Payback (Season 1, Episode 1)
Premise: A New York cab driver is stabbed and castrated, and the detectives discover he was a Serb war-crimes suspect living under a false name, which puts his former victims under suspicion.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 1, Episode 1
- Starring
- Det. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), Det. John Munch (Richard Belzer), Det. Monique Jeffries (Michelle Hurd), Det. Brian Cassidy (Dean Winters), Capt. Donald Cragen (Dann Florek)
- Guest stars
- Mili Avital as Marta Stevens, Gordana Rashovich as Anya Rugova, Elizabeth Ashley as Serena Benson, Tina Benko as Mrs. Panachek, Angie Harmon as ADA Abbie Carmichael
- Director
- Jean de Segonzac
- Writers
- Story: John Chambers & Wendy West; Written by: Dick Wolf
Summary
“Payback” opens with a cab driver stabbed to death in his taxi, his penis cut off and missing, and a hack license in the name of Victor Spicer. Detectives Olivia Benson and Elliot Stabler find Spicer alive and serving time on Rikers Island; he admits selling the license for $100 to a stranger near 125th Street. Staff at a cabbies’ coffee shop on Eleventh Avenue knew the dead man as Victor, or Steven, and one regular saw two women hail his cab around midnight. A dispatcher recalls an earlier caller, whose voice could have been a man’s or a woman’s, asking when Spicer worked.
Police identify the victim as Steven Panachek, an undocumented immigrant with a wife, a small son and a second child on the way; his widow says he was Czech. The medical examiner counts 37 wounds made by two different blades, and the lab recovers a fragment of red-painted fingernail from the front seat. Prints sent to Interpol reveal his true identity: Stefan Tanzic, a Serb officer indicted for war crimes, accused of raping 67 women while commanding an ethnic cleansing unit. After Benson berates the widow, Stabler passes on Cragen’s warning that she must stay objective or leave the unit.
Of Tanzic’s surviving victims in the area, Ileana Jashari is physically unable to have attacked anyone. Architect Marta Stevens, whose son Nicky was fathered by Tanzic, claims she was alone at her office that night and calmly describes how Tanzic, once her schoolmate, held her captive and raped her nightly for 23 days. Restaurant owner Anya Rugova, whose husband and grandson Tanzic killed, has a bandaged hand and denies knowing Stevens. Benson’s mother, Serena, who conceived Olivia through rape, urges her to quit the unit and says she understands the women without condoning them.
With no physical proof, the partners arrest both women separately and pretend a witness has identified them. During her arrest Rugova grabs a knife and fatally cuts her own femoral artery. Stevens then confesses that Rugova recognized Tanzic’s voice, stabbed him through the partition, and that both women kept stabbing him after the cab hit the curb. ADA Abbie Carmichael agrees to a plea to second-degree manslaughter on grounds of extreme emotional distress, expecting about 18 months in a psychiatric facility, and arranges a quick arraignment so Stevens can go home to her son.
Spoiler, the ending: Cragen tears into the detectives over the staged identification and doubts that two women carried those knives by chance, telling Benson she has spent her only free pass. Benson then tells Stabler that Rugova’s last words were that she wanted to be with her family.
Why it stands out
- “Payback” is the pilot episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
- Dann Florek was the first actor cast for the show; he had created Capt. Don Cragen in the 1988 pilot of Law & Order, and Richard Belzer brings John Munch over from Homicide: Life on the Street.
- Elizabeth Ashley plays Benson’s mother, Serena, who never appears on the show again, though she is mentioned several times.