Law & Order: SVU – Double Strands Review

In the latest installment of Law & Order: SVU, (Season 13, Episode 4), we’ve got a bit of recycling with a familiar evil twin plot, one detective who thinks the suspect is innocent and some Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) friction. What is up with Olivia? Last week she was butting heads with Casey Novak (Diane Neal). This weeks she gets pissy with the new Georgia import, Detective Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish).

Guest stars in Double Strands included:

Sherri West (Francie Swift), Janey Thomas (Roxanna Hope), Connie Ray (the twin’s
birth mother), Karen Tsen Lee (DNA lab tech), Peter McRobbie (the judge).

T.R. Knight played the twins, Brian Smith and Gabriel Thomas.

The episode opens with a dancer who gets raped on the way home. Benson questions the distraught victim, offering her usual canned comfort (“You did everything right — you survived.”) Her description of the attacker’s tai chi tattoo strikes a chord with Rollins who asks her what the rapist said. The phrase “Tell me you love me mommy” confirms Rollins’ suspicions that a serial rapist she was tracking in Georgia is now on the loose in New York. But Benson is annoyed that Rollins butted in and says in New York one person does the intake so as to not overwhelm the victim. Rollins explains how the signature matches her Georgia case, but Benson pooh-poohs the idea and even says it’s “a stretch.” When you think about how many times we have heard that a rapist never changes his basic M.O. on this show, this came off really lame.

Rollins fills in the SVU team on the “Atlantic Coast Rapist” (she gave him the handle). He’s a white male in his 30s who has struck in Georgia, Virginia, and Maryland. After 15 rapes in 9 years, he fell off the radar for the last 3 years. They thought he was in prison or dead. Rollins says they have his DNA because he neglected to wear a condom during the first 4 rapes. They also have a partial print from a rape on Halloween in 2003. She confirms that the rapist has a thing for athletic blondes.

Benson arrives with an expensive first-rate sketch she got from the Big Apple’s best sketch artist. Rather dramatically, she points to the sketch they already have and says it’s not going to catch anyone, whips out the high-priced artwork of the suspect and the yin yang tattoo and says “but these will.” Oh, Olivia, what would we do without you? LOL. No one said that. As soon as the sketch is out there, a girl comes in and describes being raped by the “Atlantic Coast rapist” right down to the “Mommy” line.

In the park, two women are comparing a man playing with his son to the police sketch. One takes his picture with a cell phone and send it to the coppers. Fin (Ice-T) takes it in to show the girl reporting the old rape and she identifies it as the one who did it.

Fin and Nick Amaro (Danny Pino) follow up and take Gabriel Thomas down to the station, while he protests his innocence and tells his wife, Janey, that he’ll be right back. That’s what he thinks. While preparing to put Gabriel in a line-up, Rollins tells Amaro that Gabriel already has a lawyer — Sherri West. Gabriel is identified by two victims. During further interrogation, Gabriel places himself in every state where rapes have occurred in the right time frames and about those 3 idle years — he was in Switzerland. The DNA turns out to be a match and Captain Cragen (Dann Florek) compliments Rollins. “Good job.”

Amaro visits Gabriel in his cell. They argue about the DNA results. Amaro tries to get him to talk by using Gabriel’s son, Luke, as an incentive. He’ll make sure Gabriel does his time in New York so he can see his son. Gabriel ain’t having it because he didn’t do anything. After arraignment, Gabriel slashes his wrist (they really watch them, don’t they?) and tells Amaro to tell his wife and son he never raped anybody.

At the hospital, the doctor (Karen Young) doesn’t hold out any hope that Gabriel might not be aware he is committing these heinous crimes, but she’s seen plenty of guilty men try to do themselves in to support an insanity plea. Gabriel’s wife is having her doubts about her husband’s innocence and who wouldn’t, what with the DNA and all. Benson tells her Gabriel will be OK. Janey asks her to at least not pretend she gives a damn and says she’s never had the slightest suspicion in 15 years of marriage about her husband. Predator expert Benson tells her how clever these guys are — the ones who get away with it. Janey tells them about how Gabriel never left her side after a miscarriage that happened on Halloween 2003.

Amaro relays this info to the defense attorney and also goes to the DNA lab and gives the lab tech a hard time about DNA mistakes. The lab tech point out that 4 labs would have had to conspire against Gabriel. Point taken. Later in Cragen’s office, they discuss the Halloween victim’s report that the rapist had a chipped tooth and a long abdominal scar. Gabriel has perfect teeth and no scar. Amaro brings up how Gabriel was 100 miles away from the Halloween rape scene. Cragen suggests they look into Gabriel’s family background.

When they learn that Gabriel was adopted, they track down his birth mother (Connie Ray) at a halfway house in Trenton, NJ. She had twins who were separated at birth. She has only ever heard from one of them, Brian, about 20 years ago. He had a tough time with his adoptive family. The mother killed the father right in front of Brian. Now we know Brian has emotional problems (the birth mother doesn’t — she doesn’t have even a speck of maternal emotion) and, yes, she told Brian he had a twin.

They track down the twin working at the NYC Parks Department. Novak informs them that with twins, they are going to have a big reasonable doubt problem. They decide to set Brian Smith up with some blonde athletic bait — Rollins.

Brian falls for the bait, tries to rape Rollins and get arrested, but he blames the other rapes on Gabriel. This was his plan all along. He followed Gabriel around so if he ever got caught, he could blame it on his twin. But eventually they release Gabriel, who never even knew he had a twin and now will probably have to move. If the jury was going to be confused, imagine what the neighbors are thinking!