Law & Order: SVU Season 27 Episode 21 Delivers a Powerful Season Finale, Except For One Thing

Critic’s Rating: 4.8 / 5.0

4.8

I’ve had more than enough of Chief Tynan.

Law & Order: SVU Season 27 Episode 21 offered one of the most powerful stories of the season and a dramatic rescue of a missing child.

But it also featured a dirty cop who is justifying her cover-up years later and trying to eliminate Benson just because she can, and her presence ruined an otherwise enjoyable season finale.

At This Point, Tynan’s Hatred of Benson Is a Weird Obsession

When Tynan and Benson first butted heads on Law & Order: SVU, it made a lot more sense.

Tynan was angry because Benson put taking care of a victim over attending a press conference that Tynan wasn’t even using strategically. This was a typical new-boss pattern — SVU chiefs tend to think that politics is more important than the survivors Benson serves.

Tynan also seemed frustrated that her earlier plan to get Benson out of the way by offering her a promotion didn’t work.

That all tracked, but by the time Tynan suspended Benson, it was obvious that she was just causing trouble because she could.

And on Law & Order: SVU Season 27 Episode 21, she became even more ridiculous. Benson led a mission to rescue a kid taken by a serial pedophile who killed his victims, and Tynan’s response was to threaten to get her fired for it.

If the people at 1PP haven’t figured out by now that Tynan is making it her mission to get rid of Benson without real cause, then they aren’t paying attention. It doesn’t make sense that Tynan’s threat would even hold water.

Of course, Tynan had an ulterior motive — Griffin had found out about her cover-up of his father’s murder of an unarmed man years ago, and she probably feared that Benson would do something about it.

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The way Tynan tried to justify all of that to Griffin made me angrier than anything on TV has in a while.

I can’t stand it when people try to justify bad behavior by insisting that everyone else would do the same thing, especially when they know it’s not true.

Tynan’s question about how far Griffin would go for his captain was stupid. Benson wouldn’t ask him to cover up a murder, so it’s a moot point.

It made more sense that Griffin had that conversation with Tynan once it was revealed that he was wearing a wire, though.

I’d been wondering why he told her what he suspected. It didn’t seem like it would accomplish anything other than tipping her off.

Tynan has to back off Benson now (I think), but I disagree with the idea of not ruining Tynan’s career.

She covered up the murder of a cop so that she wouldn’t be called a rat, and all these years later, she’s trying to rid the department of one of its best cops for what appear to be petty and selfish reasons. She needs to go.

Tynan Was a Distraction From One Of Law & Order: SVU’s Best Cases

Richard was one of the creepiest predators Benson’s team had faced. When he confronted her outside the courtroom, I was afraid we were about to have another William Lewis situation on our hands.

Fortunately, that wasn’t the case, but it was obvious the guy was going to do something horrible.

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He’d gotten off on a technicality, leaving him free to continue kidnapping, raping, and murdering kids.

That technicality shouldn’t have blindsided Carisi. It was unrealistic that the defense attorney was allowed to display bodycam footage that Carisi knew nothing about, and that the judge sided with her when she had done so.

I’m not convinced that a cop looking through the window of a stopped car with a driver who is acting suspiciously counts as a warrantless search. I’d think it would fall under the plain sight doctrine, though I’m not a lawyer, so I could be wrong about that.

In any case, the judge’s decision didn’t seem so far out of left field that it pulled me out of the story, even if it was more for the convenience of the plot than logical.

I wish this had been the second part of a two-part episode so that we could have experienced the case unfolding in real time before the judge pulled the rug out from under Carisi.

That would have made it hurt more.

Still, this judge’s decision kicked off a powerful story in which SVU raced against time to find proof that this guy was a kidnapper and killer before he struck again.

The investigation was one of SVU’s strongest. Law & Order: SVU Season 27 Episode 21 finally went back to basics, with the team working as a unit to find evidence of Richard’s misdeeds and stop him before it was too late.

The story wasn’t perfect — I don’t understand what took SVU so long to realize that tracking the guy might lead them to his next victim, and that shootout scene was so dark it was hard to see what was going on — but it was far better than most of what we have gotten during Season 27.

What did you think? Was this a powerful season closer, or did it leave you frustrated?

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Law & Order: SVU’s season has ended, but it is available on Peacock. Law & Order: SVU has been renewed for Season 28.

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