TVSquad

(S01E13) How about that opening sequence? Before the credits, the entire cast gets to take a shot at a locomotive big guy on PCP. He throws Elliot through a window, knocks out a kid getting off the elevator and even takes a taser shot to the gut from Olivia before Fin takes him out with a chair to the back of the head. Anyway, the entire action sequence was a pretty elaborate way to write Christopher Meloni out of this week's script.

And, how unusual was this episode? The first 40 minutes had us thinking the detectives were investigating their usual child porn case, but then suddenly Olivia passes out?!? That's when the episode takes a turn from child porn to a much headier subject of chemical companies testing their products on humans. Wha? It took me a little while to catch up with the detectives as they spouted out their theories on why people in a low-income apartment building were being gassed. For a while there, I thought the theory was hair-brained and another of Det. Munch's theories. But it just kept going.

(S04E05) Maybe I have some kind of chemical imbalance, or I just wasn't in a comedy kind of mood, but I didn't think this episode was that great. Normally I love this show, but this episode just kind of left me cold.

Fans might recall that in the first season there was a two-part episode where some officials from Home Land Security came to Reno to teach the deputies about terrorist training. It turns out they were actually con artists and they wound up stealing a bunch of stuff from the evidence lockers. In this episode, one of the con artists, "Spanish Mike" Alvarez, is placed in custody in the Reno jail where he tries to get inside the heads of each of the deputies. My favorite scene was with Junior, who he convinces to hand over his gun, but little does he know that Junior took the bullets out of the gun first. Junior taunts him: "Now who's in whose head?" That was pretty funny.