Law & Order: SVU – Blood Brothers Review

In the latest installment of Law & Order: SVU, (Season 13, Episode 3), there’s a pregnant virgin, a Schwarzenegger-type love child and a Maria Shriver look-alike. Super stuff? No, not really … just the usual Olivia (Mariska Hargitay) up in arms if anyone doubts the rape victim with that extra stuff thrown in. Here’s some of the cast in “Blood Brothers”

Jace (Miguel Pinzon), Ella  (Piper Curda), Arturo (Anthony Keyvan);
Andrew Raines (Kyle McLachlan) Mrs. Raines (Paige Turco)

We watched the credits 3 times, but they did not disclose who played Tripp.

Ella Mendez is a 13-year-old Catholic school student who collapses while the class watches a play about how drinking and sex will mess them up. We thought she fainted because the scene being depicted actually happened to her, but it turns out she is pregnant. Olivia and Amaro (Danny Pino) go off to investigate and the kid tells Olivia that the child is from God. Heh heh heh. We suspect they threw that in to give Olivia her “how shocking” moment.

But, not being believers in virgin births, they check out all the males she may have had contact with. Ella’s father (Joey Auzenne) doesn’t know jack and he also isn’t even sure Ella is really his kid. At the school, a nun (Marceline Hugot) defends the school: “We try to keep them innocent. We’re losing them to the Kardashians and Lady Gaga.” She remembers hearing Ella singing in the stairwell a few weeks ago. We’re like, huh? If they are going to go the “Agnes of God” route, it’s the handyman. But a friend reveals that a boy named Arturo has a total case of puppy love for Ella, and another boy mentions that Arturo has been absent since Ella got sick.

Questioning Arturo at home leads Olivia and Amaro to suspect that the kid knows something he ain’t saying. Before they find that out, they check out a teacher who assumed his dead uncle’s identity to get a job. He is one of those unhappy souls on the sex offender registry for having sex with his almost age-of-consent willing girlfriend.

Olivia takes his photo to show Ella who tries to pin the blame on him, but blows the details then admits that it’s someone rich and she is going to be his princess. Rich enough to send her $200 worth of roses. This leads them to Ambassador Andrew Raines and his wife, who have a 13-year old boy named Tripp.

Tripp goes to a totally different school than Ella and Arturo but the latter two were invited to a 4th of July party at Tripp’s mansion because Arturo’s mom was the Raines’ maid. Well, that is all you had to hear to know that Arturo would turn out to be a Raines. Ellla comes clean to Benson about what happened between her and Tripp. They did have sex but it was against her will and she was under the influence of Jungle Juice. It hurt, she said no and she was crying. Tripp blamed it on her. If they explained how her virginity remained intact, we missed it. ADA Casey Novak (Diane Neal) is reluctant to prosecute since they are both 13 and Ella has told 3 different stories. This doesn’t sit well with Olivia.

Spoilers:

Tripp goes missing before the detectives can question him. At first they think his parents are hiding him, but his mom finally shows up genuinely worried something happened. When Tripp’s credit card starts showing up in use, they find Jace, a boy prostitute, who says he found it in Central Park at the ramble under a bridge where he was giving the “tug and chug” to a middle-aged breeder in a Grateful Dead T-shirt. This leads to the discovery of Tripp’s body.

It turns out that the love child, Arturo. killed Tripp with a rock after Tripp literally treated him like dirt and said Ella looked like a cheap whore. Tripp was trying to pay them to get the baby aborted, the same way Tripp’s father paid Arturo’s mother to make them go away. All Arturo ever wanted was for Andrew Raines to call him his son and say he loved him. Well, we don’t know. Seems like he wanted Ella a whole lot too. Since he already knew he was Tripp’s half-brother, maybe he should have told her that. They could have run off with the baby and waited for two inheritances.

Now Tripp’s dead, Arturo’s going to jail, Raines is getting divorced and his political career is surely ruined. But Ella probably still stands to get a child support award from whatever Raines has left after the divorce.

And to think we owe it all to Arnold Schwarzenegger because this story would never have been written without his input.

Final Thoughts:

We haven’t been watching much of SVU lately, because frankly, my dears, we don’t have time. when enough people support this site, that may change … but …

We do recall Greylok saying in an episode a while ago that Casey Novak got disbarred and we were like, Oh, OK, cool. Now she’s back? Oh, OK, we looked it up. She didn’t really get disbarred. She got censured. Greylok must have been repeating some unsubstantiated gossip. And that got us to thinking … that’s what would really perk this show up: departmental gossip.