Rapist Anonymous Recap: Law & Order SVU

Law & Order SVU’s “Rapist Anonymous” was a surprisingly good episode, at least as far as the focus was on Detective Amanda Rollins who got herself tangled up with a Gamblers and Alcoholics Anonymous lothario — “a 13th stepper.” The crime was a little strange to say the least, particularly the conviction, but it was still a don’t miss episode just for the interplay between the SVU detectives.

The episode began with Olivia Benson and Brian Cassidy hosting a dinner party. Amaro, Melinda Warner, Fin, Cragen, and his lady Eileen, are all there. There’s some strange joking about weird things in their line of work, like having sex with corpses. Benson asks them to cool it with the shop talk. Cassidy has an announcement to make — Olivia will soon be a sergeant, she came in No. 48. Out of 8,000, Cragen adds, no small feat. Olivia has an announcement too. Cassidy is getting his shield back and has been assigned to IAB. That went over like a lead balloon.

Amanda Rollins is attending an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting where Lena has the floor. She was a member of NA too, and Nate was her sponsor. Nate’s is such a well-rounded addict, ain’t he? Rollins doesn’t really have a drinking problem. Gambling is her addiction, but she is there for Nate, in more ways than one. Later Nate and Rollins have coffee with Lena and Gene. Lena fondles Gene’s leg under the table.

Nate and Rollins repair to her apartment for some under-the-cover therapy and Gene and Lena go off wherever, but Lena soon shows up at Rollin’s door claiming that Gene raped her. Lena presents Rollins with a very convoluted story of consensual sex and then a later violent rape. Rollins take Lena to the emergency room, where Lena tells the nurse that she is Rollins’ sister. More evidence that Lena is off her trolley.

After a talk with Gene and a look at text messages, ADA Barba tells the SVU detectives that this rape charge ain’t going nowhere because it’s going to be too hard to prove rape with the kind of kinky hanky panky going on between Gene and Lena. And that’s why the first degree murder conviction that came later was bizarre to say the least.

Rollins continues to carry on with Nate and Lena continues to carry on with Gene. In fact the latter two end up on the roof with Gene standing on the ledge while Lena gets down on her knees and and takes “care of him” as she later put it in interrogation. Gene falls off the roof to his death. But Lena initially denies that she even knew Gene was in the building.

After this, Amaro and Fin take an interest in Rollins’ involvement with Nate and Rollins is offended. She does question Nate about his sponsor relationship with Lena, wondering if it was like theirs (were you doing her, too, Mr. Sponsor-man?). But Nate denies it and talks about the hard life Lena had and how all that stuff is confidential. After talking to Gene’s fiancée and the building super, the detectives arrest Lena and charge her with Gene’s murder.

Amaro takes it upon himself to spy on Nate at an AA meeting, pretending to be a newbie. A woman at the meeting is quite taken with Nate, who is inspiring everyone with his lengthy sobriety. Amaro makes an “I need a sponsor” pitch to Nate, but Nate says he has a lot on his plate and waltzes off with his brunette admirer.

Whatever happened with the brunette, it didn’t stop Nate from turning up in Rollins bed again. She didn’t go to that AA meeting because she was at GA. When Rollins finds out about Amaro’s pretense at the AA meeting, she is furious. Amaro says some of the other guys at the meeting told him Nate is a “13th stepper.” He’s the magic man to new women in the program. Rollins retaliates with insults about the sad state of Amaro’s personal life. He hates to see anyone else happy and, she says, he’s jealous of Benson and Cassidy, Barba and even Captain Cragen. Too bad they don’t have a 12-step program for self pity. Fin interrupts with the 411 that the whole squad room can hear them. She tells the both of them that they are not her father and storms off.

Later when Rollins finds out that Nate has to testify in Lena’s murder trial, she plans on being there and Amaro butts in again, telling her it’s not a good idea. Rollins gets pissed and Amaro backs off. Olivia Benson tries to smooth things over, but stupidly suggests to Rollins that she may need to discuss some issues with a therapist. Rollins says pointedly that she doesn’t have to pay someone to listen to her problems. We didn’t know Benson did, did you?

At the murder trial, with Rollins in the courtroom and Nate on the witness stand, he admits to sleeping with Lena “last week!” Barba constructs a scenario where either Nate and Lena together were using Rollins or Lena was playing Nate to be able to use Rollins to set the stage for murdering Gene, while pretending to be a rape victim. Shaken and disgusted, Rollins leaves the courtroom but before she can get on the elevator, Nate catches up to her. Understandably, she is done with him.

The fact that Gene got up the roof ledge all by himself doesn’t present any obstacle at all in establishing that Lena intended to kill him so she is convicted of murder in the first degree.

Lena’s conviction doesn’t do much to restore Rollins’ faith in humanity, probably because she thought it was a bullshit conviction, too. Truly, Lena didn’t seem to have the brains she was born with let alone enough gray matter to cook up such a convoluted and unbelievable scheme. Fin and Cragen comfort Rollins and Fin even offers to “knock that little hat off” Nate’s head. He invites her out for a beer but she declines, indicating that she is going to a meeting. The meeting turns out to be with the local blackjack dealer.

Cast:
Mariska Hargitay – Det. Olivia Benson
Ice-T – Det. Odafin Tutuola
Dann Florek – Captain Don Cragen
Kelli Giddish – Det. Amanda Rollins
Danny Pino – Det. Nick Amaro
Raúl Esparza – ADA Rafael Barba
Tamara Tunie: Dr. Melinda Warner
Dean Winters – Det. Brian Cassidy
Amy Seimetz – Lena Olson
Nia Vardalos – Minonna Efron
Mel Harris – Eileen Switzer
Geoffrey Cantor – Gene Fierstein
Jennifer Restivo – Melissa Blume
Jenna Stern – Judge Elana Barth
Thomas Sadoski – Nate Davis
Mimi Ferraro – Brunette