Rescue (Season 12, Episode 10)
Premise: A partygoer’s death exposes paramedics who prey on patients, while Benson’s search for Vivian Arliss threatens her guardianship of Calvin.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 12, Episode 10
- 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), ADA Gillian Hardwicke (Melissa Sagemiller), ME Dr. Melinda Warner (Tamara Tunie), Judge Lena Petrovsky (Joanna Merlin)
- Guest stars
- Maria Bello as Vivian Arliss, Charlie Tahan as Calvin Arliss, Kat Foster as Sarah Hoyt, Mike Starr as Mike O’Doole, James Martinez as Clark Tinta
- Ripped from the headlines
- Partly inspired by a 2010 uproar at Duke University, where a senior’s mock “sex thesis,” a PowerPoint ranking the men she had slept with, spread online.
- Director
- Peter Leto & Constantine Makris
- Writers
- Daniel Truly
Summary
“Rescue” opens at a Soho party where guests are drawing on the face of Caitlin Lamarck, 26, apparently passed out on a pile of coats, until the host, Jill, sees she is bleeding. Caitlin dies of bleeding in the brain, and Warner finds she was also raped. Munch and Fin learn she was shunned and fired after a joke PowerPoint rating the 15 men she had slept with spread online. Jill admits luring her to the party to humiliate her and shoving her into a mirror during an argument, but the lab finds defibrillator gel and glove powder inside Caitlin. That points to the paramedics who took her away: Clark Tinta, with past complaints of groping women, and his partner, Mike O’Doole.
Benson, meanwhile, is raising Calvin, who gets into a fight at school and signs a painting for her as “Calvin Benson.” Thefts at homes on the paramedics’ calls lead to O’Doole, whose hair turns up in the bathroom near where Mrs. Donoho’s wedding ring vanished during an open house. He admits stealing and wears a wire, and Tinta boasts of assaulting several patients; when the detectives close in on the ambulance, he kills himself by injecting air into a vein. Prints from the Donoho apartment show that Vivian and her friend Sarah Hoyt were at the open house too. Stabler finds Calvin’s DNA swab, which Benson never sent to the lab, and sends it himself. Cragen pulls Benson and then Stabler off the search for Vivian, but Benson fakes a call from Calvin’s school and finds her in a condemned South Bronx building. Vivian offers to let Benson keep Calvin if she walks away; Benson brings her in.
Vivian confesses to killing Burlock with a frying pan, and Cragen reprimands Benson, Stabler and Fin for defying him. Then Sarah confesses that she killed Burlock and that Vivian was covering for her. At Sarah’s arraignment, her lawyer, Russell Hunter, argues that Benson has a stake in the case because she has Calvin, and bail is set at $300,000. Outside the courthouse, Sarah is shot dead in her car. Video catches Gambel fleeing the garage, but saliva on Sarah’s face matches half of Calvin’s DNA. The gunman is Calvin’s father, David Drecker, who waits for the police and blames Sarah for dragging Vivian back to drugs and taking his son.
Spoiler, the ending: Soon after, child protective services worker Paul Verecca arrives at the squad room with papers ending Benson’s guardianship: Vivian has revoked it in writing, and Drecker has given custody to Calvin’s grandparents in Vermont. Calvin begs Benson not to let them take him as he is led away.
Why it stands out
- Maria Bello makes her second and last appearance of the season as Vivian Arliss, closing the story of Calvin, whom Benson took in during “Trophy.”
- Kat Foster plays Sarah Hoyt, and Mike Starr and James Martinez play paramedics Mike O’Doole and Clark Tinta.