A couple slightly more clear-headed thoughts on last night’s SVU, The Year We All Fell Down:

Parts of the story, especially the teaser, were viscerally upsetting, like people who insist on narrating your worst, most traumatic memories back to you in detail. However, I believe the story was ethically told, remarkably ethically.

“9/11 as a backdrop” stuff often comes off as hokey (and obnoxious and not-there to those of us who were in Manhattan that day) because of that “as a backdrop” element. Here, the covid crises *were* the story. They were Vanessa’s story.

Also remarkable was how this was the first episode where I (and the wider audience, one would hope?) *fully sympathized* with the hostage taker.

I’m not qualified or in a good ethical position to comment on the Benson/Garland justice fantasy element, and the show forever is what it is, but I appreciated the characters’ insistence, against others, that Vanessa was having the worst day of her life.

I loved Rollins narrowly preventing her dad from becoming an episode of Dateline. It broke my heart how much emotional labor/management the women in this episode — Benson, Rollins, Vanessa — were responsible for.

As for the Rollins/Carisi stuff, look: I was a 90s teenager who quickly learned that you earn great emotional rewards for emulating the stuff people get excited about re: popular tv shows. So I have feelings. I get a little exasperated.

But, there’s good stuff happening in other media. Just remember that when you say a show with LGBTQ main characters “isn’t for you” or that a narrative “isn’t realistic”, young people are listening. Hell, 90s teenagers are listening.

Anyway, we should probably all aspire to the kindness, community, and non-abusive, self-determined version of forgiveness portrayed with so much hope at the end of the episode.

/EndThread