TV Recap: Law & Order: SVU, ‘Holden’s Manifesto’

Plot: Based on the Elliot Rodger case. Holden March (John Karna) begins a vengeance-fueled crime spree, attacking women who have spurned him throughout his life. Meanwhile, Olivia (Mariska Hargitay) is dealing with Noah being in the hospital, suffering from poorly healed broken ribs which he sustained in foster care. A new Deputy Chief (Peter Gallagher) puts pressure on Olivia to solve the March case.

“Holden’s Manifesto” suffers from a case of a good story but bad character execution.

The idea of taking the absolutely skin-crawling case of Elliot Rodger and making it an SVU episode is a brilliant idea. You can really delve into some crazy psychological drama here. PThe series has done really well with sociopathic villains throughout its run, and the fertile ground of the Rodger case should’ve caused this episode to be a home run.

However, the villain is poorly developed. We don’t really get inside March’s head as deep as we possibly could’ve. We get a very broad caricature of March – he’s pissed at all the women who’ve rejected him – it just reeks of ‘meh.’ Worst of all, we’ve seen this motive before. The writers really needed to give the audience more. Let us inside March’s head and ee just how twisted, sick and ultimately tortured this man is. Instead, we’re given a generic “woah crazy crazy” villain that we really can’t get behind.

The performance by John Karna didn’t help the character. His presence felt like the producers really wanted to get Dane DeHaan (Chronicle, Amazing Spider-man 2) to play the role, but he was too busy, so they got his stunt double. Karna’s performance is over-acting 101 as he tries way too hard to act really crazy. It comes off as completely unnatural — at times he’s wooden and uncomfortable, at other times he’s manically over the top. His performance does nothing to alleviate the blandness of the character’s on the nose dialogue.

Outside of Holden, the rest of the episode is actually well-constructed. The detectives chasing down Holden and following the clues to discover his motives are really intriguing. It’s a shame the pay-off wasn’t as good as the road to it.

On a positive note, the episode features Kelli Giddish’s best performance to date. Her performance during the hostage scene at the episode’s climax is able to brush aside Karna’s hammy, cliched performance. The performance was also able to rise above the painfully obvious direction of the scene. Of course Rollins is going to try and relate to Holden. Of course she is going to put out the vibe that she was into Holden. And of course it’s going to end poorly for Holden. However, Giddish’s execution in the scene was just captivating. She walked the line of being submissive to Holden while remaining in complete control of the situation.

The weaknesses of ‘Holden’s Manifesto’ really hurt a potentially excellent episode. However, there were enough bright spots to steer this episode clear from being Season 15 level bad.

Rating: 5.5 out of 10

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Bill Bodkin is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of Pop-Break. He can be read weekly on Trailer Tuesday and Singles Party, weekly reviews on Mad Men, Boardwalk Empire, Hannibal, Law & Order: SVU, Sonic Highways and regular contributions throughout the week with reviews and interviews. His goal is to write 500 stories this year. He is a graduate of Rutgers University with a degree in Journalism & English and currently works in the world of political polling. He’s the reason there’s so much wrestling on the site and is beyond excited to be a Dad this coming December. Follow him on Twitter: @PopBreakDotCom

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