The thing about Detective Amanda Rollins
Every television cop has a definitive pain, a trigger to be pulled (if you will) when some humanity is called for in the middle of a standard episode. Law & Order: Special Victims Unit—a show about the worst pain you can fathom—began as generic and indistinct as anything else on the air at the turn of the millennium: Christopher Meloni channeling his Oz-honed criminal intensity into a strong-but-sensitive hero cop, Mariska Hargitay finally breaking through in knockoff Scully hair and bad pantsuits. In the pilot, fresh-to-the-unit Benson sees her first sex-crime scene and lets her emotions get the best of her, she cries by the car. “There’s no crying in baseball,” Stabler tells her, and even though it’s stolen from a completely unrelated source, that line is almost like a warning—this is post-NYPD Blue for shit sake—we won’t be soft, here, eventually.
But even Dick Wolf, Mr. The Story is Everything, knows that character is really everything, especially when said characters are solving a sex crime every week. So everyone got their thing, most notably Benson, being the product of rape, a thread that wove a crutch in later seasons. Stabler’s thing was less defined, but it was a general rage toward all the wrongdoings women had to endure, the things he had to see on the job and then take home to his wife and three daughters. Munch got a mentally unstable ex-wife, Fin a gay son. Cragen, a mothership hopover, was a recovering alcoholic.
My interest in ladycops is well-documented, but what’s always been notable to me is that these shows are built around a female lead—Cold Case again, The Killing, Prime Suspect (Belloooooooo!)—who is then by and large stranded in a sea of men. They’re always lone wolves, loveless and family-less and being called dykes by angry suspects; they always have drunk/dead moms; they don’t really have any other female friends, let alone another girl on the force (and I do understand the politics of shows and building one around an actress who may not want any other ladies around, fwiw). Strong on the outside, sad on the inside.
The Stabler/Benson partnership ultimately cast a heavy shadow over SVU—it’s the reason I started watching, in season freaking seven, and I was never a shipper—and made Olivia lame in a way, this supposedly strong woman putting so much of herself into this relationship with a man who got to have a wife and kids, everything she wants (barf). The show addressed their co-dependency multiple times before Meloni left—including my favourite, "I'm the longest relationship you've ever had with a man"—and while some viewers have griped about Olivia’s shitty attitude since the beginning of this Stablerless season, it’s completely earned.
And you know what? It turns out the show was creaking under the weight.
This season (13!) which has been revitalized creatively if you’re asking me—it’s also sent viewers screaming away, because the masses are the worst—achieved it by introducing a new pair of cops, because Stabler’s rage is big enough for two people. Benson’s new partner Amaro (Danny Pino, Scotty Valens from Cold Case!) has a wife in the war and a young daughter at home. Rollins (Kelli Giddish), partnered with Fin, was recently revealed to be a gambler, the less showier version of a drunk.
A smart thing they did right away is have Rollins, an Atlanta transplant, go to Olivia for advice about being a lady on the sex force, although it has mostly just highlighted Benson’s work fatigue and loneliness arc, as when Rollins said something like “How do you date anyone?” and Benson gave her a look that telegraphed “PLEASE DO NOT PURSUE THIS LINE OF QUESTIONING AND ALSO MAYBE GO INTO PRIVATE SECURITY.” But Olivia needs someone like her around—she’s been the queen of the squad for a long time, and the competition (or fuck, camaraderie!) is a welcome element.
Though I am normally against change, Rollins has become my favourite addition to SVU since Casey Novak, a lot of which has to do with the actress, but she’s the kind of ladycop we haven’t seen on this show since Benson got tired. Sure there have been flashes of spice and wit and what have you in the form of Cabot, Warner and various guest stars (Judith Light!) but the leather-jacket version of Benson, taking hits and running down perps—those stereotypically “strong” things that are so important to the character's image—has been missing for a few years. (And I do remember that Hargitay was really sick for awhile. Still.)
That’s why when Rollins got caught in a parking lot by a bookie, punched in the gut—twice—and responded by pulling herself up, grabbing a beer and staging a sting, I fell in love. That is some fucking action hero shit right there! She is thin and blonde, like Lilly Rush, but as with Lilly there is a toughness in her—I mean, she clearly had her breath knocked to New Jersey, and later referred to the incident as being “knocked around a little”—that’s endlessly appealing.
Early in the season, she volunteered to be a potential victim—which is classic Olivia, fight for your ish Olivia!—and ended up literally under a known rapist. Amaro went classic-Stabler nuts on the guy and they had to pull him off and she was like “Chill, dude” and walked away like it was no thing! Though she’s officially Fin’s partner—best moment: Him gut-punching the bookie and saying “You know who that’s for, right?”—they’ve matched her up with everyone and her cool, confident vibe works with the various dour, defensive, cranky and schticky ones she’s faced with. (Lighten up, squad!)
So, Rollins’ thing is gambling. Not too sexy, as things go—plus she’s already in Gamblers’ Anonymous, so you won’t see anyone throwing her in a shower, the universal television symbol of Rock Bottom—but it’s something. Kelli Giddish is new to me; I like that she was on All My Children because soap people know what’s up and know she occasionally plays a powerful lesbian on The Good Wife (which I don’t watch yet), which is intriguing. She's pretty but not in that way that makes idiots go “Someone that hot would never be a coal miner when she could be a model” (in a room she is likely intimidating but on the TV her flaxen everything is reassuring); she’s quick and Southern-style witty, which is different from Noo Yawk-style witty—so polite, yet so cutting; and she can work a pair of jeans, very important in the detective industry—trace Benson’s wardrobe back and I bet you’ll find she got less awesome when she started wearing those black slacks and pastel button-downs all the time.
The thing about Amanda Rollins is when you look at her you think “That right there is a competent cop. I bet she could take a punch—or two.” And this show needs as many of those as it can get, or resurrect.
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