Whereas; even if you don't see anything romantic in it, the Kayabeth friendship has been described as the heart of the show by Carrie Preston herself and with so many episodes all season of it feeling like the underlying thread (especially when Elsbeth isn't really an ensemble show proper in the same way something like, say, Bones or High Potential is) it feels like a lot of build-up for nothing if it's all going to be back-burnered if not fall apart from now on

Whereas; I hate the ambiguity of it just saying she's demoted to guest star indefinitely as I don't know how recurring that means and I've been burned before with a similar character exit from a similar NYC-cop female friendship (Amanda Rollins doesn't deserve the way she's returned to SVU since she left the SVU proper) and Kayabeth's arguably more iconic than Benson/Rollins modulo seasons of screen time which is why I was afraid in that above point that their friendship would be sidelined despite that promise at the end of this episode

Whereas; it really cripples a fandom's fan-activities if they don't know what the new status quo's going to be and have to attach a big AU asterisk to everything and I'm afraid she might appear so infrequently it'd feel almost pointless to speculate on meta or fan theories regarding her never mind come up with episode ideas that put their friendship in the spotlight or even include her in any AU or crossover fic ideas

Whereas; if she's narratively pushed aside because "guest star" (as I said before, I'm not sure what that means) that means we lose part of the representation we have that could convince non-white and/or non-males (she's the main cop character who's both non-white and non-male) to join the police force and actually, pardon the only slightly intentional pun, fight the good fight

Whereas; both Watsonianly and Doylistically Elsbeth needs that kind of not-necessarily-foil-but-someone-to-balance-her-out, none of the other detectives or even officers seem to fit the bill from what we've seen of them and even Teddy would need to go through a couple years of law school (if he still wants to do that) for them to do some kind of Benson/Barba-y thing

Whereas; it's hard to demote one regular unless it's to the kind of guest star that's barely-below-regular when you have THREE freaking regulars only!

Whereas; it would be easy for this to just be a temporary change for Kaya, Doylistically give other cast members an opportunity to have depth and Watsonianly maybe as time goes on she realizes it might be not what she really wants (like if she's doing as much undercover work as some sources describing this change have implied, maybe she starts to be afraid of losing herself in another identity or gets traumatized by something she had to do to maintain a cover) and can come back now with a cool new skillset that could lead to much more interesting ways to investigate cases

Whereas; petitions like this have influenced the storyline of Elsbeth before (like one got Teddy actually showing up on the show)

Therefore; even if it has to be for the S4 I feel it's likely but still want to make sure this show gets renewed for Kaya deserves to be a big part of this show still so she should be made a series regular again or at least if she has to stay a guest star she should be as frequent as a guest star can be and not be a regular

#BringBackBlanke #Justice4Kaya