[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Law & Order: SVU Season 27 Episode 2 “A Waiver of Consent.”]
Captain Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) doesn’t have a choice but to accept the newest member of her squad — Chief Kathryn Tynan (Noma Dumezweni) assigned him there — but does he at least prove to be someone she’ll want around? Detective Jake Griffin is played by Corey Cott, who previously appeared as the son of Benson’s former partner, played by Anthony Edwards — an ER reunion for Hargitay — and went to prison for rape.
The latest SVU episode also seems to set up Detective Joe Velasco’s (Octavio Pisano) exit, as he tells Benson of a new opportunity he received. Plus, Benson gets shocking news at the end of the episode about her former partner, Detective Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), but is there a twist?
Read on for how Benson deals with Griffin and what’s going on with Velasco.
Who’s the new detective on Benson’s squad?
In his first meeting with Benson, Griffin tells her that Tynan and his father were partners on patrol, and when he passed, she took him under his wing. He knows that the new assignment looks like he’s a spy, but he assures he isn’t. He says the chief wants him to learn to be a good detective from the best boss in the department. But she notes that their cases are victim-centric, and they’re extremely vulnerable. They work as one team, and she doesn’t have room for a detective with a different agenda. He promises that he only wants to learn and she’s the boss. And so she gives him the opportunity to prove himself with a rape case.
But right from the start, he’s not exactly making smart choices. He holds back a mark that turns out to be a QR code on the victim’s (Molly Griggs) wrist until he shares that scanning it leads to a members only club, Sensate (an IAB investigation into it was shut down in the past). He tells Benson “let’s roll” when they leave the hospital. When Benson learns the victim, Maya, is trying to check herself out of the hospital early, she brings Griffin with her and calls him out on his actions thus far. They work as a team, she reminds him. Then, when he stands in Maya’s way when she’s trying to leave and Benson tells him to let her go, she reminds him of how they do and do not treat victims and what they’re going through. “Let’s roll,” she pointedly tells him. “I’ll do better,” he says. (Griffin raising his hand when he talks is irksome, but Kevin Kane‘s Detective Terry Bruno makes it clear he needs to stop, or he’ll shoot his hand off.)
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When Captain Renee Curry (Aimé Donna Kelly) and Velasco don’t get anywhere talking to Sensate’s owner, Derek, who refuses to hand over any members list and says there’s no camera, Griffin brings up an informant who can help. That informant has a comment about Griffin hanging up his “Batman wings,” referring to a nickname the detective apparently received from perps. He does get Bruno and Griffin into the club as prospective members, and Derek invites them to come by as guests that night. First, however, they must sign consent forms, which ADA Sonny Carisi (Peter Scanavino) says is BS. Everyone signs it and thinks it’s legally binding, then anything can happen and go unreported. It’s why Maya’s reluctant to talk; she thinks she can’t.
Benson tells Bruno and Griffin to be careful, but the newest squad member tells her he’s been undercover before. Not like this, she warns. And she’s clearly right. At the club that night, the two detectives, as they report back to the rest of the squad, see high-profile men and women who clearly didn’t want to be there. But they wouldn’t get anywhere with a bust. Benson sends everyone home for the night, but Griffin goes back to the club.
When Benson finds out the next day, she’s, of course, mad. “This is unacceptable. I’ve already told you twice that we do things differently here and we don’t do things alone,” she reminds him. He apologizes, but that’s not enough. She’s ready to call Tynan and tell her it’s not going to work because she doesn’t need a cowboy who makes decisions on his own. But he reveals that he found a woman who works at the club who’s willing to talk to them. Isabella (Emilia Suarez) is willing to do whatever she can to make sure that the position she’s in — unable to say no to the men — doesn’t happen to anyone else, but when the NYPD raids the club, everyone hands over a card for a lawyer, Daniel Olin (Glenn Fleshler).
Another ADA, CJ Jones (Chicago Med‘s Norma Kuhling) joins Carisi as second chair after running into her own issues with Olin in the past; their motion to remove him from the case since he represents Derek and some potential witnesses has the other lawyer drop everyone but Derek. Isabella testifies, but Olin turns it around on her, then tries to paint Derek as someone just running a sexually free club with no violations. Jones handles the cross and brings up the consent waivers — Does he think someone can sign away their consent, that any woman who steps into his club is consenting to be raped? — and gets in his face about “actually running a house of prostitution where women are drugged and used by powerful men.”
The turning point comes when Benson brings a video Bruno finds online of Maya at the club, clearly unable to consent. At first, Maya doesn’t think she can testify, worried about what people will say, but Benson assures her she can. Anyone who doesn’t think she was victimized from the video is not worth listening to. With that, Maya opens up about her assault. “They used your shame to silence you. Think about what happens if you start talking,” Benson tells her. And with that, Maya testifies about her assault and seeing everything that Derek does in the club — including threatening her that she’d have a bad night when she tried to intervene when he was screaming at a shot girl.
Derek is found guilty of promoting prostitution in the third degree, sex trafficking in the second degree, and criminal sale of a controlled substance in third degree. Benson also is impressed by Jones, and Carisi assures her he already got her transferred.
As Griffin’s leaving for the night, he tells Benson he knows he blew it going into the club alone. He always wanted to be a cop and once he saw he was good at it, he never questioned himself. She reminds him that it’s a learning curve and not everyone’s right for SVU but Isabella saw something in him and he made her feel safe, and that’s something that can’t be taught. She proposes a deal: “As long as we are all on the same team, you may have a home here.” He thanks her and promises to never go behind her back.
How is Velasco being written out?
After offering an apology and promise that he’ll never hide something like Fin’s lost gun again, Velasco reveals to Benson that he’s been tapped by DEA to go undercover guarding Ramireaz’s drug runs. She says it makes sense with his experience with cartels, but does he trust the agents? While they seem straight up, he tells her they’ve told him to keep it under wraps, even from her. He knows he’s put her in a bad position and understands if she wants to report it up. But she assures him that it will stay between us. Keep her informed and be careful, she stresses. We then see the start of his assignment.
Wait, what happened to Stabler?
At the very end of the episode, Bruno stops in Benson’s office with an urgent message from Sergeant Bell (Organized Crime‘s Danielle Moné Truitt): Detective Stabler’s is in the hospital. But this seems to just be leading into when Stabler was in the hospital in Organized Crime‘s Season 5 Episode 2 (which aired on NBC right after this one, but dropped on Peacock earlier this year) and Benson visited him, not a new incident.
What do you think of the new detective, Griffin, and Velasco’s news? Let us know in the comments section below.
Law & Order: SVU, Thursdays, 9/8c, NBC