Mama (Season 19, Episode 22)
Premise: An Alzheimer’s patient’s rape claim, mixed up with a 50-year-old memory, leads SVU to a temp aide who targets elderly women in care homes.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 19, Episode 22
- Starring
- Lt. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Sgt. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Det. Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish), Det. Dominick “Sonny” Carisi Jr. (Peter Scanavino), ADA Peter Stone (Philip Winchester)
- Guest stars
- Fionnula Flanagan as Madeline “Maddie” Thomas, Hal Linden as Leonard Maxwell, Todd Alan Crain as Henry Phillips, Anne Archer as Trudy Morris, Kathleen McNenny as Christine Ritchie
- Director
- Jean de Segonzac
- Writers
- Story: Brianna Yellen & Robert Brooks Cohen & Céline C. Robinson & Elizabeth Rinehart; Written by: Lawrence Kaplow & Elizabeth Rinehart
Summary
“Mama” opens with Benson learning secondhand that Fin has been promoted to sergeant and is moving to the 21st Precinct, and telling him she wishes she had heard it from him. At Esconso Gardens, an upscale care home, 82-year-old Madeline “Maddie” Thomas, who has mid-stage Alzheimer’s, tells a nurse she was raped. Her doctor thinks she is confusing fiction with fact, and her exam shows no injuries and no foreign DNA. Cameras show only two female nurses entering her room, and Albert Romano, a Frank Sinatra impersonator who sang there that day, denies visiting any rooms. But Maddie panics at the sight of marzipan cookies and cries out the name “Max,” so detectives visit Café Roma, the bakery she once owned. Her old apprentice remembers a regular, Professor Leonard Maxwell. Maxwell, 83, says he loved Maddie and they slept together once, in the bakery kitchen in February 1966, while she was married. At a lineup she does not pick him out.
Next, Patrice Conaway (called Mrs. Connolly in the episode), an 80-year-old with multiple sclerosis in a state facility, reports that a new aide named Dan massaged her feet and raped her. “Dan” turns out to have used the identity of Daniel Hammerson, a dementia patient who had died, while moving from one temp job to another, and he also worked at Esconso, bringing food and snacks to residents’ rooms. The squad concludes that his cookies sent Maddie back to the bakery in 1966. A coworker remembers him whistling old show tunes and claiming to know Broadway star Trudy Morris, and Rollins and Carisi arrest her son, Henry Phillips, at her apartment. He says he hides his name to escape her fame and claims Patrice welcomed him. Patrice then dies of a heart attack; the lab finds Henry’s DNA, but without her testimony he can claim consent.
Shown a photo array, Maddie breaks down at Henry’s picture. Stone agrees to try her as a witness, but Judge Lisa Peck rules her unfit to testify when Maddie answers as if accepting her late husband’s proposal and then reads a menu aloud, and the case is dismissed. Benson takes the story to a reporter, and the article brings forward James Ricord, whose 87-year-old mother identifies Henry, with more victims to follow.
Spoiler, the ending: When the squad comes back for Henry, he turns on his mother over her many husbands and cries that he loved her and wanted her love; he is arrested for first-degree rape. Maxwell visits Maddie with white chrysanthemums, and she greets him as Max. Fin, back at SVU after arranging a transfer, gets his first orders from Benson as a sergeant.
Why it stands out
- Fin’s promotion to sergeant comes after a long wait following his sergeant’s exam; he returns to SVU by the end of the episode.
- The guest cast includes Fionnula Flanagan, Hal Linden, Anne Archer and Joe Piscopo.