Decline & Fall (Season 18, Episode 9)
Premise: A bartender who remembers nothing after a retail billionaire’s birthday party learns that two generations of his family had sex with her, and the patriarch claims he is too impaired to stand trial.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 18, Episode 9
- Starring
- Lt. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish), Det. Dominick “Sonny” Carisi Jr. (Peter Scanavino), ADA Rafael Barba (Raúl Esparza)
- Guest stars
- Bob Gunton as Lawrence Hendricks Sr., Ariane Rinehart as Sarah Morrissey, Ian Nelson as Eric Hendricks, Jim True-Frost as Lawrence Hendricks Jr., Sarah Clarke as Cynthia Hendricks
- Director
- Jean de Segonzac
- Writers
- Story: Brianna Yellen & Robert Brooks Cohen & Céline Robinson; Written by: Ed Zuckerman & Robert Brooks Cohen
Summary
“Decline & Fall” opens at the 75th birthday party of Lawrence Hendricks, founder of the Avalon Stores chain, who tells his guests the company will someday pass to his daughter, Cynthia. His grandson and trainee, Eric, flirts with the bartender, Sarah Morrissey. The next day Sarah tells Benson she woke on a couch in the penthouse with her pants down and sore, remembering nothing after the view. Her rape kit finds semen and her blood shows Quaaludes. Eric says they had consensual sex in his room after sharing tequila from his flask, before his father, Larry Hendricks Jr., ends the interview. A search of the penthouse, where Lawrence lives with girlfriend Sue Ann Daly, turns up Quaaludes in Eric’s room.
The lab then finds a second semen sample, a family match to Eric. Larry says he left the party early and gives a DNA swab, but when detectives come for Lawrence’s sample he announces that he had sex with Sarah and claims she came on to him. As her memory returns in pieces, Sarah recalls going willingly to Eric’s room but nothing of Lawrence. Meeting him in a park while recorded, she asks for an apology; he says she needed help relaxing, calls her Monica, and is arrested. Cynthia then wins a civil ruling that her father lacks mental capacity, making her his guardian, and his lawyer, Harold Timmons, switches to an insanity defense, which Judge Reginald Flowers lets the jury weigh.
At trial Sarah testifies about the recording. Sue Ann, told her fingerprints were found on the pill bag although the results were inconclusive, admits she moved the Quaaludes from Lawrence’s bedroom to Eric’s and that he slips them into her drinks before sex. Lawrence testifies as if it were still the 1970s and calls the pills routine at parties, while Barba presses him on how Avalon grew. Eric refuses to testify against his grandfather, so Larry takes the stand instead; he says his father is lucid, but Timmons draws out his resentment at losing his post as chief operating officer two months after getting it.
Spoiler, the ending: Confronted with the slip about Monica, Larry’s ex-wife, Larry tells Eric that Lawrence drugged his mother at a party while she was pregnant with him, which ended the marriage. Eric then testifies that his grandfather handed Sarah a separate drink at a late nightcap, kept Eric from taking it and winked that he missed the old days, and that at work Lawrence keeps up with current trends. Lawrence shouts at Eric from the defense table, and the jury finds him guilty of rape. The squad then catches a new rape case in a Murray Hill bar.
Why it stands out
- Bob Gunton guest stars as Avalon founder Lawrence Hendricks, with Sarah Clarke as his daughter, Cynthia, and Jim True-Frost as his son, Larry.
- Fin is absent from the case; the squad mentions that he is at home studying for the sergeant’s exam.