Law & Order (TV Series) Gimme Shelter - Part Three (2022) User Reviews

Anticlimactic end for a good crossover

[Saving21 · 7/10 · 25 September 2022]

This was the third part of this big Law&Order three shows crossover. The story and the way it was played during the three parts arch was good. I thought the way they incorporated characters from 3 shows was done well and it felt natural like they really work in the same town it didn't felt too pushed. The way they built the story was good with Detective cosgrove being the first character in the story and then have Benson and Stabler joining in. I liked that they used the war on Ukraine as part of the story because many shows don't really show that there is huge event in the world.

So the two parts were really well done with good and interesting story& good action. But the third part was killing the momentum. I get that they wanted to show the legal part but it was boring. I also felt that McCoy pushing for a deal with a killer of a girl was OOC for him. Also Rollins doing protective assignment for a witness that is involved with killers without flack jacket was stupid (you could see she wasn't wearing one). I get that they needed a way to start her leaving SVU (the actress is leaving) but they should go it smart. I liked the new partner of cosgrove from the first part he seems fitting in.

In the end it was enjoyable crossover and good start for law&order world 2022/23.

Mothership Law & Order, Trying its Best

[whoneedsascreenname · 9/10 · 24 September 2022]

OK, so here we are at part 3 of this 2022 Law & Order season premiere hot-mess crossover, which began at 8 pm with an "OC" episode that was really a mothership episode, followed by an uncharacteristically action-packed Benson & Stabler-led SVU hour, which played more like OC -- and now at 10 p.m where OC usually airs, we find ourselves . . . . back at the mothership.

Rebooting the original Law & Order at the end of last season -- 12 years after it had been cancelled after a 20-year run -- wasn't a terrible idea.

In fact it could have been great, Maybe it still can. But lacking the one-liner spark of the original, mood lighting and cool characters, the new version has . . . . struggled.

Gimme Shelter Part 3 as the final hour of the crossover felt like a reboot of a reboot -- a chance for Dick Wolf to reintroduce his old show -- again, 7 months after he reintroduced it last season -- only this time deeply integrated into the current Law and Order Universe, whether it makes sense or not.

As the hour opens, D. A. McCoy and team float trial strategies to put away the bad guys from Hours 1 and 2, with Benson in on the questioning again (thank g0d) of the teen witness, leaning in with her usual care and much needed star power.

Rollins (Kelli Giddish) is also on hand --for a life-changing event and what looks to be the beginning of her final episodes in the franchise, as she gets ready to depart midseason. (The actress was recently let go by Dick Wolf because her salary had climbed beyond what he viewed as her value).

Giddish may not have been the central reason people tuned in to SVU every week, but she sure has been great the last 11 years, and thinking about the franchise without her is troubling.

Rollins and Benson have been a formidable team, and close friends; inspiring examples of women leading together. That Wolf thinks she won't be missed, is a miscalculation.

Worse, Law & Order writers setting Rollins' exit arc in motion on the mothership - and not SVU - is a slap. It probably happened this way because word is the Rollins character was to have been blown up or shot during the crossover; Hargitay protested, lobbying for a proper, dignified close for Rollins. (If only she'd been around for Julian McMahon on Wolf's FBI Most Wanted).

Anyway, Benson lackadaisically hanging out in her office when Rollins desperately needs her, and Carisi (Peter Scanavino) barely in two scenes -- the best of which was cut for streaming -- also felt crappy.

Then again, the hour - the entire evening - was not put on this planet to make sense. It's here to remind us the old Law & Order exists, and nothing more.

Camryn Manheim (in the Van Buren role) is on hand her again as she has been all night, actively working with Stabler, and ofc this actress is always welcome in anything she does. Jeffrey Donovan as Cosgrove got better as the night went on, (he really is good in this) and so is Mehcad Brooks as new detective Shaw.

Sam Waterston, g0d love him, is inevitably limited at 82. Once again this feels like Dick Wolf overspending for something, but having no idea what to do with it, just as he has squandered the 'reunion' of Benson & Stabler.

Looking back at the crossover's oddball opening at 8 pm in a foreign land with unfamiliar characters, it plays like a metaphor for the series itself, which is desperate for an infusion of faces viewers know.

With thousands of characters in the Law & Order canon, Wolf seems nutty not using at least a few of them. Bring in Leslie Hendrix as Rogers, Tamara Tunie as Warner, Judith Light as Donnelly. Give us a judge we know. Bring back a villain. Move George Huang or Barba over to 8 p.m. Call Diane Neal! The choices are endless.

As the evening wraps, opportunities for closure are missed and Donovan's character is charged with making sense of a Rick Eid's choppy script which goes long where it shouldn't and short where depth is needed.

So we get Cosgrove narrating over closing scenes of Stabler in action and Benson in comfort mode, generally trying to right a ship that was never quite on course to begin with.

No doubt a three-part cross-over was an ambitious idea: A feature-length film made in weeks, with shoots running almost to air time - while the shows' individual teams were still producing their series' ongoing weekly episodes. "A" for effort, "C" for story and execution, "B" overall.

Farewell Anthony Anderson, Hello Mechad Brooks

[shelbythuylinh · 9/10 · 23 September 2022]

Miss Kevin Bernard but the Supergirl alum Mechad Brooks as John Shaw as he is a low key version of Bernard and is also a lawyer.

Have really never warmed up to Jeffrey Donovan's Frank Cosgrove but does show his soft papa bear side. As a young girl is fatally shot and it has to do with Ukraine there.

The girl about Frank's own daughter's age as he takes it personal. And he and Shaw realize that it is not typical as nothing is that at all. That has all three shows teaming up on the L&O universe there to pool on their resources.

Frank and Elliott Stabler both butt heads for control but realize that they need to work together. As egos aside they do work well.

Part Three

[bobcobb301 · 6/10 · 6 October 2022]

Of course we knew they were going to have all three shows crossover at some point, my guess is it'll happen again this season. They had some good parts in the first two episodes and some bad ones.

Most of the good action got wrapped up unfortunately ahead of this thing. They went way overboard with trying to handle the prosecution of everything and everyone and took way too many twists and turns.

I am glad we got the Law and Order franchise rebooted and they have the right cast for it, but this was not the most promising start to a new season. I just want to see them deal with simple and exciting cases.

Wobbly start to new season

[user-35583 · 6/10 · 3 October 2022]

I've have been watching since the beginning. And the writing has really faltered this series of late. This one was cookie cutter and the 3 show L&O arc collapsed under its own weight. It had promise in the first hour but simply devolved and fell apart in hour 3.

We all know and love the L&O formula. We know where things are generally going but it always remained fresh somehow. And the plot and writing has always been snappy enough to give the actors something to work with. It just feels pedestrian lately. The ad Hominem at the end of this episode by Jeffrey Donovan was so maudlin and overwrought, Jerry Orbach must be spinning in his...

The lawyers have to go

[cockezville · 6/10 · 28 September 2022]

For me the entire program is saved by Jeffrey Donovan whose intensity creates a me Or able character. I think I am going to like Anthony Anderson's replacement . But I hate these crossover episodes that drag out and Mariska gets to be Queen and pretends to send a witness away. I wish she were leaving instead of Kelli. But Hugh Dancy and Sam Waterson are horrible. Waterson overacts and there are times when he appears he is just reading his lines. And Dancy has just become tedious. I would must have a standard procedural stand alone Law and Order but please bring in a better legal aspect to the show.

What happened to all the writers?

[mysterymoviegoer · 4/10 · 27 September 2022]

I loved this series when It first appeared and then cheered when it returned last year. That proved to be disappointing. Jeffrey Donovan grew on me as did Camryn Manhiem (given not enough to do) but the two new lawyers just didn't click at all. The way they were written didn't make it sound like they were real lawyers concerned with the law. The new assistant particularly didn't sound like she got any closer to law school than a double date. The exchanges with Waterson were pale reminders of the series at its height with Steven Hill. Have the original writers all died?

This season Anthony Anderson has walked and the tri-part debut often seemed like a video game with a basic by-the-numbers script. Action, action, action but very little thought and zero wit. Boy was Jerry Orbach missed. To say the charcaters are 2-dimensional gives them a dimension. Where is the writing on this? The Benson/Stabler episodes in particular trotted out every tired cliche in the book. Ripped from today's headlines? No ripped from today's slush pile. This go-round ignores what we liked about the original. It really was different. It brimmed with humanity. It was intelligent. The charcaters were alive. New York was a vital character to the series. This city was a video game backdrop. Acting was optional. Even watyerson seemed to sleepwalk through the role. He had no real lines.

If Dick Wolf can't salvage this, I think they should pack it in.

Nauseating

[bkkaz · 2/10 · 23 September 2022]

Monsignor Grand Duchess Queen of the Morality SuperDuperUberUltraBenson sends a key witness away without checking with anyone -- not her superiors, not the D. A., not the Mayor -- and faces exactly no repercussions.

This is yet another example of the standard "make Benson look good no matter what" silliness that SVU has adopted.

It gets worse. One difference between old Law and Order and new Law and Order is the writing and acting were so good in the former, you felt the emotional drama of the moment. In sharp contrast, the writing and acting of the latter is so bad, over-the-top music must be played every time something putatively dramatic happens. Watch for yourself and compare. Or, better, don't watch.

But this third of three installments lumbers about to tie up the loose ends from the previous two. And there are many. We start with the murder of an underage prostitute/sex trafficked victim and end up with some big Russia conspiracy. The ADA who looks like a young garden gnome keeps getting undercut by the one who looks like AOC, and it seems less like a professional legal team and more like the life directors of a second-rate college dorm. Their expository arguments seldom seem rooted in legal strategy and more in the moral dilemmas that the viewer should be able to figure out on their own, another difference from the earlier incarnations.

Some other things:

1) There's a big push to have Black officers on Law and Order now, significantly more than in the past. On the one hand, that's a nod to diversity 30 years too late. On the other, the Asian American population is about 60% that of African Americans in NYC . . . And yet you don't see anything near that representation. This isn't 1950.

2) The police are increasingly being presented as do-gooder therapist types rather than cops. Their job is to catch the criminals. It's not to be social workers, and yet the touchy-feely dialogue and presentation is nauseating, not just because it's so phony but because it even further distances the presentation of police as anything fallible. In an age where real police are shooting unarmed suspects and choking people to death, the fantasy pandering here is offensive.

3) You can tell the writing staff for all these shows are recycling SVU scripts since no matter the show, a sex crime or gender harassment in some form or another is at heart.

4) Everyone has aged considerably. Meloni looks 10 years older than last season, and Hargitay desperately needs a new hairdresser. With her stringy hair just hanging around her face, she looks like she's given up.

Underwhelming season premiere(s)

[CrimeDrama1 · 3/10 · 23 September 2022]

I liked the idea of combining all three Law & Order season premieres but it gets off to a rocky start. I must say that Christopher Meloni and Jeffrey Donovan are on opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of my favorite detective character actors in the franchise. The "Organized Crime" spinoff hasn't held my interest the way I thought it would. I already knew the season premiere crossover dealt with foreign criminals but Cosgrove leaving the injured girl laying on the street only to be shot and killed was silly. The girl told Cosgrove that a man was after her. I wouldn't have left her. Aside from automatically having Cosgrove on the case, why not just have her killed on the yacht or while running away? Crime dramas should not be theatrical, they need to be realistic and believable. I should have guessed Pasha D. Lychnikoff would guest star as the mastermind behind everything. It's a sad statement about the lack of Russian-speaking actors, if not actually Russian-born actors, to portray bad guys. If it is "Ripped From The Headlines" then Russia (and Ukraine) will likely be involved in the story.

The bright spot is Mehcad Brooks. I like his portrayal of Detective Jalen Shaw. I like Anthony Anderson and I didn't hear anything about him leaving Law & Order. I thought Anderson and Jeremy Sisto were great. I loved "Burn Notice" and I thought Donovan was great at playing a burned spy but something is missing with Detective Frank Cosgrove. Fingers crossed that Shaw and Cosgrove will become solid partners. Overall, I was disappointed with the triple crossover season premiere.