Law and Order SVU - Smut (Episode 1010)

'cap thanks to SVUfans.net!Uh oh.  A mature content warning.  On any other show, that means some fun, thrilling, daring scene.  For instance: on Family Guy, you’re probably talking full-frontal animated nudity.  On SVU, however, it just means things are about to get particularly disturbing.  Like, even more than usual.  Brace yourselves, people.  A woman pushing a baby carriage follows her dog and son through the park.  The dog runs off, dragging the boy behind it, and mom parks the stroller to give chase.  Suddenly, the baby starts to scream.  Mom races back and yells at the stranger bent over the carriage to get away from her baby.  But then Mom gets a good look at the woman.  She’s totally out of it, wearing nothing but a bra, underwear, and an open trench coat.  Wait for it… yep, her thighs are all bloody.  As Mom stares, eyes approximately the size of dinner plates, the bloodsmeared half-naked woman collapses to the ground.  

According to docs, Kelly Sun was raped and beaten, and spent hours wandering the park barefoot.  And nobody helped her during the course of said wandering?  Damn, that’s cold.  I guess things really are different in New York.  Another minor detail: Kelly doesn’t remember a goddamned thing.  Currently, she’s in the hospital, and Olivia comments that she doesn’t know what’s worse - not remembering or being unable to forget.  Kelly, a travel writer, still feels dirty even after 2879505 showers and multiple assurances that it’s not her fault.  The last thing she remembers is packing for a business trip to Korea, and running an errand to Chinatown the day before.  She ran into a “frenemy,” one Riley Slade, who doesn’t like her much because she narked on him when he wrote a false-o-biography.   Olivia and Elliot have a lil’ chat with Riley, who is a bearded famewhore and actually appreciated Kelly’s action – it got him free publicity.  He also mentions the fact that Kelly’s working as a courier.  What was she courier-ing, you ask?  Why a mess of uncut diamonds, that’s what.  Kelly picked up the goods in Chinatown, and was apparently carrying $700,000 worth of diamonds in a pouch (which is, BTW, MIA) when she was raped.

Now that they mention it, Kelly remembers taking a car to the airport for her courier trip.  Elliot and Olivia are in luck, ‘cuz where can you get more kickass security tapes than at the airport?  They watch Kelly check her bags, get her boarding pass, and go into the airport lounge for a pre-flight drinky.  She sits down next to some dude, and when she retrieves a dropped purse, he slips something into her glass.  Ah, the old date rape routine. But here’s where it gets weird: Kelly doesn’t appear to be doped.  In fact, she seems hunky-dory to hop in a taxi with the guy, missing her flight in the process.  Our heroes think this whole thing is fishier than the dumpster behind a Long John Silver’s.   They pull the taxi’s records, and when they show up at the dropoff address, it’s… Anders??  Aw, man!  SVU, why’d you have to go and turn bucketsfull-of-awesome Anders into the baddie-of-the-week?  ‘Cuz you just know that’s what he’s going to be.  He’s too handsome to be anything but.  I mean, the man has his own action figure, for cryin’ out loud.  Deeeep breath.  I will now cleanse myself of the thought that this is Anders.  From now on, it is bad guy Eric Lutz.  Nobody else.  

Lutz claims Kelly was way into him, chomping at the bit to come home with him for a roll in the hay.  When he woke up, she was gone, and he had no idea where.  He’s supposedly shocked that she’s in the hospital.  Benson and Stabler find the pouch full of diamonds, still sealed, in his living room, and promptly confiscate it.  Hee!  You should see the look on Lutz’s face when he finds out there was bling in that bag.  Back at the precinct, Greyleck says they can’t arrest him for rape yet, but maybe they can get him for robbery on the pouch.  They get some bad and very weird news… there was no GHB in Kelly’s system.  Dude, that’s bizarre – this chick is not lying about the memory loss. Elliot and Liv head over to the hospital, where Kelly’s asleep… with none other than Eric Lutz at her bedside!  Ohhhh freaking creepy!!  She wakes up and starts hyperventilating about the stranger holding her hand, even though he insists they’re practically engaged after their “consensual” fling.  Elliot ain’t havin’ it, and roughs Eric up in wrestling him away.  Yum.  I love manly!Elliot.  Olivia shows Kelly the surveillance photos, and next thing you know, she’s chucking everything within reach directly at Lutz’s noggin.  “Arrest him, he raped me!” she screams.  Guess that settles that!

Lutz gets interrogated by Elliot.  He says his flight was cancelled, so he introduced himself to Kelly in the bar.  When they told him she was in the hospital, he wanted to find out how much she remembered about the previous night was concerned. Unfortunately for Lutz, the cops get a warrant for his place.  And promptly find Kelly’s blood in his bed.  But the guy has an answer for everything – Kelly was on her period.  Gross, dude!  This in and of itself is suspicious to me.  What woman wants to get it on when she’s riding the crimson tide to crampy cranky bloatland?  That’s just about the unsexiest time of the month.  Finally, we catch a break: they re-run the tox and find something called Columbian Devil’s Breath.  It keeps people conscious and compliant, but blocks memory formation.  Kelly can’t tell them what happened, because she literally has no memory of it.  Not even a lil’ tiny repressed one.  

Elliot and Olivia and 8960439 other cops rifle through a bored and smug looking Eric Lutz’s house.  He’s about to leave on a business trip to Bogota (Columbia!) and they’re anxious to keep him in the city.  The techies find lots of truly disgusting rape porn on Eric’s laptop.  And then they hit the real jackpot: on a hidden drive, there’s a plain-as-day video of Eric raping Kelly while she begs him to stop.  Y HALO, MATURE CONTENT WARNING.  It’s all very violent and graphic and disturbing, and only gets worse when no less than five other rape videos show up, all featuring different women.  Eric Lutz is a serial rapist.  It’s Olivia’s rather awful duty to show Kelly the video of her own rape, while Elliot confronts Lutz with photos of his victims.  Lutz still claims the sex was all consensual, and that the women were into rape fantasy.  Just then in comes his (female) lawyer, and chatty time is over.  Dude, I’ve never understood how any woman could defend a rapist.  It’s like kicking your whole gender squarely in the guts.  Greyleck and Lutz’s lawyer trade smack talk, and it turns out that they have to release him.  Kelly’s understandably furious – they have the rape on video, for God’s sake.  I concur.  What the fuck else do they want?  That thing’s practically a signed confession.  Elliot and Olivia decide to focus on IDing the other victims… none of whom may even know they were raped.  

Yay Huong!  I heart him and his cute fluffy nonthreatening argyle sweaters.  He says that Lutz is a classic serial rapist, depersonalizing his victims.  They want to fight back, but the drug keeps them compliant.  Greyleck wants to release photos of the victims, because they need someone who can remember what happened and testify that it wasn’t consensual.  But Olivia’s concerned about traumatizing women who don’t even know something happened to them.  Fortunately, upon further searching of Lutz’s credit card records, an escort service pops up.  The detectives track down a Barbie-esque hooker escort named Denise, whose online photo matches one of the rape videos.  Denise says that Lutz was just a sicko into rape fantasy.  So her, um, dalliance with him was a non-drugged encounter, and indeed, consensual.  He paid her, but he had (and I quote) “A hard time keeping his interest up.” Hee!  Nice turn of phrase.  Elliot and Olivia decide that rape fantasy wasn’t good enough for Lutz anymore… he graduated to the real thing.

The techies dig deeper, accessing cell phone records and matching them to the time stamps on the rape videos.  That’s how they find Laurel Andrews, a member at Eric’s gym.  Laurel’s a suburban housewife who doesn’t remember anything about being attacked.  She gets all sweaty and worked up as Elliot and Olivia push her to answer questions, and then her husband arrives home with the baby, and Liv’s all, “We’re out bye.”  Elliot wants to know why they just ran out of that house like it was on fire, and Olivia replies that Laurel’s happy – she doesn’t remember, so she’s not a victim until they tell her what happened.  Olivia doesn’t want to be responsible for that.  Hmmm.  Interesting logic.  It’s a sticky situation, but I’m not sure I wholeheartedly agree… and neither does Elliot.  Back at the precinct, they bicker about whether or not to tell Laurel.  Olivia’s all, “We’re not telling her and that’s final,” but Greyleck and Elliot share a conspiratorial glance – they both think prosecuting Lutz will hinge on Laurel.  So Elliot goes back… and shows Laurel’s husband the rape tape!  Say… what??  Is it me, or is that completely inappropriate in 389604 different ways?  Hubby is understandably devastated, and then Laurel gets home and catches sight of the tape.  “Devastated” would be an understatement for how she feels.

Olivia goes stalking into the precinct to yell at Elliot.  He dishes it right back, saying that confronting the attacker’s the only way to move on, and they can’t change the fact that she was raped.  “I can protect her,” Liv retorts.  “No you can’t,” Elliot replies.  “You should know that better than anyone.”  Say what?  This line totally leads me to believe that Elliot may know more about Olivia’s attack than we think.  No time to ponder that now, because Olivia’s on her way to talk to Laurel again, and promptly admits that she was assaulted, as well.  Dude, this is the second time in as many weeks that Olivia’s talked about the Sealview attack to a complete stranger.  It’s rapidly becoming a trend.  Liv says admitting what happened and putting her attacker behind bars was the only thing that helped.  She’ll never be “over” the attack, but at least she has her life back.  Laurel finally admits that she met Eric at the gym, and she’s started to remember the rape.  Olivia needs her to testify - it’s the only way to stop him.  Finally, Laurel agrees, and they arrest Lutz.  Because he is a sociopathic rapist whack job, he pleads not guilty… and his lawyer comes up with the novel defense of “Not guilty because porn made me do it.”  This oughta be interesting.  

Olivia’s furious – they’ve caught hundreds of cases where the perp collected porn like some people collect baseball cards.  Whereupon follows a v.v. interesting discussion all about the SVU detectives’ various opinions about porn and the role it plays in our society.  In summary:  Olivia = porn is evil, Fin = porn ain’t half bad when used correctly, and Elliot = a big fat no comment.  Hee!  I needed that.  Especially since we’re about to get back into the courtroom.  If Lutz weren’t such a creep, it might be funny to watch his lawyer intone that he’s a victim of the THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS! of hours of porn he’s watched.  There’s even an expert witness that claims porn addicts get hooked on a chemical rush they experience when watching the stuff.  She suggest rehab, not jail.  When Lutz takes the stand, he plays the victim, saying porn wrecked his life and he tried to quit but couldn’t and boo hoo hoo.  He even claims he thought the sex with his victims was consensual, and has the nerve to fake-apologize to them in court.   Lutz primly says he wants to overcome this “terrible addiction.”  Greyleck, for her part, ain’t buyin’ what Lutz is selling.  She riles him up by asking why he got into porn in the first place – is it because he sucks in the sack, and couldn’t get a woman willingly?  She thinks it’s the fight that turns him on.  And with that, we are forced to endure more of the rape tape, which is so disturbing I almost want to change the channel.  “Turn it off,” says Lutz, jumping to his feet as Laurel flees the courtroom.  “Why?” asks Greyleck smugly.  “That’s not an objection you’re raising.”  Whoa!  Lutz has a stiffie from watching the rape tape!  The jury… is not amused.  

Lutz is going down – the jury’s seen him for the monster he is.  But there’s a new problem.  Olivia finds out that the trial judge has some suggestive imagery (read: stupid pranky youtube footage of a dolphin humping a guy at Seaworld ) on his work computer.  How much do you wanna bet some writer at SVU saw this online, and was just gagging to write it into an episode?  Anyhoo, this could be seen as suggestive imagery, and if the defense finds out about it, it could trigger an appeal.  The judge takes himself off of the case, triggering a mistrial.  Next thing you know, Laurel comes barreling into the precinct… and slaps Olivia square across the face!  Elliot leaps to his feet like a linebacker, and looks just about ready to tackle Laurel into kingdom come… until Olivia stops him with a gesture.  Fangirl sigh.  Laurel’s understandably pissed – she had to relive the attack in the courtroom, and she’ll never get it out of her head. She refuses to testify again.  “You okay?”  Elliot asks Olivia.  “No.” Liv replies in frustration.  That evening, she stays late to re-examine the evidence.  Among Lutz’s credit card receipts: $15,000 at Tiffany’s.  Now what, pray tell, was that for?  Olivia takes another look at the rape victims, and one of them is wearing a diamond engagement ring.  Hello, smoking gun!  Liv promptly runs over to Lutz’s place and holds up the photo, asking who his fiancée was.  Hee!  Lutz looks downright scared of Olivia, who’s in full-on Raging Cop mode.  He takes her photo with his cell phone as “proof” that she’s “stalking him” and says he’ll have her badge.  Olivia… is not even one tiny bit scared.  She walks away and heads to a nearby techie van, and they trace the phone call that Lutz predictably places immediately after.  

The next day, Lutz is in the precinct hiding behind his lawyer, who claims Olivia’s harassing him.  But his luck just ran out… because the cops have found Shannon Browning, Lutz’s former fiancée.  She’s the one he called last night, threatening to kill her if she told the police what he did to her.  The other women may not remember the details of their rapes, but Shannon remembers everything.  Two years ago, Lutz proposed, gave her a ring, and then took her home and raped her.  All the hot air goes straight out of Lutz’s lawyer as he calls Shannon an ungrateful bitch.  In come Laurel and Kelly, backing Shannon up.  These three victims are taking their power back, and Lutz is going to jail for at least twenty-five years. “You sluts loved it!” he shouts, jumping out of his chair and lunging at them.  But none of the women are scared anymore.  They walk away confidently as the still-shouting Lutz is held back by police.