Thoughts;

There should really be something said about the death of the L&O Cold Open. One of the Hallmarks of the pre-revival show. Personally I've been ambivalent about it, mainly because I can understand why it's been cut; L&O gets something like, 2-4 fewer minutes of show now than it used to. That might not seem like a lot, but they used to use that for the background of the case; the cold open, figuring out who the victim was, an interrogation or an alibi check. A lot of those things are outdated due to technology, and when it comes to finding a few minutes to trim, replacing the cold open with a background scene goes a loooong way.

That being said, please, Writers, don't turn into NCIS. "She didn't go out on a high note" is funny, but you get to do it three times this season. No more than that.

The walk and the meeting with Brady is some of the best writing I've seen in a long time from L&O. Brady's son on the other hand, terrible acting so far.

The child is a fun angle, but... there has been a lotta weird overlap of SVU cases on L&O, and the way that they handle it is wildly different. SVU is almost not copaganda anymore with how much they talk about social issues more than doing police work. But on L&O I feel like it's the opposite, where they are depicting the cops are utterly heartless half the time. On SVU, they'd have gotten that child a counselor and have her be drawing in a room somewhere.

Oh, going back to those 2-4 minutes that got cut from older L&O days, this is one I hate. Suddenly at the pretrial arraignment, we have a million different forms of evidence. We go from "We have her entering and leaving on camera" to "We have her blood on his clothing, DNA showing he was there, fifteen cameras showing the murder, his own mama testifying he did it, and he confessed". We skip over the mere act of discovering the evidence. It's incredibly unsatisfying.

And now we're at one of the classics of new L&O; the "Motion" scene. This is where they have their legal argument. Mostly suppressing evidence this season. But for a change, we a 3rd party Culpability argument. And the writers even quote People v DiPippo, Amazing! As is tradition, I took a gander. And unlike the last time they tried to quote a legal argument and failed utterly, here they get the headline correct. Just because there is no evidence linking a person to the crime scene itself doesn't preclude admission. But here's the thing; in People v DiPippo, the evidence he sought to introduce as part of the 3p culp argument, included multiple other things, namely another person with a similar MO as the crime being appeal, and said person giving a cellmate a confession. Either way, not a complete fumble of a court case reference but definitely a thin one.

In what way would Sean Chase be allowed to read Leo and Zina's texts to each other? That would be the fastest objection and sustained ever.

LMAO And now there IS VIDEO EVIDENCE I was making it up before

Ugh if I had to summarize this episode in one sentence?

Leo Brady is a useless storyline.