Bang (Season 12, Episode 22)
Premise: A baby left in an alley leads SVU to his adoptive mother’s fiancé, who secretly sabotages condoms to father children with as many women as he can.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 12, Episode 22
- Starring
- Det. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), CSU Tech Adrian Sung (James Chen)
- Guest stars
- John Stamos as Ken Turner, Lori Singer as Dede Aston, Noelle Beck as Dr. Audrey Shelton, Jordan Dean as Wade Fisk, Marta Milans as Imelda Barros
- Director
- Peter Leto
- Writers
- Speed Weed
Summary
“Bang” begins when people leaving a children’s gymnastics class find a two-month-old boy in a cold alley; he survives with severe hypothermia. Fin traces his onesie to a pricey Upper East Side baby store, where the owner identifies him as Jasper, adopted by Dede Aston. At Dede’s brownstone, tenant Wade Fisk mentions shouting the night before, and the detectives find the nanny, Imelda Barros, frantic over the empty crib. A fresh condom leads to her lover, Ken Turner, a former Nassau County prosecutor now in private equity, who turns out to be Dede’s fiancé and the lawyer who arranged Jasper’s closed adoption.
Dede, supposedly in Boston, admits she spent the night at the Waldorf deciding what to do about being pregnant after a condom broke. Benson and Stabler tell her Ken is a reproductive abuser who pokes holes in condoms and then talks women into having the babies. A red hair on Jasper’s blanket points to Wade, who admits leaving the baby by a restaurant’s back door to get him away from a home where Ken and Imelda ignored his crying. Records list Ken as the father on 20 birth certificates in ten years, and DNA shows he is Jasper’s biological father. Dr. Audrey Shelton, a counselor who studies such men, argues that his tactics should count as rape, but they are not crimes. But Jasper’s birth mother, Bridget, a drug addict, says Ken persuaded her to give up the baby and never filed the adoption papers, and Ken is arrested at a hotel with another woman.
In the interview room Ken boasts to Stabler about his urge to father children, but ADA Hardwicke will not prosecute the paperwork misdemeanor. Before he leaves, the squad brings in several of the women who had his children. The mother of one tells him her daughter killed herself and her small son after Ken refused to let them move in with him, and Ken replies that he has 47 children across the country and in Europe. That night Ken is found dead in Dede’s back garden, blown apart by a wasp injection knife, a diving knife that fires a blast of compressed gas. Wade, out on bail, and Dede, who owns the knife, are suspected, but Ken’s former partners give Dede an alibi and say Audrey left their dinner after a phone call.
Spoiler, the ending: Benson and Stabler find Audrey drinking wine at home, expecting them. Years earlier in Buffalo she beat a man who was raping children with a baseball bat, and the DA declined to charge her. She says Ken called to ask her out, she took Dede’s knife meaning only to mutilate him, and it went off. She is taken into custody.
Why it stands out
- Footloose star Lori Singer plays Dede Aston, and John Stamos plays Ken Turner.
- The episode centers on reproductive coercion, in which a partner sabotages birth control to force a pregnancy, and the detectives point out that the law offers little against it.