About Last Night…CELEBRITY FAMILY FEUD and LAW & ORDER Crossover

Let’s talk about Thursday night’s TV!

CELEBRITY FAMILY FEUD: What an absolute mess of an episode? When you have to kill almost ten minutes introducing the two teams, you’ve made a big, big mistake. The only good thing was both teams getting $25k at the end of the game. What a weird way to end the season.

LAW & ORDER Crossover: After writing what feels like 897983123198 words on the crossover—and one more post heading your way later today—I’m going to bulletpoint my thoughts on the three hours:

• The three hours looked gorgeous. Jean de Segonzac and Alex Hall did a gorgeous job at directing the episodes, and pulled off a lot within the television landscape/production schedules they had.
• Even though it was technically OC/SVU/mothership, the most important thing for each show, uh, didn’t occur in their respective hour. (OC introduced Shaw, SVU had Elliot lose his CI, and the mothership had Amanda getting shot.) SVU and the mothership felt a little more cohesive with the casts intermingling, whereas OC felt really, really mothership-heavy. (It’s crazy we saw Olivia before we saw Elliot, and he only showed up like a half-hour in.) It could not have been easy trying to introduce a whole freaking new character to the franchise, and since format was such a non-issue—even OC got “dun dun”s!—I remain a little surprised they didn’t just say the normal order was the way it was airing. And if they do this again next season, I do wonder if they’ll shake up the order. (Whether it’s having the mothership people lose a case and that sets something off, or it go SVU->OC->mothership, whatever.)
• It was a little surreal, as a fan, to see the squads so seamlessly intermingling, especially in the SVU hour. It was a lot of fun to see how they worked together, and it’ll add flavor the next time there’s a mini-crossover.
• Kelli Giddish was absolutely brutally heartbreaking when Rollins was shot. Given how much new SVU showrunner David Graziano has written about this being a season of exploring and healing trauma, I truly hope the show dives into this in a real, significant way.
• Also traumatic: Olivia’s reaction to Amanda’s shooting and Elliot’s reaction to his CI being killed. Mariska Hargitay and Christopher Meloni were great in those moments.
• (Being a CI for OCCB has to be one of the most cursed gigs out there. So many of their people wind up dead!)
• This has to be a record for action sequences in the franchise in a three-hour block. Or, frankly, maybe even longer? Feels like we got a whole half-season worth of busts and stunts in these hours.
• “Thanks for, uh” x2 is the most male exchange I’ve heard on TV this month—maybe longer. (I laughed at the ridiculousness of it.) But, uh, I can’t believe Cosgrove had to step in so Stabler didn’t cross a line. Didn’t have that on my BINGO card.
• The writers were clear this was going to be its own thing and its out of time element would make it difficult to dig into anything time-sensitive, but in a perfect world, I would have loved to get a real beat between Benson, Bell, and Dixon. Or Rollins and anyone not-SVU-related, since it’s almost certainly her last crossover.
• Olivia risking everything to help a survivor? Yes, please, thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. (Also, a straight-up badass move to—seemingly—blatantly lie to Price.)
• Someone let Peter Scanavino work with Sam Waterston, I am begging.
• (I also cannot believe we didn’t get a Benson/Stabler/McCoy scene. The sheer history on this franchise among those three. Sigh. Hopefully next time.)
• I mean…the smile when Elliot said, “Thanks, Liv.”
• Rublev deserved nothing good, either, but I cannot believe Sirenko technically got off the “best” of everyone; that man deserves no peace.

Which shows did you watch last night?

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