User blog comment:Thief12/Thief12 and Season 8/@comment-1194123-20100423030548

The episode was great and I agree about Itzin. He owned all of his scenes single handedly. The cold, calculated exchange with Novakovich, the aforementioned scene with Taylor and Kanin... his disturbing reaction at the Secret Service agent that opened the door for him, just for the sake of it... showing already how unpredictable and unstable he is.

There is one thing that has been bugging me. It seems to me that the writers/producers are trying to push the envelope in a lot of directions to send the show out with a shock, especially with the way Jack have been treating women. Don't get me wrong, I really don't care about it cause I'm not into that feminist/chauvinistic soapbox... but sometimes it feels obvious the reason they're doing it. When Jack strangled the Justice lawyer, it was kinda cool in a WTF, unexpected kinda way... then he did the same to Dana, which was still cool, because we all hated Dana... but it kinda left me like "didn't we see this already?". And now he bangs her head and slaps her silly. Granted, if they had skipped the lawyer one, it would've felt more organic. But three times it makes you feel like they're pushing it just for shock.

It really is a minor quibble, but it's one that has been on the back of my head for the last week or two.