I think they got rid of in house catering? I watched some interview with Extras once and they talk about how much they get paid, and the perks, and usually there was in house catering to make sure people who have to be around the set all day don't go hungry -- this is or was industry norm since sometimes filming location are middle of nowhere, but sometime after Season 16 they got rid of that, there's a picture of the actors of Rollins, Carisi, and Barba's eating take-out from different place, I guess they have to go get their own lunch now or order their own ubereats.
Other people noticed that the cast was always eating in EARLY seasons, "Especially in his early seasons, Barba was also always eating. Like, there's scenes where he's eating a full plate of food when NO ONE else in the scene is."
https://old.reddit.com/r/SVU/comments/m8qs5z/always_eating/
I wonder which came first, them deciding to starve the bunny and stop dressing him up in pretty clothes, or him pulling away to other projects and them treating him worse out of spite? I just got the feeling that some higher-ups on SVU was butthurt that Esparza praised Hannibal more than SVU even though he got more scenes in SVU, but no contest, Hannibal has better writing, sets, and working environment. The way Barba was written was just spite that retconed past details like when Barba's father died. First Season 19 episode had Finn going to Cuba to arrest an old suspect across the borders, other than how outlandish that was, they didn't give the lines about Cuba to Barba like it would have in early seasons? When Nick Amaro was being written out we got a lot of episodes focusing on Nick, and then he got a happy ending with his wives in California. We barely saw Barba in Season 19 until the episode in the middle of the season where he was drummed out. I feel like the SVU higher-up did a lot to both minimalize and ruin Barba's character as much as they could get away with and it probably would have been worse if Raul Esparza wasn't friends with Mariska Hargitay.
Later SVU seasons were just so disrespectful, to characters, intelligence of the viewers, and if the catering rumours were true, to treatment of the cast as well, but Barba/Esparza got it worse because Esparza refused to rollover and/or higher-ups were annoyed with him or his character -- what made Barba's character such a fast favourite was that he's smart, he knows a LOT of legal details, like how the Violence Against Women Act can be interpreted in "Downloaded Child" so that they can go after one CEO for all the restitution the victim needed. I'm guessing the higher-ups find researching this to write Barba's character properly a pain to deal with, and they rather go with soap opera drama like Sheila Porter kidnapping Noah -- even though this arc is disrespectful to multiple characters again -- it makes Eli Porter and Noah's lawyer looks stupid, it made the family court judge look stupid, it insults the intelligence of the viewers too...and it would have been quite one thing if Eli Porter than changed her name, but she didn't. Really though, things were already starting to get bad by the time the William Lewis thing started, though the actual ripped from the headlines episode like 19x3 Intent continues to be good overall, except the Rollins Carisi bar fight which was ridiculous.
ETA: What I like and missed about early SVU is the realism, and that's not the same as grittiness, it was way more nuance like in "Lessons Learned", where there was teachers at a male highschool that were outright rapists, but also one that was gay, had a few consensual relationship with the older 17-18 year old students during those different times, none of those students he was actually involved with felt violated, it was somebody else that sent him an article bout coercive relationships, and the gay teacher explain and seem to understood that while his relationships were consensual, it might have opened the door for other teachers with worse intentions. There was the arc with Selena from "Girls Disappeared" on, someone who was a victim but is now a victimizer. From Season 16 on we started getting a lot of "murder wizards", not out of place for Hannibal but very jarriing in SVU. A lot of things like prior characterization and internal universe sense just get thrown out for easy drama. Oh, one of the reason I liked watching Law and Order is that it's filmed in New York, later season, there seem to be less sense of New York character than before.
I refuse to watch his last ADA ep, that just never happened. ;) I love him to bits and I'm sure his acting is outstanding, but I cant watch Barba written shit like that. I just watch some plays on yt with him instead then.
I decided to check out the rest of Season 19, and NO WONDER Esparza decided to jump ship, it was mostly Stupid Contrived Drama, and the ham-handed show direction ruined not only Barba's character but everyone else as well, there are still some odd well written episode like "Send in the Clowns" which felt like early SVU, and the Rollins one with "The Book of Esther" -- that was angst but I like the beginning where Rollins was getting a traumatized young woman to follow her with a candy bar "it works on Frannie", she soo would treat injured class hamster like she would Frannie! I'm picturing Rafa wedged under the kitchen sink her getting him out with a cookie.
Originally I was going to do my rewatch chronologically, but I decided to get Season 19 and 18 out of the way first...the best Barba episodes were when Amaro was still around...sadly I think the show direction as a whole actually did start to go for Super Drama when Barba was introduced, almost anybody other than Esparza wouldn't have been able to pull off the belt stunt, it was mostly with Barba's eyes that you can tell how badly the case got to him. Somewhere on the team there are good researchers that did stuck around even after Barba left so there are still good episode, but somebody above them decide that this character need to experience this contrived drama...almost right after Barba left, there was an episode where Carisi's niece claim to be raped, confess to lying about it, and then was raped for real... 19x15 In Loco Parentis...which have another character background retcon, I'm pretty sure that Carisi was the big brother during Barba's run, but in 19x15 he mention having older sisters instead, 19 x 15 show him with a big sister who has a teenage college age daughter (the math absolutely does not add up, Carisi is not that old), made more sense earlier when he had a younger sister who was about to have a baby, not just math but Carisi's personality and habits.
I heard that right before Stabler left, there were SVU viewers, even former Stabler fans, who stopped watching because his cop brutality plus family drama was getting too ridiculous, I guess there was a lot of ups and downs. Best over all seem to be Season 14 to 16, show over all and Barba episodes, that's when we got "October Surprise" "Downloaded Child", ""Padre Sandunguero", "Forgiving Rollins", "December Solstice", reality grounded episode that fleshed out characters, developed relationships, and made SVU New York seem like a realer place: Rollins and Barba with her practising testimony that explains why Rollins behave the way she does -- and it didn't come out of nowhere that episode, prior ones had her nervous about Atlanta. Amaro was both protective of Barba and trying to get him to be accountable in "October Suprirse", and then we see him tried the same with his own sister in "Padred Sandunguero", and the reveal that they have somewhat similar dads -- something retconned in "Undiscovered Country" which seem to parallel Barba's father with Stone's father in regards to the son's feeling, didn't get the "still curl into a fist" vibe and the dates are wrong, 7 years ago before Season 19 versus 14 years ago earlier.
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