Guest Star Pippa Black
This week is the season finale for Season 13 on
Law & Order SVU.
The show has it all - sex, drugs, corruption, conspiracy, pimp
wars between a traditional scumbag and a suburban mom/farmer madam, and
finally, a cliff hanger involving a dead hooker in a cop’s bed. The show opens on a NYC Bachelor Party circa
1980’s, with athletes, journalists, brokers and other movers and shakers ogling
scantily clad high end call girls with recreational drugs on the glass coffee
table. As is always, what happens to
break up the party - the dead body of one of the half-naked girl in the coat room. Except when the cops show up, the dead girl’s
story is retold as “She was skinny dipping in the lap pool, must have passed
out, I tried to resuscitate her…” Turns
out the cover-up is needed due to the A-listers caught trying to leave the
scene in the stuck elevator.
Awkward. Cue the theme music.
No one is talking. Detective Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) wants to know why they are not pounding the
witnesses harder. Captain Don Cragen (Dann Florek) says the
harder they push, the quicker they lawyer up, so proceed with caution. The Medical Examiner ME (Tamara Tunie) says the victim didn’t drown. There is no water in her lungs. She died from an overdose of Scopolamine, a
common knock out drug used for date rape.
The case does not appear to be a homicide. The silicone implants from the dead girl identifies
her as a 16 year old from Winnepeg, Canada, Maggie Murphy (Meg McCrossen). Chances
are most of these call girls are under-aged.
Miracle of miracles, a video camera recording shows the bachelor innocently getting lap dance from multiple girls and no where near the victim. The footage proves fruitful. This is not a
summary of the episode; it is a recap of the five best moments of the
show. Here’s the countdown to the Five Best Moments of the Show.
#5 Best Moment of the
Show. Clayton Hannigan (Eric Laden) who owns the penthouse
was there with a friend, Carissa Gibson (Pippa Black). Carissa gets called into the squad room and zeroes
in on Detective Nick Amaro (Danny Pino) right away. She works for Bart Ganzel (Peter
Jacobson)
as an escort and is a good one at that. She
immediately sees Amaro’s marriage trouble and pounces. Amaro looks like he’s wavering. After all, who doesn’t like to ‘talk about
anything you want’.
#4 Best Moment of the
Show. Detective Brian Cassidy (Dean Winters) is a
cop working undercover at Ganzel’s escort service. Cassidy gets a tip on his cell phone and high
tails it out of there. Too late, it’s Detective
Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish) and Amaro at the door. Unfortunately, he taunts Amaro who asks for
an ID. He then proceeds to punches out
Amaro. He is cuffed like a perp.
#3 Best Moment of the
Show. Turns out there is another madam working the
same clientele as Ganzel. Ganzel has
been taking top girls away from Delia Wilson (Brooke Smith).
Amaro and Benson chase the lead to a farm full with cattle. If Delia Wilson is NYC’s most notorious
madam, she’s doing a good job of hiding it.
We find her bottle feeding a new born calf whose mother she had to put
down days ago. This is a madam?
#2 Best Moment of the
Show. The former governor is found dead in his
sitting room, apparently from a heart attack, but with one oddity. His pants are on backwards and unzipped. The governor apparently died naked. He was getting a ‘happy ending’ from his Japanese
masseuse, Yuko
Sakura (Pei Pei Lin). She called her
booker, Iris, who told her to get away from the scene of the crime. The
ME says he has four times the amount of erectile dysfunction drugs in his
system as well as Scopolamine, the same chemical found in the first dead
body. Finally, the first one who
confesses is Iris, the former governor’s aid.
The madam, Delia Wilson, is arrested with bail
set at $2 million. Only a second later,
she makes bail. How?!? Her high price lawyer, Marvin Exley (Ron
Rifkin), put up his own townhouse as collateral. He gives the cops some free legal advice, “Walk
away. Delia has the goods on everyone,
everyone you will ever work for. You are
way in over your head.”
Finally, the #1 Best Moment of the Show.
Carissa reaches out to Amaro. She’s
scared she might be the next dead girl.
She wants protection but is too scared and leaves without taking Amaro’s
advice. The next scene has Cragen waking up in his bed with her dead body next to him - Cliffhanger.
Law & Order SVU is on summer hiatus until the fall. I can’t wait to see how they wrap this
cliffhanger up in a nice tidy bow. But
then again, it may not be nice or tidy. Will
Cragen take the fall? Will Benson’s
affair with Hagen cost both of them their jobs?
Will Amaro’s marriage be over?
Tune in next fall.