Intent (Season 19, Episode 8)
Premise: A social media star is raped by a fighter who believes she asked him to force her, and SVU traces both sides of their messages to a lonely woman in West Virginia.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 19, Episode 8
- 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
- Steve Howey as Andy “The Monster” McPherson, Gage Golightly as Katy Miller, Tenea Intriago as Heather Parcell, Glenn Fleshler as Phillip Altshuler, Brooke Shields as Sheila Porter
- Ripped from the headlines
- Loosely based on the online catfishing case involving NBA player Chris Andersen and Paris Dylan.
- Director
- Adam Bernstein
- Writers
- Story: Brianna Yellen & Robert Brooks Cohen & Céline C. Robinson & Elizabeth Rinehart; Written by: Lawrence Kaplow & Robert Brooks Cohen
Summary
“Intent” opens with Sheila collecting Noah from school; that night Noah tells Benson that Grandma Sheila said Ellie loved him very much. Social media star Katy Miller, who pays for college by promoting products like Blue Glacier shampoo, goes back to the apartment of MMA fighter Andy “The Monster” McPherson after a first date and is raped despite telling him to stop. She tells someone on the street she was raped, then refuses a rape kit and insists to Rollins and Fin that nothing happened, texting the whole time. She tells Benson a lawyer advised her to stay quiet, but the lawyer, Phillip Altshuler, says he has never heard of her.
McPherson and his lawyer and manager, Shawn Tompkins, then call the squad. McPherson says the sex was rough but consensual and shows texts in which Katy asked him to force her, plus a new demand for $10,000 to keep quiet. A sting in Stuyvesant Park ends with Katy fleeing; she says she came to meet a Chanel scout and shows threatening texts from McPherson. Chanel has never heard of her, and the squad concludes that a third person catfished both of them.
To charge the catfisher as an accomplice, there must be a rape, so Barba offers McPherson third-degree rape with probation and no jail. Katy tells him she said stop, that he choked her and that she was a virgin; he apologizes and takes the deal, which ends his career. Computer Crimes traces the messages to Maysville, West Virginia, where Rollins and Carisi arrest Heather Parcell, who looks after her mother, June, who has cancer. Waiting for her transfer, the two detectives end up in a bar fight. In New York, Benson tells Sheila never to discuss Ellie with Noah without her; Sheila apologizes and asks to buy Noah a winter coat.
Altshuler shows up to represent Heather for free, and she refuses a plea to second-degree rape. At trial Heather says it was a game copied from her mother’s soap operas. Barba shows she washes her mother’s hair with Blue Glacier, posted a hateful message about Katy on Reddit, has six Instagram followers, and had asked both to let a friend, herself, join their date. Heather finally shouts that Katy deserved it.
Spoiler, the ending: The jury finds Heather guilty of first-degree rape. While the squad agrees McPherson’s career is finished, Sheila takes Noah shopping for a coat, turns to fetch another and finds him gone. The episode ends as Sheila calls Benson.
Why it stands out
- The episode ends on a cliffhanger with Noah missing; the story continues in “Gone Baby Gone,” which aired four weeks later, on January 3, 2018.
- Steve Howey plays MMA fighter Andy “The Monster” McPherson, and Gage Golightly plays influencer Katy Miller.