User Reviews

I'm not going to rehash the "this should have been an SVU story" line, because while that's true, I don't have any problem with L&O discussing similar themes as its sibling series. I applaud L&O for TRYING to tackle an incredibly sensitive, topical, and important issue, but it's tone-deaf and at times nonsensical regarding its characterizations. (No spoilers.) Near the end of the episode, the writers make two decisions that ruin the episode: the first is regarding whether or not to call a witness to the stand. But then, once that decision is made, the episode backtracks on itself, with the final line from the victim's wife making... absolutely no sense, ESPECIALLY regarding what the episode seems to want to say about its topic-of-the-week. If you're already a bigot against this community, the episode won't do anything to change that, and if you're an ally or a member, your intelligence is basically insulted by the episode. Still, it's not horrible enough to give a below a 4, since until those issues arise, the episode is pretty standard, which for L&O means at least a 6/10.

So . . . Yet another SVU storyline reheated for Law and Order. In this case, a transgender issue.

Now, understand the distinction. There's absolutely nothing inherently SVU about having a transgender character. That's certainly possible in any iteration of Law and Order.

But this is an episode where being transgender is integral to the nature of the crime. That is SVU territory. And all the didactic speeches characters give about what being transgender is, the debates over it, and so on - that's much like the preachy, virtue signaling "we're here to teach you a lesson" approach of SVU.

The rest of the dialogue follows suit like you'd expect, which is to say, like some writers looked at a Wikipedia entry on being transgender and said, how can they work the seminal issues into dialogue that sounds phony as real speech?

The weirdest part about all this is the Garden Gnome is the one troubled by young people making the decision. If there was one character on the show who I'd think had that debate when they were young, it would be the Garden Gnome.

If someone was going to get all frosty about it, I'd expect it to be Derp, though with each episode, they seem to be unconcerned anymore about how the characters were originally established.

Remember, Derp was the cro-magnon who had a lot of bigoted views.

Anyway, the rest is the usual. The too-severe computer tech is too severe, Lurch lurches, Manhands handles the men, AOC is reduced to a cameo, etc.

If Sam, the Eagle, was in there, I missed it, but then I got up to do something interesting for a few moments.