Alas, neither the Law and Order: Special Victims Unit eposide nor the Law and Order: Organized Crime show that followed and completed the cycle were anywhere nearly as good. The SVU writers, Brianna Yellen and Brendan Feeney, were obviously trying too hard for novelty in this well-worn show in which they’ve already done all or most of the obvious sex crimes. Their story, “The Presence of Absence,” begins in a singles bar where Jenna Scott (Tory Trowbridge) has taken her best friend Zoe Greene (Eden Malyn) to get her laid for the first time since her husband Brian died of an aneurysm two years before. Jenna has been married for 10 years to Richard (Charles Warburton) but she seems to be living vicariously through Zoe. t one point Jenna signs Zoe to a dating app where she meets Klaus, a Swedish-born man who’s into BDSM play. The two carry on an online flirtation and eventually Klaus agrees tomeet Zoe, but only if she is blindfolded and he speaks in a whisper. Zoe comes back from the encounter with the feeling that she’s being raped – Klaus didn’t stop fucking her once Zoe used their safe word.She reports the encounter to the SVU detectives, and they find semen on her clothes that runs out to be a “familial match” to her late husband – indicating that she had sex with a relative of his. The DNA belongs to Brian’s nephew, medical student who’s working his way through college by being a sperm-bank donor. The police set up a “controlled meet” between Zoe and Klaus so they can arrest him – only “Klaus” turns out to be Zoe’s best friend Jenna, who bought a sperm donation from Brian’s nephew and used her finger to implant it into Zoe to get her pregnant, if not by her late husband, at least by the next best thing Nia Vardalos appears as Jenna’s defense attorney at the trial,for which the jury finds her innocent of aggravated sexual assault but convicts her on the eight lesser charges of sexual assault. Apparently they had as much trouble working through the compelxitite sof Jenna’s scheme as we did – especially after the defense attorney brought out the fact that Jenna and Zoe had experineted with a few Lesbian trysts with each other when they roomed together in college at a dormitory called “Athena” – hence the origin of Zoe’s safe word. It deservespoitns for being interesting and different, but maybe a bit too different to be all that entertaining.
Saturday, March 25, 2023
Law and Order: Special Victims Unit: "The Presence of Absence" (Dick Wolf Entertainment, Universal Television, NBC-TV, aired March 23, 2023)
Alas, neither the Law and Order: Special Victims Unit eposide nor the Law and Order: Organized Crime show that followed and completed the cycle were anywhere nearly as good. The SVU writers, Brianna Yellen and Brendan Feeney, were obviously trying too hard for novelty in this well-worn show in which they’ve already done all or most of the obvious sex crimes. Their story, “The Presence of Absence,” begins in a singles bar where Jenna Scott (Tory Trowbridge) has taken her best friend Zoe Greene (Eden Malyn) to get her laid for the first time since her husband Brian died of an aneurysm two years before. Jenna has been married for 10 years to Richard (Charles Warburton) but she seems to be living vicariously through Zoe. t one point Jenna signs Zoe to a dating app where she meets Klaus, a Swedish-born man who’s into BDSM play. The two carry on an online flirtation and eventually Klaus agrees tomeet Zoe, but only if she is blindfolded and he speaks in a whisper. Zoe comes back from the encounter with the feeling that she’s being raped – Klaus didn’t stop fucking her once Zoe used their safe word.She reports the encounter to the SVU detectives, and they find semen on her clothes that runs out to be a “familial match” to her late husband – indicating that she had sex with a relative of his. The DNA belongs to Brian’s nephew, medical student who’s working his way through college by being a sperm-bank donor. The police set up a “controlled meet” between Zoe and Klaus so they can arrest him – only “Klaus” turns out to be Zoe’s best friend Jenna, who bought a sperm donation from Brian’s nephew and used her finger to implant it into Zoe to get her pregnant, if not by her late husband, at least by the next best thing Nia Vardalos appears as Jenna’s defense attorney at the trial,for which the jury finds her innocent of aggravated sexual assault but convicts her on the eight lesser charges of sexual assault. Apparently they had as much trouble working through the compelxitite sof Jenna’s scheme as we did – especially after the defense attorney brought out the fact that Jenna and Zoe had experineted with a few Lesbian trysts with each other when they roomed together in college at a dormitory called “Athena” – hence the origin of Zoe’s safe word. It deservespoitns for being interesting and different, but maybe a bit too different to be all that entertaining.
