I’m back after a couple of days of taking a break. In the interrum I was watching some SVU and happened to come across a couple of interesting coincidences that felt like nods maybe? I am unsure. That was in the episode of SVU S22E6 The long arm of the witness. Without further side tracking lets get going.
The episode starts up in what appears to be a the most dimly lit marriage counslors office I have ever seen.
The counselor is telling them that they need to do like we do the airplane masks and take care of themselves first.
The counselor is really monologuing and it feels off. She’s also too smiley. She tells them to stand up. Or him to stand up and face his wife. She’s telling him to not be embarrassed to do it in front of her. Its weird, creepy sexual vibe.
He looks down at her and its creepy as he unbuckles his pants. His wife looks up at him smiling, something creeps into the frame from the side. Oh. Oh. IT’S A GUN.
He shoots his wife. The blood spatter defies space and hits the counslor on the face, she jumps then smiles and tells him, “Good Job, Tim”. Our favorite working mom wakes up and the intro rolls.
Allison wakes up in the morning and everyone is up at the table having a secret meeting.
Allison and Joe talk in the bathroom while he’s waking up. She’s telling him they can’t plan a surprise party for her birthday. Joe tells her that as she knows, she might as well help him gather up the stuff for the party.
Insert eye roll.
He’s getting dressed as Allison tells him about her dream. He listen but doesn’t really offer any advice. He goes to leave for the day and sits on the bed with her. He makes a joke, smacks her ass. She doesn’t seem too pleased with this being his response to her sharing her disturbing dream to her and says, “Go to work.” He walks out.
Enter Scanlan [Detective guy who is close with Devolos the DA].
He’s looking around a crime scene, gets a call. Basically he’s being told he shouldn’t be there by his boss.
Plenty of bad crime scene procedures going on everywhere. There are like 30 people in this crime scene. Scanlan puts something he’s holding on their book shelf. Devolos show up suddenly. Devolos tells Scanlan that this is a murder suicide and that’s what the cororner and everyone else thinks too. Scanlan calls out that he thinks this is another one of a series of murder suicides that are happening to newly married couples. He points out he found Bowling for Columbine in their DVD collection. He asks why would a young married couple who thinks a fun Friday night is watching an “Anti-NRA documentary” ends up dying in a murder suicide committed by an unregistered 35 in their apartment. Fair point.
Devolos brings Allison in and tells her to check out the crime scene because Scanlan is ruining his career over this pattern that no other cop is seeing.
Allison gets told by Scanlan to put booties and gloves on before coming up, so good crime scene management there.
She walks into the room. Either the bodies under the sheet are for very small people or the set dressers did a bad job. They look like a pair of pants and a sheet with some blood thrown over them. After watching the whole scene, I think it’s more that the couch is huge and they are semi smallish people. still didn’t look great.
He tells her the crime scene facts, husband killed the wife, and then killed himself.
Scanlan basically starts telling Allison that he doesn’t know why she’s there. For all he knows she could be CSI, FBI, or Kiss my ass.
Allison just says, “Oh?” very calmly in response to his aggressive defense of his interpretation of the scene Devolos has sent her to check out.
Scanlan points out that he listens to his instinct and that is how he’s gone up from being a crossing guard to detective. He gives some stats that show how many murder suicide happened lately for people married less than 2 years in the greater Phoenix area. Allison says the first year is the hardest.
Scanlan says, “I wouldn’t know”. Oh thanks bud for telling us you don’t have anyone who loves you and you aren’t married. What a sourpuss!
He retorts that in the last 100 years this is a huge increase of people dying in this way during this part of their marriage. Plus the first couple that happened to die this way was his sister and her husband and he knows that won’t be something her husband could have done to her.
She tells him she needs to be alone to concentrate. Scanlan reluctantly goes.
As soon as he does the bloody sheet starts to move like its being breathed under.
Allison steps forward. The lights go out. The marriage counselor appears and tells Allison hello again. She says isn’t this wonderful.
Allison asks if counselor is dead, and she says no. She says she is the manifestation of what happened here and their love for each other because they did this because of love. “This happened because they loved each other more than life itself.”
There is a weird audio issue here where it goes to surround sound way more than you would think it should.
The lights go back on, Allison goes up to them on the couch and looks at them under the sheet. Their faces are completely covered in blood. I have a hard time imagining why that would be.
Allison looks at their prominently portrayed wedding photo opposite them on the couch.
Cut to Allison, Devolos and Scanlan sitting in a conference room. Allison tells them there was a 3rd person. She doesn’t know who. Scanlan gets all excited that someone believes him and asks what she found. It comes out that she knows these things from a dream.
Scanlan just goes off and is berating Devolos for involving him with a psychic. He asks if he has the word JACKASS across his forehead. How will she get him a task force? He calls her Milli Vanilli the psychic? [Who is that? ]
[post note: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milli_Vanilli I think its a reference to how they faked their live performances ect. Seems like the most obvious comparison. That happened in 1991 at the latest. So the writers thought this joke would land? How old would the audience be? So think 1991, to likely remember that you would be a person in high school to mid-late twenties maybe? Say 14 is high school age, so 1991-14 = 1977, oldest lets say 30. 1991-30= 1961. This came out in 2005. 2005-1977 = 28. So the hypothetical median age for the target audience is 28. That hits hard. *Tear* Medium just did such a good job of meaning so much to me. Lol]
Devolos tells him that Allison is the task force, there isn’t any other resources.
Allison, “You really know how to make a girl feel special”
Scanlan tells Devolos he’s insane and tells Allison she’s insaner.
Allison tells them he does have ASS across his forehead.
Allison gets up and calls him out. Doesn’t he want to know about the other 3 crime scenes? What if she can see something there?
Scanlan gets upset that he doesn’t have those crime scenes, and then Devolos says she can use the photos. Allison says that will be a good start.
Commercial break cut to open back up on Ariel [Allison’s oldest daughter] looking out the window and tells everyone that mom is home. Joe goes out to her car and knocks on the window and Allison jumps. He tells her the plan he concocted to make the kids think he is sneaking the stuff for the party into the house. He makes a joke about her being 28. She’s being really grumpy about having to buy the stuff for her own surprise party.
She’s sitting in bed looking at the crime scene photos. Allison gets on his case for trying the whole she’s turning 28 joke like 5 times. [Post note: This is crazy. I totally forgot about this long running joke the whole time during my second clean up writing rewatch cause I was a bit sleepy last time.]
She gets to describing what Scanlan did at work in very loose terms.
2nd watch: She is telling Joe that Scanlan told her all about his intution and how he’s followed his gut before and it never led him wrong, but when it comes to HER having some weird intution “She’s insane!”
you tell them
Her dream starts and its just pictures of all the dead couples she saw in different shots.
Her alarm goes off and she wakes up, but I wasn’t prepared so that spooked me.
The day starts with Lee is just being a huge dick until Devolos tells him to give it a rest.
Allison explains that she thinks the husbands died first. Devolos says you can’t end up with blow back and gunshot residue on them without shooting first.
Allison really gives him some shit and tells him that he doesn’t have a theory so at least she has one.
Devolos says she appreciates Allison’s time, but obviously this partnership isn’t going to work out. He’s just about to walk out and Allison tells them that she wants them to hear her out all the way.
She said that she said she always saw 3 people at each crime scene, except for 1 that had 4. [Post: pointing to the image from the first crime scene, aka Scanlan’s sister.
Scanlan is being a huge jerk and Devolos says Allisson’s right, he is an ass. Devolos gets called out of the room, Scanlan follows. Allison calls him an idiot once he’s out of the room [Post: and she’s alone].
Devolos got called out to another precinct where this guy is telling a story that sounds crazy by all accounts up to this point.
The man being interviewed says that a man broke into their house, and and held him at gunpoint. The intruder gave the man a gun and told him he was running an experiment. Either he husband could shoot his wife with the gun provided and live or he will kill them both. The husband pulls the trigger after deciding that this must be a sick joke because the gun was too light to be loaded. The intruder laughs and says over a couple of years this husband was the first one to actually do it. The gun the husband had wasn’t loaded, so it just clicked. After the intruder laughed , he shoots the mans wife, hands the gun to the husband and walks out. [2nd watch note: this guys performance is very enjoyable. ]
Allison and Devolos talk with the husband and the husband just retells it, and says its super clever of this guy because his plan to frame him clearly worked. [Post: They explain that if he did shoot the gun like the intruder wanted, and this exact scenario plays out – the unlikelihood of anyone believing him was enough for the intruder to not kill the husband and therefore keep his word. ]
Cut to Joe at lunch at work. His coworker is leaving a voicemail on the home answering machine about coming to the surprise party. [2nd watch: In exchange, Joe’s agreed to attend his coworkers church production of Our Town. This is like my favorite play. Am I basic? What is happening?]
Allison and Scanlan go to the scene of this murder. She sees a bunch of flashes from a camera in the room with the deceased wife on the bed. [Post: She asks them if they can quit doing that. Scanlan says, “Doing what?” then they stop. She walks outside to get some air.
Scanlan follows her out and asks her if she’s okay and has she seen dead people before. She kinda throws a wry smile. He’s assuming she’s freaked out by the dead body. Allison just sort of ignores his “aw honey” attitude towards her.
She asks him about the flashes and says its like the dream she had recently that seemed to be in all photos. [She mentions the wedding photo. Immediately Scanlan jumps up and goes in the house] Scanlan looks at their wedding photo on wall. She asks him if they are looking for a photographer. The photo is very clearly in the same intense visual style as the one from the other crime scene.
Shot to home where Allison is chasing Bridgette down the hall to try to brush the knots out of her hair. Bridgette goes to dad for protection and he says we should call in an expert with well maintained hair and is good with kids. Joe calls out for Ariel, Bridgette, goes “Oh no…..”
Allison sits on the chair with Joe and sit on the phone. She checks their voicemail mailbox and hears the message Joe’s coworker left on the machine. She’s giving shit to Joe for being so good at surprise party planning. She finds out that he’s planning on having it at their home. Who is gonna clean the house? Joe says she can do it cause she will be home. She gets a call into work.
Surprise the guy who photographed all the dead couple’s weddings is probably the guy who did this.
Cut to them breaking down his door. His house is like a bad modern art installation of his pictures of all the murder scenes where he killed these people. Creepy things like Happy Anniversary are written in blood.
Scanlan is looking at the collage of his sister and her husband. Allison tells him that she really doesn’t want him to see her like this. [He seems to take this without any retort.]
The murder kept records of who he is killing from their wedding date, he’d give them a little more than a year, then do this bullshit. [They talk about the motivation of the killer, wanting to own the people he photographed.]
Allison grabs a file and says he’s doing this one tonight. She knows because Scanlan’s sister told her so. Cut away without him responding.
[The killer greets Scanlan as he walks in the door, saying he’s waiting for the husband to join there experiment. When he looks at Scanlan he immediately says, “Who are you?” Scanlan tells him he’s under arrest for the murder of his sister Lorraine. [[Dude like they would let him be the point guy walking in there.]]
Scanlan calmly walks into the crime scene where this guy is holding the next woman at gunpoint. Scanlan tells him who he is and asks him to give him a reason to kill him.
When Scanlan starts arresting him, the murder starts just saying that this is a fascinating display of behavior.
After the crisis is resolved Allison realizes she’s late to her surprise party at home. She runs home.
She walks in, but the house is very quiet. It’s 8:15 and no one is there.
She starts looking around in the dark [ quiet, empty house – shots are a much smoother shaky cam than before] . Like I think this studio has 3 lights or something, [you can light a scene so it telegraphs as dark but it is visible. I guess one reason is maybe the difference in audience technology? like this would look good on bad screens and acceptable on nicer ones? ” At some point it gets better, but its not this episode.] She goes into her room after checking for everyone. Joe walks out of the bathroom in their room.
Allison asks where everyone is, and Joe tells her that they are all being watched by various people. The limo just got here to take them to the airport to go to Mexico for the weekend.
She tells joe that she isn’t sure she can pack quick enough. He walks out to talk to the driver. She waits on the bed for minute. [Laying on the bed, she starts yelling ” I don’t know if I can pack fast enough” ]
Gets up and grabs her packed bag from under the bed and shouts after him, “I can’t believe you tricked me! Hopefully I didn’t forget anything!”
How adorable.
{3rd update: didn’t want to do this one anymore. Meh}
critikate.com 
Leave a comment