Above Suspicion (Season 14, Episode 2)
Premise: After an undercover officer is shot by a fellow cop, SVU unravels the plot behind it and finds who in the DA’s office has been protecting a powerful madam.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 14, Episode 2
- Starring
- Det. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Sgt. John Munch (Richard Belzer), Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Det. Nick Amaro (Danny Pino), Det. Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish), Det. Brian Cassidy (Dean Winters), Capt. Donald Cragen (Dann Florek), Capt. Steven Harris (Adam Baldwin), Bureau Chief Paula Foster (Paget Brewster)
- Guest stars
- Peter Jacobson as Bart Ganzel, Brooke Smith as Delia Wilson, Reg E. Cathey as Barry Querns, Courtney Reed as Officer Alana Gonzalez, Michael Potts as IAB Detective Cole Draper
- Director
- Michael Slovis
- Writers
- Warren Leight & Julie Martin
Summary
“Above Suspicion” resumes with Amaro holding Cassidy at gunpoint. Cassidy says he is undercover, investigating Ganzel and the officials on his payroll, and adds that on the night she died Carissa told him Amaro had behaved inappropriately and then phoned Ganzel on a private cell. Ganzel, meanwhile, finds listening devices in his loft. When Cassidy stops answering Foster’s signals, Benson learns from Amaro what he did; Amaro also tells her that Maria has taken Zara to Washington. Delia, who has dropped Exley and now represents herself, asks a judge to dismiss her case after Iris’s death, and he refuses. Ganzel gives the detectives a bat left behind by thugs Delia sent to smash his loft, and a print leads to one of them.
As Benson and Cassidy leave with Ganzel to identify the man, two thieves break into Ganzel’s car, a patrol car arrives within moments, and Officer Alana Gonzalez shoots Cassidy twice even though he shouts that he is a cop. He survives surgery. Benson tells IAB and Harris the shooting was arranged, and the squad looks into it on its own. One thief, Hasdrubal, got a go-ahead call from an untraceable phone, the same number Carissa called on the night she died: Ganzel’s private cell. Told falsely that Cassidy has died, Gonzalez says her sergeant and lover, Ted Koundak, showed her Cassidy’s photo and promised her a shield for taking him out. Ganzel is arrested while packing to flee to Israel and is released on $200,000 bail.
Foster and Benson play Ganzel’s lawyer, Barry Querns, wiretaps of Ganzel mocking him. Querns quits as Ganzel’s counsel and secretly records Ganzel admitting that he sent Carissa to drug Cragen for compromising photos, then killed her with a kitchen knife when she said she loved Cassidy and would leave him. Cassidy admits the affair. The murder charge against Cragen is dropped, but Foster has given Delia immunity, and three of Delia’s women tell a grand jury that Cragen assaulted them, leading Foster to charge him with solicitation and forced sodomy.
Spoiler, the ending: Learning that three earlier undercover cases against Delia collapsed, Benson has the squad examine Foster’s finances. They find a $200,000-a-year gap in the cost of caring for her daughter, Sarah, who has a brittle-bone disease, along with cash payments and a trust moved to Anguilla. Foster confesses that for eight years Exley funneled Delia’s money to her, and Benson arrests her out of her daughter’s sight. Delia, the state attorney general and a string of officials are arrested, Delia’s women recant, and Haden resigns. Harris, noting that Benson is worried about Foster’s daughter, tells her she did what she had to do.
Why it stands out
- This is the second half of the two-part premiere, which aired back to back with “Lost Reputation” on September 26, 2012, and drew about 7.19 million viewers.
- Dean Winters’s Brian Cassidy, a squad detective in the show’s first season, returns as an undercover officer, and Benson recalls a “moment” between them from those years.
- Sue Simmons, who plays herself, returns as a newscaster covering the fallout from Ganzel’s arrest.