Law & Order: SVU – Missing Pieces Review

In the latest installment of Law & Order: SVU, (Season 13, Episode 4), we’ve got a missing baby who turns up dead, a cooler and it’s all very reminiscent of previous episodes. The ending was just incredibly unbelievable, and we mean that in the literal sense – not the wow sense.

Guest stars in Missing Pieces included:

Lisa Joyce (Ally Martell), Dennis Flanagan (Tim Holland), Coogan (Jarlath Conroy), Moira Martell (Meredith Holzman)

Halloween festivities are under way and Fin (Ice-T) and Rollins (Kelli Giddish) are going door-to-door to make sure that sex offenders aren’t wearing costumes and opening the door to children. They find one in a clown costume. Olivia is spending some time with Calvin (Charlie Tahan) and Nick Amaro is dressed up as a vampire to go trick-or-treating with his mom and little daughter Zara (Alison Fernandez). He’s not too keen on his daughter’s harem dancer get-up. His mom tells him to lighten up.

Ally Martell, a young mother, goes into a store for diapers and keeps anxiously looking out the door, while asking the shopkeeper to check for organic diapers. Suddenly she bolts out the door and begins screaming that her car has been stolen and her baby was in it. Olivia has to leave Calvin. Nick has to leave Zara. They are going to take Ally to the station. She doesn’t want to go because the baby’s father, Tim, won’t be able to find her. Tim shows up and starts berating her for leaving the baby alone in the car. They are separated. Tim gets all “Where’s my kid?!! Where’s my son?!!” with Amaro, Ally tearfully tells Olivia: “You need to find Nate. He’s lactose intolerant. He needs soy formula. Whoever took him won’t know that.” If we were on  this case, we would remember this planned little act later on in minute detail.

After Fin and Rollins check up on Tim’s Craigslist apartment story, they are sent up to Buffalo (where they are from) to check into a domestic violence incident in Tim’s recent past.  In NYC, the car is found abandoned off the Willis Avenue bridge. The window is broken, the car seat is gone and so is the baby. Divers are called in to see if the baby’s body is in the river. No prints in the car except Tim’s. No blood in the car or trunk. While they continue to interrogate the parents, a Mr. Hernandez (Juan Carlos Infante) shows up with the car seat which he purchased from a peddler in Tompkins Square. With the baby missing 24 hours, Nick and Olivia pick up the peddler, Coogan, who is even selling baby clothes. His suppliers are “trade secrets” he won’t reveal. They take him down to the station and he says “I didn’t see any baby. If I did, I would have run. I don’t like babies.” Then he realizes that they don’t care about the stolen goods, only the baby. So he admits he broke the car window and took the stuff, but there was no baby in the car.

Lab tests come back showing the cooler found in the car contained fecal matter with traces of soy formula. You should more or less know the rest, except for the latest twists  … they continue to press the parents who eventually each admit to accidentally killing the baby. The Medical Examiner (Tamara Tunie) says their stories are false since the baby was not murdered at all. Little Nate died of SIDS. The father is trying to cover for Ally, who thinks she rolled over on the baby by accident while she was sleeping. The detectives reunite the parents who hug each other and they watch them through the one-way glass.

“Now what,” Fin asks.
“We let them go,” Olivia responds.
“Really?” Rollins chimes in.
“After what they put the city through?” Fin adds.
“They’re going to be paying for this for the rest of their lives.” Amaro says.
“Just send them home,” Olivia says dramatically.

Fin looks at them like they are crazy and walks away. They decide it will cost too much to prosecute them for lying to the police, causing the false Amber alert and the waste of all that police manpower.

Other episodes with kids in coolers:

In “Mercy” (Season 4 of Law & Order SVU), a baby is found in a cooler and it turns out the mother committed the crime because the child was incurably ill.

In “Serendipity” (Season 5 of Law & Order SVU), Elliot Stabler rescues a kidnapped 6-year old child from a cooler.