About Last Night…LAW & ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT, GREY’S ANATOMY, and LAW & ORDER: ORGANIZED CRIME

Let’s talk about Thursday night’s TV!

LAW & ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT: We’re only three episodes into the season, but there’s a heartbreaking theme at play so far: good people are fighting the fight…and keep getting screwed over by TPTB/factors out of their control.

Despite the heartbreak of the end, I loved the episode. It managed to work in a compelling story about a survivor trying to get justice, a bonkers amount of action (that raid was bonkers), absolute badass/snarky Olivia, good character moments with Olivia/Amanda and Olivia/Fin (though, Liv, please stop lying to your therapist), and the OC and FBI joint task force fit in seamlessly.

I’m also glad Olivia was mad that Elliot hadn’t been forthcoming about where he was and what he’s doing. No matter what, at some point, she deserves to have her anger and to actually express it to him. Circumstances made it more difficult last season. Now, it’s not safe to get into it the way they should/need to. But her anger over the situation is earned and I look forward to the day it can actually be safely expressed. (Though with Olivia and Elliot fighting in the middle of a case…somewhere, Cragen just got a splitting headache and has no clue why.)

That being said, I’m so intrigued/confused by Ayanna forbidding Elliot from telling Olivia, explicitly, that he was undercover. Logically, very few people should know, but he’s literally seeing his kids in-person and Ayanna and Olivia know each other; it certainly seems like they were friends.

GREY’S ANATOMY: Oh, hello Scott Speedman. What an absolutely insanely delightful surprise to have Nick back. And now this makes things even messier for Meredith/Hayes.

As someone who loves Link and Amelia, it’s frustrating it feels like they’re talking through each other. Wanting forever with someone doesn’t HAVE to equal being married. I get why Link’s past might make him crave more, but pushing his way to move isn’t the answer, either, because then he gets the firm no…and ends up with nothing? Sigh.

I am so happy Teddy and Owen finally got married. (Even if, uh, a priest was killed during their first attempt in the premiere.) Now, please let them be happy for more than five seconds?

LAW & ORDER: ORGANIZED CRIME: Oh my God, when showrunner Ilene Chaiken said the Albanian family was “rough, very physical, very visceral”…I DID NOT EXPECT AN EAR BEING BITTEN OFF, WTF. (This WTF also applies to severed body parts, thankyouverymuch.)

I’m really glad we’re seeing both the impact of this undercover op on Elliot and Bell. Elliot, as Bell noted, is on a very tight rope and this continues to be a Very Bad Idea. He’s running away from himself*. And for Ayanna, Gina’s death is still so recent. This has to be so triggering for both of them.

*That being said, the man who was seemingly about to recognize Elliot…is that foreshadowing or a one-time close call? Because, uh, Elliot, you are not the most stealth UC operative right now.

(But also holy Nova twist?!)

I cannot tell you how much I loved Bernie’s return. Obviously, Ellen Burstyn is an incredible actress—and her scenes with Chris Meloni are just stunning—but it was also so telling how much that relationship and Elliot have changed in the past dozen years: where he was once abrasive with little patience (understandable given their history), he’s now softer…yes, occasionally frustrated, but the overwhelming warmth felt so lovely to see. But with Bernie at least temporarily thinking Olivia was the wife that died, that reunion in a few weeks is sure going to make things complicated. (If she remembers, I suppose. She started to say “Kath,” and then talked about his wife, his beautiful bride, and then asked how Olivia’s funeral was. If she’s drifting that in and out of time, and presumably has been in NY this entire time…uh, did she think Olivia’s time with Lewis had a different outcome? Or was something said to her by someone in the family? Or was this truly from their meeting a dozen years ago?)

(I know there was some angst over Elliot being back in NY four times after he moved overseas, but he had four kids who lived in the area. There were holidays, likely graduations, etc.—I always expected he had been back. But the indication it was four times…the question becomes when, because…Olivia was very much front-page news for a bit.)

So. The letter. The letter was always going to be a tricky issue to navigate, because it had to be able to be multiple things, simultaneously: 1) Something Elliot could have written to Olivia when Kathy was alive, 2) while he was intending to go back to Rome, 3) with no idea what Olivia’s life was like in the past decade, and 4) included something in it that made her seek him out and visibly soften her approach.

It’s also interesting it seems the letter was never supposed to be seen by Olivia. Elliot told her Kathy suggested he write a letter first so it “would be easier to talk when we see each other after so much time.” It almost sounds like it was supposed to be a trial run for what, potentially, he could have told her when they reunited in-person at the awards ceremony; a way to make sure he didn’t go to her with nothing planned and end up with more regrets.

The fact is, even after everything that went down, Elliot only gave Olivia the letter after she pulled away in the OC series premiere. He heavily implied he had thought of her while he was in Italy (“You would have loved it”) and she just couldn’t hear that from him. Then he gave her the letter. If he thought the door was closed, that was it, this could be their goodbye; it makes sense he would want her to have a bit more closure/feel better about her decision to leave them behind…while still acknowledging in another world it would have been them.

I’m not sure what to make of the portions Kathy dictated, to be honest. Kathy’s actions, really, don’t make sense on paper. Elliot noted (in the SVU episode last season which marked his return to the franchise) it was Kathy who insisted they go to Olivia’s award ceremony after a decade of silence and absence—all while she apparently didn’t believe that Elliot and Olivia hadn’t been in contact since he initially left the force. And Kathy knew how close they were, for better or worse; it was an issue that was brought up as early as season 1 of SVU, but certainly came into play when she asked Olivia to get Elliot to sign divorce papers in season 8. So…is there more to this? Was Kathy dictating intentionally false things to get Elliot to do something? If she was really just trying to get Elliot to finally let go of Olivia, wouldn’t it have been safer to have him send the letter versus risking what could happen if they came face-to-face?

But as much as the letter wasn’t Elliot’s, Chaiken was also right that “it leaves Olivia and Elliot in a place where maybe they’ve never quite been before.” It does. The sole line he penned (and, uh, kept from Kathy) was “in a parallel universe, it will always be you and I.” They’re no longer in the figurative universe they were in when he wrote it; circumstances have changed. OC has not been shy about Elliot’s feelings for Olivia, both in what he’s expressed and what’s been said around/about him, but Olivia having every word of that (clearly bittersweet) letter memorized? That says a lot, too. (Also, bravo to Mariska Hargitay, who was just stunning with her acting choices throughout the scene.)

Now, uh, how much does Elliot remember about the encounter with Olivia given how drugged he was…?

Which shows did you watch last night?

Follow @GiveMeMyRemote and @marisaroffman on Twitter for the latest TV news. Connect with other TV fans on GIVE ME MY REMOTE’s official Facebook page.

And be the first to see our exclusive videos by subscribing to our YouTube channel.

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases made through links/ads placed on the site.