Law and Order: Special Victims Unit: "Deductible" (Dick Wolf Entertainment, Universal Television, NBC-TV, aired January 30, 2025)

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2025 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

The Law and Order: Special Victims Unit show that followed, “Deductible,” was just as good as the Law and Order show. It dealt with Kyra Thompson (Nicole Zyana), up-and-coming executive with an insurance company, who one night is escorted to the hotel room of Jim Hogan (Michael McGrady), who runs a high-end helicopter service to ferry rich passengers from downtown hotels. Kyra is taken there by her boss, Frank Bailey (David Alan Basche), who has his female chief operating officer, Grace Callahan (Lucy Owen), place a phony phone call posing as his wife to tell him their son had a peanut allergy and had to be rushed to the E.R. Frank uses that as an excuse to duck out, and Jim sexually assaults Kyra, getting down on the floor and pushing up her dress so he can go down on her. Kyra hides out in the hotel room’s bathroom and literally spends the night there until she’s discovered by the hotel maid. It turns out she’s especially worried because she’s raising her younger brother Jay (Leo Easton Kelly) as a single parent since their own parents were killed in an accident two years earlier. SVU Captain Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) and her squad correctly deduce that Frank Bailey had set up the whole thing and that Kyra was the “signing bonus” for the deal. Frank had told Jim that Kyra was willing to do “whatever he wanted” to get him to sign, and the next morning Jim – at Frank’s suggestion – sends her a bouquet with a dozen roses and a note thanking her for “a great evening,” which only pisses her off more. That night when she comes home from work she hides in the bathroom again, and her younger brother Jay calls the police. Captain Benson takes the call and talks to her woman-to-woman, saying she should file a complaint and also undergo a rape kit, which reveals traces of Jim Hogan’s DNA on her.

The cops get Hogan to turn state’s evidence and offer him a reduced sentence for his testimony against Frank, who it turns out had blackmailed Kyra into going along with it by stealing $2,000 in cash he gave her for a company party and then claiming she’d have to “work off” the loss. Assistant district attorney Dominick Carisi, Jr. indicts Frank Bailey after the SVU cops find a number of other women who worked for him and also were coerced into providing sexual services to would-be clients in exchange for fat commission bonuses and promotions in the firm. But the trial isn’t going well for the good guys because Frank was careful enough not to tell the women outright they were expected to have sex with the potential clients – until Captain Benson makes a direct appeal to Grace Callahan, who it turns out 10 years earlier had Frank pull the same scam on her. He gave her an envelope with cash for an office party, had someone pick her pocket for it, and then said he wouldn’t report it to the police if she’d have sex with the customers until the “debt” was worked off. Grace testifies against her boss and ultimately the jury finds him guilty of two counts of “coercion.” While the two counts together only draw a 2 ½-year sentence, Carisi is relieved because Bailey, testifying in his own defense, lied under oath and he can be prosecuted for perjury. This reminded me of the 1932 movie She Had to Say Yes, co-directed by Busby Berkeley (his first non-musical assignment) and Warner Bros. editor George Amy, and starring Loretta Young as an innocent young woman who takes a job with a clothing manufacturer, only to discover that the men she has to say “Yes” to are the department-store buyers to whom the company is trying to sell its clothes. This SVU is a powerful statement of men’s exploitation of women, though I also felt sorry for all the women – including Kyra, who risks losing Jay to the foster-care “system” if she can’t hold a job that can support them both – who are going to be out of work now that their scumbag employer has been legally exposed.