Law & Order: SVU - "Fight" (Episode 191)

Two boy scouts are wandering through the woods when, hey, awesome, they just earned their "Find A Dead Underage Rape Victim" Badge. They can have their moms sew it on their sashes next to their "Dispose of Dirty Needles" and "Spot the Pedophile Priest" badges. The victim is Julie Donovan. She has had her lips ripped off and she is covered in bruises. Doctor Melinda Warner reports there is semen inside her and detectives Fin and Lake find a red baseball hat with the letter C next to her and a busted cell phone.

Detectives Fin and Lake bring Julie's father in to ID the body. They learn that the father isn't fond of her "Hip-Hop" (i.e. black) friends. The dad freaked out when they pulled back the sheet and displayed his little girl all dead looking with no lips. The DNA from the spunk found inside of Julie show traits of homoeroticism, napoleanism, and contained traces of Axe body spray so the detectives realized that it must have belonged to a UFC-type fighter. Sho nuff, Mike Kona is a professional mixed-martial arts fighter and has a rap sheet with two burglaries and a dropped rape charge. Captain Cragen wonders whatever happened to the good ol' days when white guys would box and people would take it seriously but Chester Lake steals the moment when he Googles himself and shows off a picture of him when he was an amateur fighter. This is just one of the details of the Chester Lake saga that we learn tonight. He gives the standard "I was going to go pro but I hurt my knee" speech that I have heard a million times and that I once used myself when explaining to my grandparents why I didn't go to law school.

Detectives Lake and Fin apprehend Kona after he wins a bout against some other dumb animal. Kona, played by real life UFC star Forrest Griffin, denies ever raping Julie. Detective Fin interviews Kona's girlfriend, played by Ice-T's wife Coco-T, who also happens to be the "victim" of the rape charge that was dropped. She claims that she wasn't raped but the nosy neighbors at the hotel called the police because she is a "Screamer". I bet she is. In case you aren't familiar with Coco, she has a body like one of those jumping castles that people rent out for children's birthday parties. It's all firm but bouncey, all tits and ass, and looks like it could handle it if you went ahead and left your shoes on while you jumped on it. Ice-T never breaks character but his eyes and smirk are just screaming, "Yeah, that's right, I own that shit". She is clearly in this relationship with Kona for the money and admits that she has a spy camera in their apartment in case she ever needs to divorce him and keep the house. It's interesting because I don't think it is possible to leave Coco, I think you just get assimilated into her tits and she gets her super-duper Gold Digger powers from your life force. Ice-T is a hustler.

The spy camera from the apartment shows Kona having sex with Julie and also shows him throw a decent right cross to her jaw (but she was laying down and not protecting herself with the butterfly guard like most of his opponents). As the detectives press on with their interrogation, Kona's attorney walks in with surveillance camera tapes and other evidence showing that Kona couldn't have done it. Just as Kona is walking out a free man he gets shot by Julie's father. Too bad Kona didn't do it.

The DNA from the red hat found at the crime scene is matched to a kid with a juvenile record named Jadon Odami, and in case the name doesn't give it away he is black. They also were able to recover video from the busted cell phone that shows Julie getting all Dirty Dancing meets Harlem Nights on it with two black guys at a Frat Party. This can only mean that Julie owned a much better cell phone than I do. Detectives Fin and Lake head over to the Delta Data Rapist fraternity house to see if they can find out who the two young men in red hats were that appear to be dry humping Julie on the dancefloor in the video. The leader of the Frat (vroom vroom) is a tall, skinny, pompous looking white kid. Surprise, surprise. He ID's the two black kids dancing as Jadon and Ezra Odami. They are brothers (as in related) and members of the fraternity. The brothers walk into the house during the interview but realize that with Lake and Fin already inside the minority quota is way over the limit and they haul ass out of there. Chester Lake tries to give chase but Fin plays it cool and just shakes his head at them from the second story window. Say what you want but he is going home to Coco.

The detectives dig into the Odami's brothers' pasts so that they can get a good back-sob-story. The Odami's grew up between abusive foster homes and a junkie mom. They eventually graduated to a prison school for juveniles where they received excellent grades. They were admitted to college and due to Rev. Sharpton's picketing were allowed the privilege of joining a fraternity that proudly displays a confederate flag. That brings us to where we are now with the slow bump-n-grind and dead underage girl. The squad room once again turns into town square where the weekly ideological debate takes place. Chester argues that the state failed the Odami brothers and Stabler replies that maybe if Chester had a family, particularly a daughter, he might worry less about the injustices done to rapists. It's fun to watch Stabler so clearly antagonize Chester. Benson, surprisingly, keeps her mouth mostly shut for once and Fin is still thinking about how Kona's gold-digging hottie girlfriend is now a widow in need of some cheering up.

Fin and Lake track down momma Janelle Odami and find her turning tricks. They arrest her and as soon as they close the holding cell door in walks Jadon to confess to the murder of Julie Donovan. Jadon admits to the murder but refuses to give any details and won't give up the whereabouts of his brother. Fin brings his mom in and she does that junkie move of manipulating her son into cooperating with the police so that they will let her go. She tells him, "Heroin has took me to places that even Jesus won't go". Really? That actually sounds like a ringing endorsement to me because I am sick of this Jesus guy and his fan club being everywhere I go. At Jadon's arraignment he fires his attorney so that he can plea guilty without his legal representation getting in the way.

The detectives aren't satisfied that he acted alone and so they need to find Ezra. They trace the Red C hats to a gang called the "Corner Street Hustlers". Fin and Lake go embarrassingly undercover and learn that the gang was started in Rikers Prison by Jimmy Mac. In order to join the gang you must rape a girl. It actually sounds a lot like the fraternity that the Odami's' belonged to. Jimmy Mac was arrested jumping the turnstile at the subway near where Julie was murdered. Fin and Lake go to apprehend him for questioning when the Prison Bus drops him off but are greeted by gunfire from Ezra Odami. It's pretty obvious from where I am sitting that Ezra was shooting at Jimmy Mac but the cops think he was shooting at them. In the melee Chester apprehends Ezra but Fin chases Jimmy Mac into the back of a garbage truck that crushes him skywalker-style.

Chester becomes convinced that neither of the Odami's murdered Julie and that they were set up by Jimmy Mac who was pissed that they were leaving the gang after being released from prison and accepted to college. In a late night sensitivity session, Chester and Stabler make up for their earlier squabble and Chester reveals that he grew up bouncing between different Foster homes. Wow, the enigma that is Chester Lake is slowly getting clearer. Stabler notices a pregnant girl taking picture of Julie on the recovered video. What is a pregnant girl doing at a Frat party? Fin and Lake desperately interrogate the Odami's and are finally able to convince them that they are on their side. They have seen this mystery girl in the projects. Detectives Fin and Lake go back to momma Janelle Odami's apartment to see if she will lead them to her. She is now clean and sober which is obvious because of her blank expression, Jesus-talk, and the fact that she is 90% less interesting that she used to be. She proudly declares that once she has 90 days clean she will take her sons to Red Lobster. Mom of the fucking year over here folks. However, she does come through with the name of the pregnoid at the party.

Latrice Munoz is a hooker from Jimmy Mac's stable. She opens her mouth as easily as she spreads her legs. She helped Jimmy Mac turn Julie into a ho. Mac had her follow Julie to the party and take pictures of her doing the Odami's. The plan was that she was going to report that they raped her and Mac could use the pictures to blackmail them out of their tuition checks. Julie slept with Ezra but refused to report a false rape so Jimmy Mac took her to the woods and beat her to death. Luckily, Latrice took pictures of the murder as "insurance" against Mac every doing anything to her.

Casey Novak immediately drops the case against Jadon. Somehow, the gun Ezra used to shoot at Jimmy Mac was "lost" during the evidence transportation. Fin sheepishly grins and Cragen just shrugs it off and says "stuff happens". Yeah, like this won't come back to haunt them. Don't these guys remember last season when all of their "stuff happens" incidents damn near got SVU all fired? Shit, that is pretty much how we got stuck with Chester Lake. A two dimensional character running around trying to give himself some depth by claiming he is an ex-foster kid, amateur MMA fighter, cop from brooklyn.

Happy endings on this show? Nope. Lake tells the Odami brothers that he has a big surprise for them outside of the courtroom after they were exonerated of all charges. Fin walks into to Janelle Odami's apartment to find that she has O.D'd and died. Lake's big surprise was going to be a visit from their new "clean and sober" mother but the rookie SVU detective clearly doesn't know a thing about drug addicts who claim to have new lives after being clean for nine days. Lake decides to tell them that his big surprise is that he is taking them to Red Lobster. Whoo-hoo! This will make up for everything especially when they find out that their junkie-whore of a mother is dead.