Barba Pulls the Plug – Twice! on Law & Order: SVU

Jack McCoy showed up on the 2/7/2018 episode of Law & Order:SVU, “The Undiscovered Country.” In fact, the episode opened with him speaking at the funeral of Ben Stone. Rest in peace, Ben, we always loved you. Ben’s son, Peter, came in from Chicago to settle his pop’s affairs and McCoy offered him a spot. Declining at first, he later accepts and his first assignment is to prosecute ADA Rafael Barba for murder! Here’s how that came about:

SVU got called in on a familial kidnapping. The dad, Aaron Householder, snatched his infant son after tying up the babysitter, Sandy, taping her mouth shut and sticking her in a closet. Maggie, the distraught mother, realizes that she’s got to give the detectives some background instead of demanding they find her son and informs Sgt. Olivia Benson that her little boy, Drew, has a genetic disease called mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome. He cannot breath on his own and Aaron didn’t take his medical equipment so, of course, she is frantic.

And of course they track down the exact location of the baby and the father who is armed with a paintball gun. Olivia learns from him that he took Drew to prevent Maggie from killing their child. So this is their conflict: Aaron can’t get behind letting Drew die like he’s nothing and holds out hope that there may be some breakthrough to save the baby. Maggie can’t stand seeing Drew suffer every day and wants to end his pain.

Rafael Barba is extremely conflicted over prosecuting Aaron. He reveals that it’s personal in a conversation with Jack McCoy. He selfishly let his terminally ill father suffer rather than pull the plug because, at the time, he thought that was wrong. “Where there’s life, there’s hope.” He believed that then, but now he thinks he just didn’t want the burden of knowing his actions ended his father’s life even though he hated the man. Whoa! That’s a lot of baggage, m’boy. Jack McCoy could have pulled him off the case since he couldn’t be objective, but instead told him to offer Aaron probation.

Barba went to the hospital to do that but Aaron had gone out for coffee. There he found Maggie suffering intensely as she watched over Drew. She explained that the judge decided to appoint a guardian ad litem to represent Drew’s best interests. When that happens, Aaron will object and there will be more waiting, while Drew suffers every minute of that time. She confesses that she knew there was a chance that this would happen to her baby during her pregnancy but refused to get an abortion. “Why can’t he just die?” she moans. “He can,” Barba replies, giving her his permission to pull the plug on Drew right there and then. Well, when it came down to it, she couldn’t so he sent her out of the room and did it himself!

Of all the crazy plots on this show, this one takes the cake, eh? Naturally, Olivia Benson went to bat for him. She was obnoxious as hell to Peter Stone, serving as assistant prosecutor. She went to Jack McCoy, who said he can’t have his ADAs running around killing people. “It’s unbecoming.” He knows that Barba did what he thought was right and hopes the jury agrees. They only charged Barba with second degree murder, which sounds terrible but his actions didn’t really fit the charge. They had to know that so the whole trial was a waste of time. He wasn’t even going to be fired afterwards. Maybe they should have just thrown him a ticker tape parade! He resigned from the department anyhow, had an emotional last moment with Olivia and sallied forth, who knows where. Bye, bye, Barba.

We’re not sorry to see him go. We know some fans were wondering if his relationship with Olivia would blossom into amour, but wasn’t it bad enough that she was always getting him to prosecute cases that he knew he shouldn’t?

Anyway, it was fun to see that son-of-a-gun Jack McCoy again. The same old Jack. SVU will be on hiatus until February 28th, but guess what? Dean Winters will be back as Brian Cassidy when the show returns. That’s great news unless it turns out to be his swan song, too. Somehow that rocky start to Olivia and Peter’s relationship gave us a future romance vibe. Will she ever realize that Brian is her true love?

Selected Cast of The Undiscovered Country:
Sam Waterston – Jack McCoy
Mariska Hargitay – Olivia Benson
Kelli Giddish – Amanda Rollins
Ice-T – Odafin Tutuola
Peter Scanavino – Dominick Carisi Jr.
Raúl Esparza – Rafael Barba
Philip Winchester – Peter Stone
Peter Jacobson – Randy Dworkin
Abigail Hawk – Maggie Householder
Joe Tapper – Aaron Householder
Lindsay Becker – Sandy Burnside