Law and Order: Special Victims Unit: "Vivid" (Dick Wolf Entertainment, Universal Television, NBC-TV, aired April 2, 2026)

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

By chance, the Law and Order: Special Victims Unit episode, “Vivid,” that followed Law and Order’s “Fate’s Cruel Joke” on Thursday, April 2 was also about a podcaster who’s attained a major following on the Internet. She uses a cartoon avatar as well as a screen name online but she’s really April Deieso (Sarah Desjardins), and the Special Victims Unit gets interested in her when she narrates a recovered memory of a rape that supposedly happened to her five years previously. So does a free-lance group of vigilantes that are sort of #MeToo on steroids, led by an argumentative and incredibly self-righteous woman named Elaine Marquez (Annette Arnold) and her self-effacing to the point of neuterdom partner, Harrison Kuo (Zack Palombo). They and two other people literally gang up on a middle-aged man who they believe was April’s rapist, who actually had nothing to do with the crime. It turns out April is a patient in a long-term study of the effects of psychedelic drugs in treating post-traumatic stress disorder. The research is being funded by a minor drug company whose CEO, Rosalie Fuentes (Jamie Ann Romero), is hoping to steer the company to major status on the basis of the success rate with a particular psychedelic. The doctors in charge of the study are Jonah Catmull (John Schwab) and Austin Severson (Breckin Meyer), and as part of the protocol they’re both supposed to be in the same room with the patient for as long as the effects of the drug last. We eventually learn that April was indeed raped, but not five years ago; she was raped during one of the psychedelic “therapy” sessions, and her rapist was Dr. Severson. He had sent Dr. Catmull out of the room on some pretext and was alone with April, whom he had blindfolded on the ground that the lack of distracting visual stimuli would make the treatment more effective. Supposedly each session was video-recorded, but it turns out Dr. Fuentes never bothered to look at the recordings, and neither did anyone else at the drug company.

When Dr. Severson is found out, he shocks prosecutor Dominic Carisi, Jr. (Peter Scanavino) by immediately pleading guilty to all charges and meekly accepting a 15-year prison sentence and the loss of his medical license. Carisi suspects he’s essentially falling on his sword to protect the drug company for which he worked and the whole idea of psychedelic drugs as a valid treatment for mental illness. Carisi becomes determined to shut down the entire company as an illegal and dangerous enterprise, and he gets the go-ahead from New York state attorney general Philip Esquivel (it was a bit of a shock to see a male New York attorney general when it’s well known that the real New York attorney general is a woman, Letitia James, who because she dared to prosecute Donald Trump on civil fraud charges is now in the cross-hairs of his Justice Department revenge machine; the real reason Trump just fired Attorney General Pam Bondi is she was unable to make charges stick against James, former FBI director James Comey, California Senator Adam Schiff, and the six Senators and Congressmembers who jointly posted an online video reminding American servicemembers that they not only have the right but the duty to refuse to obey illegal orders) to serve as a special prosecutor against the company. Only the judge in the case wimps out and allows the company to remain in business as long as Rosalie Fuentes steps down as CEO. Screenwriter Roxanne Paredes seems to be presenting this as a “victory” for the enlightened use of psychedelic drugs as mental therapies, but as a child of the 1960’s who saw all too many of my peers literally or figuratively destroy their lives on those drugs (I didn’t personally know anybody who jumped out of a multi-story window under the LSD-induced delusion that they could fly, but I heard enough stories about that happening I believed them), I’m horrified at the blithe acceptance of those drugs as anything but monstrous harms to anyone of the human race who takes them.