This show is sort of like one of those guilty pleasure shows, for me. You know the ones which you don't really want people to know you watch and you like more than you're willing to admit but you also think are kind of silly? Yeah. Obviously lots of people like this show, though, because it's managed fifteen seasons which is amazing - and while there is a lot of admittedly melodramatic nonsense, this show does deal with taboo subjects like rape and abuse - which I believe our society should treat with more sympathy and less shame. In my opinion, then, this show has some messages which could be significant, and so I should be allowed to enjoy it. Yeah. I shouldn't have to justify this to myself.
*CHUNG CHUNG*
We begin with a brief 'Previously on Law & Order' section. It lasts about a minute and a half, and usually that would annoy me but this had dramatic atmospheric music and it didn't include any boring or unnecessary clips, so I thought it was good. Right. Let's get on with it. I'm pretty sure this is an extra-long pilot episode - one hour split into two parts - so be prepared for that.
I'm kind of pissed at the Michael J. Fox Show for ruining this dramatic eye-opening (pun intended) moment.
*one quick Google later*
Lewis, that's the chap. Anyway, Lewis stomps on the floor beside Benson's face and she wakes up suddenly. Her eyes look sort of red and sore and Lewis asks if she's still feeling woozy. As he hauls her up (she seems to be tied to a chair which has fallen over with her, and he's lifting her back to a sitting position) we see a small bowl with several cigarettes in it on the floor. Does that mean they've been here for some time, or that he's been burning her with them? Once she's sitting, he does some of his trademark creepy flirting (shoving the gun into her crotch, saying she's beautiful, etc) and then takes the duct tape off so she can have... more alcohol? That's just rude. If someone tied me up and got me drunk I'd be incredibly pissed (angry and drunk). He warns her not to scream again, and then rips the tape off. Benson spits in his face. Unfortunately he's so creepy that he doesn't really care. The phone rings, interrupting him before he can force-feed her more alcohol. It's Brian (Dean Winters). He leaves a message.
Olivia (I just keep writing Beckett, it's easier this way) seizes her chance and tries to talk him down, warning him that her boyfriend is a cop and has keys to the apartment. Lewis doesn't believe her and isn't scared. He starts making a phone call (who to?) but continues having a really long conversation with Olivia. I have no idea why whoever he's calling is waiting so long before picking up. Lewis mentions Rollins, reminding everyone that he seemed to have a creepy thing for her last season before he suddenly and for no apparent reason transferred his affections onto Olivia. She continues to try and talk him down, but he doesn't believe it will work. He pinches her chest (no, not that part of her chest - her upper chest) where he's burnt her, although we can't see the marks. It hurts. She reminds him that he's very good at getting away with things (I don't know if that's such a good move...) and he seems to have given up on the phone call now. No, wait, the phone is back! It's Brian's message, and Lewis plays it to Olivia. Brian has to work late and he won't come over until... tomorrow? He didn't make it clear, but Lewis is triumphant and Olivia is sort of in despair. It makes me think that there should be some kind of system you set up if you have no family to check in on you. There should be someone you text every two or three hours or so and they should call and check in if you don't check in and yeah. I may patent this. I think I'll call it Neighbourhood Text.
I guess this is what you'd call a 'defiant attitude'.
In spite of the guy's sociopathicness and the gun pointed at her head, Olivia is still remarkably brazen in the face of danger. Good for her! Now she's threatening him with the entire police department chasing him down. He doesn't care. Then he hits her in the face with the gun aaaand cue title credits! In case you were wondering, they're more-or-less the same only everyone is in different outfits at the end and Mariska Hargitay has cut her hair again. Are you thrilled by these developments? Me neither. Moving on.
In the precinct, everyone is wandering around casually doing their jobs. It's a stark contrast, which was probably the point. Amaro (Danny Pino) has to pay for coffee even though he doesn't drink it (haha, sucker) and Brian turns up with flowers. It's around now that they begin to realise that no one has seen Olivia since yesterday evening and they sort of start to wonder. Cragen (Dann Florek) sends Rollins (Kelli Giddish) and Fin (Ice-T) out to her apartment to... what... drop in unnanounced and check on her? I know she's in trouble right now, but doesn't that seem like a little bit of overkill? I mean they don't know she's in trouble. Also, yay, Rollins! I like Rollins. Oh and Munch (Richard Belzer) was hanging around too, so that's all the gang. In the hallway outside Benson's apartment, Fin and Rollins quickly realise something is wrong - there's mail hanging around outside and according to Fin it's been thirty-five hours... youch. They knock on the door, look more and more worried, and then abrupt scene change!
Inside Olivia's apartment (damn it, did they bust the door down? I want to know!) everyone is sure that Lewis is behind this. Olivia's hair and blood are all over the place (well hair I could understand, it is her apartment after all) and Fin finds keys on the stove that smell like burnt flesh. Mmm. Everyone looks suitably sickened. Rollins gets an alert that they've tracked Olivia's mobile (or cellphone) and it's in the halfway house where Lewis used to live. Fin and Amaro go there and beat up Lewis' roommate until they a) find the phone buried in a pile of coats (long story) and b) the roommate tells them that Lewis was going to go and meet up with his lawyer. He took the roommate's car. Rollins bursts into the courtroom like a pro to drag the lawyer out of her arraignment and question her.
Better come quietly. I'm seriously this close to pulling a Nick Amaro and punching you in the face.
The annoying lawyer still thinks that Lewis is innocent (we try not to blame her, because sociopaths are notoriously difficult to spot, but seriously. Why is she so dumb?) but through some supreme talking skills, Rollins and Cragen manage to weasel their various locations the day before out of her. She mentions that they stopped at her parents' house, and her parents aren't home. It's in Bellport, or Belport, but I don't know where that is. The police obviously do, because 'Suffolk Police' cars pull up in front of the house and they spot the car that Lewis stole. Fin checks the boot (or trunk) while the rest charge into the house. Quietly. It's a quiet charge. The house is pretty quiet too, and Rollins spots a dead guy on the floor. He's old and his walker is next to him, but he's been duct-taped and has a... tennis ball in his mouth? This is a hard way for annoying lawyer to learn that her boyfriend's a sociopath, because I think that's her dad. His body is cold, so he's been dead for a while. In the boot (or trunk) of the car, Fin finds a bedsheet, a lot of blood and Olivia's necklace which she left for them. So she was still alive. Good to know!
Lewis has taken the car from the garage, so Cragen suggests calling the annoying lawyer and finding out what car her parents drive. Inside the house, Rollins and Nick are busting into the bedroom. There are ropes and stuff, so they figure Lewis stayed there for a while. Rollins opens the cupboard (or closet) and there's a dead elderly lady hanging there in her bra. No, wait... she's alive. They lift her down (she was hanging by her hands) - or, rather, Amaro lifts her down in a pretty awesome macho moment. She's rushed to hospital in an ambulance (well duh, sorry for stating the obvious) and Rollins goes with. The woman is horrified that her daughter's boyfriend is a psycho and mentions that there was a woman in the room (aka Olivia). Lewis made Olivia watch while he raped the woman, and any time she tried to close her eyes he burnt the woman. This guy is seriously screwed up. The woman says that Olivia passed out, and she thinks she was still alive - but then the woman herself passes out and the annoying paramedics won't let Rollins question her anymore (okay, okay, they're just doing their jobs. It's still annoying).
Back at the precinct, Brian is freaking out and Munch is trying to calm him down. He says Olivia is a survivor. I think that being alive isn't much cop if you spend the rest of your life traumatised, but sure. She's a survivor. In fact she's handcuffed inside the backseat of a car, because we're back with her and Lewis. Lewis brought shopping. He got a bunch of creepy stuff from a hardware store, oh joy. He pours vodka down Benson's throat, then gives her a sip of water (she's thirsty) but pours the rest away and for some reason shoves the empty bottle down her shirt. That's just weird. He keeps calling her terms of endearment, which makes it all the more creepy (which is obviously the point) and then he kisses her through the duct tape. I don't get it. How does that even work?
I seriously hope I get to kill you at some point in the next 67 minutes.
Back at the precinct, Munch and Rollins have been going over Lewis' MO. He's usually pretty consistent in certain details - the hardware store stuff (WTF does he want with a soldering iron?!) and taking people to a quiet, solitary location somewhere. He doesn't always let them live. Rollins mentions that he wanted to take his lawyer girlfriend to the beach, and Brian unhelpfully points out how many beaches there are on Long Island and then throws a temper tantrum instead of doing something useful.
Olivia and Lewis are driving through the night. Lewis is listening to a ridiculously cheerful song and singing along, which is possibly the worst torture yet. Benson is lying on the floor in the back mostly covered by a tarpaulin. Suddenly sirens flash behind Lewis. The car is getting pulled over! Olivia looks hopeful, but I'm not because I know that there's no way she's going to be rescued eighteen minutes in. Lewis threatens to kill the officer, who he says is young, if Olivia moves. At first, it seems like Lewis will be able to pull it off (he went through a flashing red light, which is why he was pulled over) but the cop starts to get suspicious after spotting the vodka bottles on the front seat. He questions the tarpaulin in the back and then Lewis grabs him, yanks him in through the window and blows his brains out. (Wasn't that descriptive of me? But seriously, it was the only phrase that fit.)
The next morning, the detectives are on the scene. Lewis stole the gun and badge of the officer he killed, used the squad car to pull over a mother in a white minivan and then locked her and her baby in the squad car while he drove off. They get a BOLO out on the minivan but Cragen thinks he'll ditch it as soon as he can. They're searching anywhere and everywhere nearby but so far they've found nothing.
At least we know they're putting a lot of effort into it, right?
Lewis and his white minivan find a house with a bunch of letters in the box. The door... seems to be open? Because he walks right in, dragging Olivia, and throws her on the bed. He wants to get rid of the car but says it won't take him long. Olivia communicates through whimpers and longing gestures that she needs the toilet, which is in the next room. Lewis says she can go, but she seems to be lacking the strength even to get off the bed. He offers to help her. Urgh, please don't. People helping you go to the toilet is THE WORST. I'm so serious. Hospital taught me that. It sucks. Olivia doesn't really have much choice, though, because she's probably as drugged as I was at the time, so Lewis hauls her to her feet and puts a gun under her chin. Is he trying to scare her into peeing her pants? Rude. She doesn't, anyway, and he shoves her towards the toilet but the screen goes mercifully blank. Good. I don't think she needed an extra several million people watching that particular humiliation.
At the hardware store which Lewis visited last night, Fin and Amaro are questioning the guy behind the counter. He says that Lewis bought a tarp, some rope and a handheld blowtorch. Well, at least it's not a soldering iron. Amaro and Fin are angry that the guy didn't spot Lewis for what he was (hey, people don't just automatically assume that everyone buying rope is a kidnapper psychopath, okay?) and storm out.
Meanwhile, Olivia is trying to escape (even though she's cuffed to the bed). It's highly ineffective (mostly because she's cuffed to the bed) and when Lewis gets back he's kind of angry. He's also excited, though, because it's an actual iron-framed bed and he plots out where he's going to tie her hands and feet. It's lucky she's tall, because I don't think my feet would stretch all the way down to the end of that bed. How embarrassing. Isn't there some Greek myth about a guy who used to stretch people to fit on his beds? Or chop off their limbs if they were too tall? ANYWAY. Getting off topic. Lewis asks if Olivia wants him to cut or burn her clothes off. I'd go for cut. Olivia doesn't say anything, but Lewis starts looking for scissors anyway. He can't find any, but he does find a... claw? Hook? Can opener? Hoofpick? I really have no idea what that is.
Neither do I, but it doesn't look fun.
Lewis tries some really bad psychological manipulation but Olivia isn't impressed. She turns the tables on him and starts flirting. It almost seems like it's going to work and Lewis will take the cuffs off, but then it doesn't work. He threatens to kill Olivia again and she says that she wants to live and she'll do anything. Is it wrong that I want her to be braver? It's probably too hard to be brave, though. I mean at this point it's been, what, nearly five days? Anyway, Lewis goes for her pants (rude!) but is interrupted by a knock at the door (yay!). Olivia immediately starts screaming. Quick thinking! Whoever is at the door can't find the key, and they don't seem to hear the screaming either. Lewis is quick to cover Olivia's mouth and threaten her again while telling her to shut up.
When he opens the door, a woman with cleaning equipment and her small daughter are outside. OMG no, run! This is stressful. Lewis speaks Spanish to the little girl (her name is Luisa). He asks her how old she is and how she's doing and she looks scared. She's sensible. Lewis grabs her hand and pulls her and her mother inside (noooooooo!) and closes the curtains. He looks worried. Meanwhile, a man has found a strange van in a driveway and called the police. I don't know if it's his driveway or not, but his daughter's bike is there. He flips out and Amaro and some cops in full gear rush into the house. Quietly. A quiet rush. There's music playing, but the man's daughter and her boyfriend are making out peacefully in a bedroom, so clearly Lewis hasn’t been there. Lucky escape.
Back in the shack (I know it's someone's house, but it looks very shack-like) Lewis tells Olivia that the maid and her five-year-old daughter have shown up. He hasn't done anything to Luisa... yet. Olivia points out that he has weird tastes in little girls and old ladies, and says that they've been together for four days (man that sucks) and all he's done is talk. I can't tell if she's trying to provoke him into attacking her and not the little girl or just annoying him deliberately. Lewis starts taking off his belt and suddenly Benson yanks the bar she's chained to away from the head of the bed and uses it to beat him up. Awesome! That was seriously fantastic! She hits him a couple of times with the bar, kicks him in the balls and grabs the gun. Then she hesitates. No, damn it, just shoot him! Seriously, shoot him now! Why do people always make this mistake? She hits him in the face with the gun and he passes out. Or does he? Come on, why wouldn't she shoot him? Idiot.
It's a little while later, because Olivia has chained Lewis to the bed. She's hustling the maid and her daughter out of the house, but when the maid offers to call the police she says that she is the police (yeah, but you're injured, drugged, and alone in a house with a psychopath! Are you seriously telling me you don't want back-up?) and then terrifies the woman by saying that if the police find out she is an illegal immigrant they will take away her daughter. So... now the only two people who know where you are aren't going to talk. Nice work, Olivia.
Thank you for saving me, but why are you being so weird?
The maid and her daughter flee in a terrified state of panic (I'm not surprised) and Olivia goes back to stare at Lewis. Call it in, Olivia! No, she decides it's more important to examine her cuts in the mirror first. Then she stares at Lewis again, and then she kicks him. Doesn't she understand that anything she does to him while he's tied to a bed is no longer self-defence? Call the bloody thing in! No, she wants him to suffer first. Maybe she can burn him or cut him. Or use the blowtorch. The blowtorch is burning him, stupid! Call it in! Damn it! (Also, when did he tell her about the blowtorch?) She grabs the blowtorch and makes a terrifying face but then she decides he might enjoy that too much. And then she starts having a tearful rant about how she doesn't know what to do, and how her old partner would know what to do. WTF? Seriously, WTF? Call it in! OMG I know she's drunk but this is a level of sheer stupidity that goes beyond drunken table dancing. She leans in close to Lewis and oh, surprise surprise, he's awake. Hands up if you weren't expecting that. No one? Thought so. Olivia shrieks and pulls the gun on him again. You know what would be a sensible thing to do right now? Call the police. Lewis asks her to shoot him because he can't handle hearing anymore of her sad, self-pitying speech. I almost agree. Why is she complaining that she doesn't know what to do? CALL IT IN OMFG.
Okay, now this is just getting silly. A long conversation ensues about whether or not Olivia and Elliot Stabler ever slept together and whether she still wants to. In what way is this relevant to/driving the plot? Elliot has been gone for two seasons, and seriously any sane person in Olivia's situations would have called the cops by now. It's also selfish of her not to be thinking that she should tell her friends and her boyfriend that she's alive. I mean really, in what way does reminiscing about your completely irrelevant ex-partner beat reuniting with your boyfriend? Then the conversation turns to fathers. Olivia kicks Lewis for mentioning hers (again with the kicking) and then he starts telling her a story about how his father used to have sex with his babysitter, and one day his babysitter sexually molested him and then his father raped her in front of him. It's a plausible origin story for a serial rapist/torturer but really, can't psychopaths ever just be psychopaths? Not all of them have a traumatic backstory, you know. Some people just have problems in their brain. Of course, there's always the possibility that Lewis is making all of this up. According to him, though, it was one of the best days of his life. Olivia meanwhile is sitting in the corner with the gun, doing nothing and letting him psyche her out. Fail. She thinks about killing him again and he encourages her, but then she doesn't. Call the police, Olivia!
Twenty-odd years of police training and I still don't know what I'm meant to do in this situation!
Lewis thinks that Olivia doesn't have the balls to kill him. Well obviously she doesn't have balls. She's a woman. That's a stupid, sexist, out-dated phrase anyway, and besides, balls don't make you stronger - they hurt if someone hits you there. Obviously it cuts Olivia deep, though (she secretly always wanted testicles? I dunno) because she picks up the metal rod from the bed and starts beating him. While screaming. This is seriously going to help his 'police vendetta and brutality' case in court. There's a tremendous crushing sound so I assume she broke his skull. That's the end of him.
Next second, Amaro is there, helping Olivia out of the house. So... I guess she finally called them, eh? That entire conversation seemed ridiculous and silly, as though it was only invented to give her some extra reasons to be mentally unstable in the rest of the series. 'Oh, being kidnapped and attacked isn't enough,' thought the writers. 'We'd better have her beat someone to death with a metal rod as well.' Whatever. According to Fin, Lewis isn't even dead. Way to epically screw everything up, Olivia. New scene, and I think we're back at the precinct. Someone is taking Olivia's statement (or something) and oh, apparently Lewis tried to escape, got to a standing position and lunged at her, which is why she attacked him with the rod. Nice try. She doesn't have a convincing argument for why she used the rod instead of the gun, though. I'm starting to wonder if she's just as sociopathic as Lewis, because I don't think I could beat someone to almost-death and then calmly lie about it. Cragen suggests she takes mandatory leave, and she agrees. She wants to go to Brian's house. As Olivia and Brian walk out of the precinct, everyone stares blankly at her in the least enthusiastic reunion I've ever seen.
We can't help it. We've all been turned into emotionless zombies.
At Brian's, Olivia cuts her hair. Then she goes to a psychiatrist where she confesses what she did and how Lewis kept taunting her. Aren't psychiatrists supposed to report cops if their behaviour is failing so epically? The psychiatrist says it wasn't her fault. Ohh, I think it was. She should have called it in! Back at her apartment, it's a mess. Olivia has a brief flashback to Lewis pouring alcohol on her head and knocking her and her chair over. Brian is trying to be helpful, but she's not particularly grateful. Some more scenes flash by - they're sort of in short bursts now. It's a montage. Olivia is learning kickboxing and talking to her psychiatrist about the first time in the apartment. It didn't go well. She mentions how she feels she is better off than the man's other victims because she wasn't raped and they were. The psychiatrist says that's not true, because abuse is abuse and it's different for everyone but still just as bad. I agree with the psychiatrist on this one. Olivia wants to go back to work, but the psychiatrist thinks she shouldn't. She's not scared of her job, she's just scared of walking back into the squadroom/precinct and having everyone look at her and wonder if she's okay. Since they all seem to be thoroughly zombified, I'm sure that won't be a problem. They have no brains left to wonder with.
Okay, maybe that was a little bit unfair, because they all seem happy to see her when she does return to work. Yay! Their emotions have been replaced! There are flowers and welcome balloons on Olivia's desk. She wants a cake. I do too. Cake is tasty and delicious. This feels like the spot where the first episode would end and the second would begin, so I think for the sake of your sanity, so that you're not trapped on this page too long (believe me, it's already making me feel stuck) I will transfer the next part into a second episode recap. Everyone cool with that? Yes? Good. This was a pretty confronting episode, so go and hug babies or something cheerful. I'm going to watch a five-year-old in her school concert. You should all do something equally fun, and then on to the next episode!