Law & Order: SVU - Avatar (Epsiode 902)

There is a shirtless guy on top of a screaming girl. He rips her shirt off as she screams in a shrill voice, "STOP!!" He keeps going, but tries to cover her mouth with his hand roughly. She finally gets an arm free and smashes him in the face with a water glass perched on the nightstand. The shards of broken glass cut deep and while the man is temporarily stunned, the girl takes her chance and runs to another room and slams the door. As she frantically dials for help, the man's yelling can be heard through the barricaded door.

OK, I thought this was Law & Order: SVU. So, why is the episode starting with a vanilla scene of consensual sex? I mean, ripping clothes, shards of glass, blood everywhere, someone calling the cops...YAWN...this is what I consider to be just regular old Tuesday sex. The detectives of SVU disagree with me and apparently this young woman was raped by her sister's boyfriend.

Or was she? Turns out, the boy has a "condition" that makes him rape girls in his sleep. Sexsomnia doesn't sound real to me, but it gets this guy off in more ways than one. Perhaps, the more interesting fact is that the sleep-fucking beau's girlfriend is missing without a trace. No, she isn't missing that television show--she is literally missing. Poor Dad is really pissed when he finds out that his younger daughter was raped by Rip Van Winkle and won't be charged and his older daughter has apparently been kidnapped. What is there to do when you feel a major injustice has been done? Call a press conference. Dad offers the $50K he was saving to help his missing daughter and her Sexsonmniac boyfried buy a house as a reward. As usual, the detectives get calls from every wacko in New York, but a promising lead somehow develops.

Meet Ginger Mason. Ginger explains to Detectives Lake and Benson that she met the missing girl, Rachel, on an online gaming world called Another Universe. She proudly shows the detectives that in this game, each user creates an avatar and is free to live a virtual life online. For Ginger and Rachel, the game was Sims: Slut Edition. Their avatars were 14-year-old prostitutes who ran a sex club where they stripped and performed sex acts. A screen shot shows one of the girls giving a lap dance to a middle-aged bald avatar. OK, so does that mean that someone who could recreate themselves in a virtual universe and do anything they wanted, created a fat, balding avatar that has to pay for sex? Now, what happens in the real world is all fair game and I am not ashamed to admit that I have been known to associate with "professionals," but your internal loser alarm has got to be blaring when you are paying for sex in a fantasy. It's like going to a party at the Playboy mansion and spending the night locked in a room reading Playboy magazine. Benson believes that perhaps one of Rachel's online fans wanted a piece of the real thing and tracked her down in the real world.

Benson and Lake try to explain this all to Cragen but his old ass just looks way too confused. Don't get me wrong, I am sure Cragen has a MySpace page with an ironic yet hip indie song playing and a zillion friends, but this avatar nonsense really shows his age, so he just nods and lets Benson go along with her plan of using Mario and Luigi to save the princess from the Rape Castle. Rape Castle? That actually wouldn't be a bad name for a dark lager made in a micro-brewery. Detectives Benson and Stabler pay a visit to the game's creator, Eric Winton. Eric Winton is a well-dressed English bloke and his office is nothing but a bunch of computer screens where he plays God. Eric brings up Rachel's blog (Christ, even fake 14-year-old hookers have these now) and her last entry was a complaint about being stalked by a character named Wit Billions.

Wit Billions looks like you would expect him to look in real life. Fat, white, bald and white collar. His avatar is a medieval executioner, which probably helps him with the ladies. Of course, he has no idea what they are talking about but a search of his place shows the guy owns just about every book ever written about executioners. His computer is clean and he has an iron-clad alibi, so they go back to Eric Winton to see if he has a partner. Sure enough, Wit Millions, the Executioner, hangs out with a geeky looking avatar that they trace to a local bookstore. Detectives Lake and Benson go to the bookstore and breeze right past the owner and arrest the geeky guy in the back who is glued to a computer screen. His name is Nestor and he also claims to have nothing to do with Wit Billions, but when he sees the real-life person, he recognizes him from the bookstore. Nestor casually mentions that his boss, Mr. Cooper, plays the game. A-ha! Mr. Cooper knows the game and has access to Wit Billions' credit card information, since he shops at his store.

The Detectives go back to the bookstore but the computer and Mr. Cooper are gone. A scavenger hunt of clues eventually lead them to his apartment. Hanging on his wall is a picture of a real-life 15-year-old girl that looks exactly like Rachel's avatar. Behind it they find a To-Do list of "1. Buy Drugs 2. Get Cash 3. Call Realtor." Sounds like the making of an awesome party in L.A. They track down the realtor, who takes them to an isolated storage unit. Inside, they find packed suitcases and a tied-up, drugged-up Rachel. Just as they are admiring the cocktail tray full of good chemicals, they hear a car screech and realize that Mr. Cooper just slipped through their fingers. A little research back at the station reveals that Mr. Cooper's real name is Gregory Searle. Gregory did 20 years for kidnapping and possibly killing the young girl whose photograph the detectives found hanging in his apartment.

Rachel is stabilized at the hospital but can barely speak. Or maybe she was retarded before all the drugging due to her online prostituting and nightly raping sessions with her boyfriend. Either way, she tells the cops that she only remembers feeling a slight pinch of a needle and waking up tied up in the bed, being raped while only semi-conscious. It's somewhat ironic that her rape is a lot like her boyfriend's regular sex life. She tells them that the bags were packed because Gregory told her he was taking her to his cabin in the woods.

They arrest Mr. Cooper, or Gregory Searle, at the bus station. He is smug during the interrogation and tries to place the blame back on the geeky kid, Nestor. They press him about his prior record. He immediately gets defensive and claims he rescued his last victim, Lauren. He said that he kept her in a nice cabin in the woods but is smart and swarmy enough to not give up the location of said cabin. Without any evidence, they have to let him go. Rachel dies at the hospital and I don't think Dad invited the boyfriend to the funeral. They have Stabler tail him to make sure he doesn't get too far and they realize the only way they can get him is to find his former victim's body. How the hell do they find a lone cabin in the woods? Well...is it too much of a stretch to assume that since Gregory is clearly obsessed with Lauren that he would recreate her in his fantasy land and that he would keep her in a cabin in the woods that matches exactly with the real location? That it would be so detailed that it could be cross referenced with real topographical maps of New York state and give an exact pinpoint location? Um, not in TV it isn't. I guess not. Well, shit, the guy is into avatars and he's obsessed so, oh what the hell, we will let this one slide.

Detectives Fin and Lake show up at the cabin to begin searching for a corpse that has been rotting for 25 years and find Lauren alive and breathing and looking as crazy as one might expect. Meanwhile, Gregory is about to hop a plane but Stabler arrests him for jay-walking and drags his ass back to the station. This is why you have to love Stabler. He doesn't care about rules or "civil rights" when he has a job to do. Woe to any criminal that has Stabler sicced onto them.

Without any other hopes of getting a confession or pinning Rachel's kidnapping, rape, now murder, on him they decide to try to use Lauren against him. She is still in love with him after waiting at the cabin like a good little girl for 25 years. Yep, girls are crazy. I can't go out of town for a three day weekend without my "girlfriend" cheating on me with some dirtbag who waits tables at Denny's, but this psycho, kidnapping child molester has a girl that will wait for 25 years. Damn. When she enters the interrogation room Gregory looks spooked for the first time since his arrest. While she cries and tells him that she missed him and loved him the only thing he can bring himself to say is "What happened to you? You look so old." Whoops. She might have waited 25 years but you never, ever, ever tell a woman that she looks old. She yells at him and tells him that she knows what he did with Rachel. He gets caught up in the argument and confesses to it and, even though he is now going to prison, looks relieved to just get her out of the room. Case closed.

Yes, another week into the new season and new recaps. I don't know about you, but it's getting late and I am exhausted from watching and writing about this show. I think I am just going to throw on my ninja pajamas, pop a few Ambien, maybe have a glass of bourbon, and go sleep somewhere that there may be a hot young thing that I can sleep-saunter over to and then claim that I have a "condition." Sleep tight.