Let's Talk Television: Mother's Day

A quick and dirty post about the two current shows I love the most.

May 11, 2025

A Quick Note About Programming

It’s the busiest time of my year at work, I want to get my latest Andor post up before Tuesday, and my kids are taking me out today SO this is a quick and dirty post about the two current shows I love the most. Thus, New This Week is down below in Also Watching. There’s no Mental Illness Sidebar or Ship of the Week, and both Andor and Law & Order: Organized Crime are my show of the week.

A Tale of Two Series

Building Tension

Andor has always been amazing, but episodes 2.8 and 2.9 blew me away. The building tension starts in 2.7, explodes in 2.8, and does not let up. At all. The last shot of 2.9 is the K2-SO (Alan Tudyk) we know and love waking up to Cassian (Diego Luna) holding a blaster rifle on him. Cassian’s and Mon’s (Genevieve O’Reilly) storylines have finally converged. Yavin is up and running. Bix (Adria Arjona) took herself out of the narrative. We have been barreling toward Rogue One all season, and we are nearly there.

Stabler, AKA Law & Order: Organized Crime, is a different beast. For one, while it absolutely should be called Stabler, it’s one of the many Laws and Orders and the Laws and Orders are crime procedurals made for a mainstream audience. OC is the least Law & Order of the Laws and Orders, which is great for it and for the franchise IMHO, but based on the revolving door of showrunners, I’d say TPTB see it otherwise. Dick Wolf (and NBC) likes his little Law & Order box. It’s his legacy. The move to Peacock is promising, but only in theory. In reality, all of streaming (all of television, all of creative media) is going through it right now, and the outlook is TBD.

But we are halfway through Stabler season five, and there, too, the tension is mounting and we are barreling toward something. Elliot’s (Christopher Meloni) life has been in imminent danger in all five episodes, which is absurd, but effective. Eli (Nicky Torcha) is being speedrun through his father’s career arc, which is honestly everything I want it to be, even though I agree with Becky (Kiaya Scott) that he deserves better. The Joe Jr. (Michael Trotter) plotline, which began last season, has been percolating in the background and seems poised to take center stage now that the Secret Secret Italians have been handled. The last episode of this season is titled “He Was a Stabler,” and I am so scared for Elliot, Eli, and Eli’s baby, even though it referring to Joe Jr. or Joe Sr. makes more narrative sense.

Welcome to the Rebellion

Prior to the prequels, Star Wars was centered exclusively on scrappy individuals. The Rebellion was made up of rebels with a cause. We were told of Alderaan’s peaceful citizens, and we briefly met Mon Mothma, but they were not a part of the story. Obi-Wan and Yoda gave us a taste of Jedi moderation, but Luke chafed against it. The prequel trilogy expanded on the Jedi Order and gave us Padmé, Bail Organa (love of my life), and the Senate. But the emphasis on scrappy individuals remained. Padmé used aggressive negotiations. Bail flew into a firefight. Yoda’s lightsaber battles were highlighted. The Jedi and the Senate explicitly avoid sharing intel or working together. Anakin’s entire character represents the tension between the individual and the community, and while the story lands on the side of prioritizing the self as the wrong path, Vader and the Empire represent a complete lack of identity. The messaging is confused because they wrote Mon Mothma out of the story.

Andor, finally, tells us who Mon is and what she represents, and tells us, explicitly, that the Rebellion needs all kinds of rebels. Season one ended with Karis Nemik’s (Alex Lawther) and Maarva’s (Fiona Shaw) words inspiring action. Now, we get Mon’s Senate speech leading into another promised speech at Yavin (see Star Wars: Rebels), leading into her leadership. We get Senators Organa (Benjamin Bratt) and Erveen (Jane Bertish) using laws and order to allow it. And we’ve gotten the likes of Kleya (Elizabeth Dulau) and Lonni (Robert Emms) all along. They are all individuals, and they can all be scrappy, but they are a different kind of rebel. When Cassian extracts Mon, showing off incredible skill and precision, she is thrust into the overt violence she’s been shielded from. She knew of it. She cried over it. But she’d never experienced it. Now she has, and it’s changed her, but not into a fighter. The rebels need her to be something else.

Isabella Spezzano (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) was born into the Secret Secret Italians along with her brother, Rocco (Anthony Skordi), and sister, Lucia (Dorothy Lyman). But she chose to rebel, to turn them in and start anew with Elliot’s help. Her choices catch up to her in New York, and her grandson dies, and I expected it to turn her against Elliot and the police. That was the predictable story, but Isabella is different. Isabella understands who the enemy is, and she won’t be manipulated. This episode surprised me over and over. Roman (Alberto Frezza) is revealed to be his Nona’s legacy, used by Rocco and Lucia, not a believer in the Secret Secret Italians. The priest, too, prioritizes Isabella and Roman. Isabella and Elliot’s relationship was introduced three episodes ago, but I fully believe in their trust.

Isabella had her welcome to the rebellion moment back in Italy, when she first made the deal. And Elliot was her Cassian, and he is here again. (Elliot telling Ayanna he’ll ‘stay put’ and wait for back-up while walking into the scene of the crime without even a half-step pause is the least surprising thing ever, and exactly why we love him.) Isabella rebels again when she blows her sister’s face off in order to fake her own death, and I love the little smile Elliot gives when he realizes it, and love even more that they didn’t let that linger. It was the first thing I thought of when we saw her missing face, but a lesser show would hold it for a gotcha or make the audience speculate. This show decided to give Elliot a tiny win, which he really needed.

What Matters Most

It’s Mother’s Day, so let’s talk about mothers.

For the first time ever, I felt sorry for Eedy Karn (Katherine Hunter). She’s awful, she believes all the Imperial propaganda because it bolsters her own biases, and she belittled her son at every turn. But she lost him to horror, and she sold me on her sorrow.

Syril (Kyle Soller) dies in a way that befits his pitiful life. He learns that Dedra (Denise Gough) was hiding the truth about the Imperial plot on Ghorman and feels betrayed. He attacks her and goes looking for the pretty girl whom I was totally right to be shipping him with last week, but he can’t reach her. I expected him to find her fallen, dead body and be shot from behind while crying over it, but what happens is even better. He sees Cassian preparing to shoot Dedra and runs over in a rage to foil it. They fight, Cassian has the upper hand, obviously, and Syril briefly lowers his blaster only to be shot dead by his dead pretty girl’s father for being an Imperial tool (in every way). The last words spoken to Syril Karn are “Who are you?” and that is PERFECT.

But two people do mourn him and his sad little wanna-be, never-was life. His mother. And Dedra, who has to hide her tears, the way she had to hide her affection, but clearly cared for him deeply. They gave up everything for a relationship that appeared painful from the outside and was rotten on the inside, and this end is poetic, but I do find myself feeling sorry for everyone.

Over in a closer galaxy, Becky had her baby. Six weeks early, so he’s in the NICU, and Eli missed the emergency birth because he was being grilled by Marcus Warren (Malcolm Goodwin), the most recent IAB agent with a vendetta against Stablers. But this latest sojourn to the hospital gave us two incredible scenes about Eli and Elliot.

First, Bernie (Ellen Burstyn), who is easily confused and mixes up past and present sometimes, but is whip smart when she’s lucid, demands to know what they’re keeping from her. Elliot explains Eli’s trouble with IAB over an officer-involved shooting, and then they both break my heart when Bernie asks if Elliot thinks Eli will end up being a cop like Elliot or a cop like Joe Sr. I love that Elliot tells her the truth, I Love that she sees and verbalizes that “a cop like you” and “a cop like your father” are different, and I LOVE that it hits Elliot so hard. The camera lingers on Chris Meloni acting with his whole soul, and everything hurts.

Then we get a scene between Elliot and Becky, and I cannot process how perfect it all is. Becky doesn’t want Eli to be a cop because she thinks he’s doing it for his dad and/or family, not himself, and it will destroy him. “He just loves you so much and wants you to be proud of him,” she tells Elliot, and I think they pulled this whole scene out of my subconscious. It’s everything I wanted out of this storyline. Becky’s right. Elliot became a cop to prove something to his father, and now Eli is doing the same. But Bernie’s right, too, that Elliot is not Joe Sr., not as a cop and not as a father. The scene with Becky ends on a hug, and I would die for this stupid show.

Lost This Week

Syril Karn. Maggie (Missy Peregrym) almost died on FBI, and I was actually worried enough to check if she’d left the show.

Also Watching/New This Week

Plus a rundown of where we’re at in the seasons.

The Last of Us (Max) — three more episodes this season
Alert: Missing Persons Unit (Hulu) — I’m taking a break from this show
Andor (Disney+) — three episodes, final three episodes next week
FBI (Paramount+) — two more episodes this season
FBI: Most Wanted (Paramount+) — two more episodes this season, series ending
Chicago Med (Peacock) — part one, season finale next week
9-1-1 (Hulu) — part one, season finale next week
Doctor Odyssey (Hulu) — part one, season finale next week
Elsbeth (Peacock) — season finale (I’ll include it next time)
Law & Order (Peacock) — season finale next week
Law & Order: Organized Crime (Peacock)— five more episodes this season
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (Peacock) — season finale next week
Leverage: Redemption (Prime) — seven more episodes this season
Black Butler: Emerald Witch Arc (Crunchyroll) — four more episodes this season

I will be posting another ode to Andor’s incredible production design soon, as well as a post about my plans for the after-season (i.e. movies are coming, I swear).

What are YOU watching?