(eps follow below) I wasn't a fan, mainly because no character really got to me, and the fact that I disliked Stabler and was never fond of Amaro as well. The others were ok enough, but I didn't "feel" much. Sure, I loved Benson, I love her, she's the heart and soul of the show, but her character was rather..I don't have the right word, basically it seemed to me like she orbitated around Stabler and I did not like that.
And then Rafael Barba came along (ps no beard, no uncle, no joke; definitely not boring). I loved Barba since his first scene. Everything about him: his lines, his voice, his smirk, (well maybe not how he runs..) and how looks at people, with those deep eyes... there's only one little thing... sometimes he speaks so quickly it's hard to follow... anyway I usually get everything he says, if needed I just rewind it in my head while the others talk, so it's ok. Just never give him Italian lines please :-p we're not all godfathers here :-p
Before, I only watched the occasional rerun on tv when there was nothing else, now I found myself looking for these episodes, watching to see the actor's name (Raúl Esparza) to check if Barba will be on the show. I got almost emotional when I saw for the first time his name in the opening credits (in later seasons, and with a beautiful picture too). He's amazing. I love Barba. I went on youtube, watched a video of Esparza singing in Spanish... and I wonder, did they ever make an episode with Barba singing a little bit in Spanish? Because I tell you I would buy the season dvds just for that scene (if I could find them, that is). Not that Barba has a lot of reasons to be singing by himself, but they could give him a good reason for once... in English would be good too, I'm not picky. Or maybe a dance with Benson!! Yes, and you know what, maybe there is no music so he sings a little.. come on that would be awesome!! But I'm fantasizing, I know all this is not likely to happen on SVU,it's ok, it's just that when I love a character I want to see good things happen to him :-) and Esparza is such a good, amazing actor any scene would be great. Anyway, as long as he'll be on the show, I think I'll keep watching this show looking for him.
Obviously I'm a Barson fan now. I want to see him in a romantic scene *dreamy-eyes*
ep 1 & 2 - Lost reputation and Above suspicion. When Cragen is under attack, accused of murdering a girl. Of course he did not, but he did see a prostitute occasionally because he wanted companionship and this seemed the easier way... still I think that for someone working at svu paying a prostitute should be unacceptable, because if there weren't so many men ready to pay for it there wouldn't be so much exploitation... Cragen, really?? - In these eps I was glad to see Paget Brewster, and I liked her scenes with Mariska, and was kind of sorry to see that her character was ultimately arrested. Very glad also to see Adam Baldwin here, replacing Cragen as squad commander: Captain Harris.
ep 3 - Twenty-five acts. Barba!!!!!! wow. I love this episode, and there was nothing I didn't like, all the actors were good and the characters interesting. Anna Chlumsky was Jocelyn Paley, and she was really good; Elizabeth Marvel is Rita Calhoun, and we'll see lots more of her in svu. The judges and the professor and the others were ok, and of course there is Captain Harris introducing Benson and Rollins to Barba :-D
Jocelyn is a young successful writer and she goes out with a tv-show host Cain, and they start to have sex when he becomes violent and hurts her and doesn't stop. SVU convinces her to press charges.
Harris suggested ADA Rafael Barba "he's got big brass...ego". Cain rapes her twice, and since she wrote a book on sex and bondage they investigate her past, and later they find out that it was her teacher who actually wrote the book; Jocelyn is distressed because if known her carrier would be ruined, she says. It was the teacher's idea, and part of the contract is that nobody must know, and she might now have to give all the money back. It's not going well so Barba tries to provoke Cain: "where was the buckle?" - "I don't know if I can be more specific, would you like me to show you?" - "well, actually.. *nodding*" and after the obvious objection he says "as a regular Joe, I am curious about how this belt-around-the-neck-thing is exciting, I am sure Your Honor, that the jury is curious as well" so he takes off his belt and puts it around his own neck and told him to show him and provoked him until he got angry and started pulling hard and for a second Barba was choking and then he has no marks on his neck and he shows the picture of Jocelyn's neck afterwards and it was all red and bruised... - Liv"SVU is the only unit where the victim's word isn't good enough, we have to prove that a crime was committed" Harris"that's true, they don't ask robbery victims if they wanted it" .
When it was all over, Barba tells Jocelyn that America "loves a comeback" and it's the end.
So funny, so good, so interesting, so intriguing, so sexy. I loved him immediately. I wonder if the writers were sort of planning a Barson future from the start, or maybe it's just my imagination I don't know, but didn't he gave Benson a special look? Anyway, of course Raúl Esparza is brilliant, and Barba absolutely amazing. This is obviously the ep where he takes off his belt and lets the defendant Cain almost choke him to prove how violent he was :-)
ep 4 - Acceptable loss. We see Eames again! (Kathryn Erbe) from Criminal Intent, I used to love that show, I loved Goren and Eames, but not the others, in later seasons. This ep anyway is not among my favourites. It was tough, with lots of poor girls mistreated and Eames asking them to do nothing in the interest of national security, to catch a terrorist. The svu squad will end up saving the girls anyway, and then catching the terrorist too, because this is a tv show and this things happen. I liked the scene with Eames and Benson at the end, talking about their former partners, and Eames saying how after so many years it sort of felt like they were married, and Benson saying "but you weren't", because she still misses Stabler... I was very happy when in later seasons she'll finally get over it.
It went like this: Liv"that's how you break them, getting them to tell their story" - "isn't that how you do it?" and Liv says that she doesn't normally do it with her head on one side, Eames laughs and says "yeah well I learned that from my partner at Major case, it's his way of keeping eye contact" - "a little eccentric" - "you have no idea" :-p and then "all that time together, the two of us, it was like we were married". Liv nods and says "but you weren't" and Eames nods...
ep 5 - Manhattan vigil. Another sad episode. A child is abducted and this reminds Benson of a child that was abducted in that area many years ago and never found, and now they finally find his dead body, and the poor mother's pain was so touching. Good actress.
ep 6 - Friending Emily. There's a bit of Barba here, but not much. Two sisters leave their friends to go to a party where everyone else is older, and the younger sister disappears. They'll find her and save her :-)
ep 7 - Vanity's bonfire. A young couple had adopted a little child who gets kidnapped by the biological mother who was tricked in giving it away. Only thing notable in this ep was that there was Scott Bakula in it, but he played the bad guy.
ep 8 - Lessons learned. Good episode, very sad but that's not so strange in this show. Barba and Benson try every way possible to get a school accountable for all the sexual abuses its professors committed years ago, but these teachers are all too old or already dead, and it all happened many years before. In the end they at least manage to get the school to issue public apologies. There's a scene where Barba says "as a kid growing up in the South Bronx going to Catholic school, I would've given anything to go here" Benson says "smart guy like you couldn't get a scholarship?" :-p and he "only kids they took from my neighborhood were the athletes" then he tries to tell her that "I'm a prosecutor not a healer" in perfect Bones-style, but when she argues that something criminal did happen, he yields immediately :lol: it started pretty early, I must say, but it'll go on for a long time :lol: he can never say no to her :-D
There was Elliott Gould in this ep, playing a good man who admitted sex but was not one of the bad guys, and never forced anyone.
ep 9 - Dreams deferred. Well, there was no Barba in here but it was a good episode nonetheless. I'm not a big fan of Patricia Arquette, but she was really good here, and her whole story was very touching and nice. She's an old prostitute who helps the team catch a murderer. She doesn't want to give up 'the life', so the squad tries to convince her because it's time she takes care of herself. I loved the scene when Fin goes to talk to her daughter who doesn't have a good relationship with her mom because she despises her lifestyle but Fin makes her think about how difficult life was for her mom, and how she started this life because she needed money for her, to raise her, and how she never needed anything because mom took care of her.
ep 10 - Presumed guilty. No Barba here, because apparently he's vacationing in Switzerland, in some place where all rich men go skiing :-p This ep was not my fav because it was in some way too tough, but all the squad's parts were very good. Fin's ex-brother-in-law is in trouble and they all help him. He did not beat up a priest, he actually tried to stop the assault. A sad story of priests abusing children come out of this. Benson and Fin and Rollins were all adorable here.
ep 11 - Beautiful frame. Lots of Barba here :-D and it would have been an even better episode but for the fact that I didn't like this Jessie at all. I didn't like the actress and I didn't like the character.
What I did like: Pam James was ok, and Judge Catano I liked very much, very happy that she'll appear again in later episodes. I liked all scenes with Barba, and I love every time Rollins gets to be the one that explains things and words to the other members of the squad :lol:
ep 12 - Criminal hatred. So many lovely Barba scenes here :-D This is the episode where a guy picks up gay men who can pass for straight and then assaults them and robs them. These men all had wives who never suspected anything (except one, the wife of the only man that died. I liked her, she played this awkward sad woman who knew everything about her husband's "secret" but loved him anyway, because in their own way husband and wife really did love each other). I didn't like Amaro here, he was such an idiot. The bad guy always acted cool but he actually hated himself for what he was and took it out on those men that could hide it and pass for straight. I love the scene when Barba introduces himself to a witness, walking with his hands in his pocket :-D and the scenes with opposing counsellor Nia Vardalos were very funny :lol: loved all of them :lol
ep 13 - Monster's legacy. No Barba here. Benson and counsellor Ellis work together to prove that a man in death row was not fairly represented during his trial because his history of abused child was ignored.
ep 14 - Secrets exhumed. No Barba. FBI agent Dana Lewis is back, and she tries very hard to pin a murder on a man who confessed to all the others but this one, and the team realizes that this one was actually committed by her.
ep 15 - Deadly ambition. No Barba. Amanda's sister plots to have her shoot her man, making her believe that he was about to rape her. Rollins gets in lots of trouble for this because Kim will deny the attempted rape to be able to cash the insurance money she took on him. Amaro helps her.
ep 16 - Funny Valentine. Great episode, this one, on how dangerous domestic violence can be, and how women endanger themselves when they refuse to accept reality and keep defending their man. Misha is a 19-year-old singer in love with fellow singer Caleb. When he beats her and sends her to the hospital the team gets involved, and Benson and Barba try their best to get her to testify against him. Every time she seems determined to do it, but then a word from Caleb is enough to change her mind and make her believe that he loves her and everything will be fine again between them. Of course it will not be fine, because there will be always something to "set him off", and ultimately he'll beat her to death, and they'll learn about it from tv news.
Jeffrey Tambor plays Barba's opposing counsellor, and their fights are always lots of fun :lol: Again, very glad we'll get to see this counsellor again in later episodes :-)
All the actors were good here, a very good episode. Lots of moments with Barba and Benson together, from the "have you ever been in love?" scene to the "come on Barba you can be very convincing when you want to be", to the moment when they first go to talk to Misha and he looks so proud of his badass Benson :lol:
ep 17 - Undercover blue. When we learn that Benson is having a relationship with Cassidy... and our reaction is not much different from Barba's. Come on, don't tell me he wasn't affected by this, I'm sure they are planning something for them. I hope too.
Cassidy should be the key witness in Barba's case against Ganzelle, but a girl accusing him of rape risks compromising everything and creates lots of trouble for him. It turns out that when Amaro was undercover he fell for a girl but had to leave her when the case finished, and never saw her again. Now Cassidy's lawyer brings her in with the news that they had a son together, and now Amaro wants to be a part of the boy's life, and Cassidy convinces him to work together to help each other.
ep 18 - Legitimate rape. A sad episode who makes you angry at that woman in the jury who let the rapist go free because she believed that a woman could not get pregnant unless it was consensual sex, which is stupid, and makes you (well it made me) dislike her almost more than I disliked the disgusting scum. A journalist was raped by her cameraman, and had to endure being interrogated by him when he chose to represent himself. For the first time we have an idea of how much time actually passes in this show between the charges and the trial, because she found out she was pregnant when talking to Benson and she had the child as soon as the trial ended. Of course this is a tv show, in real life that's utopian.
This is the:
"men: they're all rapists right?"
"objection. argumentative and ridiculous"
episode :lol:
I also liked the judge and the fact that it was so clear that she despised that man and was very disappointed by the jury's verdict.
ep 19 -Born psychopath. Mixed feelings about this. (No Barba). It's about a 10-year-old boy who is a psychopath, totally insensible to other people's feeling, killing animals out of curiosity, hurting his little sister... it was a very tough episode emotionally, but I couldn't help thinking that I wouldn't have liked my son to say and pretend those things...
ep 20 - Girl dishonored. This is one of those episodes that make you disgusted about this world. First episode about Hudson University, where the fraternity is a place where boys act like gods and do whatever they like and rape whoever they like and get covered by the school while the poor girls are shamed, not believed, rejected. Barba and Benson fight hard against the school and this time they win. I was disgusted by the story, hearing the headmaster saying that she let them say and wear whatever they liked because of free speech, because of freedom... there should be limits, I can't believe anything like that could ever happen, those shirts and blogs I hope would never be allowed in a real school!!
The actors were all good, a great episode.
ep 21 - Traumatic wound - Another good episode, I liked it a lot, although what happened to the girl was horrible. One of Amaro's good episode; it's only thanks to him if they find out the truth. A girl went to a club with three friends; when someone pulls down her top, she is assaulted by some of the drunk men present. She talks to svu, but at first she thought the security man had assaulted her too, only Amaro understands that Frank does have sort of blackouts, he has PTSD, and works with him to try and piece together the events of that night. Frank's memory comes in pieces, but he's able to tell them who pulled the girl's top, and also that her three friends were in on it, so Barba prepares his case. Very nice scenes in the courtroom, I loved it :lol: The opposing counsellor (same as in Funny Valentine, right? What's his name?) was great and he got Frank to remember another piece, and he said in the courtroom that there was someone filming the whole thing, so now they have to find the guy, fast, and of course they do: hurray, Barba wins :-) This counsellor is the first one to call Barba Rafaél, right? Mostly he's called Barba or Ràfael, only this lawyer and Barba's old friends call him Rafaél :-) loved hearing this. He gives him the book "all the king's men" :-p but got it back :-p
Can I say here how I like this show's style of filming? How the characters and the scenes are never static, they are always moving, coming and going, feels more real, like in this scene for example, when we follow them all coming out of the courtroom. We see Barba sit down while we follow Frank talking to the squad;we move left with them until we see that lawyer coming out and seeing Rafaél at which point we follow him, sitting down and talking to Barba. I love the movement, the sense of ensemble, the vitality of the scenes.
ep 22 - Poisoned motive. When Rollins gets shot by a sniper who has a grudge against Fin and goes after people connected to him. Obviously this was not the way to deal with it and it was not Fin's fault, but the breakdown was rather understandable, after all that happened.
ep 23 - Brief interlude. This is one of the eps that affected me more.. a Canadian woman takes a solitary trip to NY and will die there, leaving a husband and two children. The husband was such a good man, afraid of losing his younger wife he wanted to give her all the space she needed, letting her do this trip alone, and the poor woman meeting her death right when she was about to go back home, only because 'she was kind to the wrong person'; this ending was very sad.
ep 24 - Her negotiation. This one was one of the most peculiar, toughest episodes of all. It starts all quiet and nice, which should have worried me, thinking about it now. When do we ever see them doing normal stuff, being cheerful or simply living their lives? I should have known hell was about to break loose.
As I said, it starts off nicely, with all of them out of work for the weekend. Fin and Cragen going to a match, Rolling at the park with her dog... when she meets a young man who just exposed himself to two tourists. He burned his fingers so he has no fingerprints, and Amanda has a bad feeling about him so she calls back everyone, even Barba :-p and it was funny because as I saw him I thought 'was he on a boat?' and then Benson asked "where were you, on your yatcht?" :lol: this alone was funny, but his face when he said "not my yatcht" ... one of the most memorable Barba scenes :lol: and also the "he is crazy like a fox" scene was something :lol: this was quite an episode, starting with lots of nice moments, funny lines, and then quickly escalating towards hell.
This William Lewis has a young lawyer so infatuated that she fights for him as hard as she can. The squad pieces together his violent past but fails to put him away. He goes free for exposing himself then he assaults the old woman that witnessed that, but again goes free because the woman dies and they have nothing. It ends with Lewis showing up at Benson's apartment, holding her hostage (and Cassidy did not show up, even sent a message saying he wouldn't come, so Lewis knew nobody would come to save her). A very tough cliffhanger, I'm glad I didn't see this in America back then, where and when I would have had to wait months to know the rest..
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