"Strange Beauty"

Guest Star David Eigenberg

This week on Law & Order SVU, the show opens on a young girl on the cell phone to her mom.  She’s scared and she wants to go home.  Minutes later, she gets abducted by a cabby and it’s all caught on surveillance tape.  Meanwhile Detective Nick Amaro (Danny Pino) and Odafin Tutuola (Ice-T) runs into Detective Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish) and Sam Reynolds (Myk Watford), her old Captain from Atlanta, who comes onto her.  Rollins leaves the bar to get away and witnesses the abduction while the cab speeds away.  She manages to get the medallion number.  Good job detective.  Cue the theme music.

There just happens to be a slew of cabby abductions.  Rollins and Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) interview the mother who reports a daughter missing, and called her for help last night and then nothing.  The mom says the daughter, Nina, has changed recently.  First she gets one tattoo of an octopus on her ankle, now she’s covered with tattoos.  The investigation leads them to the cabby dispatcher, and the surveillance tape reveals all.  The next scene is the most gruesome.  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.  A single leg shows up on the medical examiner’s (ME) table.  It was brought in by some guy fishing on the Gowanas Canal.  Surprise, surprise, it has an octopus tattoo on the ankle.  Three guesses whose leg it is.

#4 Best Moment of the Show.  It gets worse.  Turns out the same guy found another single leg 11 years ago in the canal.  The ME says the girl was alive when the leg was cut off.  Turns out the girl whose leg it belongs to is still alive.  She was paid $25,000 for it.  She says it was just another John.  She says she couldn’t recognize the guy who did it if she wanted to. 

#3 Best Moment of the Show.  Nina’s body was found, missing a leg, of course.  Nina’s body has been modified many times.  The ME says the subculture of body modification causes people to push the envelope beyond just piercings and tattoos.  The ME says she’s seen stretched earlobe, forked tongue, steel plate under the skin.  Nina’s ear has been sharpened to a point, ala Arwyn from Lord of the Rings. 

#2 Best Moment of the Show.   Rollins and Fin chase the case to Freak Night at a club at Coney Island.  It’s so exclusive; you need a password to get in.  Inside is a world of contortionist, designer burn scars, odd piercings, and tattoos.   The one legged receptionist, who lost her leg due to bone cancer when she was 15, is performing body modifications on people for profit. 

Finally, the #1 Best Moment of the Show.   Turns out, Dr. Hal Brightman, a psychiatrist, has been scamming his brother the dentist’s prescription pad, to get his rocks off by anesthetizing six girls and cutting their legs off to relive his childhood obsession with his own mother’s one leggedness due to a car accident when he was an adolescent.   This episode is freak show central.  You need a tough stomach for this.

Next week on Law & Order SVU, a bachelor party goes horribly wrong.  A conspiracy warns all to walk away now.