The thing that’s ridiculous about Benson becoming the centerpiece of the show is that she gets promoted to captain eventually, so her role would be much more administrative and dealing with internal politics. She wouldn’t be showing up at the scene of every crime and doing a lot of actual detective work. Rawlins realistically should have been the protagonist for the show after Benson’s promotion, and while they have her a couple of episodes as the centerpiece each season, it still involves Benson being the focus of drama far too often. And they basically fired Kelli Giddish in the most recent season because she had been on the show so long she was getting too expensive given how much Hargitay costs to keep around.