Law and Order: Special Victims Unit: "Breakwater" (Dick Wolf Entertainment, Universal Television, NBC-TV, aired October 28, 2022)

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

The Law and Order: Special Victims Unit episode that followed, “Breakwater,” was one of the very best shows in the recent history of this series. Written by Denis Hamill and Monet Hurst-Mendoza, two relatively new writers in the SVU firmament, it tells a tight-knit tale of Paul Greco (James Carpinello), a supervisor and trainer of the city’s would-be lifeguards. He is also an equal-opportunity sexual harasser and rapist, forcing himself on both women and men. The cops learn about this when the Manhattan Special Victims Unit receives a complaint from one of Greco’s lifeguards/victims, 19-year-old Diego Rodriguez (Damien Diaz, who aside from being a quite capable actor has pecs to die for!), who tells the cops that Greco assaulted him years before and is now abusing his 14-year-old sister Martina (Samantha Boscarino). As punishment for reporting him, ostensibly for showing up drunk to work but really for ratting him out to the cops about his sexual exploitation of the younmg lifeguard recruits, Greco orders Diego to swim back and forth between two buoys until he llterally starts to pass out from the strain. The lifeguard on duty, one of Greco’s dick-driven hires, panics and it’s up to SVU detective Joe Velasco (Octavio Pisano), to try to rescue Diego by diving into the water – only he’s too late. Diego dies in the hospital after a futile attempt to revive him, and both the police and prosecutor Sonny Carisi (Peter Scanavino) learn that they’re unable to prosecute Greco for Diego’s murder.

Then they decide to look at previous cases of drowning at beaches staffed by lifeguards who’d got their positions “putting out” for Greco rather than actually being qualified – including the lifeguard who was on duty when Diego drowned and who did nothing to save him because he was barely able to swim – and see if they can make a manslaughter case against Greco for the deaths of 10 people who’d drowned at beaches staffed by Greco’s unqualified lifeguards. This was an especially interesting SVU episode because the villain was multidimensional and well drawn. Of course he’s got the classic macho thing going, telling the cops that they can’t understand his job and the risks it entails, and lamenting that his lifeguards can’t save absolutely everybody. Under pressure from the city government, which fears that if word of Greco’s antics gets out they’ll be faced with multiple lawsuits from family members of people who drowned at beaches staffed by Greco’s girlfriends or boyfriends, prosecutors agree to a plea bargain, reasoning that Greco will be in prison until he turns 70 and he’ll no longer be the hot young stud muffin who was able to prey on those vulnerable people of both (mainstream) genders. Every time I start to think SVU has got stale and is just rehashing old formulae, and it may be time to put this show out of its misery already, Dick Wolf and his show runners and production staff – including executive story editors Kathy Dobbs and Nolan Dunbar – come up with an episode this good that proves there’s life in this old show yet!