‘Law & Order: Special Victims Unit’ Recap – ‘Rorschach’

Written by John Edward Betancourt

LAW & ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT -- "Rorschach" Episode 26006 -- Pictured: (l-r) Juliana Aidén Martinez as Det. Kate Silva, Mariska Hargitay as Capt. Olivia Benson, Josh Cooke as Agent Harrison Clay -- (Photo by: Scott Gries/NBC)

Caution: This article contains spoilers for Episode 2606 of ‘Law & Order: Special Victims Unit’. To revisit the previous episode, click here. This article also contains discussing regarding domestic violence and sexual assault, which may be triggering to some individuals.

If there is one particular question we ask often in this life, but rarely get a good answer to, it would have to be… why aren’t men that abuse women and assault them held accountable more often? And well, don’t get a good answer to that for several reasons. For starters, we don’t always know it happens. Because so many women stay silent on the matter, in large part because we don’t listen to them. Second, there is a strange mantra in our world that somehow… this is a ‘simple mistake’ that men make, and they somehow deserve second chances for this calculated crime, and if you don’t believe that… well we did just elect a man convicted of being a sexual assaulter to the highest office of the land.

But that second reason, has a lot of the keys to it as to why these crimes go unpunished. For again, calculation comes into play and a lot of these dude bros think about how not to get caught, how to keep their disgusting actions a secret. And that, combined with the power of fear, they get away with it. Which does leave us to wonder what it would take to bring the calculated ones to justice and well, the next episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit on NBC answers that question. In that, vigilance and persistence are the key, so that in the long term, there is a real fear that men that do such acts will be caught, regardless of how smart they think they are, and ‘Rorschach’ made that clear, through one complex crime.

For the SVU team was pulled into a strange case up north by the Feds. Wherein a pair of travel vloggers named Ellie and Chris ended up in the hospital due to a brutal attack. One where Chris was stabbed several times and where Ellie was plunged into a coma, and well… it was just so savage and random that the Feds and the local police needed another set of eyes on it and at first, it really did seem as though someone just lost their mind and decided to attack two innocent people. Which while plausible, did not sit right with Captain Benson or Detective Silva. Because something about the crime scene and the way Chris spoke about the case, just didn’t add up. In fact, there was a sense of staging and a sense that facts were missing.

Which forced the team to dig deep into the evidence and anything they could get their hands on data wise to piece together what happened here, and well… some body cam footage from a traffic stop, and some horrible, deleted footage revealed… that Chris… was THAT guy. The abuser who could no longer take his girlfriend having agency or wants, so he did what they always do. Resort to violence, power, and every low thing in the book to be the poor little Alpha, and of course, to not get caught… he hurt himself by plunging the knife into his body, and well… under normal circumstances he would have gotten away with it all. Due to lack of solid evidence and leads. Which is why, we need teams like Benson’s, working these cases tirelessly and tearing into every detail to prove what abusers do. 

All so, they can be held accountable and so that long term, guys like Chris, do have the fear of whatever God they believe in, put into them that they cannot get away with such crimes, and refrain from committing them. But alas, we do enable, and we do reward men that go this route… so it will be a long time before the Chrises and presidents-elect of the world pay the piper for the awful things they do. But while we wait, we can praise one intelligent episode. One that showcased how abusers work, how they get away with so much and how outright pathetic they are. Because it takes a real coward, to strike a woman and cross that line, and it was nice that this series reminded us, what real men look like, and how dudes like Chris, are just an embarrassment. Until next time.

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