“I don’t care about her exploding clock.”
BY: JACOB POLITTE
Online Editor
Law & Order SVU: “Down Low In Hell’s Kitchen”
Season 21, Episode 3
Airdate: 10/10/19
***SPOILERS BELOW***
This week’s episode of SVU was ripped from the headlines, as it was a different kind of take on the Jussie Smollet attack hoax from earlier this year. When all of that went down, I knew the SVU Writers Room would pounce on it soon enough, and we only had to wait about eight months to see the finished product.
The episode itself was fine. It wasn’t bad, but I can’t say I cared much about it. It was nice to see Sergeant Tutuola’s son Ken again, and the new Deputy Chief for the Special Victims Unit, Chrisitan Garland, grew on me pretty quickly. At first, it seemed like there was a lot of tension between Garland and the squad, but that evaporated rather fast, and he was more than willing to help SVU with the case by going undercover in a gay bar.
The “victim” of the episode, Mathis Brooks, was of course faking his rape, but his hoax did actually lead to a real rapist getting caught. Brooks doesn’t even get thrown in jail for faking his assault, but the damage to his career and his life is more than enough, at least to Tutuola. When visiting a despondent Brooks at his home to tell him that he’s not being charged, Tutuola deduces that something did happen to Brooks a long time ago, and says that he needs to deal with it himself.
The entire episode as a whole was pretty standard for SVU, aside from one particularly icy moment.
Captain Olivia Benson and Carisi’s boss, Bureau Chief Vanessa Hadid, are not getting along, and there was a rather tense interaction between them when Brooks takes his frustrations with the NYPD public. Hadid is cold, deeply uncaring and we already know that she’s corrupt based off the revelation that she was part of Sir Toby’s legal team in the season premiere. That being said, she wasn’t necessarily wrong about this case, but it’s obvious that she does not like Benson, and that she may prove to be SVU’s biggest obstacle going forward. This conflict really does put Carisi in between a rock and a hard place, but if Warren Leight’s storytelling tendencies have taught me one thing, it’s that eventually everything will backfire spectacularly on Hadid, and she will have to answer for her corruption. All Benson has to do is bide her time.
JACOB’S FINAL RULINGS:
– While I know it won’t happen, I hope that Benson will get to physically fight Hadid at some point. I know Mariska Hargitay would probably love to hit somebody on this show again; she hasn’t gotten to do it since Season 16.
– Brooks is gay, but I thought the way that Garland and the team basically forced him to come out was really unwarranted.
– Noah decides to quit baseball and wants to be a dancer. That’s something the young actor Ryan Bugle actually does in real life, but I don’t think I need to see it again on this show.
– Benson’s a supportive mom, good for her.
