Alexandra Cabot Goes Rogue on Law & Order: SVU

Boy, Peter Stone and the SVU detectives really made a big mess of things in “Sunk Cost Fallacy,” the April 18, 2018 episode of Law & Order: SVU.

The first scene showed Peter Stone at the Bayview Mental Health Facility, talking to his sister’s doctor. She has developed tardive dyskinesia, a condition caused by the long-term use of antipsychotic medications. Stone has to decide whether to give her a bigger dose of the medications or take her off them completely. He wants the doctor to make the final call but the doctor insists that Stone has to do it. Considering what happened later, we assume they showed that to demonstrate why Stone might be making irrational decisions!

Nick Hunter (Scott Porter), Alexandra Cabot (Stephanie March) , Jules Hunter (Sarah Wilson)

Then we get to the case as it unfolds. Nick Hunter is having a party at his home. His mom, Vera, drove out from Brooklyn for the occasion and they are waiting for Jules, Nick’s wife of 10 years, and their 4-year-old daughter, Ruby. Nick gets a call from Jules and asks how far away she is. Disturbingly, she starts screaming. He hears a man voice telling her to shut up and she tells Nick this guy is going to kill her.

At the police station, Nick is so agitated he can hardly remember what happened during the day or whether he even kissed Jules and Ruby goodbye. He recalls sending Jules a text, asking her to pick something up and she texted back “NP.” Nick’s mother, Vera, helpfully informs Lt. Olivia Benson that stands for “no problem.” The detectives trace Jules’ cell phone to a Bergen County, NJ mall where they find her car. There’s blood inside. A bag containing her cell phone and wallet is found nearby. They also find evidence of fix-a-flat. Det. Sonny Carisi figures she had to have bought that can within 10 miles of the mall so they find the right gas station. A man bought it and he conveniently paid with a credit card.

Meantime, things are starting to look bad for Nick. When he is asked if anyone might have had it in for him or Jules, he denies it but his mother fingers Jorge Garcia, a handyman Nick refused to pay. Later, their house was broken into and Vera is sure it was Jorge. A neighbor also saw Jules and Jorge arguing. A chat with Jorge reveals that Jules paid Jorge behind Nick’s back. She looked mad because he told her that he saw Nick with another woman.

They interview Paisley, the girl with the purple hair Jorge saw Nick with. She thinks that Nick is a widower with a dead wife and daughter. Jules’ sister, Sherry, comes in to tell Det. Amanda Rollins that her brother-in-law has a “dark side,” recounting an incident where he “jokingly” said his life would be better if Jules was dead. The blood inside the car is a match for Jules. They find out that Nick was out at his country club, an area with a swamp around it at midnight and start searching the swamp for bodies. They get Nick back down at the station and lay all this out for him but he angrily denies murdering his wife and daughter… well, because he didn’t.

Benson and Stone are watching this interrogation. Stone gets a call from Bayview. Before he goes off to take it, he tells Olivia to arrest Nick for murder because “a night in Rikers” will make him talk. So on the flimsiest of flimsy evidence, they lock Nick up and he gets the crap beat out of him.

When the detectives get security footage from the mall, they see the man who threw Jules’ cell phone and wallet in the trash bin. He was kind enough not to hide his face and facial recognition helps them find out who he is. Benson and Carisi follow him, hoping he will lead them to Jules and Ruby, but he leads them to Alexandra Cabot, SVU’s very own former Assistant District Attorney. Benson is shocked to find out that Cabot is now working on the other side of the fence, helping domestic violence victims disappear to escape their abusers. She has Jules and Ruby. That presents quite a dilemma with Nick in jail for killing his wife and daughter. There isn’t even any solid evidence of domestic violence.

What is Olivia Benson supposed to do now? Report this information and get Nick out of jail ASAP, we would think. What does she do? She goes with Cabot to meet Jules Hunter and hear her big bad Nick stories. Benson is not impressed until Jules says one morning she overslept. Nick made the coffee himself and poured a cup of it on her stomach, showing Benson the wound. She did go to the hospital but didn’t tell anyone that her husband caused the injury.

After further consultation with Cabot, Benson gets Stone to downgrade the murder charge against Nick to assault. Stone storms angrily into Benson’s office to inform her that Nick got out on bail and is suing her, him, the police department and the City of New York for $50 million dollars for false arrest and imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress and more. A motion for accelerated discovery was granted and Benson gets to be deposed first. Nick’s attorney forced Benson to admit that she knew Jules and Ruby were alive and that she charged Nick with assault based upon what Jules told her.

Alex Cabot was extremely upset, exclaiming: “You could have lied, Liv!” Benson said she could not because she was under oath. Cabot wanted to know if Benson thought God would smite her if she lied: “This entire ‘tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth’ is a load of crap that we tell people so that they think the criminal justice system gives a damn about them.’ Benson replied: “What happened to you?” and Cabot said: “I opened my eyes.”

Somehow, all of these shady maneuvers by Cabot, Stone and the detectives took a backseat to the allegations against Nick. Jules filed for divorce and Cabot represented her. She testified that she never spilled the beans on Nick because she was scared. Nick’s attorney suggested that she never sought help or called the police because she’s lying. After the hearing, Benson and Cabot had dinner and drinks while Carisi took Jules to a safe place with police protection. On the way there, a vehicle ran a stop sign. Carisi could not stop and Jules was killed. Olivia left Cabot to go to the scene. She decided on the spot that Nick was responsible, telling Rollins: “What better way to get sole custody of your daughter?”

At Stone’s deposition on Nick’s false arrest case, he admitted that he arrested Nick for murder for no other reason than he didn’t like his attitude. Meeting with Benson afterwards, they are both sure he is guilty but she is not sure they will ever be able to prove it. Stone said he didn’t envy Benson’s decision to bring Jules back. She said that it’s easier to make a decision if you take your sense of justice, morality or superego– whatever you want to call it– out of the equation.

You could see Stone applying that nugget to the decision he had to make about his sister. He decided that she should get more antipsychotic medication. “You made the right decision,” the doctor said. What if he had chosen to stop her meds, Stone wondered. The doctor said that would have been the right decision, too, because sometimes the only wrong decision is to do nothing. And that really summed up the whole episode in a nutshell because it made no sense!

Selected Cast of “Sunk Cost Fallacy”
Mariska Hargitay – Olivia Benson
Kelli Giddish – Amanda Rollins
Peter Scanavino – Dominick “Sonny” Carisi Jr.
Philip Winchester – Peter Stone
Stephanie March – Alexandra Cabot
Scott Porter – Nick Hunter
Sarah Wilson – Jules Hunter
Katie Flahive – Sherry (Jules’ sister)
Richard Kind – Mr. Biegel (Nick’s attorney)
Joan Porter – Vera Hunter
Kaitlin Mesh – Paisley Adams
Ceasar F. Barajas – Jorge Garcia