Unstable (Season 11, Episode 1)
Premise: A volatile detective helps SVU with a rape victim who trusts only him, and the case suggests Stabler sent the wrong man to prison ten years earlier.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 11, Episode 1
- Starring
- Det. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Capt. Donald Cragen (Dann Florek), Exec. ADA Sonya Paxton (Christine Lahti), ME Dr. Melinda Warner (Tamara Tunie)
- Guest stars
- Wentworth Miller as Nate Kendall, Mahershala Ali as Mark Foster, Jennifer Ferrin as Rena West, Chike Johnson as Victor Tate, Geneva Carr as Katie Harris
- Director
- Arthur W. Forney
- Writers
- Judith McCreary
Summary
“Unstable” opens when Rena West, 35, runs into a crime scene and tells Nate Kendall, a volatile detective from the 24th Precinct, that she has been raped. She clings to Kendall and will not talk to Benson and Stabler, so Cragen puts Kendall on the case. Rena says a polite man in a suit offered to carry her groceries, forced his way in at knifepoint, tied her wrists and raped her, and that she fled while he went for more cord. An autistic neighbor’s street cameras help find the man, and Rena picks Mark Foster, a former trader jailed for beating his ex-wife. When Foster runs, Kendall knocks him down with his car.
Benson doubts the identification: Rena is white, Foster is black, and she took 15 minutes to choose. Executive ADA Sonya Paxton arrives from Appeals, saying Jack McCoy sent her to stop overturned convictions, and insists on showing photos one at a time. Fin finds a 1998 rape with the same green van-carpet fibers. Stabler arrested Victor Tate for that attack on Katie Harris, and Tate is serving 25 years. Katie picks Tate again, but Stabler recalls that Tate always blamed his faulty alibi on Stabler’s questioning. Benson turns up two older knifepoint rapes of prostitutes; a former pimp tells Kendall one woman is dead, and the other, Beverly Neal, now a court reporter, refuses to help. Kendall reveals that his ten-year-old daughter died with his ex-wife when a meth lab blew up.
Foster makes bail, and 16-year-old Lynn Rivers is found raped and killed in a midtown lot, covered in the same fibers; Warner finds that her nipples were cut off. Lynn had left a party near Rena’s home to buy beer. The squad traces an old van owned by Foster’s father, a retired butcher. Foster tries to burn it in a neighbor’s garage, and Kendall holds him at gunpoint, saying he wants to kill him, but does not fire. The murder weapon is in the van. Offered life without parole, Foster confesses to the rapes, to strangling one prostitute and to the attack on Katie, who listens. Stabler promises Tate he will soon be free.
Spoiler, the ending: Foster taunts Stabler about Tate, and Kendall offers to take him to the Tombs. Soon after, Foster goes out a precinct window and dies of a broken neck; Kendall says he jumped and goes to wait for Internal Affairs, and nobody can say what happened. Paxton then explains that a dead man’s taped confession is inadmissible hearsay and that a parole board will not free an inmate who maintains his innocence, so Tate faces 15 more years unless the governor steps in.
Why it stands out
- The season premiere introduces Christine Lahti as Executive ADA Sonya Paxton, who appears through the fourth episode and returns briefly in the eighth; Alex Cabot is said to be training in Albany.
- Wentworth Miller guest stars as Nate Kendall, and Mahershala Ali, credited as Mahershalalhashbaz Ali, plays Mark Foster.