Kate from “NCIS” has really gone off the rails.
BY: JACOB POLITTE
Staff Writer
Law and Order: SVU “Caretaker”
Season 20, Episode 7
Air Date: 11/1/2018
“Caretaker” wasted no time jumping right into the hour’s heinous crime. A disturbing triple homicide claims the lives of three people, two of them children. After a quick red herring involving the family’s nanny, the real culprit is revealed — the mother, Anna.
I didn’t recognize her at first, but Sasha Alexander, who played the mother, is a fantastic actress. Perhaps her most recognizable role is that of Special Agent Caitlin Todd from the long-running show “NCIS.” Her death early on in the show’s run was one of the more surprising events I’ve seen on television. She also had a guest arc on Shameless a few years back and was the main character in another long-running show, starring as Maura Isles in the TNT series Rizzoli & Isles. She’s a prolific actress and brought her A-game this week. I found her work to be more compelling than the majority of the casts.
I understand this particular crime was rather gruesome and the show is trying to portray the detectives reacting in a certain way, but there were times where Benson and her detectives were once again behaving in a way that was borderline unprofessional. In particular, Benson’s comment about wanting to buy a race-car bed (one of which was at the crime scene, covered in blood) was weird and out-of-place.
Part of being a cop is remaining objective and calculated, even in the face of the most heinous of crimes. SVU has been doing less and less of this lately and it’s hurting the show’s credibility.
I wrote in one of my reviews a few weeks back about an episode of SVU from the show’s sixth season titled “Charisma.” There’s a mass murder of a bunch of children who are involved in a cult and, as the result of that crime, the detectives must undergo a psychiatric evaluation in order to work the case; as a result, two of the detectives are sidelined (interestingly, Benson was not one of them.) If the members of the squad had such a disturbed reaction to this crime, perhaps a similar thing should have happened here.
CASE DETAILS:
A boy wanders out of his house and begins slowly dragging his feet down the street; he has his back turned to the camera, indicating something is wrong. Once a woman sees him and calls out to him, he turns around and we see that he has been shot in the stomach and he collapses in the woman’s arms. He ultimately doesn’t make it.
Benson and Tutuola arrive on the scene and, after being horrified looking at the crime scene, they get to work. After locating and informing the mother of the family, the detectives turn to another person conspicuously absent from the crime scene — the family’s nanny, Delores.
It’s discovered that while Delores was at the crime scene, she did not perpetuate the killings; she saw the bodies and ran away in fear. The attention turns to Anna and the squad uncovers evidence of embezzlement. They uncover more when a search of Anna’s office brings a pair of shoes with a speck of blood on them to light. A further search of the home finds traces of her fingerprints near the crime scene in her daughter’s bedroom. With this information, the detectives are confident that Anna killed her entire family.
When confronted with the evidence, Anna breaks down and admits her crimes. “They’re so much better off now,” she says, leaving Benson’s jaw hanging wide open. It appears Anna knew her embezzlement was going to be the end of her career and, wanting to spare her family the embarrassment of it all, decided to take their lives.
ADA Ben Stone faces another old rival from his stomping grounds of Chicago as William “Billy” O’Boyle is Anna’s lawyer. They try to go for a “mental defect” defense and Stone and the squad are having none of that. Stone says the only way to disprove that defense is to prove Anna planned the murders.
At the end of it all, Stone and the squad only get a small win: Anna is found not guilty of the murders of her children but is found guilty of the murder of her husband. Admittedly, I found this verdict confusing and felt like I missed something important beforehand as a result. How could Anna be found guilty of one of the murders and not guilty of the other two when it was clearly established that she committed all three murders? Stone’s explanation is simply that the jury could not legally accept Anna murdering her own children; that seems rather ridiculous to me.
It ultimately doesn’t matter, though, as Anna hangs her herself off-screen in her cell. We end with silence.
JACOB’S FINAL VERDICTS:
– I have to say once more how much I enjoyed Sasha Alexander as Anna. The guest stars have been fantastic all season long.
– There is most definitely a mental health issue in this country that is not being properly addressed. I’m not sure this episode did anything to properly comment on that.
– I guess Noah is being nice to Benson this week, so no drama there.
– Rollins gets flowers from her ex-boyfriend (and confirmed father of her child) and Benson suggests she keeps them, explaining how sometimes in life they “need a little pretty.” Um, no. Throw those things away. Cut that man out of your life Rollins; you’re better than this!
– Next week’s episode is titled “Hell’s Kitchen.” First things first, that’s a great title for an episode! Secondly, if I don’t hear any cooking puns during next week’s show, I’m going to be upset.
