Mask (Season 12, Episode 13)
Premise: A masked serial rapist who claims to redeem his victims is traced to a sex-addiction clinic run by the estranged father of one of them.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 12, Episode 13
- Starring
- Det. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Capt. Donald Cragen (Dann Florek), Dr. George Huang (BD Wong)
- Guest stars
- Jeremy Irons as Dr. Cap Jackson, A.J. Cook as Debbie Shields, Chandler Williams as Dr. Brett Kincaid, Mariette Hartley as Lorna Scarry, Lindsey Kraft as Courtney
- Director
- Donna Deitch
- Writers
- Speed Weed
Summary
“Mask” begins when two boys with camera binoculars watch a man in a grotesque mask rape a woman across the street, then stomp her partner when she comes home. The victims are Dr. Debbie Shields, an OB-GYN, and Ann Jackson, who needs brain surgery. Debbie’s clinic has drawn threats over her work on embryos with three genetic parents, but the exterminator who wrote one letter has an alibi. A sketch from Richmond, Virginia, shows the same mask on a man who raped four women in one week in 2006. Debbie says the rapist promised to cure her of “Falmouth,” and Ann’s estranged father, Cap Jackson, a psychiatrist who treats sex addicts, says the man raped the wrong woman, then cites patient privilege and says no more.
Huang, who admires Jackson’s work, joins Stabler in questioning him about his memoir of addiction. His wife killed herself, and Ann stopped speaking to him the summer she turned 16, at the family’s Cape Cod retreat in Falmouth. The mask turns out to depict Kamadeva, a Hindu god of erotic love, and under Stabler’s pressure Jackson says he thinks he raped Ann that summer. Ann wakes briefly, then seizes and is put in a coma. Huang links attacks in Richmond, Philadelphia, New York and Utica, all cities with sex-addiction rehab centers. A stripper, Holly Dimeo, is raped next and slashes the attacker’s forearm, so Stabler goes undercover in Jackson’s clinic, where patients must keep their sleeves down. A patient, Courtney, tries to seduce him, and Clay Gibson’s talk of “nirvana” makes Clay a suspect.
Jackson is furious to find a detective in his group, but after Stabler accuses him of shielding a rapist to escape his own guilt, he agrees to share his patients’ names. Ann’s childhood friend Linda then reveals that on the Falmouth dock 20 years ago, the drunken Jackson had sex with her, at 17, not with Ann; Ann, who loved Linda, cut him off. In a group session every man rolls up his sleeves for Stabler, but none has a cut, and Clay was hiding only a tattoo. The detectives learn the other rehab centers shared a records service, and that therapist Brett Kincaid runs Jackson’s computers and heard him discuss Ann.
Spoiler, the ending: Kincaid has lured Courtney to an abandoned cop bar with a note in Stabler’s name. Stabler and Jackson find him attacking her, and he is arrested for raping Debbie and Holly and assaulting Ann. Jackson’s patients desert the clinic after the undercover operation. Ann has not woken, and Jackson says he will be at her side when she does.
Why it stands out
- Jeremy Irons guest-stars as Dr. Cap Jackson; executive producer Neal Baer said the show was elated to work with an actor of his caliber.
- A.J. Cook plays Debbie Shields, and Mariette Hartley plays Jackson’s lawyer, Lorna Scarry.