Law and Order: Special Victims Unit: "The Steps We Cannot Take" (Wolf Entertainment, Universal Television, NBC-TV, aired October 13, 2022)

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

The Law and Order: Special Victims Unit episode that followed, “The Steps We Cannot Take,” was in ots own way equally chilling. The cops are investigating the attempted murder of a couple from India, Ray and Nisha Singh (Rock Kohli and Anjaly Bihmani) who are shot as th ey’re trying to remodel it. Since Ray is shot on the restaurant floor and Nisha is shot in her shower upstairs, the building is obviously a live-work space. Their 15-year-old daughter Priya (Aditi Nayav) is kidnapped and the SVU officers realize that she was the real target. They’re able to identify the kidnapper and attempted murderer, a welder named Elias Olsen (Adam Petchel), but when they raid his house they find at least three other girls besides Priya being held captive – Nadine Chavez (Paola Sanchez Abreu), Gillian Moore (Jess Gabor) and Gillian’s daughter Bella (Dalya Knapp). They also learn that the mastermind of the kidnappings is not Elias Olsen but his father Søren – only when they search the premises they find Søren’s remains and also the dead body of an infant son. At first the cops suspect that Elias murdered his father, but because of the trahectory of the fatal bullet they deduce, based on the medical examiner’s report, that the real killer had to have been someone considerably shorter. Both Gillian and Nadine confess to murdering Søren, but it’s clear they’re covering up for the real killer, Bella, who is also Søren’s daughter and therefore is Elias’s half-sister. While this isn’t as good as an SVU episode I remember from the years Christopher Meloni was on the show in which two identical twins confess to the same crime, and they both get away with it because the prosecutors realize they can’t prove beyond a reasonable doubt that one of them did it, t his was still a chilling little show and a nice frisson-filled exercise in the sort of sick, quirky kinkiness this show has specialized in during its 24-year run on the air, longest of any scripted prime-time drama or comedy series.