Law & Order: SVU - "Blinded" (Episode 190)

A cop condescendingly listens to an old lady reporting a car with a voice coming from the trunk. It isn't until he verifies her story with an immigrant hot dog vendor that he realizes she may have been revealing the whereabouts of Sabrina Farmer, a missing 11 year-old girl. The car was towed so the detectives from SUV go the impound and take turns busting up cars to find the missing girl. They are finally able to find the girl locked in the wheel of an Impala and they get her to the hospital just in time to save her life. The doctor reports that she has a serious concussion and she was raped.

Detective Lake traced the Impala to a Saul Picard a Louisiana native who just signed a one month lease at a condo in Manhattan. Detectives Benson and Stabler go to his condo to question him. He has a thick cajun accent and looks like a rat. There is an awkward moment when Stabler thinks he has met him before but it is quickly shaken off. Saul states that he returned the rental car the day before. The Rental Company, Escape Rent A Car, verified that he did return the car but the car was stolen shortly after.

The detectives finally get a breakthrough when the crime lab finds a particular pollen on the rock that was used to smash Sabrina's face that can only be found in a particular part of.....you guessed it....Louisiana. It's sad that the Katrina riff-raff was able to make it past Texas and now are polluting New York as well. Look people, I am really sorry that your ghetto was destroyed but do you mind not fucking up Manhattan?

Stabler and Benson go back to his condo and it is abandoned and clean. The rental car company tells them that they gave him another car. They run his name through the federal database and nothing comes up. Suddenly, they get a call that Sabrina is awake. Olivia does that thing that she does so well and interviews the victim. Sabrina tells her that Saul approached her in the bookstore and told her she was in danger. He then took her to a park where he called her "Francine". Oooh...nothing is more embarrassing than calling the 11 year-old girl that you are with by the name of the 11 year-old girl you wish you were with. Ready for more good news? Stabler gets a call that another girl has gone missing. Maybe it's this Francine girl that Saul can't stop talking about?

The newest girl on the missing preteen circuit is Eva Holland. Eva was abducted from a bookstore while her mom was busy shopping and being a bad mother in the store next door. Stabler inspects the area where Eva was taken and realizes that he had seen Saul before, on the back of a book jacket. Saul Picard is a children's book author which is just one more reason not to trust those creeps. His book is called "Secret of the Arch" and the detectives gamble that he took her to the Arch at Grand Army Plaza.

Benson and Stabler find Saul sleeping in the front seat with Eva sleeping in the back seat. Stabler puts Saul in cuffs but Saul won't stop babbling like Rain Man missing an episode of The People's Court. Saul notices a sign on the side of a truck that states "Winter is Coming...Time to Escape" and throws a headbutt into Stabler that would make any WWF wrestler proud. Stabler hits his head against the back window of the squad car and drops like a ton of bricks while Saul scampers off. Elliot wakes up in the hospital blinded with his two bitches, the wife and Olivia. The doctor reports that his brain bounced off of his skull and his vision was damaged because of it. Don't worry, it isn't permanent but it still launches Olivia into a panicked rage at the thought of her secret crush-partner being hurt.

A couple of doors down from Stabler's hospital room is Saul's. An FBI agent is there to get a DNA sample and to steal the case away from SVU after they had done all the hard work and paid with Stabler's sight. The Feds claim they have jurisdiction because Saul had kidnapped a girl from Mississippi and crossed state lines to take her back to Louisiana where he raped her and left her for dead. Assistant District Attorney Casey Novak is pissed because she wants the case and believes that the feds are taking him back to Louisiana because it is a capital crime to rape someone under the age of eleven in that state. In a strange legal tactic, Casey convinces Picard's defense attorney to fight the extradition to Louisiana.

Dr. Huang interviews Picard to determine if he has any mental issues aside from taking pleasure in raping and bludgeoning preteen girls. Saul tells a story about when he was 17 he walked in on his 11 year-old sister, Francine, being gang raped by his schoolmates. He froze and was unable to act. This triggered his first psychotic episode. He took medicine to treat it but it stopped working after Francine died and so he, logically, stopped taking it. Then he began receiving messages from Francine and kept seeing her in bookstores surrounded by the boys that raped her. I suppose that this somehow manifested itself in his schizophrenic brain to track down young girls in bookstores and kidnap and rape them. Ok....so he's not a pedophile but he is a schizophrenic, and I am sure that this is a huge relief to all the young girls he raped. Dr. Huang tells Casey that he belongs in a mental health facility and not a prison.

Casey informs Saul Picard that Louisiana wants to extradite him to Louisiana so that they can execute him. Picard is now back on his medication and is "normal". Picard asks to be sent to Louisiana because he wants to die for his actions. Wow, look at that, me and the child rapist are actually seeing eye to eye on something. Casey looks reluctant at this news and I fear another SVU political crusade coming...

Casey wants to try Picard but his attorney argues that he is clearly crazy. The defense attorney argues that Casey knows he is mentally incompetent and the only way to prevent extradition is to have the court declare him so. Casey is now in a very tough situation because she can either have him sent to Louisiana to stand trial and be sentenced to death or throw the hearing so that he is declared mentally incompetent and have him sent to a state looney bin instead of a real prison. The ideological debate is played out in the squad room. Chester Lake argues that capital punishment does nothing to prevent crime and that if Picard is truly sick than he is not responsible for his crimes. Olivia argues that executing a convicted rapist is a sure shot to guarantee that he won't harm another child. Fin just wants to smoke his ass, fool. Casey remains silent but insists that she will go to court and will need to call Stabler to the stand.

During the trial Casey emphasizes Picard's attack on Stabler. The highlight of the show is when the recovering Stabler is forced to put on old-lady spectacles in order to identify Picard as his attacker. Then she does it. She leads the questions so that Stabler is forced to admit that Picard was an "emotionally disturbed person" and Picard let's loose a crazy tirade to emphasize the point. The judge declares a mistrial and SVU is pissed at Casey for getting the mental incompetency granted to Saul. The anger towards Casey manifests in a near cat-fight between her and Benson. Unfortunately, no shirts were ripped and no hair was pulled but Casey accuses Benson of leaking the arrest to the feds to get revenge for Picard's attack on Stabler and Benson accuses Casey of crusading on behalf of her ex-crazy boyfriend. Kick her ass! District Attorney McCoy threatens to fire Novak and have her disbarred. He has a report of Casey covering up a disturbance call when her schizo ex-finance attacked her. Casey finally joins the ranks of the rest of the SVU detectives of abusing their power to cover up crimes that are close to home. By the end of it though, Casey and Benson make up and share stories and braid each other's hair while eating ice cream and revealing which boys they think are cute.

Saul Picard is sentenced to a looney bin. Casey visits him after he tries to commit suicide and tells him that he may live long enough to forgive himself. Oh, and in case you are wondering, her ex-finance was clipped by a cab awhile back and died at the scene. This does a little to satisfy my bloodlust but it seems to me that the wrong crazy person died in this episode. Sure, her ex-finance beat her but that is pretty tame compared to the crimes of Saul Picard.

Take your Prozac weirdos, I have a feeling Olivia was driving that cab.