Law and Order: Special Victims Unit: "Hubris" (Dick Wolf Entertainment, Universal Television, NBC-TV, aired January 29, 2026)

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2026 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

After the Law and Order episode on January 29 I watched a Law and Order: Special Victims Unit show that seemed to be aimed at proving once and for all the truth behind the old joke: “What do you call a person who thinks they’re God? A schizophrenic. What do you call a person who knows they’re God? A doctor.” In this case the megalomaniac doctor in question is Dr. Bethany Allen (Kate Burton), who turns up frequently as an “expert” witness in cases of alleged child abuse by parents and almost always argues that the parent was abusive and deserves to have the child taken away and put in foster care. This comes to the attention of the Manhattan Special Victims Unit in general and its long-term head, Captain Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), in particular, when a man from New Jersey is busted in a sting operation for solicitation of prostitution. He already had a 15-year-old Black girl, Riley Williams (Milan Marsh), in his car when the white woman cop posing as a hooker announced herself as a police officer and busted him. Naturally he pleaded that he has a wife and children back in New Jersey and once word of this gets back to her, she’s going to leave him and take the kids. But Benson approaches Riley in the hospital and, though she later flees the emergency room, ultimately she’s recaptured and Benson establishes enough of a contact with her that she learns Riley was taken away from her father, who was raising her (or trying to) as a single parent since Riley’s mother died, and put in foster care. Alas, the foster parents she was assigned to were literally the ones from hell; her foster dad in particular saw Riley as an income opportunity and pimped her out. Olivia meets with Riley’s dad, Nate Williams (Sean Patrick Thomas), and with the help of a sympathetic social worker assigned to Riley’s case manages to get the custody case reopened.

Alas, the jurisdiction is the Bronx, and she runs into not only an overworked attorney who doesn’t see much hope of getting Nate custody of his daughter again but the solid wall of Dr. Bethany Allen. Writer Michelle Fazekas (an old Law and Order hand) goes out of her way to make Dr. Allen a self-righteous scumbag who sees herself on a mission to protect children from abusive parents whether the abuse is real or not. Wisely, Fazekas didn’t turn Dr. Allen into a racist; though the two children we’ve seen victimized by her testimony, Riley and the child of Corinne Langford (Briana Starks), who not only lost her child but went to prison for a crime that in fact never happened, are both Black, at least she avoided that cheap shot. But both the writing and Kate Burton’s chillingly effective performance turn Dr. Allen into a self-absorbed egomaniacal monster. Ultimately true justice prevails when Olivia discovers that Dr. Allen actually ran a test on Connie Langford’s son that proved his injury had been caused by a congenital disease rather than parental abuse, then deliberately left that out of the case files, and still later lied under oath about doing so. That gives Olivia the leverage she needs to get Dr. Allen to surrender her medical license to avoid a perjury charge, and both Corinne Langford and Nate Williams get their kids back. This was a well-done SVU episode, though quite frankly they’ve done self-absorbed, arrogant professionals several times before (as have the Lifetime writers) and done them even better than here.