Law and Order: Special Victims Unit: "If I Knew Then What I Know Now" (Dick Wolf Productions, Universal, NBC-TV, aired February 24, 2022)

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2022 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

The Law and Order: Special Victims Unit episode that followed – which, like the seminal Law and Order, was preceded by a disclaimer stating that the story and characters had nothing to do with real people (which, as my husband Charles pointed out, means that it does have a basis, albeit a tenuous one, with real life and real people) – has to deal with an 18-year-old who has just been informed by her birth mother, whom she had never met before, that she was conceived via rape. This poses a problem for the series’ star, Mariska Hargitay, playing Captain Olivia Benson, since as all hard-core SVU mavens have long known Benson, too, was conceived when her dad raped her mom, and unlike the woman in the story, Benson’s mom actually raised her as a single parent. The young daughter is named Ashley Peters (Gates Leonard) and her mom is Michelle Young (Lisa Joyce); the two women don’t look at all alike (a pet peeve of mine in watching movies or TV is when we’re told by the script that two characters are biologically related when the people playing them don’t look a bit alike), but we’re supposed to believe they are mother and daughter.

The cops ultimately trace Michelle’s alleged rape to a July 4, 2003 Fourth of July party (she remembers it was the Fourth of July because she remembers fireworks going off) at a New York brownstone with a red door. It’s just been bought by a Lesbian couple but they agree to let the cops come in and allow Michelle to look through the place and see if there is something she recognizes. She does: a large rose-like pattern on the ceiling above which she was raped. The cops were able to trace the guests at the party, including Josh Wilcox (Ben Jeffrey), his brother Zach (Corey Sorenson) and Cole Eaton (Joe Cumutte), a high-flying Wall Street financier who thinks his money could bail him out of anything. After a DNA test clears both the Wilcoxes, Cole Eaton turns out to be the real rapist and the cops wire Michelle for a “controlled meeting” with Cole – who first offers her a bribe to make all this go away and then flippantly tells her, “You missed your chance,” just before the cops burst in and arrest him. But he works out a plea deal that enables him to plead to a misdemeanor and avoid any jail time; just two years’ probation and 400 hours of community service.

The imdb.com page on this episode doesn’t credit the writers or director (though I believe Brianna Yellen, yet another old Law and Order “hand,” was involved), and it also features a Law and Order: The Soap Opera sub-plot in which assistant district attorney Dominick Carisi, Jr. (Peter Scanavino) and detective Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish) realize they have to disclose their love relationship both to their respective bosses and to Rollins’ kids (she’s had two, by different fathers, and at least one of them is seeing Carisi come over a lot and has leaped to the wrong conclusion that he is her dad), but it was also a tough story. Though the real-life aspects of this show were nowhere nearly as apparent as the ones in the Law and Order just before it, I could detect elements of the Martha Moxley case from years ago (in which two relatives of Ethel Kennedy were accused of her rape and murder) and also the accusations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and his bravado in the face of them, essentially knowing both in advance at the time of his alleged assault on Christine Blasey Ford and years later that he would be able to get away with murder because of his wealth and social position.