booyahkendell:

Remember when Nick shot and killed a young boy during a shootout and there was an entire episode dedicated to the professional and emotional repercussions of his actions?

That’s one of my biggest complaints with the last two seasons of SVU. You cannot continue to have these characters go through life-changing, traumatic experiences with no thought as to how those things are going to affect them personally. It comes off as cheap otherwise.

A two minute scene of Amanda crying is not enough to fully develop the incredible amount of guilt that she would feel at killing the girl she was trying to save. A two minute scene of Sonny looking shaken up and a “he’ll be fine” from Liv is not enough to fully develop the trauma that comes with watching the woman you were assigned to protect die in front of you.

Previous seasons considered those types of consequences. The Nick episode I mentioned above, Liv’s PTSD after Lewis, the episode entirely dedicated to Amanda confronting the trauma of being assaulted by her former captain. It feels like shock value for the sake of shock value when characters go through similar events now. Not also highlighting the emotional repercussions of the traumatic events that they experience puts the focus on the drama of those events in a way that feels cheap.

This