Return of the Prodigal Son

I have binged this show and was looking forward to this episode. This season has been grating. The politics in this are just not something that needs to be there. Yes, I get the actors of the show have their views but can we just not put that in the show. I watch to get away from reality not to have it shoved down my throat. The character of Cat is just awful. In this episode I wanted to throat punch her. She has been getting on my nerves for awhile. This was the straw that broke the camels back. I cannot continue to watch this show after this. I never even finished the episode. Awful....just awful.

I have been watching the show since day 1 and by far the better seasons were the Olivia-Elliott days. From the first scene the chemistry was there. It wasn't a great episode but just seen them act together even for a few minutes made my day.

As lovely as it was to see Stabler and Benson back on-screen together, the episode was fumbled by soap opera-esque writing. The dialogue was slow and overworked, the score felt more like a 2010 cancer patient film than a hard-hitting crime-drama, and the focus of the show was pandering to viewers' expectations as opposed to solving the crime.

This decline in quality has been a slow burn over the past several seasons - switching from a fast-paced, procedural show that uses its format to explore the complexity of its criminal characters to an overwrought drama that is resting on its laurels and expecting it to be enough.

Liv and Elliott deserved better, and so did the fans.

I used to love this show, even better than the original, but maybe six or seven years ago the show shifted from being about solving and convicting criminals and started to delve deeply into the personal lives of the characters. It ruined the show. If I want a soap opera I'll watch Days of Our Lives.

I only watched this episode because of the return of Chris Meloni. Unfortunately everything I hated about the "new"L&O SVU was here in spades and great new additional things thrown in to make me hate it even more. The opening was cartoonish. To call the writers sophomoric would be an insult to the comparative maturity of sophomores in high school everywhere.

While the political stuff in the show does get annoying sometimes, I was able to overlook that and focus on the darkness, intensity, emotional feels and excellent performances that Chris Meloni and Mariska Hargitay brought.