December Solstice (Season 16, Episode 16)
Premise: A novelist’s daughters accuse his much younger wife of secretly drugging him for sex, and his death after she pulls him from the hospital leads to a manslaughter charge.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 16, Episode 16
- Starring
- Sgt. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Nick Amaro (Danny Pino), Det. Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish), Det. Dominick “Sonny” Carisi Jr. (Peter Scanavino), ADA Rafael Barba (Raúl Esparza), Deputy Chief ME Dr. Carl Rudnick (Jefferson Mays)
- Guest stars
- Robert Vaughn as Walter Briggs, Marcia Cross as Charmaine Briggs, Susan Pourfar as Delilah Briggs, Emily Bergl as Judith Briggs, Mercedes Ruehl as Lucia Barba
- Ripped from the headlines
- Loosely based on the family dispute that surrounded radio host Casey Kasem in the period before his death in 2014.
- Director
- Sharat Raju
- Writers
- Ed Zuckerman
Summary
“December Solstice” opens with Benson confirming that DNA shows Noah’s biological father is Johnny D, a pimp held on federal charges; she is told she need not reveal it, and she has already begun adoption paperwork. At a party, novelist Walter Briggs, nearly 80 and suffering from dementia, meets his daughters, Delilah and Judith, who say his sixth wife, Charmaine, keeps them away from him. The sisters tell SVU that Charmaine secretly gives their father erectile dysfunction pills despite his heart condition, hoping for a child and a bigger share of his estate, and that he cannot consent. Housekeeper Ms. Thwaites backs them up.
Carisi, a devoted Briggs reader, and Rollins make a welfare check, and Briggs boasts of satisfying his wife before drifting into confusion. Soon after, he has a heart attack, and Charmaine checks him out of the hospital over his doctors’ objections. An ambulance driver says she wanted a Westchester airport for a flight to Canada, then moved her husband into a cab. The detectives find the couple at the airport, and at a late-night hearing Charmaine’s lawyer, Arlene Heller, fights the daughters’ bid for guardianship while Briggs struggles to remember their names. The judge sends him to a Westchester hospital, where he dies of another heart attack. The squad stops Charmaine from taking the body, and the autopsy and a nurse reveal she had a company extract his sperm after death. Barba charges her with second-degree manslaughter.
Barba urges his mother, Lucia, to move his grandmother from her Bronx walk-up into a care home. At trial, Thwaites says Charmaine crushed the pills into orange juice, and Dr. Tedroe describes the risk of moving so frail a patient. Then a video Briggs recorded three years earlier, released by an online service after his death, praises Charmaine and scolds his daughters, revealing that he refused Delilah the rights to adapt his novel “The Fifth Assailant” for the stage. Charmaine testifies that she wanted him to die in peace at a lake in Quebec and wanted his child out of love. Judith, convinced that Delilah lied about Charmaine barring visits, offers to testify for the defense.
Spoiler, the ending: Charmaine pleads guilty to first-degree reckless endangerment and receives probation, on the condition that Delilah’s play never be produced; she also reveals that a surrogate is carrying an embryo from her egg and Walter’s sperm. Barba tells Carisi no jury would have jailed her, and Judith gives Carisi a signed first edition of “The Fifth Assailant.” Before the move, Barba’s mother finds his grandmother dead in her own bed. His mother blames herself; Barba takes the blame, noting that she died at home, as she wished.
Why it stands out
- Marcia Cross plays Charmaine Briggs in her first television role since the 2012 finale of Desperate Housewives.
- Robert Vaughn plays Walter Briggs; he appeared earlier in the series as Tate Speer in the season eight episode “Clock.”
- Mercedes Ruehl plays Barba’s mother, Lucia, and Sandy Duncan returns as Judge Virginia Farrell from “American Disgrace” earlier in the season.