Service on Law & Order: SVU

The SVU detectives returned on April 11, 2018 with an episode called “Service” that started out with a badly beaten woman found unconscious in an alley refusing to cooperate with Rollins and Fin at the hospital about how it happened. The detectives already figured out that the woman is a hooker and Rollins thinks her pimp did a number on her. Street-wise Fin informs her that pimps don’t leave their “bread-and-butter” out on the street to die. The woman will only say her name is Sky and that she fell down. Rollins cannot hide her annoyance that this false information has to be dragged out of this beaten and half-conscious woman and storms off, much to Fin’s consternation. He tells Sky that they will let her rest up and will see her later.

From a man’s size 11 footprint at the scene, Det. Sonny Carisi (“Sherlock,” to Fin) is able to pinpoint two possible low-rent hotels where the beating may have taken place. The whole time he is explaining his brilliant deductions to Lt. Olivia Benson, she can’t help noticing what a sour puss Rollins is sporting. She assigns Fin and Rollins to the Abington where they find Sky’s handbag and use strong-arm tactics on the manager, Grigor. They learn that three guys who checked in as “Elvis” were the last ones with Sky in Room 117. Grigor found her and, thinking she was already dead, took her out in the alley and then called the police. They inform him that Sky is alive and arrest him for endangering an impaired person. At the hospital, Carisi discovers that Sky has flown the coop. They find her profile online on a triple XXX site: “Sky: I will blow your mind,” Carisi reads from the page. “Among other things,” Rollins chimes in sarcastically. She has made it known that she has no sympathy for hookers who don’t want their help. All the same, Carisi sets up a date and they bring her down to SVU when she shows up.

Rollins is very nasty to Sky and tells her that she could care less what happened to her: “To me, you’re about what, 110 lbs. of wasted skin and lipstick.” OMG! She insultingly offers Sky $30 to give her a name as Benson charges in and says “That’s enough!” She apologizes to Sky, gives her back her handbag and the next thing you know, Sky is spilling her guts, including her real name: Sandy Ksenevich. She gives Benson all she can recall about the 3 men: one about 20, a virgin, an old dude about 40 who raped her and the third guy she hit with a lamp. After that, “Grandpa” came back in the room and beat the hell out of her. She showed Benson the young guy’s money clip that he left on the nightstand. It has a U.S. Army insignia. Sky was probably shocked when Benson took the clip and gave her back the money.

Sandy (Morgan Taylor Campbell), Billy (Jack DiFalco) , Jim (Marquise Vilson) and Tyler (Timothy Adams)

Then it was off to the army base where they track down Sgt. Jim Preston, the guy who got hit with the lamp, through his medical records. He refuses to give anything other than his name, rank and serial number. They zero in on the virgin, Private Billy Shaughnessy. He tries to take the rap for raping and beating Sandy. Benson meets with Sandy, continuing her usual spiel that she is important so she will testify in court and Sandy ID’s the 3 men, including Staff Sergeant Tyler Jones, the real villain. Benson is ready to march into court with the victim’s IDs but ADA Peter Stone informs her that it takes more than that. In the absence of hard evidence, they will need to get one of the guys to rat out Tyler Jones.

So they work on the weakest link first, little Billy boy, and the other two are arrested and arraigned with bail set at $50,000 each. Speedy trials are never a problem in the SVU universe and before you can say Presto! Sandy is on the stand getting hammered by Olson, the defense attorney, for being a paid sex worker. He claims that Sandy is used to brutality in her line of work and it’s all a matter of degree. Billy is up next and he completely changes his story, claiming that after he had his first time with Sandy, they all left and went back to base. He refuses to change his story despite threats of perjury charges. He would rather be a criminal than a traitor.

So now they only have Sgt. Jim Preston to work on. Carisi finds out that Jim is a transgender man who was born a female. He doesn’t want to be outed for fear of losing his career. Stone drops all charges against Jim with prejudice (which means the charges cannot be brought again). He tells Jim if he doesn’t testify against Tyler Jones, Stone will subpoena him. If he doesn’t appear, Stone will go after him big time. Benson worries that Jim’s life will be ruined if he testifies. Stone says, if Jim doesn’t testify, Sandy’s life will be ruined, so she can take her choice.

Benson chooses Sandy and convinces Jim to testify. On the stand, Jim says that after Tyler came out of the room, he saw Sandy sitting on the bed, crying. Tyler pushed him in the room and Sandy hit him with the lamp, thinking she was about to be raped again. The defense attorney tries to prejudice the jury against Jim by bringing up his gender identity but Jim handles it with forceful dignity: “My gender identity isn’t relevant to what I do, just as whatever is in your pants, isn’t relevant to what you do.” All the defense attorney has left to impeach Jim’s testify is how all charges were dropped against him in exchange for his testimony. Jim admits that but the jury believes he is telling the truth so Tyler Jones is found guilty. All the soldiers in the courtroom stood up to salute Jim as he was about to leave. He turned and returned the salute.

The final scene showed Rollins meeting with Sandy to apologize and explain her abusive behavior (there was another scene where she tried to degrade Sky some more, after the courtroom humiliation, by offering Sky $300 for the work she missed). Rollins’ excuse was that some fool she was seeing named “Dr. Al” was stepping out on her with hookers. She discovered that by scoping out the credit card bill he left out in the open. LOL!! Now it was Sandy’s turn to offer solace although Rollins hardly deserved it.

The next episode of SVU features the long-awaited return of Alexandra Cabot.

Selected Cast of “Service”
Mariska Hargitay – Olivia Benson
Kelli Giddish – Amanda Rollins
Ice-T – Odafin Tutuola
Peter Scanavino – Dominick “Sonny” Carisi Jr.
Philip Winchester – Peter Stone
Morgan Taylor Campbell – Sandy “Sky” Ksenivich
Marquise Vilson – Sergeant Jim Preston
Timothy Adams – Staff Sergeant Tyler Jones
Jack DiFalco – Private Billy” Shaughnessy
Wayne Knight – Grigor
Christopher Wiehl – Defense Attorney James Olson