Law and Order SVU - Hothouse (Episode 1012)

So… yeah.  By now you’ve probably heard that Recapist is shutting down.  Exactly why, however, hasn’t been made abundantly clear to the general populus.  So at the risk of having my recap deleted and/or defiled edited posthaste, let me fill you in. Buzznet, the company that bought Recapist awhile back, has decided it’s not so much into paying its recappers anymore.  But hey, the're cool with the idea of us continuing our contributions to their site - if we’re willing to do it for free.  I’ve very much enjoyed recapping SVU and all my other shows, but… hey Buzznet?  Hells to the no.  A well put together recap takes waaaaaaaaay too much time to do it for free.  So this will be my last SVU recap.  I hope y’all enjoy it.  We start off in classic SVU fashion… a corpse floating its way down the Hudson distracts some fusty seniors from their rather creaky outdoor Tai Chi.  Olivia and Elliot arrive on the scene; the young Jane Doe’s head has been bashed in, and she has puncture wounds to her breastises.  But you ain’t seen nothing yet – the kid’s also got long-term scarring, including some healed cigarette burns.  They do a fancypants carbon dating trick and discover her exact (down to the day!) age (fourteen years twenty days!).  She was dead when she hit the river, ‘cuz there’s no water in her lungs.  Good.  I can’t think of a more disgusting way to die than inhaling skanky syringe-filled Hudson scumwater.  Another schmancy test on her hair reveals that Jane Doe lived in the Ukraine until a few months ago (don’t ask me to explain this test.  It has something to do with water and mineral content.  Or possibly gypsy voodoo magic.).

Elliot and Olivia practically pole vault to the conclusion that Jane Doe was a trafficked sex worker.  They talk to a social worker who specializes in helping escaped sex slaves, whereupon we get to learn all about the vile and repulsive world of human trafficking.  This leads to a Ukranian girl named Veronika, who escaped her traffickers the year before and is terrified they’ll find and kill her.  In exchange for a spot in the witness protection program, Veronika coughs up the cell phone number of the head Ukranian girlie-importer baddie, Alik.  You guessed it.  Time to go undercover again!  Snerk!  You’d think that by this time, every bad guy in the city would recognize Elliot’s and Olivia’s faces, they’ve gone undercover so many times.  I think the most memorable was the one where Olivia was oh-so-inappropriately (since she was like thirty-five) dressed as a raver.  This time it’s better… Olivia gets to be a fur stole-sportin’ madam!  Yee-ay-yuh!  She comes strolling in all suave to meet Alik in a bar, with her “bodyguard” Fin right behind, looking entirely badass in a pair of dark glasses.  Olivia Madame Claudia coolly claims she needs to buy some foreign girls to “service” her clients.  After sizing her up for a long moment, Alik says he just might know some girls who are “looking for work.”  At his den of iniquity, Olivia checks the girls’ teeth and agrees to buy two of them.  “Done deal,” says Alik.  And the cops promptly bust his ass.  He screams “Bitch, you’re dead!” in Olivia’s general direction, whereupon Fin hi-lariously thwacks Alik’s against the wall.  “Oops, sorry ‘bout that!”  Har!  Sure you are, Fin.

Creepy Alik really seems to believe he’s been helping his girls find a better life rather than forcing them into prostitution.  He claims that the Jane Doe isn’t one of his, but that he does know who she is.  Greyleck woodenly strikes a deal: Alik will do his time in the Ukraine, rather than the US, in exchange for Jane Doe’s identity.  It turns out that Jane Doe wasn’t a prostitute – she was famous in the Ukraine for being a young genius.  Elsa Lychkoff had a supremely high IQ and went to Morewood, a boarding school for protégés.  The headmaster of the school practically has an orgasm gushing over how smart Elsa was.  She was born in the US to Ukranian immigrants, and had recently been in the Ukraine on a family trip (hence the hair voodoo).  Students board at Morewood, and Elsa signed herself out for the weekend, which is why she hadn’t been reported missing.  Apparently Elsa was BFFs with her roommate, Jennifer, a chess whiz.  Jennifer says everybody adored Elsa, who was so smart she never had to study for anything and was at the top of the class.  But she would also sneak out at night, “dressed slutty.”  Jennifer shows them Elsa’s illicit duffel ‘o hooker duds.  She also says that Elsa wouldn’t talk about the old scars and burns on her skin. 

Time to break the news to Elsa’s parents.  Pa Lychkoff, a Naziesque dude with a gnarly Eastern European accent, seems more angry than sad over his daughter’s death.  He claims he was the only one who understood her.  Y’know, because he was the only one who was on par intellectually.  Dad has a rather puffed-up version of his own intelligence, here, IMHO.  He talks about how Morewood was the best place to nourish Elsa’s intellect, even though Mom wanted to “coddle” her at home.  For her part, Elsa’s mother looks as miserable as John McCain on election day.  She’s all hangdog-silent and might as well have “MARRIED TO DOUCHEBAG ABUSER” tattooed across her forehead.   Dad claims that he never hurt his kid, even though he’s a chain smoker and she had burns on her arms.  He yells at our heroes to find out who killed his “shining star.”  Back at the precinct, a little research on Pa unearths his shady history: after immigrating, he was fired from several jobs, and is now knee-deep in fraud charges and IRS issues. 

But the family drama just don’t stop!  Here comes Elsa’s older sister Katrina, ready and willing to dish about how her father tortured her and Elsa.  Katrina got kicked out when her dad decided she wasn’t smart enough (even though she had an IQ of 135).  He wanted to focus his tutorly energy on genius Elsa.  While her parents are at the funeral home, Katrina takes Elliot and Olivia to their house, to show them where her father “taught” her and her sister.  Lychkoff kept the basement freezing cold, supposedly to nourish their intellectual growth.  He’d drill them in mathematics, science, and other studies, and if they didn’t answer correctly, would beat or make them kneel on grains of rice – Katrina has truly awful rice-shaped scars on her knees.  Yowtch!  Katrina claims that Morewood paid her father to enroll Elsa, and that she was his ca$h cow when it came to winning science fairs and contests, too.  Let’s put it this way: father of the year, he ain’t. 

Just then Mousey Mom and Evil Dad show up, and he claims they’re trespassing.  Elliot’s all, “trespass this,” and arrests his ass.  At the precinct, Elliot questions mom, who’s an open book about what a creep her husband is.  As she spills the beans about his various misdeeds, Cap’n Cragen is relaying the info to Olivia (who’s interviewing dad in a separate room) via a walkie-talkie and earpiece.  Hee!  How come they haven’t used this technique before?  The result is absolutely priceless – it seems to Evil Dad that Olivia magically knows everything about him.  He admits to beating his daughter, but only to make her succeed!  Olivia needles him about his fake PhD and gambling habit, and accuses him of beating his daughter to death when he found out about her sneaking out of school.  Wherupon Evil Dad starts beating his own head against the wall, screaming “Forgive me, Elsa!”  Dude must have been really throwin’ himself at that wall, ‘cuz he somehow manages to knock himself unconscious. As he’s taken away in an ambulance, Fin discovers that he has an alibi – he was gambling during Elsa’s TOD.  Evil Dad’s a guilt-ridden creep, sure – just not the guilt-ridden creep who killed Elsa. 

Back to the drawing board!  Elliot and Olivia interview various geeks, dorks, nerds and social ‘tards at Morewood, all of whom are obviously incapable of looking up from their homework, much less bashing in someone's head.  One of them says that Elsa was into older dudes, especially one Danny Burke, a former Morewood student.  Danny, who’s now living a v.v. glamorous life in Newark, New Jersey, claims to have been like a big brother to Elsa.  He dropped out of Morewood, and still hates it for its encouraging pressure-filled toxic environment.  Elsa felt the same way – she detested Morewood and wanted to be a kid again.  Danny claims Elsa never would have touched the duffel o’ hooker duds… and interestingly, also comments that she in fact hated her roommate Jennifer’s chess-playin’ guts.  Jennifer was jealous of Elsa, and it was like World War III in their room.  When she died, Elsa was giving Jennifer the classic Roommate Silent Treatment.  Ah yes.  I remember that one.  Very effective. 

Jennifer lied about being BFF with Elsa, so it’s time to pay her another visit.  Jennifer’s all distracted, right in the middle of a game of chess and trying to give our heroes the brush-off.  Elliot and Olivia are all, “Hells no we won’t be ignored by a fourteen year old.”  They demand to know what happened to Elsa, and Jennifer’s face crumples like a wet paper bag.  “I want my mom,” she says, suddenly looking approximately 3 years old.  Mom shows up and is alarmed to find her daughter pacing an interrogation room whilst muttering to herself like a monkey on crack.  When everybody sits down with Jennifer, the first thing she pops off with is “I’m glad Elsa’s dead.”  BACK IT UP, THAR.  Jennifer starts ranting about how Elsa got all the attention, and how she always had to be the best at Morewood– second place didn’t matter.  It wasn’t fair, because Elsa never studied, and Jennifer worked so hard but could never come out on top.  “She’s a genius, and she never let me forget it!” Jennifer shouts.  Her tirade just keeps getting more intense… she jabbers about how Elsa ignored her, and never let her win at anything.  Jennifer longed to be the smartest, and was furious that Elsa wouldn’t speak to her.  When Elsa went to visit Danny, Jennifer followed her onto the Jersey-bound ferry and confronted her.  Talking a mile a minute, Jennifer describes the confrontation that followed: Elsa screamed and called Jennifer pathetic and dumb, and they got in a fight, and Jennifer stabbed her in the chest with a pen and slammed her head against the railing, then pushed her body into the river.  To Elliot and Olivia’s shock, Jennifer simply confesses all of this, while sobbing and hyperventilating.  Her eyes are all crazy as she turns to her mother and says “I’m number one now, mom.  Aren’t you happy for me?”

You would think that because they got a full confession, this ep would be a wrap.  But not so fast, silly viewer - this is SVU!  It just wouldn’t feel right without a last-minute, difficult-to-resolve prosecution issue.  Thing is, Elliot and Olivia recognize the fact that Jennifer’s a vulnerable, teetering-on-the-edge child.  But Elsa’s body technically went into the river on the Jersey side… and Jersey’s prosecutor wants to try her as an adult and put her away from life.  Hee!  Remember at the beginning of the season, when SVU was all gung-ho about giving Kim Greyleck and her “tough-love” prosecution plenty o’ screen time?  Yeah.  Turns out the PTB aren’t so stupid after all, and since then, they’ve recognized that Greyleck has all the appeal of a bag of wet cement.  They’re using every trick in the book to keep her out of these episodes.  Bring former DA’s out of retirement!  Move the trial to Jersey!  And the big one… bring former ADA Alexandra Cabot out of the Witness Protection Program for six episodes!  Man, I’m sad that I won’t get to recap that.  So long, Greyleck.  I think you’ll get a total of 5 minutes of screentime this season.  Ha!

Ms. Jersey Prosecutress, who’s 8497654 times cooler than Greyleck, thinks Jennifer’s a cold, conniving sociopath and calls Elliot and Olivia as witnesses.  They do their best to downplay Jennifer’s crime, but it’s not looking good.  For her part, Jennifer’s still looking like a monkey on crack.  She’s all fidgety and as the hearing to determine how she’ll be tried ends, she stands up and starts yelling nonsense.  She’s tossed in a jail cell, where Olivia tries to talk to her as she paces back and forth.  Jennifer doesn’t understand why she’s there – she doesn’t remember anything.  She tells Olivia that she takes a medication called Provigil, to stay awake for days so that she can cram for exams.   Apparently everyone at Morewood is on drugs – it’s encouraged!  Gee, the more I hear about this school, the more I’m pretty sure I won’t be sending my kids there.  Jennifer had been up for six days before she killed Elsa, and at the moment, she’s been awake for 72 hours.  Well, shit!  No wonder she’s acting so crazy.  Olivia finds Jennifer’s stash hidden in her room, as well as a diary filled with tightly packed gibberish writing.  As little as seventeen hours without sleep can make you legally impaired – so six days?  Fugeddabouddit.  Olivia tries to convince reluctant Jersey Prosecutress to go for an insanity plea on the ground of sleep deprivation psychosis.  She hands over Jennifer’s journal – and asks her to “sleep on it.” Snerk. 

Jersey Prosecutress is not entirely without heart, and after reading Jennifer’s manic ramblings, agrees to try her as a minor.  Jennifer’s remanded to juvenile justice for seven years - she’ll be out by the age of twenty-one.  At least she still has a chance.  Unlike the next case… a fifteen-year-old who raped and murdered his six year old stepsister.  Ah, SVU.  You’ll never change.