Savior (Season 11, Episode 14)
Premise: SVU hunts a religious zealot who strangles prostitutes, and the case depends on a pregnant survivor whose premature baby leaves Benson facing a hard decision.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 11, Episode 14
- Starring
- Det. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Capt. Donald Cragen (Dann Florek), ADA Alexandra Cabot (Stephanie March)
- Guest stars
- Mischa Barton as Gladys Dalton, Lee Tergesen as Billy Skags, Erin Dilly as Shawna Grant, David Alan Basche as Michael Gallagher, Delaney Williams as John Buchanan
- Director
- Peter Leto
- Writers
- Mick Betancourt
Summary
“Savior” opens with the body of Abby Mannion, 22, strangled on a prostitution stroll with a gun-barrel bruise on her forehead and a homemade prayer card to the archangel Zadkiel, like the one left on Maggie Ortiz, killed the week before. Abby’s landlord, Stanley Koscheck, calls her a scammer, and her former roommate, Lynn Drexel, admits she took designer purses from the store where she works for Abby to resell online to pay for their cocaine, before Abby turned to sex work. DNA from Abby leads to Michael Gallagher, a churchgoing father who paid her for rough role play, but he says he left her alive. Then a new prayer card turns up on a living victim.
She is Gladys Dalton, 22, who works the streets as “Sunshine” for a pimp called Marmalade, who recruited her at 12, and supports her aunt Shawna Grant’s household. Her attacker asked whether she was ready to meet her father. A younger girl, Spud, describes a preacher in a red Buick, and the detectives catch lay minister Billy Skags with a terrified woman locked in his car. At a lineup, Gladys flees when Skags begins quoting scripture and collapses; doctors find she is 24 weeks pregnant. Judge Linda Maskin rejects the lineup identification and orders a Wade hearing. Shawna throws Gladys out, and the detectives trace her through an online ad to a Red Hook apartment, where she is having seizures. An emergency C-section delivers a daughter weighing about a pound with poor odds of survival.
When a doctor raises withholding treatment, Benson and Stabler argue over the baby’s future. Cabot needs Gladys at the hearing, so Benson arrests her for prostitution to bring her to court. Gladys identifies Skags, defense attorney John Buchanan attacks her past, and after Skags’s outburst Judge Maskin rules the identification admissible.
Spoiler, the ending: Cabot drops the prostitution charge. Gladys then leaves, sending Benson power of attorney over her daughter with a note saying she will come back when she can be the mother the girl deserves. At the hospital, a doctor tells Benson the baby’s brain is bleeding and asks her to decide at once whether to operate, and the episode ends before she answers.
Why it stands out
- Lee Tergesen plays Billy Skags, reuniting him with his former Oz co-star Christopher Meloni, who played his lover on that series, for the first time since Oz ended in 2003.
- Mischa Barton guest stars as Gladys Dalton.