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Allison Leotta, novelist, former sex-crimes prosecutor, tv critic

Author of A Good Killing, Speak of the Devil, and others.

ABA Blawg 100

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Hey folks! It’s that time of year — the American Bar Association is rounding up the best legal blogs in America.  The Prime-Time Crime Review has gotten a nod for the past two years — and I’d love to do it again!  If you enjoy this blog, please go to the Blawg 100 Amici and let them know.  It’s a quickie form.  And getting nominated makes me feel better about the hours I spend blogging instead of doing my day job of writing novels.

Captain. Cragen in his prison jumpsuit

SVU is back with its Season 14 premiere on Wednesday, September 26th.  I’ll be here, nitpicking what they got right and wrong from my perspective as a former sex-crimes prosecutor.  As you may recall, last season wrapped up with Captain Cragen waking up in bed with a dead hooker and some very ominous music.  Come on by on the 27th, and let’s chat about how Cragen looks in a prison jumpsuit and whether it’s a good idea for Olivia to be the one interrogating her old boss.

Why We Love TV Crime Dramas — And Hate Them

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It’s possible that I became a prosecutor because I love crime dramas. Or maybe I just love crime dramas because I was a prosecutor.  One thing is clear: lawyers can’t stop talking about their work. We tell war stories at the drop of a hat. And prosecutors have some of the best material, because crime naturally has the elements that make a compelling narrative. The stakes are the highest imaginable: life, death, freedom, and justice.

Now that I write about crimes instead of prosecuting them, I’ve been wondering: why are TV crime dramas so addictive? Why are we fascinated with them? And why is it that, despite my compulsion, some of these shows drive me crazy?

Here’s what I concluded…

WHY WE LOVE TV CRIME DRAMA

We love TV crime dramas because they play on (and relieve) our FEAR.

I’ve heard a theory that the horror of 9/11 created a sense of vulnerability in our national consciousness, and that watching the good guys win makes us feel better. But I’m not sure about that. Shows like Law & Order, Perry Mason, Dragnet, and LA Law far preceded 9/11. So  it’s something deeper than 9/11. I think there’s a primal fear we all have, rooted deep in our lizard brains.

We’ve all have had moments of feeling vulnerable, or looking over our shoulder while walking down the street. We hear about crimes happening every day (and the news only reports the most vicious attacks). We wonder: could that happen to me. How can I prevent it?

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10 Lessons From SVU That May Save Your Life

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The finale of Law & Order: SVU Season 13 aired last Wednesday. As a former sex-crimes prosecutor, I’ve mocked silly episodes about amputation fetishes and sperm donor impersonators. But this season also brought great new characters, blisteringly real story lines, and impeccable timing on controversial issues. What’s most striking about this season, however, is how many lessons from the show could literally save your life. In case you missed some episodes, here are my top ten real-life lessons to take from this season of SVU.

1.  You may already be in love with your rapist.

When we think of rape, we tend to picture a stranger lurking in the bushes.  But most sexual assaults I saw as a prosecutor were committed by a man the victim knew intimately: an ex-boyfriend or stepfather; a doctor or minister; a teacher or coach; a professional colleague or the guy brought home from a bar.  SVU honed in on this theme in Season 13.  Personal Fouls featured a youth basketball coach who molested his players.  Theatre Tricks included a tech-savvy stalker who was the victim’s neighbor and friend.   The victim in Blood Brothers wouldn’t name her wealthy assailant because she hoped he would marry her.  Many of us worry about someone breaking into our homes – but what you most need to worry about is who you invite in.

2. Look out for your sons as much as your daughters.

Personal Fouls was a remarkable episode paralleling the Jerry Sandusky / Joe Paterno case.  (And it aired before the real scandal broke – I’m still wondering how the writers managed that one.) The episode highlighted sex crimes against boys.

While sexual assaults are the most under-reported crimes in America, assaults against male victims are the most under-reported of all.  It’s estimated that 1 in 4 American women and 1 in 6 American men will be the victim of a sexual assault in their lifetime.  But hardly any of the male survivors come forward, principally because of the perceived stigma attached to being a victim.  SVU’s Detective Amanda Rollins got it right when she said, “Male victims today are where female victims were 40 years ago.  It’s the dark ages.”  Kudos to SVU for getting people to talk about this subject, and helping male survivors realize they’re not alone.

3.  If you are sexually assaulted, tell the police the truth.  Immediately.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn

SVU opened its season with Scorched Earth, a riff on the real Dominique-Strauss Kahn case. The episode featured a fictional hotel maid who claimed she was sexually assaulted by a powerful European politician.  When inconsistencies surfaced in her story, the case tanked.  In real life, it’s nearly impossible to prosecute a he-said/she-said sex assault when the victim has made seriously conflicting statements.  If you’re worried about telling the police something, it’s better to get it out up front.

Delays in reporting rapes are also a common challenge, as highlighted in the episode True Believers, where a college student didn’t come forward immediately, because she was in shock and had her final exams the next day.  Victims often have understandable reasons for not making an immediate report of rape, but the sooner a truthful report is made, the stronger the case.

 

4.  Lock your door.

Michael Moore might disagree, but the simple act of locking your door could save your life, and it’s surprisingly often

Aaron Thomas, the alleged East Coast Rapist

overlooked.  Double Strand featured a serial rapist similar to the real-life East Coast Rapist – a man charged with sexually assaulting multiple women by walking into their homes when a door or window was left open.  True Believers featured a rapist who got into a home by slipping in while a woman was bringing in her groceries.  When stranger rapes do occur, these two scenarios are often how they start.

 

5.  There is no florist-client privilege.

Frequent TV mentions of the attorney-client and doctor-patient privileges have made viewers believe in other privileges that don’t actually exist.  A florist in Blood Brothers argued (unsuccessfully) that his delivery of roses was confidential.  I’ve had people argue that information they told their hotel concierge, postman, or yoga instructor was privileged.  Not true.  You may have a privilege for confidences you tell your doctor, spouse, or religious leader, but in the right circumstances, even those can be circumvented.  Keep your secrets between yourself and your lawyer.

6.  Never shake a baby.

In Missing Pieces, the detectives considered Shaken-Baby Syndrome to explain the mysterious death of an infant.  As a prosecutor, I saw too many cases of babies who were killed or brain-damaged from being shaken by a frustrated parent.  If you feel like you can’t take your baby’s crying one moment longer, set him down in a crib, go to another room, and give yourself some time to recoup.  Crying can’t kill a baby – but shaking can.

 

 

 

 

 

7.  The police can lie to you to extract a confession.

In Home Invasion and Strange Beauty, the SVU detectives extracted confessions by lying to the suspects.  The Supreme Court has approved of police deception to get a confession.  If you’re ever interrogated by the police, you have to tell the truth – but they don’t.

8.  Use caution when mixing work with romance.

One of the more interesting continuing plot lines this season involved Detective Olivia Benson’s romance with a dashing ADA played by Harry Connick, Jr.  Interoffice romances can always be dicey, and it was heartbreaking – and realistic – to see Olivia lose her first good relationship in a long time after she and Harry crossed some ethical lines in Justice Denied.  But the worst thing about it was that Harry was in the show all season, and he didn’t sing even once.

9.  Don’t have sex with people under your supervision.

Educated Guess featured a mental-hospital guard who had sex with a patient in his ward.  Many  jurisdictions have laws making it illegal for prison guards to have sex with prisoners, teachers to have sex with their students, and mental hospital employees to have sex with patients.  Even if the prisoner, student, or patient is saying “yes,” there’s too much of a power differential.  Don’t mix it up with your clientele.

10.  One more reason not to become a prostitute.

Prostitutes are eighteen times more likely to be killed than other women.  They often don’t call the police if someone robs, assaults, or rapes them, and many have no family to look for them if they go missing.  Predators know this, and serial killers have often preyed on prostitutes.  Hunting Ground highlighted this dynamic with a harrowing mash-up of the real-life Long Island Serial Killer and the Craig’s List Killer.  My second novel, “Discretion,” is about the case of a high-end escort killed at the U.S. Capitol.

I can’t guarantee you’ll live longer if you watch SVU. But you may just learn something.  And if next season is at all like this one, we’ll all have a lot of fun.

Like the blog?  Check out my  legal thrillers LAW OF ATTRACTION and DISCRETION.
Twitter: @AllisonLeotta 

 

 

SVU Finale! Episode #13-23: Rhodium Nights

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Recap: The SVU finale “Rhodium Nights” ended Season 13 with a bang. This was a fast-paced, fun episode (to the extent anything involving two murdered escorts can be “fun”), based on a couple of interesting real-life cases.

We open with the world’s most extravagant, debauched bachelor party. Dozens of gorgeous semi-naked women lap-dance on NY Yankees, Secret Services agents, and the bachelor – who’s the son of the police commissioner. The guy who’s hosting the party goes to his bedroom to get busy with a giggly blond. Instead, they find the cold, dead body of a 16-year-old girl in her panties.

All the VIPs deny knowing the dead girl. But the ME determines she died from a lethal dose of scopolamine. Our good detectives figure out her identity by tracking down the serial numbers of her breast implants.

The trail soon leads to an elite underworld of high-priced sex for sale. In the midst of this world is Olivia’s gravelly-voiced ex-boyfriend, Cassidy, who greets Nick by punching him in the face. See, Cassidy is undercover, and needs to preserve his undercover status. (Um, ok. Seems his undercover persona might have taken over his psyche a bit too much.)

We soon learn that all the girls at the party were escorts. And there’s a vicious war going on between two rival escort agencies. Cassidy’s boss, Genzel, supplied the escorts to the bachelor party. But a female madam, Delia, has been the leading supplier of expensive sex in NY for a long time. She doesn’t like the up-and-coming challenger to her throne. So, maybe, she arranged to have the 16-year-old killed to frame Genzel.

Dispute resolution in the escort world can be vicious. They can’t really call the cops, so they have to get creative.

Our detectives go to talk to Delia. She lives on a farm, wears a flannel shirt, and looks like a frizzy Everymom, feeding a baby goat a bottle of milk. (Goats again! This has been the Season Of The Goat on SVU. There was even an @SVUgoat who appeared on Twitter tonight, tweeting – or bleating – some of most hilarious SVU tweets ever.) Delia claims she’s just a simple goat-cheese maker / soccer mom who dabbles in matchmaking.

And the case might have ended right there. But then someone slips under the door pictures of Captain Cragen canoodling with a Russian mail-order bride/escort from last season. Although that was a totally legit undercover operation, Cragen says he’s recusing himself and the SVU from the case. Olivia’s puzzled scowl doesn’t last long, because she’s then called to investigate an ex-governor who died in the middle of a massage. He was also poisoned with scopolamine. That is not a happy ending.

Questioning the woman who booked the governor’s massage, our detectives soon gather enough evidence to arrest Delia. The judge orders her held on $2 million bail – but her attorney puts up his house to bail her out. The defense attorney sneers at our heroes, “She has the goods on everyone you work for or ever will.”

The next morning, Cragen wakes up with blood all over his hands. An escort with her throat slit is lying in bed next to him.

Fade to “Dick Wolf” and our final dun dun of the season. What?? That’s the end? Even the Godfather gave us the closure of knowing who killed that horse. I can’t believe we have to wait until Season 14 to find out what happens with Cragen.

Verdict: A-

What they got right:

At first, I thought this was going to be about the Secret Service / Colombian prostitutes scandal. But those Secret Service agents at the party were just a tip of the hat to that case.

This episode was primarily about the real-life case of Anna Gristina, also known as the “Millionaire Madam” or the “Soccer Mom Madam.” She’s charged with running NY’s most elite escort agency. Some think her little black book holds the dirty little secrets of some of the most powerful men in America. And some wonder if corrupt police officers helped her run her business.

Like the madam on tonight’s show, Gristina has a gaggle of kids and summered on a farm in upstate New York. (She has a fondness for potbellied pigs rather than goats.) She was also ordered held on $2 million bail, for which her defense attorney made the extraordinary offer of his townhouse as collateral (in real life, that fell through, and she’s still in Rikers). And Gristina had a famous rivalry with the self-proclaimed “King of All Pimps,” Jason Itzler.

According to the New York Daily News, Itzler described Gristina as “the most vindictive b***h ever in the escorting game,” and said she is: “Dangerous, dangerous, dangerous.”

Another thing the episode got right was that the police have tracked breast implants to find the identity of murder victims before. The most famous case involved the murder of Playboy bunny Jasmine Fiore, who was strangled and stuffed in a suitcase. Her body was so badly mutilated, she was unidentifiable. But tracking the serial numbers of her breast implants, the police could learn her name, address, phone number, and Social Security number, as well as the contact information for her surgeon and primary-care doctor.

Ryan Jenkins was charged with murdering Jasmine Fiore.

 

What they got wrong:

These guys threw the most elaborate bachelor party of all time … and video-taped all eight hours of it? In my experience, the type of guests who flee on an elevator after a body is found are also the type who do not record hours of illegal sex among their VIP friends.

Poor Nick got a bad rap tonight. First he was clocked by Mayhem itself. But then he was mocked for talking to the blond escort. Just because she was flirting with him didn’t mean he had to stop listening to her. To the contrary, some of the best information police get is from women who are flirting with them.

Cragen didn’t have to recuse himself because there were photos of him doing an undercover prostitution sting. That was either the flimsiest excuse ever … or Cragen is corrupt. And I can’t believe that of our sweet, earnest captain. Even if he does have blood all over his hands.

Rivals madams may beef with each other, but not to this extent. They threaten. They rat each other out. They may even hurt each other. But they don’t kill escorts and plant them in each other’s beds. Or – especially – the police chief’s bed. I’m not saying they’re above that. It would simply be bad for business.

Well, SVU fans, that’s all the episodes for the season – but there’s still lots of fun ahead this summer.

If you like my blog – or, hell, even if you don’t like it – please buy my novel, DISCRETION. Coincidentally, it is about the investigation of a high-priced escort who’s killed at the U.S. Capitol, and was inspired by my work as a sex-crimes prosecutor and some real cases. It’s been getting great advance reviews. I would especially appreciate if you would pre-order it today. Pre-orders mean a lot to authors. And I would love to hear your comments on what I got right and wrong!

Meanwhile, stop by the blog over the summer. I love hearing from you. And I have some great pieces lined up:

– Top 10 Lessons from SVU That May Save Your Life
– Best and Worst Moments of SVU Season 13
– Why We Love and Hate Crime Dramas
– An original e-short story, TEN RULES FOR A CALL GIRL, that I’m really excited to share with you
– Great guest bloggers
– Interviews of bestselling crime writers and TV show writers
– Reality-checks of the summer blockbuster movies

I’ll be posting every Monday.  Keep stopping by!

 

SVU Episode #13-22: Strange Beauty

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Recap:

I would give an arm and a leg not to have watched tonight’s episode about ritual amputation. I had to put away the popcorn, and I’m still feeling a little woozy. What a freakshow: Men with rubber wings implanted in their shoulder blades! Women with surgically altered elf ears! Severed limbs floating in canals!

Gah.

Shake it off, Leotta. You’ve got a blog to write.

Okay. We open with a pretty girl being abducted by a rogue taxi driver. Soon, her leg is found floating in the Gowanus Canal. Anyone who’s seen the Gowanus shouldn’t be surprised by the next revelation: several mystery legs have been dredged from its murky depths. All were cleanly sliced off at the knee. And forensic examination reveals that their owners were still alive when the limbs were severed.

Is this the work of some sick guy, or just a new women’s razor gone terribly wrong?

When the rest of the girl’s corpse turns up, our good detectives must delve into the seamy underworld of “body modification,” where women pay to have their ears shaped like elves, and men have horns surgically implanted into their foreheads. Ice-T and Amanda go to a carnival tent – literally a freakshow, filled with tattooed, body-bending extras who were clearly the reason for this entire episode – and pretend to be a couple looking to spice up their sex lives by reshaping their cartilage.

The trail soon leads to a pretty one-legged dental receptionist, who makes a side business out of stealing her employer’s nitrous oxide and surgically altering people into the fantasy creatures of their choosing. At first, the detectives think the receptionist amputated her own leg as a sort of avant-garde extension of ear piercing. But she swears it was from bone cancer.

Is she a victim or a perp?

Our detectives discover a one-legged prostitute – the former owner of one of the Gowanus gams – who tells them she sold her leg to a man for $25,000 to pay for her drug habit.

Is it the receptionist’s creepy dentist boss or his psychiatrist brother? Turns out, the brothers’ mom lost her leg in a car accident when they were kids. The psychiatrist became obsessed with one-legged women. After counseling the brave receptionist through her bone-cancer amputation, he decided women simply look better with one leg. Thus began his mission to de-leg the women of New York.

After a heart-to-heart with Olivia and Amanda, he cheerfully leads the detectives to the world’s least-monitored storage facility (didn’t anyone notice women going in with two legs and leaving with one?).  In his penthouse storage unit, the sick psychiatrist has a little shop of horrors, complete with surgical saws, operating tables, and before-and-after photos of his victims. His eyes get all dreamy as he contemplates how Olivia and Amanda would look as amputees. They scowl, cuff him, and lead him away.

Verdict: C

What they got right:

The detectives tonight used some very standard and respectable techniques that real police really use. Their methods included many we’ve discussed on this blog before: pulling security video, tracking cell phone numbers, looking up tattoos in the tattoo database, interviewing witnesses, police lying to witnesses to get a confession, and DNA testing to find the legs’ owners. All methods were quite realistic and authentic. It was just the subject matter that was bizarre and over-the-top.

As Nick said, “This just got weird.”

But – they had some basis in fact. There really is a whole freaky subculture of self-mutilation (also known as body modification). As someone with pierced ears, I may be waxing hypocritical here. But I spent way too much time going down a most disturbing Google rabbit hole tonight. If you have a strong stomach and the desire to see images you may never be able to get out of your head, click here to explore 3D body art, Satanic scarification, suspension (this one actually made me shriek), and even body modification for pets.

The show is certainly not falling into the trap of being predictable or cliched. You won’t find any crazed psychiatrists with sexualized amputation fetishes on Everybody Loves Raymond. Our SVU writers have proven themselves willing and able to go far afield to keep the show fresh and unique for us.

Um… thanks?

 What they got wrong:

I’ve never heard of somebody getting their left leg cut off in some sort of bizarre ritualized mutilation fantasy. The right leg, perhaps.

No, seriously, I don’t need to tell you how crazy the plot was.  We all know the entire storyline was just an excuse for that crazy body-mod circus tent.  Which was some seriously entertaining television, but not remotely like any real case in the history of real cases.

On a more specific level, I’ve seen some terrible money-making schemes, but a prostitute selling her leg for $25,000 just doesn’t ring true. People have been known to sell their extra organs for money (kidneys are popular). Funeral parlors have been charged with cutting off corpses’ limbs and selling them for medical research. The worst thing I saw as a prosecutor were mothers who sold their own children into prostitution in order to fund a drug habit. But I’ve never heard of a single person selling their limbs for any amount of money. Maybe I’ve just been hanging out in the wrong circus tents.

Well, what do you think, SVU fans? Is amputation the new black? Would you be willing to sell any part of your body for cash? And what are the chances that a crazed psychiatrist who has a leg-amputation fetish would fall for a one-legged girl who just happens to be into surgical body-modification? Leave your comments!

 

SVU Episode #13-21: Learning Curves

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Recap: This episode took a harrowing real-life case and gave it a twist, a double-backflip, and a roller-coaster ride. Hang on tight SVU fans. Curves ahead. (Learning Curves. Ba dum bum.)

Tonight’s show started with a brutal crime landing right on Ice-T’s doorstep. His son, Ken, announces that he’s engaged to marry a hot young hunk name Alejandro. Before Ice-T even finishes his hilarious scowl of surprise, Alejandro is abducted by a bunch of thugs who stuff him into a van, take him to a dingy apartment, and beat and sodomize him with a baseball bat while yelling gay-bashing insults.

Ice-T is outraged, but the top brass take him off the case. (Good call, top brass). Of course, Ice-T goes rogue and keeps investigating. Amanda (who apparently has a considerable bad-girl streak of her own) goes with him to a suspect’s apartment. Although they don’t have a warrant, they barge into the house. The hugely pregnant resident demands that they leave – but Amanda blocks the woman into the kitchen while Ice-T goes to her bedroom and rifles through  underwear drawers. Bad cops! No donut! Ice-T finds an unregistered gun, which Nick then uses to strong-arm the pregnant woman’s boyfriend into confessing that he and a bunch of his gang friends assaulted Alejandro. SVU arrests all of the gang members involved.

Case closed, right? Of course not. We’re not even at the second commercial break.

Another man is soon abducted, pulled into a van, assaulted and gay-bashed. Our second victim is played by Tony Hale, the actor known for his hilarious portrayal of Buster Bluth on Arrested Development. (Hale tweeted: “Going to be on Law & Order tonite. I’ve heard it’s my best comedic performance to date.”)

Our detectives scratch their collective heads. With all the gang-bangers locked up, who assaulted Buster? We soon learn it was the pugnacious grocer father of a student at the school where Buster taught. But why? Well, that gets complicated. The grocer’s teenage son, Luca, reported that Buster molested him. But Luca can’t keep his story straight. Soon, he’s saying a different, mousy brunette female teacher was the one who molested him. But it’s not her either. After a quick chat with Martha Stewart (convincing as a prim and proper headmistress), our detectives learn that Luca was having sex with his curvaceous blond biology teacher. He made up the other allegations to cover for their illicit relationship.

Luca doesn’t want to file charges against this blond teacher — he wants to run away with her. But the biology teacher doesn’t. So Luca goes to her classroom and slits her throat with the least-frightening weapon of the season, a tiny frog-dissecting scalpel. We close with Nick convincing the blood-soaked boy to drop the scalpel rather than commit suicide with it.

Verdict: B

What they got right:

I find it remarkable that SVU ran this episode about gay marriage and hate crimes on the same day that President Obama announced his support for same-sex marriage. This season, SVU has had a near-psychic ability to run episodes at exactly the right time — sometimes even scooping the real news. (Like the Joe Paterno/ Jerry Sandusky case, where the fictional SVU episode aired before the real-life case broke.) It’s a little spooky. SVU creators, what kind of dark magic are you working over there in the writers room?

There really was a case involving a man who was allegedly kidnapped, tortured, and sodomized by a gang of young men in Brooklyn. In real life, the 30-year-old man was apparently targeted by the “Latin King Goonies” because he was gay and had sex with some 17-year-olds who were known to the gang members. The man was invited to a “party,” but when he showed up, the thugs allegedly beat him, sodomized him with a toilet plunger, and made one of his lovers burn him with cigarettes on his genitals.

Hate crimes against members of the lesbian, gay, bi and transgender community are on the rise – and tend to spike in response to gay marriage initiatives. Hate crimes were up 13% in 2010 – and 50% of hate-crime victims don’t even make police reports. Minorities and transgender victims are the least likely to come forward.  In response to the President’s announcement tonight, we will unfortunately probably see an uptick in violent crimes against the LGBT community.

What they got wrong:

My favorite line tonight was the pregnant girl who said, “I’ve seen TV – I know my rights!”’ Oh sister, you need to check out this blog.  Any semi-competent lawyer would’ve gotten that gun suppressed, and there would have been no leverage to elicit her boyfriend’s confession. Ice-T and Amanda violated that woman’s Fourth Amendment rights, which guard against unreasonable searches and seizures, by barging into her home and searching without a warrant. And the boyfriend’s resulting confession was “fruit of the poisonous tree” – meaning, the cops never would have gotten the confession without the bad search in the first place. Everything would have been suppressed.

I like a good confession as much as the next prosecutor. But this wasn’t a good one. Ice-T’s actions could have torpedoed the entire case, and the guy could have walked … if he or his girlfriend actually did know their rights. That’s what happens when you get your legal advice from TV shows!

(Editor’s note: this blog is for fun and does not give legal advice.)

The gruesome ending, where the boy killed his seductive blond biology teacher, was just a thin excuse to close with the requisite SVU gore. There have been plenty teenagers who declared their love and eternal devotion for the teacher who committed statutory rape by having sex with them. Those students never end up killing the teacher.

One of the most notorious cases of teacher/student statutory rape was that of Mary Kay Letourneau, the 35-year-old teacher who had an affair with her 13-year-old student, Vili Fualaau. She was prosecuted and jailed, but every time she got out, she returned to Fualaau. She had two of his babies while in jail. After her sentence was served, she married him, took the name Mary Kay Fualaau, and now seems to spend a fair amount of time giving interviews to glossy magazines.

Unlike the kid in tonight's SVU, Fili Fualauu responded with an engagement ring and People magazine interviews rather than killing his teacher/sexual assailant

One final “wrong” – I hear Martha Stewart didn’t bring home-baked cookies for the cast and crew when she guest-starred. Boo!

What do you think, SVU fans? Is the world actually being run by a cabal of SVU writers who are orchestrating real-life events to coincide with their episodes? Should Ice-T be punished for going off the rails or commended for being such a caring dad? And when a lifestyle guru shows up for her TV cameo, shouldn’t she bring some tasty treats for the crew? Leave your comments!

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SVU Episode #13-20: Father Dearest

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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.

 

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