| "We Dream Of Machine Elves" | ||
|---|---|---|
| ← | SVU, Episode 21.08 | → |
| Production number: 21008 First aired (US): 14 November 2019 First aired (UK): 21 January 2020 First aired (CAN): 14 November 2019 First aired (AUS): 2 July 2020 | ||
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| Teleplay By Brendan Feeney & Monet Hurst-Mendoza Story By Julie Martin & Warren Leight Directed By Jonathan Herron | ||
Summary[]
Rollins goes undercover to find a suspect who is drugging and assaulting tourists, while Benson helps the victims sort out their memories from their hallucinations.
Plot[]
plot
Cast[]
Main cast[]
- Mariska Hargitay as Captain Olivia Benson
- Kelli Giddish as Detective Amanda Rollins
- Ice-T as Sergeant Odafin Tutuola
- Peter Scanavino as A.D.A. Dominick Carisi, Jr.
- Jamie Gray Hyder as Officer Katriona Tamin
Recurring cast[]
- Demore Barnes as Deputy Chief Christian Garland
- Stephen Wallem as Nurse Rudy Syndergaard
- Thamer Jendoubi as Officer Kivlahan
Guest cast[]
- Adam Arkin as Dr. Julius Adler
- James Healy, Jr. as Carl Williams
- Andy Mientus as Caleb Williams
- Eve O'Brien as Anais Adler
- Gloria Biegler as Linda Williams
- Sarah Catherine Hook as Meghan Gale
- Maureen Mueller as Kathleen Adler
- Annie Hägg as Freja Bergdahl
- Hannah Lynne Miller as Tara Crane
- Ivy Croteau as Courtney Holden
- Jae Bernhard as Matteo
- Kyle Fox Douglas as Rhy
- Beth Malone as Doctor
- Victoria Pike as Student (uncredited)
References[]
- Cognitive interview
- Memory recall
- John Bauer
- "We're Off to See the Wizard" from The Wizard of Oz
- Tompkins Square University
- Georgia State University
- The Brady Bunch
- Joseph Campbell
- "O Captain! My Captain!"
- Great Bend, Kansas
- Green Eggs and Ham
Quotes[]
- Meghan Gale: Help me!
- Rollins: Can you tell me your name?
- Meghan Gale: Get the elves way from me, please.
- Rollins: The elves? Elves?
- Meghan Gale: The machine elves. They wanna take me back there.
- Rollins: To where, honey?
- Meghan Gale: To their world. They told me, if I stay here, I'm digging my own grave.
- Rollins: [indicating the EMTs] Okay, you know what? These folks right here, they're good elves, and they're gonna help take care of you, I promise. You're gonna be okay, honey. [to one of the EMTs as she leaves] I need a tox screen and a psych eval.
- Tutuola: She give you anything?
- Rollins: She kept going on about machine elves.
- Tutuola: She's tripping out.
- Rollins: Yeah. Drugs or a psychotic break or both.
- Benson: Machine elves?
- Rollins: Yeah, I'm having 'em check for DMT. It's a common hallucinogen among users.
- Benson: And a very powerful psychedelic. I... I haven't seen this in years.
- Rollins: Well, she must have taken a massive dose for her to still be feeling symptoms.
- Benson: So, do we know if she was assaulted?
- Rollins: She's got ligature marks, she may be concussed. She's not lucid enough to consent to a rape kit.
- Benson: Okay, well, the chief just called twice. So I need to figure out what we're looking at.
- Meghan Gale: Where am I? It's so light in here.
- Benson: You're at Mercy Hospital in Manhattan.
- Meghan Gale: New York? I'm still here?
- Benson: Yeah.
- Meghan Gale: I want to go home.
- Benson: Can you tell us where your home is?
- Meghan Gale: 190 Forest Avenue, Great Bend, Kansas. My name is Meghan Gale.
- Meghan Gale: It was dark. They held me down.
- Benson: [taking her restraints off] Let's get these off her. Okay. Meghan, tell me about "they."
- Meghan Gale: The machine elves. Before they came in, the room spun, and then flowers bursting. And all the eyes...
- Rollins: The elves had eyes?
- Meghan Gale: A hundred. Purple and yellow faces. Oh, and they crawled all over me, inside me.
- Benson: Inside you how?
- Meghan Gale: Like they were having sex with me. I tried to get away, to get to my friends.
- Tara Crane: Oh, my god. Uh, we've been texting Meghan. Is she okay?
- Tutuola: Not really. When did you see her last?
- Courtney Holden: Saturday night at... at Fiddlesticks in Greenwich Village.
- Tamin: Were you girls doing any drugs?
- Tara Crane: No, just fireball shots. Meghan wanted to call her boyfriend, we went ahead, she never showed up.
- Tutuola: And you didn't think to call the police?
- Courtney Holden: We... we were here to party. It was our first time in New York.
- Meghan Gale: I saw a hawk above me. I tried to jump on its back and fly away... but my hands melted into the headboard.
- Benson: So you were on a bed.
- Meghan Gale: A woman brought me there. I thought she was helping me.
- Benson: How was she helping you?
- Meghan Gale: She got us a chariot, without a horse.
- Benson: What about the driver?
- Meghan Gale: He sat on a leopard. He was nice. He gave me water.
- Rudy Syndergaard: Okay, well, your detective was right. There's a reason Meghan was so out of it.
- Benson: Well, DMT.
- Rudy Syndergaard: Yeah. Lab says a hundred times the usual dose. Also traces of ketamine.
- Benson: Anything else?
- Rudy Syndergaard: Well, if I had to guess, GHB.
- Benson: So, too long ago to show on a tox screen. Thank you.
- Rudy Syndergaard: Okay. One more thing. DMT overdose is not a regular Saturday night, so I called a Bellevue nurse I know to see if they had any cases. She said a girl was brought in two weeks ago, same tox screen.
- Benson: Where can we find her?
- Rudy Syndergaard: She's still there. Psych ward. Never came back.
- Garland: Two victims dosed with DMT?
- Benson: Meghan Gale and Jane Doe. She was found two weeks ago, 6:00 a.m., wandering, wearing a sheet by the fountain at Rockefeller Center.
- Garland: Garland: How did we miss it?
- Benson: The unis thought that she was homeless, an EDP. So they took her to the psych ward. And she hasn't uttered a coherent sentence since. Doctor says that she stays awake for days at a time. She might be afraid to sleep.
- Garland: We have no idea who she is?
- Benson: Oh, no. There's no ID, there's no DNA, there's no missing persons. Now, the medical report shows signs of sexual assault, and from the tox screen, she was taking prescription antipsychotics.
- Garland: What are we looking at here?
- Benson: It's a man-woman team who pick very young victims, take them to some group house, drug with DMT, rape them, and then... and then dump them in some public space.
- Garland: Have you ever seen something like this before? Could it be some kind of cult?
- Benson: I don't know. I mean, Meghan says that she remembers an older man talking to the group. She called him a wizard.
- Garland: Until we have more answers, let's try and keep the details out of the press.
- Benson: [checking her phone] Well, we may not be able to. Another victim just turned up. Central Park, off 5th Avenue.
- Officer Kivlahan: We got a 911 call. Screaming woman dumped out of a pedicab.
- Tutuola: They get a look at the driver?
- Officer Kivlahan: Not really. Said he had on a top hat. We get here, she's blindfolded, hands tied, nothing on her.
- Tamin: She say anything?
- Officer Kivlahan: Some language I never heard.
- Benson: [on the phone with Garland] Yes, Chief, she's an exchange student from Sweden. Her name is Freja Bergdahl. This one went missing two days ago. You know, the roommate says that she's a good kid, she's a grad student at Pratt, not a drug taker.
- Freja Bergdahl: The trolls kept me in the dark. They held me down. They were inside me.
- Rollins: Was anyone with the trolls?
- Freja Bergdahl: A king. W-With a white beard. Like a John Bauer fairy tale. He ruled the house.
- Benson: Tell me about the house. H-How did you get there?
- Freja Bergdahl: It was bumpy.
- Rollins: You were in a car?
- Freja Bergdahl: Nej. A bicycle.
- Benson: Okay. Good, Freja. Do you remember... you remember seeing anything else?
- Freja Bergdahl: We went past a... a giant stone woman. And later, up a high stoop. Many stairs.
- Rollins: Freja, you're an art student. All right, you think you can draw the... the woman and the trolls?
- Garland: Machine elves, Swedish trolls? So this girl was also drugged with DMT?
- Benson: A huge dose, and ketamine.
- Rollins: Both rape kits came back with semen from multiple donors. No hits.
- Garland: No criminal records, not DNA savvy. Led by a wizard? A king?
- Rollins: Yeah, who has unlimited access to DMT, tougher to get than cocaine and meth.
- Benson: You know, shamans in South America use it to access a higher dimension.
- Garland: So our wizard gets DMT through a religious group or medical research?
- Benson: We're checking clinical trials to see if they've had any of the drugs stolen.
- Rollins: Freja remembered passing a huge stone woman. Maybe a hallucination.
- Garland: Or not. What about the Bust of Sylvette? The Picasso statue.
- Benson: By the I.M. Pei Towers. Okay, we'll start a canvass.
- Garland: Why don't you put Freja in a car, drive her around, see what comes back?
- Benson: Um, uh, she's... she's actually quite traumatized.
- Garland: I won't tell you how to do your job, Captain.
- Benson: Thank you.
- Garland: But I know you'll be sensitive to her experience, and to our needs. We need a break.
- Freja Bergdahl: There she is.
- Benson: The giant stone woman.
- Freja Bergdahl: Yes. Yes. We were here.
- Benson: So, Freja, is... is there anything else that you... that you remember passing?
- Freja Bergdahl: [thinking] On the side of the road, a canopy of floating triangles.
- Benson: Okay.
- Freja Bergdahl: There! Those triangles.
- Benson: That's the AIDS Memorial.
- Benson: You said that the house had a high stoop.
- Freja Bergdahl: Mm-hmm. [starting to panic] Oh, I don't want to do this.
- Benson: Freja, was it one of these?
- Freja Bergdahl: With the red door.
- Benson: Okay.
- Freja Bergdahl: I have to go.
- Benson: Listen to me. Listen to me, we're done. We're done. We're done. It's over, and you're safe. You're safe, okay? You're safe.
- Benson: So, the brownstone here with the red door was bought 30 years ago by a foundation for radical therapy, and gifted to Julius Adler for his institute.
- Carisi: He's the white-bearded wizard?
- Rollins: Dr. Julius Adler, an esteemed professor of radical psychiatry at Tompkins Square, a prolific author, and...
- Tutuola: And a freak. He uses psychedelics as a cure-all.
- Rollins: In controlled, clinical studies.
- Tamin: I ran the building. It's got nonprofit status. Seven complaints over the last year. Noise, kids partying, a cello being thrown out a third-story window.
- Carisi: And both victims remember going into that brownstone? Can they ID him?
- Benson: No, but Freja was clearly triggered. Now, she thinks she remembers the red door and the high stoop.
- Carisi: She thinks. She also remembered trolls.
- Tamin: There's reason to believe he has DMT and other psychedelics inside.
- Carisi: But if he's running clinical trials, that may not be illegal.
- Tutuola: Come on, Carisi, you can trust us.
- Carisi: I do, Fin, but every time I go out on a limb for you guys, somebody saws it off. Look, it's an academic institute. I need some patina of probable cause.
- Tutuola: Patina?
- Tamin: That guy was really a cop?
- Rollins: We could take a run at Adler, see if he gives us anything.
- Benson: That's a good idea. Kat, Fin, you're off to see the wizard.
- Rollins: I heard Adler wasn't helpful.
- Benson: Nope. But he did claim that so many students passed through the doors of his institute that he can't keep track of 'em.
- Rollins: I, um, didn't want to get into it before, but back in Atlanta, when I was going through some stuff, I took some psych courses at Georgia State, and Adler was a guest professor. I'm telling you, this man... he's brilliant, empathically, a real healer. Whatever happened to those girls, I can't imagine how he'd be involved.
- Benson: Rollins, I hear you. But you and I both know that that was a long time ago, and people change.
- Rollins: They do. But it sounds like he still keeps an open door for his students. It couldn't hurt to make an approach.
- Rollins: I'm a big admirer of yours.
- Dr. Julius Adler: Oh.
- Rollins: Amanda. I actually took a lecture class of yours years ago.
- Dr. Adler: Yeah, yes, in, uh... Atlanta, right?
- Rollins: That's right.
- Dr. Adler: Yeah. Well, aren't you a fish out of water.
- Rollins: I-I am. Guess you could say I was searching for a bigger pond.
- Dr. Adler: Hmm.
- Rollins: Um, I'm finishing up my master's in liberation psychiatry, and all roads still lead to you.
- Dr. Adler: Oh, call me Rome.
- Benson: Rollins, are you okay?
- Rollins: Yeah, I didn't inhale.
- Benson: Are you sure?
- Anais Adler: Wait, you're a cop?
- Tamin: Captain, everyone goes?
- Benson: Everyone goes until we find out who's a vic and who's a perp.
- Dr. Adler: So, where, uh did you go, Amanda?
- Rollins: Excuse me?
- Dr. Adler: Well, I saw the light come on in your eyes, your soul leave its cage. You were on your journey. So I'm curious, where did you go?
- Carisi: [watching with Benson] What the hell is he doing?
- Benson: She's just letting him establish rapport.
- Carisi: Uh-huh. Who else did we pick up?
- Anais Adler: We're a family. Maybe not the Brady Bunch, but that was an artificial construct to make us all conform.
- Tamin: Your father tell you that?
- Anais Adler: And more. Every day since I was three, when my mother died. He sacrificed everything to take care of me. What he's built and taught. No one can take that away.
- Tamin: Which is what, exactly?
- Anais Adler: How to be whole. People come to him searching for an alternative path.
- Carisi: So she's drunk the Kool-Aid, too. Do we have anybody else?
- Benson: Caleb, the pedicab driver, and ten others who are all on video taking a hit from the pipe.
- Rollins: Adler swears there were no assaults.
- Carisi: Yeah, no surprise there. What do the victims say?
- Benson: Uh, victim. Freja went back to Stockholm. So, Meghan IDed Anais and Caleb, and she remembers Adler giving a lecture.
- Carisi: But after that, machine elves. We got any DNA hits from the men?
- Bensin: Not yet, but they're in front of it.
- Rollins: And they claim it was a mutual psychonautic sexual exploration.
- Carisi: Wh... translation, consensual?
- Rollins: Yeah.
- Carisi: Okay, so this guy claims academic freedom, but the truth is, he's a puppet master who gets his acolytes to rape and torture girls.
- Rollins: I don't think that's what this is.
- Carisi: Oh, yeah? So Meghan wanted to dig her own grave, run around half-naked in a bed sheet?
- Dr. Adler: These kids come from, uh, abusive homes, repressive schools. They arrive, uh, totally disconnected, unable to feel.
- Rollins: I get all that, but how do you go from there to gang rape?
- Dr. Adler: Rape? This is... no, no. This is about cutting through their armor, freeing their libido. Look, I-I-I'm not angry at you, Amanda, for pretending to be interested in my work. That ruse was... that was your job. But did you actually read anything I wrote?
- Rollins: Yeah, I read every single one of your books.
- Dr. Adler: Then why are you asking the wrong questions? What fear is blocking you from feeling what I know is inside you?
- Rollins: Don't do that, Doctor, 'cause I am the only friend you have in here.
- Dr. Adler: Friend? I am offering you the chance to journey to dimensions you can't imagine, and your reaction is to play the "good cop" card? I am so disappointed.
- Roolins: Hmm.
- Dr. Adler: Really. I would like to leave unless I'm being charged with a crime.
- Rollins: Yes, actually. Possession, for now.
- Dr. Adler: Well, that won't stand. I have a government-approved grant for research into DMT. My institute is a de facto extension of the university. But if the great purge must proceed, then proceed it must.
- Garland: So, Adler's a false prophet. To paraphrase Joseph Campbell, the mystic swims in the same water in which the psychotic drowns.
- Carisi: Even so, his students still believe everything he feeds them.
- Benson: And the daughter thinks he's a saint. The mother died when she was three, so he raised her.
- Rollins: Something happened to Adler. Twenty years ago, he was one of the foremost authorities in liberation psychiatry.
- Carisi: Okay, well, whatever alternate reality he's in, this reality, he's guilty of either conspiracy to rape or sex trafficking.
- Garland: I agree. Charge him with both.
- Carisi: How? Who am I gonna put on the stand? Caleb? Meghan and her elves?
- Garland: Charge Anais. Flip her.
- Rollins: She won't turn on him. They're sutured.
- Tamin: [on her phone] Or maybe that's just another alternate reality he's created. I found a marriage certificate. Adler married Kathleen Bell in '94, but no obituary, no death certificate.
- Benson: Well, if she's not deceased... then where is she?
- Garland: Find out.
- Doctor: Kathleen Bell Adler. Admitted in '97. She was a brilliant clinician until she was found naked in the middle of Harvard Square.
- Benson: What was her diagnosis?
- Doctor: Hallucinogenic-induced psychosis with underlying paranoid schizophrenia.
- Rollins: Can she communicate?
- Doctor: Intermittently. This week, she's been having agitated conversations with someone who's not there, about her daughter.
- Benson: Her daughter doesn't know that her mother is even alive.
- Doctor: Anais? Kathleen's worried about her.
- Rollins: Does her husband, Dr. Adler, visit?
- Doctor: No one's ever visited her.
- Rollins: Ever?
- Doctor: At least not since I've been on staff. That's going on 15 years now.
- Rollins: What's her prognosis?
- Doctor: After all this time here? No one re-integrates from that.
- Benson: Adler did this to her.
- Rollins: We don't know that.
- Benson: I do. Hey, Rollins, I know that you have a blind spot for men that you think are smarter than you...
- Rollins: No, I just want to ask him about his wife.
- Benson: Can I... can I actually trust you with him?
- Rollins: Who else is gonna get through? I mean, you, Fin, Carisi? Okay, he thinks... he thinks you're all so covered in armor that you'll never open up. No offense.
- Dr. Adler: [led into an interrogation room] Oh. So by, uh, altering my external reality, you think I'll alter my responses. Is that it?
- Rollins: I want to ask you about your wife.
- Dr. Adler: My wife? She's gone.
- Rollins: Gone, but not dead.
- Dr. Adler: I'd ask you to, uh, leave my wife alone.
- Rollins: Like you have?
- Dr. Adler: Okay, time... in this world, in this plane, has stopped for her. She's well taken care of, but the, uh, the kind of break that she suffered, there's... there's no return.
- Dr. Adler: Kathleen battled demons her whole life. Her parents treated their dogs better than they treated her.
- Rollins: How? 'Cause she was a-a well-regarded doctor...
- Dr. Adler: No, no. Not my fault. Her father raped her when she was a child. She completely dissociated from herself to survive. By the time she came to see me, she had already seen, and been failed by, a dozen therapists.
- Rollins: So you were her doctor.
- Dr. Adler: Initially, yes, for a psych evaluation. After a suicide attempt.
- Rollins: And you slept with her?
- Dr. Adler: Later. Yes, after I'd begun treating her.
- Rollins: With the hallucinogens?
- Dr. Adler: And love. And positive sexual energy. She was so depersonalized, so de-realized, the only way to heal her wounds was to go back to their cause and reprogram her response.
- Rollins: Re-enacting?
- Dr. Adler: Yes. And I can tell you, it did work for a time. We were happy. We conceived a child. But as Anais grew, Kathleen flooded with memories. The abuse had started earlier than she'd let herself remember. I did everything I could.
- Rollins: But you lost her.
- Dr. Adler: Yes. And since then, I have... dedicated my life to saving other victims.
- Rollins: That's... that's what I want to hear about.
- Dr. Adler: Oh, so many of them. It's more common than you realize. Freud knew it early on in his work. He-he... he saw how pervasive child sex assault was, but academia wouldn't even discuss incest. So he categorized their memories as childhood fantasy.
- Rollins: The Oedipus complex.
- Dr. Adler: Yes. The original sin of psychotherapy.
- Rollins: So, these students aren't drugging and assaulting these women, it's... therapy.
- Dr. Adler: These young people are drawn to us. They-they have deep wounds. Now, by... by altering their perception of reality, while re-enacting their abuse, I am able to re-connect them with their true selves.
- Rollins: True selves? Did that help the woman in-in Bellevue? Because she may never come back.
- Dr. Adler: Not my...
- Rollins: Just like your wife, who may never...
- Dr. Adler: No, no! Not my fault! Not my fault! They are... they are broken. I-I try to save them. You know this, Kathleen.
- Rollins: [taken aback] I...
- Dr. Adler: Okay, all right, they have sent you to silence me.
- Rollins: That's not what's going on here, Doctor. You... you were brilliant. And look what's happened to your mind.
- Dr. Adler: My mind has evolved. That is why people are threatened by me. [pointing to the one-way mirror] Who is out there? The AMA? American Psychiatric? How many forces conspire against me? Big Pharma? You said yourself. They're only interested in drugs in order to numb the soul. Who is out there?
- Rollins: No one's behind that glass but my captain.
- Dr. Adler: "Oh, captain, my captain. Our fearful trip is done. The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won."
- Rollins: Dr. Adler, come back. Stay with me.
- Dr. Adler: No, no, no, no. That... that is the last thing I will do. I will not sit there with you and eat green eggs and ham. I will not give a false confession. I will not be complicit in our society's bloodlust for scapegoats!
- [after Dr. Adler's mental break in the interrogation room]
- Tutuola: I've got an ambulance on the way.
- Garland: Could this be an elaborate act?
- Benson: If you ask me, he's just escaped.
- Rollins: There you are.
- Carisi: Hey, what's up?
- Rollins: Um, I went and checked on Adler. He's been at Bellevue for the last three days and hasn't eaten, spoken, slept. He's completely unresponsive. And it's not a ruse.
- Carisi: Well, even so, I still plan on arraigning him and his disciples, including Anais. What they did to those women...
- Rollins: I hear you. Just, can you give me 24 hours before you arraign Anais?
- Carisi: Yeah. Yeah, sure.
- Rollins: Thanks.
- Carisi: Hey, Rollins, if you don't mind me asking. What's your deal with this guy?
- Rollins: I wanted to hear his side of the story. I had no idea how far gone he was. There was a time that... I was lost and... thought he had the answers, I wanted to learn from him. I wanted to follow him.
- Carisi: Yeah, but you didn't. You were smart, Rollins.
- Rollins: Hmm.
- Carisi: Hey. You dodged a bullet.
- Anais Adler: Will she know who I am?
- Doctor: She's been here 20 years. You can't expect too much.
- Anais Adler: I didn't even know she was alive.
- Rollins: The doctor understands.
- Benson: And if-if... if you're not up for this, we can turn around right now.
- Anais Adler: She's my mother.
Background Information and Notes[]
- The episode's title refers to "machine elves", mythical creatures perceived by users of the psychedelic drug DMT (N,N-Dimethyltryptamine).
- Terence McKenna, who coined the term "machine elves", had also compared what he had seen while on DMT to the munchkins from The Wizard of Oz. The episode has a number of other references to the story and film including:
- The first victim, Meghan Gale, has the same last name as the protagonist of The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy Gale. Both of them are also from Kansas and want to go home.
- In the story, the titular Wizard is not an actual wizard, but a con man who pretends to have magical powers. The criminal in this episode, Dr. Julius Adler, is described as a wizard in people's hallucinations and also behaves much like a con man.
- Benson tells Fin and Tamin that they "are off to see the wizard" visit when they go to question Adler, a reference to a song from the film adaptation, "We're Off to See the Wizard".
- The song that plays in the open is "White Rabbit" by Jefferson Airplane.
- Jamie Gray Hyder joins the main cast in this episode.
- For the first time in the series, there are more women than men in the main cast. The first time this happened in the Law & Order franchise is with the ninth season of Law & Order: Criminal Intent, with two women (Saffron Burrows and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) and one man (Jeff Goldblum).
- The Bust of Sylvette, which was by inspired by Sylvette David, whom Picasso met in 1954, created by Pablo Picasso, as stated located in the grounds of I.M. Pei Towers. That being said, the property is owned New York University (NYU) and is one of many towers designed by I.M. Pei within the city.
Episode Scene Cards[]
| 1 | 2 | 3 |
|---|---|---|
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Rixton Suites Express |
Hudson General Hospital |
Department of |
| 4 | 5 | 6 |
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Bank Street |
Office of |
Laguardia Psychiatric Hospital |
| Previous episode: "Counselor, It's Chinatown" |
"We Dream Of Machine Elves" Law & Order: Special Victims Unit Season 21 |
Next episode: "Can't Be Held Accountable" |