Law & Order: SVU (4/10/2007) - Shallow Cover

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The show opens with Detective Elliot Stabler on the witness stand for a (GASP!) rape trial. A woman was brutally beaten and raped and all the evidence hinges on some DNA found on a piece of gum found at the crime scene. They didn’t give details, but I am guessing that 9 out of 10 rapists prefer the flavor of Hubba Bubba to Juicy Fruit. The defense attorney insinuates that Detective Olivia Benson, who had arrested the defendant five years earlier, may have planted the DNA. When he calls Detective Benson to the stand, everyone realizes she is not there. In the judge’s chambers, Casey Novack battles it out with the defense attorney over his suggestion that Detective Benson would break police protocol and the judge gives her a one week recess to bring Olivia to the stand to testify. So, for the rest of the episode, as we watch Olivia break police protocol, we all hope that she can hurry up doing it so that she will make it back to testify and put this rapist behind bars. Unless she did, in fact, plant evidence, in which case we all hope that she puts this maybe-maybe not rapist behind bars.

As Olivia Benson’s whereabouts begin to rival those of Carmen Sandiego, the suspense is finally alleviated when we find her with a group of Oregon Tree-Huggers protesting in front of a forest. If I know Olivia, then she is probably trying to rape-kit an endangered spotted-owl. But, alas, I am wrong, and we see that she is trying to save the forest from whatever evil corporation is threatening it this week. The cops try to disperse the crowd and start to get physical with some of the protesters. When a particularly rough cop clubs a fellow Grateful Dead Fan, Olivia steps in and gets a nightstick to the head. She wakes up in a county hospital and finds that she has been arrested for assaulting an officer. The fact that she doesn’t flash her badge and demand to be arrested for assaulting a co-worker tells us that she must be working undercover. She speaks to her Public Pretender and finally walks out of jail only to be stopped by the Captain of the Podunk Police Department. The head of the pharmaceutical company that Olivia’s group was protesting was found murdered.

During her interrogation, Olivia finally gets to feel what it is like to be on the other side of the table. Of course, she can’t abandon her cop instincts and quickly points out that the crime scene photos detail a sex crime. The victim, Carl Dunford, had his sex organ cut off. By "sex organ", I mean his dick and probably his balls too, but they didn’t really specify. Luckily, I’ve got a very vivid imagination.

We finally find out that Olivia Benson is indeed undercover when we see her meet up with her case agent for the FBI. They meet in a diner and she is still wearing her "Nirvana Fan Circa 1992" outfit and he is dressed…well, like an FBI Agent. The Fed tells her to ignore the murder and to concentrate on what she is supposed to be investigating, an eco-terrorist who has been committing arson. Eco-Terrorist? Wow, demonizing environmental groups doesn’t take that much creativity after all. Olivia Benson begins immediately violating police protocol and calls Fin to get all the details she can on Carl Dunford. Fin tells her that Carl Dunford doesn’t have a record and so she goes to Fitzmore Pharmaceuticals to try and learn more about him. The only thing she really finds out is that he is very close to his mother and so she goes to interrogate her.

Before she can even talk to the victim’s mother, she is stopped by the same cop that brained her with the nightstick the night before at the protest. He tells her to immediately stay out of the investigation or he will arrest her for interfering with police business. She ignores police protocol and goes to the Dunford Residence. Someone has beaten her to the punch and already broken in, and so Olivia follows them. She finds an old lady gathering up magazines and videos. The woman identifies herself as Dunford’s ex-wife and she is just there to gather up the kiddie movies and child clothing catalogs from her ex-husband’s house so that he isn’t exposed as a pedophile. She is desperate and claims to only be protecting his image to spare her daughter the shame. Olivia tells her that she must go to the police with this information and the ex-Mrs. Dunford realizes that Olivia isn’t a cop. This is very comforting to the victim’s ex because she is able to stroll out of the house without any worry about her cover-up.

Meanwhile, Casey Novak is back in New York and is desperately trying to get someone to pull Olivia Benson out of undercover for a day so that she can testify at the trial of alleged rapist. The victim in this case is going crazy and refuses to talk to a counselor. She tells Casey that if the man isn’t convicted then she may kill herself. That would be a real win-win situation for the defendant and Casey hates that.

Detective Olivia Benson resumes ignoring her real assignment by the FBI and continues to break police protocol by showing up to an open house that is being hosted by the realtor ex-wife of Carl Dunford. Detective Benson really pours on the heat and finally cracks her. She admits that she caught her husband molesting the 12-year-old babysitter years ago. She never went to the police because she was too ashamed and she got a divorce and full custody of her daughter. Now, are you in the market for a new home? Because this one is really hot and the sellers are very motivated. She probably didn’t tell the cops that her husband was molesting the babysitter because she wanted those fat Fitzmore Pharmaceutical checks to keep up the rate of alimony and, plus, it is so hard to find a good babysitter.

Olivia tracks down the old babysitter and she has got Sexual Abuse Victim practically stamped across her forehead. She’s got a filthy apartment full of crying babies, she smokes a Marlboro Red 100, and she refers to Carl Dunford as her "ex-boyfriend". I’ve seen this type before, hell, I’ve dated this type before and for all of their unhealthy behavior and self-destructive impulses we must remember that their only real "crime" was being a young, innocent, vulnerable little girl…who probably dressed to slutty and had the habit of "asking for it" with her eyes. The babysitter tells Olivia that after the divorce Carl would take her to a special room underneath the garage.

Guess what Olivia does next? Break police protocol and break in to the Dunford Residence again? You know it. When Olivia discovers the hidden room under the garage, she calls the police. Captain Podunk shows up and takes notes from Olivia’s crime scene analysis.

The local cops and an FBI Agent hold a press conference to reveal that they have found this underground sex chamber along with a set of fingerprints that belong to Brittany Dunlap. Brittany Dunlap had been missing for 7 years and now they feel that she may be alive and is probably in some way or another responsible for the death of Carl Dunford. The cops detain Olivia at the press conference and drag her down to the station again. She is surprised when her FBI Case Agent shows up and calls her by her real name and outs her as a cop. Please, Olivia, if you are a guy who wears mesh shirts, dances to remixes of Justin Timberlake songs and frequently tries to convince your friends that Barbara Streisand is the best female vocalist of all time then you cannot claim that anyone outed you as being gay. Olivia Benson made it clear to even the dumbest of Police Captains that she was a cop and so the FBI released her from undercover duty. Turns out the Eco-Terrorist that Olivia was supposed to be tracking down wasn’t part of the group that she was infiltrating. She got lucky there because we haven’t even seen any of this group since the protest and I don’t think Olivia had either.

Released from her duty as an undercover officer, Olivia can’t get the scent of Unsolved Sex Crime out of her nose. Hmmm…I think I may have stumbled upon a new scent for the makers of Axe Body Spray. The Fed decides to let Olivia come aboard and so she happily joins the case formally.

The FBI gets a tip that a trucker picked up a young hitchhiker and dropped her off in Butteville, the town that Brittany Dunlap was raised. No plans were issued to investigate the trucker himself but I would find a trucker who picks up a teenage hitchhiker and doesn’t rape her to be very suspect…of what, I do not know, but there is just something strange about that. They finally track Nell Brittany Dunlap down to a hidden fort in the woods. She is utterly looney. This is not the "my stepdad touched me" stripper psychosis that we are all too familiar with, but rather the "I can only mumble vowel sounds because of I have been locked under a garage getting raped by an old creep for seven years" type crazy. Brittany finally calms down and confesses to Olivia that she killed Carl Dunford and de-wanged him because he asked her to help him find a new girl since she was getting too old for his tastes. She killed him because he was losing interest in her. Damn.

Before Olivia has the chance to celebrate her "Queen of the Molested" title she gets an urgent notice from New York explaining the need for her to testify. Olivia makes it to court just in the nick of time to save Casey Novack’s case and prosecute the rapist. Her testimony is key to proving that she would never, ever, ever break police protocol. Bi-coastal Rape Busting is Olivia’s newest addition to her resume. Of course, if she keeps ignoring every superior she has then she may need that resume sooner than she thinks.