Let’s Talk Television: These Are My Characters

I watch terrible television so you don’t have to.

New This Week

CSI: Vegas (Monday, Paramount+)

This third season premiere episode starts where the season two finale ends, with Josh Folsom (Matt Lauria) under arrest for the murder of the drug dealer who murdered his mother. Most of the hour is dedicated to proving Josh’s innocence but along the way they introduce Vegas drug lord Raphael Tarquenio (Benito Martinez), who I assume will be the main antagonist of the season. Tarquenio has a past with Catherine (Marg Helgenberger), and is ultimately responsible for Josh’s mother’s death, though his hapless nephew goes down for it alone.

The wrap-up of the murder investigation is a little quick and pat for me, but as hard as they tried, I never believed Josh could be guilty so it’s probably for the best this way. Josh didn’t immediately get his job back, but I expect it, and have some hope he’ll end up partnered with Catherine because Lauria and Helgenberger play off each other well and have all the way back to the OG CSI when he portrayed a totally different character.

In other news, Allie (Mandeep Khellion) hit the ground running as a new shift supervisor, and CSI Penny (Sarah Gilman) is engaged to ME Jack (Joel Johnstone) after three dates. I miss Jack’s sister Sonya, but I’m probably the only one.

Death and Other Details (Tuesday, Hulu)

The series took full advantage of its quirk factor for this one; most of the episode took place in a liminal space between flashback and interrogation. Imogene (Violett Beane) asked Rufus (Mandy Patinkin) to tell her everything, from the beginning, so they could figure out what he missed in her mother’s murder investigation that led to the current murders. This eventually leads to Rufus helping Imogene unlock the memory of her mother’s last day.

We learn that Rufus stumbled into the case that made him famous during a poker game so his whole ‘world’s best detective’ persona is a lie and he only took Imogene’s case because the Colliers were rich and well connected. And we learn that Kira (Linda Emond) was poised to be a whistleblower about the Chinese factory, and Celia Chun (Lisa Lu) was her witness and the widow of one of the men killed. This is all divertingly twisty but there are many more turns it could take.

For one, Emond also plays Hilde, the agent assigned to solve Danny’s murder, and now Alexandra’s, too. If Kira is not dead, why did she leave Imogene with the people who tried to kill her? Perhaps Hilde is Kira’s sister/twin/cousin/some other relative. Or perhaps Kira is Viktor Simms/founded the Viktor Simms organization and had to keep Imogene out of it. We also don’t know who Imogene’s father is; he could be Lawrence (David Marshall Grant) or Llewellyn (Jere Burns) and she could believe they’d protect her. Is Rufus really looking for Viktor Simms, maybe he and Danny are a part of it and Danny isn’t even dead? Just plenty of weird ways this could go.

But what makes this episode stand out is the gimmick of Imogene playing Rufus throughout his memories. Beane is delightful throughout. She plays the part on multiple levels, both blustering-but-also-earnest as Rufus and disdainful-but-also-disappointed as Imogene. Also she’s dressed in Rufus’s clothes tailored to Beane and she is stunning.

FBI (Wednesday, Paramount+)

Every Jubal (Jeremey Sisto) episode is the same: 1. trouble with his ex-wife and son, 2. alcoholism subplot, 3. Jubal made a mistake because of 1 and 2, 4. Jubal resolves to do better. Now, Sisto plays each of these beats well and this particular episode is a well-crafted version of the story. But it is the same story.

Eight years ago Jubal was lead on a case with two missing girls. They were determined to be victims of a serial killer and it was closed though their bodies were never found. Turns out they were kidnapped and held hostage all this time (the way the initial case gets to this result is an unbelievable coincidence but once again, I don’t watch any of these shows for realism). The elder girl is killed but they track down the younger one which causes the perp to drag her into a store and hold a bunch of people hostage. Gabby (Gabriela Ochoa Perez) gets the gun and has to be talked down by her dad (Kenneth Trujillo)— tldr; Jubal is able to save Gabby from FBI snipers, from the bad guy who had her all these years, and from becoming a killer herself.

It’s a good story but I really, truly need Jubal’s story/character growth to move forward. Just the slightest bit will do. Get a love interest because I can’t stand the ex-wife, or more correctly, how the ex-wife is written. Become someone’s AA sponsor maybe. I am a big fan of continuity and a bigger fan of atonement! I just want the needle to move that little bit.

FBI: Most Wanted (Wednesday, Paramount+)

Guess what, everybody? It’s another revenge-for-how-terrible-the-U.S.-is plot! This time a Turkish father and daughter go after retired NYPD who were part of Ghost Squad, a secret counterterrorism unit that held and tortured them both twentyish years ago. We hear the story from Ray Cannon Sr. (Steven Williams), the father of our Ray Cannon (Edwin Hodge). It is horrific and it is based in what really happened here after 9/11. But once again, the show paints the Ghost Squad as the bad apples and our crew sympathize with Jeyla and Kamal right up until they throw them to the ground and arrest them.

Now, of course, I do not condone murder and the Berks have to face consequences as much as Ghost Squad does. But there’s nothing to suggest the rest of Ghost Squad will be punished, or any of the higher-ups in NYPD or the U.S. government. Nor anything to suggest they will acknowledge their complicity in what happened to the Berks and therefore what happened to the people they killed. And our ‘heroes’, including Ray Sr., remain heroes straddling the line between both sides and holding themselves above the fray. And it’s exhausting.

Chicago Med (Thursday, Peacock)

In this version of Ripped from the Headlines, Hannah (Jessy Schram) treats a woman whose water broke at 15 weeks, making her pregnancy unviable, but couldn’t get an abortion in her state. This is a timely and necessary plotline and I only wish I didn’t think ER would do it better. I am biased in this opinion, having made a list of abortion episodes on ER to watch and discuss as a side-project for Mental Health in the Movies. But I still think it.

Meanwhile, Ripley (Luke Mitchell) treats an old man who was lobotomized years ago, Archer (Steven Weber) treats an addict being counseled by his son Sean (Luigi Sottile), and Crockett (Dominic Raines) and Zola (Sophia Ali) go for round three of Zola vs the Healthcare System. Ripley wonders to Dr. Charles (Oliver Platt)what his patient might have been, and Charles completes the thought “if they hadn’t given up on him”. He then apologizes for disappearing on Ripley back when he was a kid and his patient, i.e. for giving up on him. If this is the closure Ripley needs and we can now move forward in the present I’m all for it. I would like to learn who Ripley is outside of his previous connection to Charles, especially given they are hardcore setting up a relationship with Hannah.

Archer’s patient dies, which strongly affects Sean and I worried we were heading to another relapse. But his supervisor Margo (Beth Lacke) promises to watch out for him so now I’m hopeful she’s an age-appropriate love interest for Archer. I was honestly worried we weren’t going to see Sean anymore when he got a job outside the hospital so I’m all in on anything that keeps him around. I love the Archers, I love them with Hannah, and I’m totally into her being part of the family instead of dating either. I just wish I had a reason to like her with Ripley.

Finally, Crockett and Zola’s push-me-pull-me about hospital and insurance regulations is getting old. It is certainly a plot line we should see but it can’t be the same argument every week.

Law & Order (Friday, Peacock)

This was heavily promoted as Jack McCoy’s (Sam Waterston) last episode and it was a lot of build-up for nothing. Which is also my description of this entire revival.

I hate to sound like a broken record but this case could have been on SVU. Twice it reminded me of cases that have already been on SVU. In the promo they showed previous footage of Jack spilling bullets onto the table and floor of the courtroom to make a case about the gun manufacturer’s culpability in gun violence. THAT is what this episode should have been. Jack McCoy going too far to make a political point, losing the case (he won the jury but the judge vacated the verdict and dismissed the case), and resigning in protest. Or resigning for the same reasons he did— to save Nolan (Hugh Dancy) and the rest of the office being fired by a newly elected Republican —but after a case that was a big swing. If they were set on this case, on justice hinging on a witness whose dad had enough power to threaten the DA’s office, well they should have introduced that earlier. You can’t introduce a political nemesis in the same episode he wins.

So this episode, like the rest of the season so far, is sloppy and boring and I struggled to care that Jack McCoy, a character I love!, walked off screen for the last time.

Law & Order: SVU (Friday, Peacock)

Maddie Watch: is over! Maddie (Alison Flinn) is found! Four for you Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay)!

Okay, so, this episode is fine. It has some beautiful shots, most particularly Benson in the snowy woods. Everything Olivia wears is gorgeous, the grey on grey toward the end really stands out. Her jewelry is on point; Elliot’s giant compass of love is front and center in every scene, I love the hoop earrings, and she replaced the Maddie charm bracelet with a much more expensive gold charm bracelet with a heart. Mariska Hargitay is sixty and stunning.

I also like Captain Curry (Aimé Donna Kelly) and Special Agent Sykes (Jordana Spiro). I don’t fully understand why Olivia is on a Janeway-like mission to collect people but they are mostly women and the squad definitely needs more women. And I like Fin (Ice-T) being overprotective of Olivia, though I also dislike it in the context of this season. Which brings us to my main problem.

What was the point of Maddie’s abduction being an arc? I’d hoped it was building to something. A bigger case, the squad’s growth, some kind of breakthrough for Olivia’s career or how it intersects with her personal life (did she ever get that award that Staber came back for in the first place?). And I suppose one or more of those things could still happen. But as much as she wins in this episode the four prior were about her being too invested in it, to the point where she needed therapy for Post Traumatic Stress. In this episode, she literally thanks the parents for proving she’s not crazy. Because Fin, Velasco (Octavio Pisano), Bruno (Kevin Kane), and Carisi (Peter Scanavino) spent the last month negging her. WHY.

That plus the revolving door of women who want to be like Olivia Benson makes this season super disjointed so far. It’s not bad, per se, I just don’t know what’s going on. It’s like they are trying to make me feel as off my game as Olivia feels. But they are for sure not clever enough for that!

Law & Order:Organized Crime (Friday, Peacock)

Gosh, I love this show. It is such a sweet blend of all the things I love: atonement, family both blood and found, the need to do the right thing and the impossible calculation required to figure out what that is, humor and joy in the midst of crisis.

Elliot (Christopher Meloni) uses his suspension to follow up on Rita (Izabela Vidovik) aka “someone I thought I saved” (cue TEARS). He tracks her to Long Island where she met up with the super shady Noah Cahill (Reed Diamond) and disappeared. We eventually learn she was murdered and buried on the beach. This is soul crushing. Rita was someone he met while undercover and risked his UC op to help because as hard as he tries to move on Stabler is an SVU cop through and through. He cares about victims, about special victims. (Note: he also interacts with a kid again this episode and Elliot Stabler remains excellent with kids, someone needs to say so on the show please and thank you.)

Anyway, this season (series) seems to be about all the people Elliot can’t save and it is heartbreaking and I love it. Elliot has to learn the same lesson Jubal and Olivia do, he is not responsible for all the bad things that happen to the people he knows and loves. He doesn’t have that power. But the characters who think they should have that power, those are are characters I love most. Those are the characters who sometimes save me.

The best part of the episode (series) is the OCCB team. Elliot gets Vargas (Tate Ellington) to help him because he doesn’t want to endanger his team. Vargas’ simultaneous excitement to be called on and disappointment that it’s because Elliot doesn’t consider him one of them endeared me to the character more than anything else could. And then he pulled in Jet (Ainsley Siegler), Bobby (Rick Gonzalez), and Bashir (Abubakr Ali) and the result was the sweetest, most adorable scene of found family in a crime procedural ever. The second most being Elliot visiting Ayanna (Danielle Moné Truitt) in the hospital and gifting her a teddy bear that she has in her hands for the rest of the episode. GOSH I LOVE THIS SHOW.

Elliot’s family family also show up in a visit to Joe Jr.’s (Michael Trotter) shady wine operation and a phone call with Eli (Nicky Torchia). The Joe Jr. stuff bores me thus far but the call with Eli goes about as well as it could. Elliot is worried that someone at the dinner was doing drugs after finding evidence in his bathroom. (1. it would be shocking if no one at that dinner was drugged and 2. it’s a really nice bathroom.) It’s reasonable to suspect Eli given he was stealing drugs in S2. But Elliot doesn’t accuse, he listens, and Eli doesn’t freak out, he answers in a way that calms Elliot, and puts him onto Joe Jr. instead. I approve.

The episode ends with Bobby and Bashir witnessing the LIPD find evidence of multiple bodies and therefore a serial killer. I am into Elliot getting justice for Rita as best he can.

So Help Me Todd (Friday, Paramount+)

Again, this series is so calming compared to the rest. There’s professional and personal maneuvering going on all over this episode but none of it is delivered without humor and the joy of success. No one dies, no one cries, mysteries are solved without blood or tears, and it is generally wholesome and kind.

Margaret (Marcia Gay Harden) wins by being true to herself, though possibly at the expense of Susan (Inga Schlingmann), who is definitely being set up to jump ship to Beverly (Leslie Silva), the shark. Beverly wins by also being true to herself, a shark willing to burn bridges to come out on top. And Todd (Skylar Astin) wins by believing in himself and his abilities to see things that no one else does.

But the show is way more about relationships than legal maneuvering. Margaret and Gus (Jeffrey Nordling) get to a good post-Harry place. And most importantly Todd and Allison (Madeline Wise) continue to be the best dysfunctional siblings. I look forward to Allison regaining her confidence but her journey to getting there is fun to watch and super relatable.

Also Watching

A few episodes of Scandal because Tony Goldwyn debuts as Jack McCoy’s replacement. I love early Scandal, it is PEAK terrible television, and it gives me high hopes for Goldwyn making me care about OG Law & Order again.

Mental Illness Sidebar

I’ve already mentioned the lobotomy, which was of course presented as horrific. There is also a subplot about Goodwin’s (S. Epatha Merkerson) ex-husband who is potentially suffering from dementia.

Jubal and his son go to therapy at the end of FBI. Before heading in they have a chat where Jubal repeats what Maggie (Missy Peregrym) told him earlier word for word. It’s good advice and I actually really like the repetition. But it was legitimately about 90 seconds previous, or at most 3 hours in universe, which is a bit silly.

No one else gets therapy on screen but literally every single person in every single series needs it.

Ship of the Week

In Chicago, besides Ripley and Hannah, and Crockett and Zola, Maggie (Marlyne Barrett) finalizes her divorce and finds herself attracted to a new EMT.

In New York, Olivia leaves Elliot a voicemail to let him know she’s heard about his trouble with IAB, trusts him over them, and is available to listen. Three/thirteen/sixteen/twenty-five years later it’s annoying that this romance exists on voicemail but this is where we are.

In Portland, Margaret and Gus shared a bench, a weird sandwich, and enough of a conversation to arrive at a hopeful place in their relationship so they win.

Show of the Week

Death and Other Details pulled off its high concept and is clearly the best put together. But Organized Crime has my heart.

What are YOU watching?