Motherly Love (Season 18, Episode 10)
Premise: A teenager kills his best friend to stop what his psychiatrist mother calls a rape, until SVU learns she was the one abusing the boy.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 18, Episode 10
- Starring
- Lt. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Det. Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish), Det. Dominick “Sonny” Carisi Jr. (Peter Scanavino), ADA Rafael Barba (Raúl Esparza), Judge Elana Barth (Jenna Stern)
- Guest stars
- Sarah Wynter as Dr. Nicole Keller, Aaron Sanders as Luke Keller, Daniel Cosgrove as Dr. Daniel Keller, Delaney Williams as John Buchanan, Jason Bowen as Det. Marcus Perry
- Director
- Mariska Hargitay
- Writers
- Story: Brianna Yellen & Robert Brooks Cohen & Céline Robinson; Written by: Rick Eid & Julie Martin
Summary
“Motherly Love” opens as Luke Keller, 15, back early after an argument at his father’s, hears noises, calls 911 and takes his rifle from a closet. When his mother, psychiatrist Dr. Nicole Keller, screams that she is being raped, he fires and kills the boy on top of her: his best friend, Trey Franklin, 15. Homicide Det. Marcus Perry calls in SVU. Nicole tells Benson and Rollins she let Trey in at 9 p.m. to do homework, went upstairs in her nightgown and was attacked when she came down for wine. Luke tells Fin and Carisi he did not know it was Trey and only meant to scare the man away.
Trey’s parents, Charles and Regina, insist he would never attack anyone. In his room the detectives find photos of Trey in bed with a naked, sleeping Nicole, who says he must have crept in while she was on sleep medication. A classmate, Ethan Miller, pressed about a fight that got him and Trey suspended, admits Nicole abused him about ten times before turning to Trey. Luke refuses to believe it, and his father, Dr. Daniel Keller, calls his ex-wife a narcissist. The lab then finds Trey’s semen on a towel in Nicole’s top-floor bedroom, where she said he never went, and she is arrested for third-degree rape of a minor and murder.
At trial before Judge Elana Barth, Barba, who has given Luke qualified immunity for testifying, calls Benson and Luke, who says his mother looked at him and at his hands before she screamed. Her lawyer, John Buchanan, gets Luke to concede he cannot know what she saw. Nicole repeats her story until Barba’s cross-examination, then asks to change her defense: she now testifies that she and Trey were having consensual sex, that she never cried rape before Luke fired, and that Luke knew of the affair because she once caught him watching them. Luke then tells his father he wants to plead guilty to murder.
Spoiler, the ending: Benson meets Luke and reminds him of the hunt where he could not bring himself to shoot a deer, telling him he fired to save his mother. Instead of cross-examining Nicole, Barba recalls Luke, who tells the jury he fired because she looked him in the eye and cried for help. The jury convicts Nicole of second-degree murder and third-degree rape of a minor. Led away, she shouts to Luke that she forgives him and blames Benson for turning him against her; Benson replies that Nicole did that herself, then turns down a drink to go home to Noah.
Why it stands out
- Directed by Mariska Hargitay.
- Filmed and announced as the series’ 400th episode, it aired as the 399th after the season’s episodes were reshuffled; the 400th to air was “Great Expectations.”