Imposter (Season 18, Episode 3)
Premise: A security guard who poses as a college admissions director to seduce anxious mothers is charged with rape, testing whether sex obtained by fraud is a crime in New York.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 18, Episode 3
- 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)
- Guest stars
- Wallace Langham as Tom Metcalfe, Paula Marshall as Laura Collett, Conor Proft as Justin Collett, Callie Thorne as Nikki Staines, Vincent Curatola as Judge Al Bertuccio
- Director
- Jean de Segonzac
- Writers
- Story: Brianna Yellen & Robert Cohen & Celine Robinson; Written by: Rick Eid & Gavin Harris
Summary
“Imposter” begins with Laura Collett, a Manhattan mother consumed by her son’s college applications, in a hotel room with a man. Hours later, maintenance finds her unconscious in an overflowing tub after a near-fatal mix of alcohol and diazepam. Her phone holds two texts sent ten minutes apart to the same burner number, the first calling it the best sex ever and the second accusing him of rape. Her husband, James, knows nothing; her son, Justin, a high school senior, says she is fixated on getting him into Hudson University and has had lunches with someone from its admissions office. A spa log shows the man signed in as Alden Kessler, Hudson’s director of admissions, but the real Kessler looks nothing like the man in the hotel’s security video.
Laura wakes and says she caught the man out when he got Hudson’s endowment wrong; she found the real Kessler online, and the impostor laughed when she called him. Benson tells her that because she never agreed to sex with the man he really was, it was rape, though Fin doubts that lying to get sex is a crime. Notes on Kessler’s stationery lead to Tom Metcalfe, a campus security guard who boasts to Carisi of posing as a neurologist and says deceit is not illegal. Barba concedes that New York has no rape-by-fraud law but agrees to try the theory. A note found under a warrant sends Benson and Fin to a luxury SoHo condo, where Metcalfe has just slept with another Hudson mother, Erin Dowling, who refuses to help. A hidden camera there has filmed him with five mothers, none willing to complain.
Metcalfe rejects a plea to third-degree sexual assault and is charged with rape. Judge Al Bertuccio admits only Laura’s video and accuses Barba of using the case for politics. Laura testifies that she saw sex with “Kessler” as a business deal, and defense attorney Nikki Staines likens her to a prostitute. The defense then lists Gary Bell, a doorman and Metcalfe’s high school friend, to say Laura called Metcalfe by his real name. The squad learns Bell was fired from a hotel for hiding a camera in a women’s restroom, and facing an unlawful surveillance charge, he is withdrawn.
Spoiler, the ending: After closing arguments, Bertuccio makes clear he is ready to throw out a guilty verdict, and Barba accepts a plea to second-degree criminal impersonation, a misdemeanor. Benson goes to tell Laura in person and arrives to find emergency crews outside the Colletts’; Justin has taken his own life, and Laura sobs over her son.
Why it stands out
- Carisi, who is studying law, has an interview with a Brooklyn prosecutor that Barba arranged, and teases Rollins that he is not just a cop.
- Wallace Langham plays impostor Tom Metcalfe, with Paula Marshall as Laura Collett, Callie Thorne as defense attorney Nikki Staines and Vincent Curatola as Judge Al Bertuccio.