Man Up (Season 20, Episode 1)
Premise: A 15-year-old boy refuses to name the man who raped him after a family hunting trip, and the squad comes to suspect his own father.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 20, Episode 1
- 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
- Dylan Walsh as John Conway, Bryce Romero as Sam Conway, Sally Murphy as Molly Conway, Richard Meehan as Brian Conway, Kurt Fuller as Jed Karey
- Director
- Alex Chapple
- Writers
- Michael Chernuchin & Julie Martin
Summary
“Man Up” opens with a gym coach reporting blood on the shorts of 15-year-old Sam Conway, who insists he fell. A hospital exam shows he was raped within the past two days, but Sam tells Carisi it is his own business and that he needed it to happen. His parents, John and Molly, say he spent the weekend on a hunting trip in Steuben County with his father and older brother, Brian. A friend tells Rollins that Sam phoned her drunk on Sunday night to say he had become a man, and a bar leads the squad to Gus Haverford, an older man who says he only put the crying boy in an Uber home. Sam, he adds, kept talking about his brother and a rabbit.
Fin leans on Brian, who denies everything. When Brian goes after Sam at school, Benson chases him but runs out of breath, and he knocks a cyclist down before he is caught. John then announces that Sam has come out as gay and had a fling with a young man he met upstate. Suspecting the father is shielding Brian, the squad presses Molly, who finally admits she walked in on Sam crying on his bed while John stood over him closing his pants, and that John had her put Sam’s bloody underwear in the wash. John is arrested for raping his son and tells Stone that a hunter who flinches loses. Sam still denies everything to Carisi at a batting cage.
At trial, a lab witness finds John’s DNA on the underwear, but defense attorney Jed Karey suggests it could have transferred in the washing machine. Judge Edward Kofax bars Molly’s testimony under spousal privilege, so Stone names her an unindicted co-conspirator for washing the evidence, which strips the protection. Karey gets her to admit she never told police her husband raped Sam. Called by the defense, Sam says he had consensual sex with a man whose name he cannot remember. Stone walks him through the rabbit he could not shoot and asks whether his father raped him to punish his fear; Sam insists his father would never do that.
Rollins listens as Dr. Al Pollack apologizes for his escort scandal and asks for another chance, and she later tells Benson she is pregnant. Benson admits to Fin that she blames herself for the cyclist’s broken leg because she could not keep up, and he tells her that age catches everyone.
Spoiler, the ending: The jury finds John Conway not guilty of first-degree rape.
Why it stands out
- The first hour of the Season 20 premiere; it and “Man Down” aired together on September 27, 2018. With this season the series tied the original Law & Order and Gunsmoke as the longest-running scripted, non-animated prime-time drama on American television.
- Dylan Walsh, who had guest-starred in Season 8, plays John Conway across both hours of the premiere.
- Kurt Fuller plays defense attorney Jed Karey, and George Newbern begins a recurring run as Rollins’s on-and-off partner, Dr. Al Pollack.