October Surprise (Season 15, Episode 6)
Premise: When a mayoral front-runner asks Barba, his oldest friend, to help a mutual friend accused of attempted rape, SVU uncovers the candidate’s sexting and hush money.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 15, Episode 6
- Starring
- Sgt. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Det. Nick Amaro (Danny Pino), Det. Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish), ADA Rafael Barba (Raúl Esparza)
- Guest stars
- Vincent Laresca as State Senator Alejandro “Alex” Muñoz, Kirk Acevedo as Eduardo “Eddie” Garcia, Annaleigh Ashford as Lindsay Anderson, Karen Olivo as Yelina Muñoz, Grace Van Patten as Jodie Lanier
- Ripped from the headlines
- Drawn in part from the sexting scandals of Anthony Weiner.
- Director
- Peter Werner
- Writers
- Story: Warren Leight; Story & teleplay: Peter Blauner
Summary
“October Surprise” opens 12 days before New York’s mayoral election, as front-runner State Senator Alejandro “Alex” Muñoz rallies supporters in the Bronx. His volunteer driver, Rikers corrections officer Eduardo “Eddie” Garcia, slips away and is arrested at the apartment of shoe saleswoman and foot model Lindsay Anderson, who says he tried to rape her. Muñoz then drops in on Barba, his boyhood friend from Jerome Avenue, and asks him to look after Eddie, the third of their childhood trio. Eddie claims Lindsay attacked him over a supposed pregnancy and that the $2,000 he carried was for an abortion. Barba asks Benson to give Eddie the benefit of the doubt, which irritates Amaro.
Lindsay denies any pregnancy, wavers on pressing charges and asks to deal only with Amaro. Four men have orders of protection against her for harassment and extortion. Since her targets are rich married men, the detectives suspect she was really after Muñoz and that he sent Eddie to scare her; Muñoz swears he never met her. Lindsay has already left for a political job in Tel Aviv, and campaign media consultant Hank Abraham says she was involved with his top aide, whom he has just sent there too. Amaro urges Barba to recuse himself, but the DA wants him to stay on. Muñoz’s wife, Yelina, visits Barba, and their talk hints at a past between them.
Rollins sets up an online fan page, and Muñoz soon moves her to a cheating site under the alias “Enrique Trouble” and sends explicit photos. Barba privately warns Muñoz, who blames hackers and Wall Street, and Amaro accuses Barba of tipping off a suspect; the two trade jabs over Barba’s Harvard years and Bronx roots. Rollins finds about ten other women, and Fin recognizes one, Anna Pretard, as a former adult-film actress who got a state gaming commission job. In the playground where Eddie once protected him, Barba persuades his friend to cooperate. Eddie admits carrying cash to Anna and to another woman with a state tourism job, plus one payment to Lindsay, and recalls overhearing about a woman named Jodie. She turns out to be Jodie Lanier, a 15-year-old high school sophomore who traded nude photos with Muñoz.
Spoiler, the ending: Barba pulls Muñoz out of a fundraiser, lays out the evidence and urges him to quit the race. Muñoz refuses, calls Barba a servant of the rich and warns that the barrio will never forgive him; at a press conference he blames special interests, a corrupt detective and Barba. Reverend Curtis Scott accuses Barba of sacrificing the city’s poor. At the arraignment, five days before the election, Muñoz’s lawyer, Ron Kuby, calls the timing political, and the judge sets bail at $10,000.
Why it stands out
- The episode fills in Barba’s background: he grew up on Jerome Avenue in the Bronx with Muñoz and Garcia, and Amaro needles him about leaving the neighborhood for Harvard.
- Lester Holt makes a cameo as a news anchor, and Ron Kuby plays himself as Muñoz’s defense lawyer.
- Vincent Laresca plays Muñoz, Kirk Acevedo plays Eddie Garcia and Leslie Odom Jr. plays Reverend Curtis Scott.