Remember Me Too (Season 19, Episode 24)
Premise: Charged after the hostage standoff, Lourdes Vega goes on trial while Benson tries to prove Miguel Lopez trafficked her, and his associates go after Stone’s sister.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 19, Episode 24
- 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), Dr. Elizabeth Olivet (Carolyn McCormick), Judge D. Serani (Michael Mastro)
- Guest stars
- Genesis Rodriguez as Lourdes Vega, Carlos Miranda as Miguel Lopez, Benito Martinez as Santino Rojas, Amy Korb as Pamela Stone, Roberto Sanchez as Diego Diaz
- Director
- Alex Chapple
- Writers
- Story: Brianna Yellen & Robert Brooks Cohen & Céline C. Robinson & Elizabeth Rinehart; Written by: Michael Chernuchin & Julie Martin
Summary
“Remember Me Too” picks up after the penthouse standoff. Miguel Lopez says he only designed websites for Jorge Diaz and watched his security cameras after a break-in, until a lawyer he never called, Efrain Hernandez, ends the interview. Lourdes Vega tells detectives to just have her deported, though she says the traffickers will hunt her down and kill her. Records confirm Miguel was living in Portland in 2013, and Carisi wonders whether Lourdes has the wrong man; Benson, who saw her scars, is certain. Then Diaz dies in surgery and Lourdes is charged. At her arraignment on assault, kidnapping, attempted murder and manslaughter, Santino Rojas, who has volunteered to defend her, calls her a likely witness against the Mexican cartels. Stone says he cannot drop a homicide charge, and with nothing but her word against Miguel, he lets the case against him go.
A photo in Lourdes’s room leads detectives to Maria Luna, another nanny who knew Lourdes in Texas, but she says she has never seen Miguel. Rojas enters an insanity defense. Dr. Elizabeth Olivet finds that Lourdes has PTSD but knew her actions were wrong. On the stand Miguel says Lourdes knocked him out, tied him up and burned his face, and Rojas attacks his honesty over years of illegal border crossings and a fake Social Security number before DACA. Stone treats Benson as a hostile witness to get her to admit Lourdes’s threats; under questioning from Rojas she agrees that Lourdes’s state matched PTSD. Lourdes tells the jury what Miguel did to her. Meanwhile Diaz’s brother, Diego, warns Stone in a bar to drop the case and mentions his sister, Pam. Benson then realizes that Miguel spoke of cigar burns before Lourdes ever had, but Stone says it will not stand up, and word comes that armed men have taken Pam from her Westchester facility.
Spoiler, the ending: Lourdes agrees to take Stone’s deal. Threatened with being branded an informant, Miguel admits he drove women north for Jorge and raped them, and gives up the warehouse where he left them. Police free the women there, but Diego holds a gun on Pam, and in the shooting she is hit; she dies saying her brother’s name. Lourdes is told she can hope for asylum and witness protection, federal agents round up Miguel’s associates in both the United States and Mexico, and Benson tells a grieving Stone there was nothing he could have done.
Why it stands out
- The second half of the two-part Season 19 finale, which aired on May 23, 2018, directly after “Remember Me.”
- Carolyn McCormick appears as Dr. Elizabeth Olivet, a character from the original Law & Order.
- The episode marks the last appearance of Stone’s sister, Pamela, who is killed in the closing raid.