Come on, admit it. Who hasn’t fantasized about killing their sister’s no-good boyfriend? SVU took that fantasy – along with some realistic points about domestic violence, sibling rivalry, and Internal Affairs investigations – and turned it into “Deadly Ambitions,” a well-plotted episode that scored high on suspense and low on crim-pro mistakes.

Recap: Amanda’s ditzy sister Kim is back in NY, with a bruise on her cheek and a bun in the oven, both courtesy of Jeff, her gun-loving good-ol-boy ex. Amanda helps Kim get a restraining order, to little avail. When Amanda comes home from a shift, she hears her sister inside screaming – “Jeff! You’re hurting me!” – and bursts into the apartment. Jeff is in the middle of one of his favorite hobbies: beating the stuffing out of Kim.

Still, he tries one feeble attempt to explain. “She called me!” he yells, pointing a shiny silver revolver at Amanda. Bad move, buddy. Amanda, who’s earned the nickname “Annie Oakley” at the NYPD firing range, promptly shoots him to death.

The whole incident, while sub-optimal, seems like an open-and-shut case for NYPD. Amanda was clearly acting to protect her pregnant little sister. You’d think she’d want to tell her story and clear everything up ASAP, right? But Olivia and Cragen urgently tell her not to talk to anyone – especially not vindictive Internal Affairs Lt. Tucker – until she gets her union delegate. Meanwhile, she can’t be on active duty until she’s cleared in the internal investigation into her use of deadly force.

Since Amanda’s house is a crime scene, she and Kim crash at Finn’s place. For the first time in fourteen years, we see where Finn lives – which was remarkably normal. There was a questionable ceramic leopard and some framed cartoon posters on the walls, but mostly it seemed like a middle-of-the-road blue-collar bachelor pad. I guess I expected Finn’s interior-decorating sensibilities to more closely resemble Ice-T’s website home page:

Yowza. I suppose they can’t show that album cover on prime-time TV. [Read more...]

After last week’s Mike Tyson debacle, I was hoping SVU would regroup and come back with a strong, realistic episode. Instead, “Secrets Exhumed” eschewed plausibility and focused on creating unbelievable plot twists. It succeeded … in being unbelievable.

Recap: A cold case is re-sparked when a Florida prisoner’s DNA matches a series of five rapes from 25 years ago. When Olivia and Nick fly to Miami to pick up the suspect, wheelchair-bound Brian Traymore, they’re met by an FBI agent played by Marcia Gay Harden, who cheerfully suggests they all investigate together. Olivia happily agrees to work with Marcia, who has periodically guest-starred on SVU over the years.

Olivia and Nick quickly extract a confession from Traymore, who was a serial rapist until a car accident severed his spine. But he only admits to four of the five rape/murders. That is, until Marcia comes into the room and, using a voice as soft and creepy as a snake charmer, convinces him to confess to rape/murder #5, the attack on a beautiful young kindergarten teacher named Kyra.

The case seems closed, until Kyra’s fiancee, Noah, shows up at the station and greets Marcia with a hug and an exchange of guilty glances. Nick’s Spidey sense tells him something’s off. And he’s right.

Turns out, Marcia used to date Noah in college. He broke up with her just a few weeks before getting engaged to Kyra – who was pregnant at the time she was killed.

Although SVU conventions demand that at least one investigator be personally involved with a victim or witness to the crime (case in point: the preview for next week, where Amanda shoots her sister’s boyfriend), Nick is shocked – shocked! – that Marcia had a relationship with Noah. [Read more...]