For Your Emmy Consideration...

The #42 Minutes

Students on a field trip to the Museum of Natural History discover Laurel Linwood, barely conscious, on the exhibit hall floor. As advertised, very little else happens outside of the precinct as Benson works to piece together Laurel's evening so she and the squad can ID the rapist. Fin and Carisi easily find a suspect but they find him dead with a pair of scissors jammed in his face and suddenly Laurel is both suspect and victim (and if this had been an Eidisode there probs would have been bar video of her actively seducing the dude and also most of the ep would've occurred in the hospital emergency room with the detectives bumbling about trying to figure out how to get Laurel to speak).

Sorry.

The more Benson tries to draw out information from Laurel, the details become more convoluted, and we learn both Laurel and her sister are harboring deep-seated trauma. The abuse suffered at the hands of their father spills out over the sister's objections, and even the Lieutenant (who must have by now at least 20 years of SVU experience?), is shocked by the horrifying family secret.

Laurel predicts she's going to prison, but surely any mildly competent attorney would use her obviously fragile state of mental health in her favor. The detectives escort her out leaving a mentally and physically exhausted Benson to collect herself in the dawn of a new, sunny day.

Ramblings:

The episode's art--the camera angles, the lighting, the acting--was superb. Benson sounded like Benson, and surely there were many moments on set when she and Melora Walters left everyone speechless. It was, collectively, an extraordinary performance.

A +
Emmys all around!

Buuuuuuuut....the actual story lacked intensity. Maybe I've watched too much SVU or have too much of a morbid mind or both but as soon as the father's funeral detail emerged I knew he had something more to do with whatever happened to Laurel other than that he was dead. The sister's demeanor was aloof from the beginning and caused me to zero in even more on the father so much so that I doubted myself and snickered, "nope, not him, too obvious."

I suppose the redeeming quality of the script was the broader point about the irrevocable and far-reaching effects of domestic physical and psychological abuse on not only the immediate victim but the entire family. The soul is not dead quote will be tweeted and retweeted and included in bios and GIFed and tattooed...but Benson's ripple metaphor is the overlooked gem of the dialogue.

"...they grow bigger and bigger and bigger destroying everything in its wake...that's what your father did. He threw an insidious rock into your family and it covered all of you."

Speaking of dialogue...

Oh, wait...in my weekly I'm-still-pissed-about-Tuckson commentary...I am convinced the writers intentionally keep poking us in the shoulder with subtle references like smelling flowers and the phrase "collateral damage" which inevitably conjures memories of the masterpiece Collateral Damages and the official unveiling of #Tuckson and the arm grab and the "Ed just give me five minutes" and the "one of you wanna join me" and the hand on the small of her back, and, and, and...

They'll have to pry that ship from my cold, dead hands...

QUOTABLE

"Alone..."

"Hatred..."

"Father..."

"You could not be more wrong."

"I think I'm here to help you understand that. This I know."

Mariska absolutely killed this...she did a remarkable job of showing OMB exuding empathy one minute, struggling to keep her past at bay the next, and then giving in and allowing those demons to bubble back to the surface. Finally she goes all you really have no fucking clue, sister and it was so badass when she flipped off the audio and yanked the blinds closed. I am officially never ever ever taking any stock in a preview ever again, but even though I spent the #42Minutes bracing for OMB to expose a previously hidden wound I did think the juxtaposition of the two women both broken by fathers reemphasized why we love Olivia Margaret Benson so much. She has every reason to wear her damage and demons on her sleeve, but she's turned all that ugliness into a purposeful and heroic life.

"You couldn't get her to say word one." Sorry, Rollins. LOLOLOLOLOL

Wardrobe:

Not much to comment on this week, so let's just admire Mariska a little more.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears 

      Looms but the Horror of the shade, 

And yet the menace of the years 

      Finds and shall find me unafraid. 

It matters not how strait the gate, 

      How charged with punishments the scroll, 

I am the master of my fate, 

      I am the captain of my soul. 

Is It Next Wednesday Yet?

Not looking forward to Sheila absconding with Noah but, then again, maybe Benson or someone else will have to shoot her.