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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GenuineSnoof Thu 24 Oct 2024 12:00PM UTC
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sungarden Thu 24 Oct 2024 03:09PM UTC
Last Edited Thu 24 Oct 2024 03:24PM UTC
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