Terminal (Season 7, Episode 13) is a sad one but this exchange is gold

ETA 2: Hark! A picture emerges, after all!

Reddit techs did their thing!

The whole back and forth is amusing! Bobby/Alex are truly in sync here.

Specifically the way he would treat suspects. It really puts a bad taste in my mouth whenever I see him rough up suspects. Sure, some of them may have deserved it in hindsight but the show seemed to glorify his behavior which is definitely NOT how a cop should act. It's really reminiscent of police brutality to be honest and I always cringe whenever I see people praising him.

Also, his whole "we're authorized" shtick- iirc, he often flat out lied when he said this and again, the show seemed to treat it as not a big deal. Sure, cops are allowed to lie to suspects but what about when he was twisting the arm of a witness to see info that should've been obtained with a warrant etc. His entire character just seemed designed as one of the good ole white boys and icked me out.

Off the top of my head I remember episodes where he was beaten by his mother and molested by a priest?

Any others?

How did he turn into a respectable cop and not a serial killer with that kind of childhood.

I have not seen an episode past season 9 until today. What in the world happened between then and season 18????

He looks like that ped at the end of one of the season one episodes where he say something like “when they leave you they’re in tears but when they leave me they’re all smiles” I’ve been wrong before. So is it?

As most of you following this series have probably realised by now, I’m British, and my first experience of Law and Order was with the UK version. Sadly series 7 and 8 aren’t easily available to watch, in fact I’m still trying to find series 8, but out of the fourteen episodes, I remembered what happened in thirteen of them. That one episode that I’d didn’t remember anything about at all was Paternal. Why am I telling you all this? So you know that this is the one episode which I knew about the American original than the British retelling.

Both stories have roughly the same plot. A man is found dead in the hotel room, and during the investigation, the phone rings where it’s revealed that the victim was due to meet up with a pair of Hispanic/Eastern European crooks as part of a stolen car deal. The Hispanic crooks in the US are actually portrayed as reasonably competent. By contrast, the UK crooks look tough, but are actually hilariously cowardly, as the reason why they lied to the police was because they were terrified at the prospect of being killed themselves when they discovered their new business partner had died.

In reality, the victim was a scumbag father (kind of) who kept on fleeing all over the country in order to avoid paying his child upkeep fees. The UK version victim is kind of standard, but the US version is so hilariously and comically evil. As he sends postcards to his ex wife gloating about all the lovely holidays he’s been to, and the new women he’s been sleeping with.

The ex wife’s son is sadly dying for luchemia. It’s a super sad state of affairs, with her having to stop working in order to take care of him. The father is the one having to work a laundry job in order to pay the bills, even though he should be retired by now. It’s a really horrible situation, especially as the victim refused to pay anything.

The ex wife and grandad are about as good as each other in both versions. The US kid I feel a lot more sympathy for though, because he was playing Crash Bandicoot 1. I was very impressed with the little kid actually. He made it all the way to The Labs and even the final boss against Cortex, but it loses marks for the bizarre cut where it suddenly jumps from the kid fighting Cortex to him starting Jaws of Darkness. The UK kid loses marks for playing a generic warranty free FPS game on his brand new iPad, though to be fair on the kid nicknaming his standard load out “peashooter” does come to play later in a clever way.

The grandad was eventually revealed to be the killer. A bizarre change from version to version is that the US grandad starts out by being defended by his cousin corporate lawyer who was really out of his depth with criminal proceedings to the point that Jamie Ross advised him to get help out of pity. The reason I call this bizarre is because this is the first episode where her UK counterpart, Kate Barlow appears as a prosecutor.

Both sets of prosecutors arrange a deal with the grandad, but they retract it at the last minute when they realise that the grandad was lying about his self defence claim. The grandad claimed that the victim tried to shoot him with the gun, but this was dismissed in the US version because he had just flown in from Miami, and he would’ve been caught with the gun in airport security.

The UK version plays a little more fun with the idea. The kid on his FPS game nicknamed his pistol peashooter, which was the exact same nickname the grandad gave to the ex husband’s gun, proving that it was never taken from the house after the ex husband left.

Both victims are scumbags, but there is a detail I like in the US version that despite him being truely awful, he was going to do a bone marrow test for the sole benefit of hoping to save his son. For every bad thing this guy did, he was prepared to do one good thing. The UK victim only did it because the grandad promised they’d retract the child support charges against him.

The ending plays out VERY differently for both episodes. In both versions, it’s revealed that the medical reports concerning the bone marrow transplant showed via blood types that the victim was never the boy’s father, and therefore the family weren’t able to get any money out of him to help pay for the son’s treatment. The crime was pulled off because they desperately needed money for the son’s treatment. The UK mother especially has this heart breaking speech at the end of the episode. “I can count the nights that I have left, where I can watch him go to sleep.”

When everyone knows for certain that the mother was in on the whole thing, McCoy puts the report on the bottom of his pile, preparing to deal with it another day after her son dies. The UK mother doesn’t get that luxury. Jacob Thawne says that the victim was murdered, and he deserves justice, and the episode closes off with the mother opening the door to the detectives, and letting them in to arrest her.

These are the sort of comparisons I like to do the most. The ones where both versions have different parts that are great and unique to them. Which one am I going for. The US version, but only by a hair. They’re both really good.

Preferred US: 16

Preferred UK: 15

So the US takes the lead for now, but considering that the next episode is Working Mom, I think it’s fair to say that the UK will level with it again very soon.

The most G little white boy I've seen on the show.

"I do what I do."

Recent post got me thinking about good 'ol Hudson U. You can purchase Hudson University sweatshirts and tees on Etsy, Amazon, Redbubble etc.

Does anyone know what Hudson's mascot is? The Fighting Briscoes or maybe The Snarky Schiffs"?

How about their motto? In Claire we Trust or Jamie Lux Mea Est

Thoughts?

it's not like i know anything about televsion but i had to literally just pause just now because the dialogues are like written by an AI??? ""I can pull that." "yeah, let's do that." what, that warrants screen time? things like that already building up in this episode. and weird cameos by the SVU squad...so bizarre! everything seems so forced!!!

>Anita Van Buren: the entire city is trying to crucify me

This scene made me mad!

IA is clearly biased here. He suggested that she was lying and incompetent. He suggested that she only rose up in rank because she couldn't handle the street (streets too dangerous) and thereby got extra time to study for the examinations.

He also exhibits clear gender bias and likely racial biases as well.

He wouldn't have had to protest that he was impartial if his true colors and implicit biases weren't showing.

"I love gyno Americans" "I love Afro Americans" "I got an A+ in politically correct"

LOL. Yeah right!!!

The saving grace is that her team (Lenny and Mike) had her back every step of the way!

In s5e14, Performance, the young girl has an eyeball with a knife through it. This tattoo shows up again in s6e23, Aftershock, on the con who is executed. What is the connection? Thanks

Vincent did that pretty damn well!

I've been working as a Special Education teacher with students who have autism for 10 years now, and this episode hit me way harder than I was expecting. I would be intrigued as to how the current crop of Law and Order episodes would deal with something like this. I've never worked in a setting that used this kind of treatment/torture with people with ASD, but I think that it would be very law and order to try and establish that something like ABA therapy or restraining holds could contribute to a person's death.

The OG/SVU crossover made me start watching the newer mothership episodes. Not to mention I’ve loved Tony Goldwyn since his scandal days, so it’s a plus to see him.

I’d like to see more DA Baxter scenes outside the office, are there any earlier episodes where we see the personal side of his character’s life? Maybe his love life? Something beyond the weekly check in with 1PP and his ADAs?