Lunacy (Season 10, Episode 4)
Premise: The strangled body of a European astronaut turns up in the river, and Stabler’s childhood hero, a famous astronaut, helps steer the investigation.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 10, Episode 4
- Starring
- Det. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), Sgt. John Munch (Richard Belzer), Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Capt. Donald Cragen (Dann Florek), Dr. George Huang (BD Wong), ME Dr. Melinda Warner (Tamara Tunie)
- Guest stars
- James Brolin as Colonel Richard Finley, Chris Elliott as Anton Thibodeaux, Kristina Klebe as Marga Janssen, Dane DeHaan as Vincent Beckwith, Danny Mastrogiorgio as Orlando McTeer
- Director
- Peter Leto
- Writers
- Daniel Truly
Summary
“Lunacy” begins when a woman’s body is pulled from the water near Battery Park, strangled, with her hands cut off and her genitals damaged. A man on a nearby roof turns out to be filming a staged rape scene with actors, and his footage shows a cab numbered 2X89 parked near the scene for days. The real cab with that number belongs to Eddie De Pablo, who was home sick, and does not match the video, so the detectives suspect a copycat cab tied to 18 months of rapes in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. Warner finds that sea creatures, including an eel, caused the genital damage, that something like a boat propeller took the hands, and that the woman, 35, had the bones of a 60-year-old.
DNA from urine Fin finds where the cab was parked leads to Orlando McTeer, a paroled rapist driving an illegal cab. With Benson as bait, the detectives catch him, and a surviving victim knows his voice. McTeer admits the rapes, but on the night of the murder he was raping a woman in Pennsylvania. A retinal scan identifies the dead woman as Marga Janssen, a Belgian astronaut with the European Space Agency who spent 207 days aboard the International Space Station. At a space symposium, Stabler reunites with his mentor, Marine test pilot and astronaut Col. Richard “Dick” Finley. Marga’s girlfriend, Leslie Schuster (called Andy in the episode), says Marga called off their trip and went for a walk at midnight. A crewmate who broke down in orbit has an alibi.
Vincent Beckwith, a meth user from an auction-house family with a record of fixating on women, is caught using Marga’s credit card, and Finley punches him. Beckwith admits pawning Marga’s necklace but says he found it in her purse after a man in a baseball cap tossed it into a dumpster. As Huang and Munch sort Marga’s fan mail, Finley points to Anton Thibodeaux, an obsessed fan who met Marga that night, but Beckwith does not pick him out and he is released. After a private talk with Finley, Thibodeaux returns with a gun and opens fire in the squad room, and Finley stops him in front of Stabler’s son Dickie, Finley’s namesake.
Spoiler, the ending: After telling Dickie how he gave up flight training for his young family, Stabler confronts Finley in his hotel room, accusing him of steering the detectives toward other suspects and setting Thibodeaux off. Finley’s fingerprint on the necklace matches one he left on a model rocket, and he shouts that Marga, NASA’s rising star, stood between him and the moon. The two men fight, and when Benson arrives and asks if everything is okay, Stabler says it is not.
Why it stands out
- Although it aired fourth, “Lunacy” was the first episode of the season filmed, shot in July 2008.
- James Brolin guest stars as astronaut Dick Finley, and Chris Elliott plays the obsessed fan Anton Thibodeaux.
- The episode reveals that Stabler’s son Dickie is named after Finley, who drew Stabler into the Marines.