Wildlife (Season 10, Episode 7)
Premise: A would-be model killed by a tiger leads Stabler undercover into a ring that smuggles endangered animals, a job that strains his marriage and nearly costs him his life.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 10, Episode 7
- Starring
- Det. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Capt. Donald Cragen (Dann Florek), ADA Kim Greylek (Michaela McManus), ME Dr. Melinda Warner (Tamara Tunie)
- Guest stars
- Big Boi as Gots Money, Andrew Divoff as Andre Bushido, Reg E. Cathey as Victor Tybor, Caitlin FitzGerald as Natalie and Anna Bleers, Vanessa Aspillaga as Agent Brianna Kalke
- Director
- Peter Leto
- Writers
- Mick Betancourt
Summary
“Wildlife” opens with a man shot on a Queens street, then turns back to the case behind it. A young woman is found near an after-hours club, shot in the head, with bite wounds to her neck and genitals and a dead parrot in her purse. Warner traces bacteria in the wounds to a tiger, and the bird is a Spix’s macaw, extinct in the wild. Fin and Stabler follow a VIP stamp on her hand to mobster Michael Solano’s club, whose talent wrangler, Oscar Assadorian, names her as Natalie Bleers, an aspiring model. Her twin, Anna, says Natalie had been seeing a rapper, Gots Money, and expecting a big payday.
A warrant turns up a pet tiger at Gots’s apartment, but its DNA does not match the saliva on Natalie, and Gots, a Westchester native posing as a gangster, says Natalie was the smuggler who sold him the cat. To stay out of jail he introduces Stabler, posing as a corrupt U.S. Customs agent named Mike Kanicki, to Andre Bushido, who deals in rare animals and exotic meat. Agent Brianna Kalke of Fish and Wildlife asks the squad to back off, saying her agency has spent a year on the ring and that Bushido has killed 14 people. Soon Gots is found dead in his apartment, killed by Bushido’s hyenas.
Over a dinner of smuggled turtle eggs, Bushido tells “Mike” that his last courier opened a tiger cage and was mauled, and that they then ate the tiger. He wants help getting a baby white-crested gibbon, one of 17 left, through Customs so its breastbone can be carved into chopsticks worth $1 million. Bushido and his partner, Victor Tybor, take Stabler’s wallet and phone, search his cover home in Queens and strap a GPS watch on him. Kathy, who has not heard from him, presses Benson for answers, and Benson slips into the house to give Stabler her phone; when the smugglers burst in, she poses as a prostitute. Bushido later sends Stabler to fetch a cage, and he is shot in the street.
Spoiler, the ending: Stabler survives two bullet wounds, and Cragen plants a news story that the Customs agent died. The warehouse is empty, but a feed supplier’s records lead to a courier flying in from Jakarta, and Stabler, ignoring his doctor, joins the stakeout at JFK, where the gibbon is hidden in a basketball. Bushido and Tybor are arrested at the handoff. Tybor then tells Benson he is an undercover officer working with Kalke; he told her about Stabler, and his real target is the prison gang behind the ring. Stabler goes home to his family.
Why it stands out
- Rapper Big Boi (credited as Antwan Andre Patton) guest stars as Gots Money, with Andrew Divoff as Andre Bushido and Reg E. Cathey as Victor Tybor.
- Kimba, an 11-month-old white-handed gibbon, played the baby; since a critically endangered black crested gibbon could not be used, the script gave the animal an invented “white-crested” species.
- An undercover scene between Benson and Stabler was promoted before the season began.