Complicated (Season 19, Episode 5)
Premise: A young woman found in Central Park is taken for a girl kidnapped ten years earlier, and the detectives come to doubt both her story and the missing girl’s family.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 19, Episode 5
- 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), Defense Attorney Trevor Langan (Peter Hermann)
- Guest stars
- Iliana Raykovski as Britney Taylor, Mike Faist as Glenn Lawrence, Paul Schulze as Bill Lawrence, Kellie Overbey as Karen Lawrence, Brooke Shields as Sheila Porter
- Director
- Tricia Brock
- Writers
- Story: Brianna Yellen & Robert Brooks Cohen & Céline C. Robinson & Elizabeth Rinehart; Written by: Céline C. Robinson
Summary
“Complicated” opens in family court, where Judge Ruth Linden hears Sheila Porter’s bid to vacate Noah’s adoption. With Trevor Langan beside her, Benson says Ellie told her that her mother was dead. Sheila cites the closed abuse inquiry and says that while she will not take Noah from his home, she means to be part of his life. Meanwhile, a frightened young woman runs to an officer in Central Park saying a man is chasing her. She tells Rollins and Carisi that a man named Steve took her when she was small and forced her to have sex with him for years. She recalls a father who called her “Little M” and a game of hide-and-seek with her big brother by an arch on her first day of kindergarten.
The details match Emma Lawrence, who vanished from Prospect Park on her first day of kindergarten in 2007, aged six. An age-progressed sketch looks like the girl, and Bill and Karen Lawrence identify her at once. After an old family photo jogs her memory, she goes home with them and her older brother, Glenn. Then video shows her boarding the subway in the Bronx, not jumping from a van. At a homecoming event, NBA player Isaiah Thomas gives her a jersey, recalling the Cavaliers jersey Emma wore when she disappeared. Her story of a Pennsylvania farm falls apart, and Barba declines to seek a DNA warrant. A photo check then ties the girl to a Florida fraud warrant for Britney Taylor, 21.
In a TV interview Glenn changes his account of the day Emma vanished, and Carisi notices it no longer matches what he told police in 2007. Over drinks with a woman at a bar, Glenn hints that Emma is never coming back, until his father pulls him away. Taken in, Britney admits who she is: abused by her own mother and too old for youth shelters, she picked the Lawrences after seeing their televised plea. She says Glenn knows she is not Emma and told her she can never leave. Wearing a wire, she gets Glenn to call Emma’s death an accident; he then admits smothering her with a couch cushion for dancing in front of the TV, and Bill is arrested.
Spoiler, the ending: Bill pleads guilty to falsely reporting an incident and obstruction so that Glenn’s manslaughter charge is reduced to criminally negligent homicide; in court he says he does not regret protecting his son. Karen says she wishes the girl had never been found. Benson meets Sheila, who describes how Ellie fell into drugs and her late husband pushed her away, and the two agree to stay out of court. Sheila visits, and Noah calls her Grandma.
Why it stands out
- Isaiah Thomas, then a point guard for the Cleveland Cavaliers, appears as himself.
- Mike Faist, a Tony nominee for Dear Evan Hansen, plays Glenn Lawrence.
- Noah meets his grandmother, Sheila Porter, for the first time.