Wonderland Story (Season 15, Episode 5)
Premise: A woman who was raped two years earlier is drugged and assaulted again after an underground party, as the squad sends Munch into retirement.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 15, Episode 5
- 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)
- Guest stars
- Sofia Vassilieva as Sarah Walsh, Finn Wittrock as Cameron Tyler, Amelia Rose Blaire as Nicole Price, Clark Johnson as Meldrick Lewis, Carol Kane as Gwen Munch
- Director
- Jennifer Getzinger
- Writers
- Story: Ed Zuckerman & Lawrence Kaplow; Teleplay: Warren Leight & Julie Martin
Summary
“Wonderland Story” opens at Munch’s retirement party, where Benson reads from her diary about meeting him on her first day at SVU, Fin thanks his partner, the squad presents a shadow box with his New York and Baltimore shields, and he is announced as a future special investigator for the DA. During Munch’s roast of his colleagues, Benson slips out after a text from Sarah Walsh, the piano student whose rapist, Michael Wedmore, went free after a trial two years earlier. Sarah woke up naked and sore with a torn earlobe after a night out, remembers nothing past 10 p.m., and is sure Wedmore, whom she has seen following her, did it again.
Her rape kit shows GHB but no DNA. Wedmore’s mother and co-workers place him at work nearby, and his phone’s location clears him, so Benson tells Sarah a different predator likely attacked her, and Sarah, blaming herself, cuts her off. Sarah’s friend Nicole Price, engaged to Matthew, explains that the couple gave her a pocket watch, the pass to an underground party with an Alice in Wonderland theme. Fin gets into the next party, at the same water tower, and the squad shuts it down. Video from a neighbor across the street shows internet millionaire Cameron Tyler carrying Sarah out on Friday night, though he had told detectives he was in the Hamptons. Cameron, Matthew’s best friend and Nicole’s employer, visits Sarah with an orchid and says he took her home by cab but stayed downstairs.
A caterer, Celine Dubois, accused Cameron of sexual assault a year earlier and recanted; she now runs her own shop and will not talk. Nicole recalls passing out at Cameron’s Fourth of July party and waking sore with a torn earlobe, after which he took her to a doctor friend rather than a hospital. Benson argues against telling Nicole she was probably raped but is overruled, and she and Rollins break the news. Wearing a wire, Nicole tells Cameron she is pregnant and not by Matthew; Cameron admits they had sex, claiming she came on to him, offers to pay for an abortion and is arrested. Matthew attacks him in the squad room, and Cameron’s cloud storage holds video of him with eight unconscious women.
Spoiler, the ending: Cragen gives Benson the sergeant’s exam, calling her his number two. Cameron agrees to plead guilty to four counts of aggravated sexual assault, including Sarah’s, for 10 to 15 years. Benson tells Sarah she has been assaulted twice herself and passes on her therapist’s advice to change routines. Once the squad room is quiet, Munch says goodbye to Cragen and, alone at his desk, answers a ringing phone with “Homicide” before correcting himself.
Why it stands out
- Richard Belzer’s last episode as a series regular: Munch retires after 15 years at SVU to become a special investigator for the DA, a role in which he returns for the season finale, “Spring Awakening.”
- Homicide: Life on the Street, where Munch began, sends guests to the party: Clark Johnson as Meldrick Lewis and Carol Kane and Ellen McElduff as Munch’s ex-wives Gwen Munch and Billie Lou Hatfield, with David Steinberg as his brother.
- Sofia Vassilieva reprises Sarah Walsh from Season 13’s “True Believers.”