Law and Order: Special Victims Unit: "Children of Wolves" (Dick Wolf Entertainment, Universal Television, NBC-TV, aired April 11, 2024)

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2024 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

Last night (Thursday, April 11) Dick Wolf’s Law and Order shows resumed after a three-week hiatus (which I presume was the fault of last summer’s writers’ and actors’ strikes that cut down the usual production window), and my husband Charles and I watched two of them. First was a Law and Order: Special Victims Unit episode called “Children of Wolves,” directed by series star Mariska Hargitay herself (and judging from her work here I hope she gets to do more, and in particular I’d like to see her make a feature film: she’s that good as a director) from a script by David Graziano and old Law and Order hand Julie Martin. It opened with Captain Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) in bed with her adopted son Noah Porter-Benson (Ryan Buggle, who was obnoxiously “cute” in the rancid fashion Shirley Temple’s 1930’s mega-success had made de rigueur for the film depiction of children ever since, but as he’s grown older he’s got better looking and less offensive and he’s likely to be quite sexy as a young man). Noah is asking her questions about his biological father and other people mom has been involved with professionally – he understandably wonders if any other adult she’s known has been evil (well, when you make your living in police work it comes with the territory: the only other people you meet are either fellow cops or crooks). Benson tries to assuage Noah’s curiosity by reading him the story of Little Red Riding Hood – and just then director Hargitay cuts from Benson reading Noah the Little Red Riding Hood story to a scene of two teenage girls, one of whom is indeed wearing a red hoodie, walking through a park late at night where they’re accosted by four teenage boys obviously up to no good. The two girls try to run away, the boys say, “We didn’t give you permission to leave,” and ultimately the boys physically and sexually assault the girls.

One of the girls, Rosie Meadows (Audrey Bennett), is beaten within an inch of her life and is found the next morning in the park. The other, Sydney Lynch (Amalina Ace), daughter of a sommelier (someone who serves wine at a fancy restaurant) named Denise Lynch (Kelly Butler) who’s been raising her as a single mom since her dad died when Sydney was six, is taken and kidnapped by the four boys. The cops at first have no clues with which to track down the kidnappers and rescue Sydney, but eventually they trace her first to a boatyard where a number of yachts are parked for the winter, and then to an abandoned townhouse whose owners are having it renovated so they can sell it. The leader of the gang is Seth Piper (Reilly Walters), whose mom Mona (Shannon Stowe) was hired as an exterminator specializing in rats. When they figure out who Seth is, Benson has Mona call her son on her cell phone, takes the phone from her and correctly guesses that Seth is a psychopath who started by torturing animals – rats, in his case (which ties in with his mom’s gig as an exterminator; Mona even showed up at the scene in a car with a model rat on its roof) – and then branched out to humans. Ultimately Seth and his buddies – Austin Lindley (Corey Militzok), Damian Rojas (Alex Lukmann) and Terry Walker (Chris Glow) – are arrested and almost immediately start ratting each other out. Alas, while all this has been going on Rosie’s parents, Colin (Seann Gallagher) and Gail (Marika Engelhardt), have been summoned from a vacation in Japan by Rosie’s Black nanny, Marva James (Jammie Patton).

They arrive at the hospital but find Rosie brain-dead, and ultimately they agree to pull the plug on her – which Benson of course uses as a weapon against Seth, saying he’s now facing a murder charge. While all this has been going on Noah (ya remember Noah?) has been researching Benson’s and his own past online and also going through Benson’s personal papers. He is full of embarrassing questions about who his biological dad was and whether he’s likely to inherit any of dad’s criminal tendencies, and Benson removes the box of her papers from a shelf Noah could reach to one he can’t (at least not for a while yet). Though I still don’t care for the Law and Order: The Soap Opera aspects of Benson’s relationship with Noah and how the writers tear-jerk with it, at least this episode has a toughness about it none of the previous ones involving Noah have had. (Quite frankly, for a while there I was hoping the SVU writers would kill off the obnoxious brat already, but former show runner Michael Chernuchin concocted the whole business with Noah because he felt Benson’s character needed to be warmed up and humanized. Needless to say, I disagree.) I generally liked this one, found it to be better integrated between the policier and the character aspects of this show than most of the ones involving Noah, and would like to see Mariska Hargitay get more directorial opportunities – and not just on SVU episodes, either!