Great Expectations Recap: Law & Order SVU

Last week, we had a kid getting killed because of a bad mother. This week in “Great Expectations” (2-15-17), a kid died because of a bad father.

In the opening scene, at a New York City White Caps hockey game (“The best youth hockey program in the state”), one team loses because a young player, Jack Wilson, missed a shot. Parents are talking about it before the team comes out. In the locker room, the coach tells the kids they are gonna have to practice the next day and they better show up ready to work. Two boys give Jack a hard time but another tells them to stop. This turns out to be Kyle Turner, Jack’s “best friend” (that sounds familiar from the last episode, too). But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Out in the parking lot, Jack’s mom tries to hurry him along, when suddenly the boy collapses and she sees blood on the back of his pants.

At the hospital, Carisi informs Benson that the boy was violated with a blunt instrument, like a hockey stick. He thinks it’s a hazing but his more experienced lieutenant schools him: it’s a sexual assault. Once they get all the names on the hockey team, they pick the two wildest boys, known as “the Bash Brothers,” as the likely suspects. They get some footage that shows those two leaving the locker room last in a suspicious hurry. Under questioning, one of them (Timmy) immediately folds. All he and Will did was hold Jack down. Kyle was the attacker.

They bring Kyle and his mother in for questioning, collecting all his hockey sticks to test for DNA while they’re at it. Kyle is not a tough kid at all. In fact, he acts pretty confused. You figure the detectives should have no trouble breaking down his defenses, if he has any. While in the process of doing so, Kyle’s father arrives, insisting that they cannot talk to the boy without him. He gets told what the Bash Brothers spilled and wonders if he should get an attorney but Benson comes out and says they are going to send the boy home. Rollins can’t believe it but the hockey sticks came back clean, and Benson has deduced (yes, we’re being sarcastic) that the kid got rid of that evidence. She instructs Rollins to talk to Jack and his parents some more.

The next morning Rollins and Fin show up at the hospital and get Jack to corroborate that Kyle was his attacker. He says he never saw Kyle like that. He was like a “whole other person.” As they go off to arrest Kyle, Jack asks them to tell his friend that he knows he didn’t mean it. At the Turner home, they learn Kyle is in the hospital, too.

At the hospital, the doctor tells them the spiral fracture of the wrist Kyle is suffering from isn’t the only one he’s ever had. He thinks someone has been abusing the boy. So now we know Kyle is a victim, too, and everyone’s chief suspect is his pushy father, Jim, but first we have to clear his big brother, Adam. When it comes to an admission that Jim Turner is abusing Kyle, the family circles the wagon. Kyle is formally arrested for his attack on Jack Wilson. Rollins tells Carisi Kyle’s mother is to blame, too, for not protecting her kids. Carisi doesn’t think it’s that simple.

In the meantime, an even bigger shocker occurs. Jack Wilson died after the onset of an infection and no one even bothered to tell SVU. A manslaughter charge is going to be tacked on to Kyle’s sexual assault charge now! Jack’s father bitterly spills all he knows about how abusive Jim Turner is, but his knowledge is about the same as the detectives– he’s never actually seen Turner hit Kyle or anyone else. Meantime, they get some video footage of Turner talking to Kyle before the assault and try to get the kid to admit his father put him up to it.

During Kyle’s arraignment, Benson notices big brother Adam storming out of the courtroom in disgust and runs after him, imploring him to convince Kyle to come clean about their father. The next call the detectives get is from Helen Turner. Her husband gave Adam a severe beating and that’s an understatement! She tells the detectives that Adam kept pushing Jim’s buttons until he lost control. Adam did it on purpose, it turns out, and set up his phone to record the whole episode, showing his father punching and stomping on him.

Now that everyone already knows Daddy is bad, Kyle admits that his father put him up to assaulting Jack but he doesn’t want to testify in court and get his dad in trouble. A poignant tale from Carisi about how he protected Bobby the Bully from being punished takes care of that. Bobby is now in Sing Sing for murder and Carisi feels responsible every day. “And if not for you,” Benson chimes in, “Do it for your little brother.” Kyle agrees to testify and help them find his father. That doesn’t get the kid off the hook entirely. He got “a few years in juvie,” but the detectives felt that was better than 10 years in an adult prison.

Remember how in the last episode, Barba insisted on charging the mother with murder even though she wasn’t the one who killed the best friend? Well, Barba wasn’t in this episode and they didn’t say anything about what Jim Turner got charged with or what kind of sentence he got. They just said that they got the father out of the house, even if it was 13 years too late.

Cast of Great Expectations:
Mariska Hargitay – Olivia Benson
Kelli Giddish – Amanda Rollins
Ice T – Odafin Tutuola
Peter Scanavino – Dominick Carisi Jr.

Guest Stars:
Lincoln Melcher – Kyle Turner
Brent Sexton – Jim Turner
Amy Spanger – Helen Turner
Ben Cook – Adam Turner
Maxwell Kenneth Owens – Mark Turner
Christopher Paul Richards – Jack Wilson
Brian Hutchison – Frank Wilson
Erika Rolfsrud – Linda Wilson
Gia Crovatin – Samantha Chapman
Olga Merediz – Judge Roberta Martinez
Taylor Miller – Attorney Ryan Egan
Drew Beasley – Timmy Brown
Elijah Richardson – Will Harris
Josh Banks – Peter Brown
Tanesha Gary – Donna Harris
Brad Fraizer – Coach Gordon Sheen
Eric Elizaga – Dr. Stephen Hale
Athena Colón – Nurse Sofia Perez
Lynn Marocola – Police Officer