Recap: In terms of creepiness and watchability this episode scored high. In terms of realism, believabilty, or anything approaching how an actual crime would occur or a real investigation would unfold, tonight’s episode was the lowest point of the season.
We start with a four-year-old boy calling 911 because Mommy is asleep and won’t wake up. The operator uses cell-phone tracking technology to pinpoint his location. Moments later, Olivia and Nick bust through the boy’s door. They find his mother, bloody and unconscious, on the floor.
After a commercial break, we learn that mom just had too much to drink and slipped and fell. And here, folks, is where the case would have ended in real life.
But we know the show isn’t over because no pretty 16-year-old girls have yet made their appearances. Not to worry; they soon do. In droves.
Turns out, mom fell after fighting with her 16-year-old daughter about the man the girl was seeing. The girl then left and spent the night out. SVU launches into a full-scale investigation of the girl. We’re talking ATM records, credit-card tracking, cell phone tracing, and library searches justified by the Patriot Act and a FISA warrant.
After unleashing the full force of the criminal-justice arsenal to locate one rebellious teenager who’s been out of contact with her mom for eight hours, the detectives learn that the girl went to visit her biological father – mom’s sperm donor.
Checking out some children-of-sperm-donor chat rooms, the detectives discover that several 16-year-old girls have met with the same father … and had sex with him. Ew. BD Wong sagely explains that falling in love with a long-lost father often happens; he even provides a wonderfully Wong-like scientific name for the phenomenon: “Genetic Sexual Attraction.” Double ew.
So who’s the dysfunctional Dad?
Without probable cause for a warrant, Olivia and Amanda go to a sperm bank and pretend to be a smolderingly sexy lesbian couple. (Of course they do. Actually, I’m impressed that the writers had the restraint to wait 20 episodes before deploying this device.)
The detectives soon discover the donor is an arrogant lung surgeon with a God complex. They visit the surgeon in his posh mansion, where he’s surrounded by his cool British wife and pouty teenage daughter. He admits to being a sperm donor, but proves he’s not having sex with the 16-year-olds. Who is?
As it so often does on SVU, everything comes down to a party in the Hamptons. There, several suspects hobnobbed with the fertile surgeon and his family. SVU hones in on one of the partygoers – oh my God, it’s Dawson Leery from Dawson’s Creek! And, yikes, he’s gotten super creepy since moving away from Capeside.
Dawson, it turns out, was in love with the surgeon’s British wife when they were in college – like twenty years ago. When he saw her at this Hamptons party, looking so happy and well-adjusted, he decided to track down her husband’s sperm-donor daughters and have revenge sex with them. (Somewhere down deep inside, we all want our exes to be miserable without us. But this reaction seems, at the very least, excessive.)
But wait – there’s more! Now’s he’s got the surgeon’s pouty daughter locked in a hotel room! He’ll only tell Mom and Dad where she is if Mom will dance with him to the tune of a meaningful song that’s been conveniently downloaded onto an iPad in the police interrogation room! And when Mom agrees to the creepy dance in the dimly lit cell, Dawson looks like he might break her neck! But instead he tells her … he killed her daughter!
Oh my God! But … he actually didn’t! The surgeon’s teenage daughter is safely ensconced in satin sheets at a posh hotel. And she’s really annoyed when SVU busts in, finds her alive, and tells her she can’t shag Dawson any more.
Verdict: D+
What they got wrong:
My challenge tonight is keeping this short.
First, detectives don’t respond to 911 calls. Patrol officers do. In real life, Olivia and Nick would have been ordering mocha Frappucinos while their uniformed colleague answered the little boy’s 911 call.
Second, anyone who’s ever called in a missing person knows the police won’t even write up a report – much less deploy the Patriot Act, FISA, and cell phone tracking – for someone who hasn’t been missing for a while. Different jurisdictions have different rules, but usually require at least 24 or 48 hours of being missing. Especially if circumstances indicate that the “missing” person is just off fooling around with her boyfriend.
Third, I’ve never heard of a stalker carrying a torch passively for twenty years and then deploying the most outrageous stalking of all time because he glanced a smiling ex at a party. Stalkers come in many shapes and sizes, but I can’t imagine one as tenacious and patient as Dawson was tonight.
My biggest nit is this: in real life, this whole investigation never would have happened. All the sex here was consensual and the girls were of age. In D.C., the age of consent is 16. That means a 16-year-old girl can have sex with whoever she chooses (with a few exceptions for people with special duties, like guardians, teachers, and ministers, in which case, they’d have to wait until she turned 18).
Will a 16-year-old girl always choose the right guy? Survey says: No. Might she unwisely believe some creep’s ridiculously bogus claims? Sure.
But lying to get sex is not a crime. (DA’s offices would be overwhelmed if they had to investigate every guy who scored by pretending to be richer or more devoted than he really was). Pretending to be a someone’s biological father in order to seduce her is gross and deplorable. But it’s not illegal.
And police don’t chase down disturbing yet legal acts. They don’t have the jurisdiction. Often, in fact, they’re looking for the easy route to “decline” a case. They want to leave the precinct, maybe grab a beer, then go home and see if the wife is feeling frisky.
What they got right:
911 calls from landlines have long been traceable to a real address, but the technology for cell phones only recently caught up. Cell phone locations can now be pinpointed to within 50 meters. But this technology is new, and many police stations don’t have it yet. Also, it doesn’t help if you’re in an area with a lot of skyscrapers and 50 meters could mean 1000 different dwellings. You’re much better off if you can tell the 911 operator exactly where you are.
Kathryn Harrison
There really is a phenomenon called “Genetic Sexual Attraction,” where related family members who grew up apart fall for each other when they meet. The theory is that you tend to be attracted to people who resemble you, and who resembles you more than good old dad? I had to Google this all up. It’s not a phenomenon that comes up much in prosecuting sex crimes. What actually comes up, over and over, is a stepfather or uncle or grandfather who is sexually attracted to his stepdaughter, niece or granddaughter, who he’s known all his life.
An author named Kathryn Harrison published a memoir called “The Kiss” regarding her four-year-long incestuous relationship with her biological father, which started when she was 20 years old.
On that disturbing note, SVU fans, what do you think? Can you imagine anyone exacting revenge on an ex-girlfriend by seducing her husband’s sperm-donor offspring? Will Ice-T use the Patriot Act to nab people with too many parking tickets? And what are the chances of Olivia and Amanda locking lips before the season is over? Leave your comments!
Brandon says
3 May, 2012 at 8:21 amI know the Dawson was a bit crazy but what would be the point of going after the IV daughters if the plan was to hurt his ex-girlfriend and get revenge on Dr. Asshole? It couldn’t have been to embarrass or frame the doc as the whole thing wasn’t even uncovered until the first girl went missing. I mean why not just go after the biological daughter outright?
Allison Leotta says
6 May, 2012 at 9:32 pmYeah, seems like a lot of time on children-of-sperm-donor chat rooms, when the real damage was done by targeting the pouty daughter herself.
Carl N. Brown says
3 May, 2012 at 11:36 amI know at least two women who are aware that the father who raised them was not her biologocal father, knew who their biological father was, and still accepted the man who raised them was their “true” father and had no desire to have any sort of relationship with their biological sire.
Much less …ew.
Allison Leotta says
6 May, 2012 at 9:33 pmAh, such a relief to hear a nice, happy story for once on this blog. 🙂
kimsch says
3 May, 2012 at 1:48 pmI agree with your grade for this episode. I wondered why Olivia and Nick would show up for this call. The call didn’t even imply that there was a “special victim.” Also, after they saw mom on the floor, Nick called to the uniforms outside the door, “get the EMTs here now!”
Knowing that the call did include an unresponsive adult, don’t you think the EMTs would have been there before Olivia and Nick?
Another point I had an issue with was when Olivia and Amanda were at the sperm bank. The receptionist was giving them lots of information. Do people just walk-in to sperm banks like it’s a salon asking to see the hairstyle book? Wouldn’t you make a appointment and see a counselor of some kind first?
James Pollock says
4 May, 2012 at 12:31 pmThe SVU detectives would’ve been routed on this call because they, unlike patrol officers or regular detectives, have extensive training and experience working with child witnesses. So, 50% of your objection is overruled. The EMTs would have already been inside, examining mom, but there’s a reason that SVU was involved. (Not as egregious as a CSI: Miami episode from a couple of seasons ago where the CSI team gets to the scene of a fire BEFORE THE FD so that our starts could have a heroic moment.)
As for the sperm bank, some of them are for-profit businesses. You keep the potential customer on the line unless you have reason to cut them loose. Not quite like other retail businesses, but considering that the product they sell IS available for free from multiple sources…
Allison Leotta says
6 May, 2012 at 9:35 pmKimsch, In my experience, it’s *always* a patrol officer, not a detective, who gets there first. If there’s a special issue — child victim or witness, sex crime, DV felony, homicide — they will call a specialized detective. 911 just doesn’t send the call out to detectives. Also, in my experience, it’s 50/50 as to who gets there first, the EMTs or the police. A lot is just a matter of luck and timing, and who happened to be closer when the 911 dispatch went out.
James Pollock says
8 May, 2012 at 12:12 amOh, I’m not saying it’s ACCURATE, I’m saying it falls within my willing suspension of disbelief. The real reason the SVU detectives were first on the scene is because they are the stars of the show.
Another possibility: A patrolman DID arrive on scene first, ascertained the correct apartment, but was unable to convince the young child to open the door… thus requiring a call to the detectives to specialize in dealing with small children. None of this being shown because it isn’t important. This is why there were patrol officers and EMTs waiting just off-screen when they were needed.
Alenna says
3 May, 2012 at 10:59 pmOoh this was a bad episode. I’m going to have to put it on my “worst of SVU” list, right above the episode “Selfish” (Season 10, Episode 19) – the one where they put a mother on trial for murder because her unvaccinated kid gave another child the measles.
The producers and writers really need to do an apology to teenage girls – for yet another episode where they are portrayed as dumb zombie-like airheads (or murderous sociopaths). I mean I know young teenagers can do dumb things at times – but I do think that most of them know that you don’t have sex with your father. Or the man you think is your father. Good grief. Apparently, most pretty 16-year-old girls are so gullible, they will believe any story and hop into bed with any man who tells them he loves them.
While I was watching this I couldn’t help but wonder what happened to all the other rape and child abuse cases in NYC? Don’t the SVU detectives have a stack of other work they should be doing? They had 5 detectives intensely working on this case, which should have been dropped once the missing girl was found. They started imagining things and following leads that were completely improbable (and not even illegal) – do they really have that much spare time on their hands?
It was great seeing Dr. Huang (or Wong?) again. It’s a shame he was wasted in this episode.
Alenna says
4 May, 2012 at 9:31 amJust FYI – The age of consent in New York is 17 (at least according to Wiki) : “Sex with a person under 17 is a Class “E” felony if the perpetrator is at least 21”. So I guess they could be going after Mr. Creepy for a felony for having sex with the airheads. Still doesn’t absolve the silly storyline however.
James Pollock says
4 May, 2012 at 12:34 pmFor a while, they thought the suspect was actually the girls’ biological father. There’s no age of consent for that at all… it’s always icky, and always prohibited by law.
Alenna says
4 May, 2012 at 1:34 pmWhy was there even a “suspect” in the beginning? The mother hit her head while drinking. The runaway girl (who hadn’t even been gone 12 hours) had researched her biological father on-line and agreed to meet him at a coffee bar. Is that a crime? Is it illegal? The detectives jump from finding her plans to meet him, to assuming that they were were having sex was based on what evidence? And afterwards bringing her in to interrogate her (without parents present) about the whole situation was absurd. I just re-watched the first part – it looks even worse the second time. The only logical reason for the SVU detectives to make the assumptions they made was because they are SVU detectives who see rape and incest “everywhere”. In that case they all really need a vacation – and a shrink.
James Pollock says
4 May, 2012 at 11:31 pmIn the very beginning, they didn’t know mom caused her own injury… they thought the girl had been taken. This was somewhat reasonable… mom whacked on the head, bleeding on the floor, unconscious; daughter missing. That bumps you up the waiting list and tips the assumption from “runaway” to “abducted child”.
Note: I’m not claiming the story is believable as is… just that parts of it are less fantastic than others.
Also, nobody’s mentioned yet the IV kid with the baby and the shy BF. Surely HE knows whether or not he had anything to do with knocking her up. But he says nothing? He doesn’t even get to make an actual appearance in the show?
Allison Leotta says
6 May, 2012 at 9:44 pmAlenna, great point about the age of consent in NY. They did have a legal basis to investigate some of these girls (although not, I think, for the pouty surgeon’s daughter, who had just been accepted into college and was therefore at least 17 and probably 18). But, yeah, I thought the whole daughter’s missing after a fight with mom in which she says she’s going to visit a guy — was a pretty weak basis for an investigation that included every character in the SVU, and some from prior seasons.
James Pollock says
7 May, 2012 at 10:18 amMy daughter is 16 and is not just accepted into, but attending college. I was 16 when I started by senior year of H.S. So “accepted into college” does NOT imply “at least 17 years of age”. It’s a pretty safe bet, but not a lock.
Allison Leotta says
7 May, 2012 at 11:33 amWow, impressive family, James!
James Pollock says
8 May, 2012 at 12:13 amNot really. We just have birthdays in late fall. (And a local community college that takes students at 16).
Keith says
4 May, 2012 at 12:56 pmYes, Genetic Sexual Attraction is real, and there are adult who are happy together in relationships started by GSA. Rhode Island has no laws against adult consensual incest, and many countries don’t, either. New Jersey has no laws against adult sibling consensual incest. Several other states are close to that or do not prosecute. Yes, many people find it disgusting, but we’re not all going to want each other’s love lives.
Thanks for the recap. I’m not watching the show as often as I used to.
Allison Leotta says
6 May, 2012 at 9:35 pmNoted. Thanks for weighing in.
Michelle Cunin says
9 May, 2012 at 7:38 amI didn’t know that siblings could marry. Ever. A little confused about that one, myself, but I think it’s more of being an only child and not understanding the dynamic of siblings. Other than watching my own children.
James Pollock says
12 May, 2012 at 6:18 amSurprisingly, it doesn’t come up very often. Most states bar statutory marriage to siblings (even siblings by adoption). Generally, there are three bars to marriage: Age, consanguinity, or one of the parties is already married to another living person. (Plus, of course, most states bar marriage between persons who are of the same gender.)
mockingJD says
4 May, 2012 at 2:45 pm“Different jurisdictions have different rules, but usually require at least 24 or 48 hours of being missing.”
Even for a minor?
James Pollock says
4 May, 2012 at 11:49 pmDepends on what evidence there is that the child is in danger. Most of the time, missing kids are in no danger at all… they’re at the mall, a friend’s house, etc. Even most runaways will return under their own power once they have a chance to cool off. Of the true abductions, most are non-custodial parents and relatives. The true stranger abduction is phenomenally rare.
So, if there’s evidence that the child was taken, an immediate response is likely (amber alerts, etc.) but if there’s no evidence beyond mom or dad who don’t know where the child is, you’re more likely to get a “wait and see”.approach. Which is not to say that the police will do nothing at all. Most likely, nearby patrol officers will get a notification that a child is unaccounted-for, but they won’t stop what they’re doing to look for the child. If you have a case where parent and teenager had a big blowout and the teenager stormed out and drove off, you probably get close to nothing but “call us if (s)he doesn’t come back by tomorrow.”
Allison Leotta says
6 May, 2012 at 9:36 pmJames, I agree with your take on this. MockingJD, that is the greatest screen name ever.
Carl N. Brown says
5 May, 2012 at 6:53 amIt is really damaging to “suspension of disbelief” when a police procedural TV plot is contrary to standard police procedure. One should be asked to suspend disbelief for ghost stories.
One thing keeps nagging me about “momma was just drunk and fell when toddler called 911–no problem” scenario. In todays hometown newspaper we had a report of a woman found passed out in her vehicle with an infant; the child is now in custody of the state. Which brought to my mind other reported cases over the past year or so, where there were 911 reports of children wandering un-supervised while their parents were asleep (often drunk or stoned) which resulted in the drunks or stoners or late sleepers jailed and the children in state custody. I suspect that here if momma was drunk and fell, and a bloody child made a 911 call, it would not be easily dismissed. Is Manhatten that slack about child endangerment? Or are we in the sticks just paranoid (years ago a 3 y.o. wandered away from home and fell to his death in rock quarry)?
James Pollock says
6 May, 2012 at 2:16 pmHuh? Just a few episodes they suggested that letting your child walk by himself to the subway station was just asking for him to be set upon and tortured to death by a pack of vicious teenage girls.
Allison Leotta says
6 May, 2012 at 9:38 pmCarl, I think you’re right — at the very least, Child Protective Services should be alerted, and they could look into whether the family has any history of this, and whether there’s any other reason to be concerned for the little boy’s welfare.
James Pollock says
7 May, 2012 at 10:26 amI’m not sure I agree that CPS would be interested in this family. There’s no indication that anything like this has happened before, this incident appears to be an accident, and the child has been taught to call 911 for help (although without teaching him his own address and (landline) phone number). There’s no sign that the children were ever in danger (OK, “danger” here defined as “the type of danger that CPS deals with”… CPS doesn’t handle creepy stalker dudes who have a thing for one of the child’s parents).
Michelle Cunin says
9 May, 2012 at 9:51 amBut wouldn’t they? If CPS caught wind of that, they might investigate to find out the facts. One of my neighbors had CPS called on her by a spiteful neighbor for having a messy house. Rather than dismiss it as her just being a shoddy housewife, they kept her their crosshairs. Sometimes common sense alludes them, making us scratch our heads at them. They seem to linger where there’s nothing going on, while letting those who actually do harm to kids slip through their fingers.
Allison Leotta says
9 May, 2012 at 8:14 pmYeah, Michelle makes a good point. There are lots of reasons CPS might get involved — or not involved. Every CPS has different rules, but often its the prevailing sentiment within the agency that makes the difference. Something that might be considered “neglect” in one county might considered totally fine in another. And of course as in any system, there is room for human error and outright abuse of the system.
James Pollock says
10 May, 2012 at 1:20 amThe system tends to swing back and forth like a pendulum. There’ll be some horrible case of abuse, the public gets all “why didn’t they do anything about this?”, and the agency gets more proactive in taking kids. They get so protective that they start taking kids in cases that have the public all “don’t they have anything better to do?” and so the agency gets more inclined to leave kids in their parents’ homes unless there’s solid evidence they need to be removed. Then there’s a horrible case of abuse and the pendulum swings back again.
One thing that never changes is that the actual caseworkers are given a caseload that would require superhuman effort to maintain, and during economic hard times (now) they get budget cuts, at exactly the same time that incidence of neglect and abuse rise. I mean, all we ask them to do is to identify which children need to be removed from their homes and which do not with 100% accuracy… how hard can that be?
Now, if the cops have to show up again, and there’s a pattern instead of an incident, probably a different story.
Disclaimer: My only direct contact with the system was a court-ordered “maintenance” checkup during a long, bitter custody fight.
Dave says
9 May, 2012 at 7:33 pmThank you, I’m glad I’m not the only one perplexed by this episode. I have enjoyed SVU as a drama and they’ve done pretty well considering how many shows stumble after a major character departs, but this episode just made no sense. My fiancee enjoyed it, but I just kept asking “Why are they investigating, if nobody broke the law? Wait–why are we looking for a sperm donor? What CRIME was committed?”
Allison Leotta says
9 May, 2012 at 8:15 pmDave, that’s what I kept thinking, too. It was interesting on a moment-to-moment basic, but the more I thought about the big picture of the plot, the less it made sense to me!
Michelle Cunin says
10 May, 2012 at 7:59 amAlmost like a continuation of “Inconceivable”, when the Chief of D’s referred to the stolen tank of eggs as “special victims”. Maybe Cragen got the call from him again to tell him to send the detectives out.
Fluff says
31 May, 2013 at 7:22 amSVU is set in New York, not D.C., so age of consent in D.C. is irrelevant. Age of consent in New York is 17, thus making it statutory rape.
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