We Dream of Machine Elves (Season 21, Episode 8)
Premise: Young women are found drugged with huge doses of DMT after being sexually assaulted, and the trail leads to a radical psychiatrist and his devoted followers.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 21, Episode 8
- Starring
- Capt. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Sgt. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Det. Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish), Det. Katriona “Kat” Tamin (Jamie Gray Hyder), Deputy Chief Christian Garland (Demore Barnes), ADA Dominick “Sonny” Carisi Jr. (Peter Scanavino)
- Guest stars
- Adam Arkin as Dr. Julius Adler, Eve O’Brien as Anais Adler, Sarah Catherine Hook as Meghan Gale, Annie Hägg as Freja Bergdahl, Maureen Mueller as Kathleen Adler
- Director
- Jonathan Herron
- Writers
- Story: Warren Leight & Julie Martin; Teleplay: Brendan Feeney & Monet Hurst-Mendoza
Summary
“We Dream of Machine Elves” begins with Meghan Gale, a visitor from Kansas in town for a bachelorette party, losing her friends in Greenwich Village. A friendly young woman named Anais takes her off in a pedicab to a house where an older man is lecturing a group on depression as a reaction to an oppressive society. Meghan is later found terrified and raving about “machine elves,” and the squad suspects she was buried alive or made to dig her own grave. Tests show an enormous dose of the psychedelic DMT plus ketamine, and her account of the elves suggests she was sexually assaulted.
A nurse’s tip leads to an unidentified earlier victim, still incoherent in Bellevue’s psych ward. Then Freja Bergdahl, a Swedish graduate student at Pratt, is dumped from a pedicab in Central Park, blindfolded and bound. The rape kits carry semen from several men. Freja recalls a white-bearded king and a giant stone woman, and at the deputy chief’s urging she is driven around until she recognizes Picasso’s Bust of Sylvette, the AIDS Memorial and a brownstone with a red door. It belongs to the institute of Dr. Julius Adler, a radical psychiatrist who promotes psychedelics. Carisi sees too little for a warrant, and Fin and Kat get nothing from Adler. Rollins reveals she once took his classes in Atlanta and admired him; posing as a graduate student at his lecture, she meets his daughter, Anais, and is invited to an open-house session.
When Adler offers Rollins a pipe and the team sees tanks being unloaded, they raid the house and arrest everyone, including Anais and the pedicab driver, Caleb Williams, whose parents say they lost him to Adler six years ago. The men insist the sex was consensual, and Adler, charged with possession, cites a research grant for DMT. Freja goes home to Stockholm. The squad learns that Adler’s wife, Kathleen, whom Anais believes dead, has been in a psychiatric hospital since 1997 with a psychosis brought on by hallucinogens. Questioned by Rollins, Adler says he began treating Kathleen after childhood abuse by her father, slept with her and used drugs to make her relive the abuse, the method he now uses on his followers. Pressed, he breaks down and talks to Kathleen as if she were in the room.
Spoiler, the ending: Adler is taken to Bellevue, where he stays silent and unresponsive for three days. Carisi still plans to arraign him and his followers, including Anais, but agrees to wait a day. Rollins admits that she once wanted to follow Adler. She then brings Anais to meet her mother, who greets her by saying that she and Anais’s father were just talking about her.
Why it stands out
- Adam Arkin guest-stars as Dr. Julius Adler.
- Jamie Gray Hyder joins the main cast as Kat Tamin from this episode, after recurring earlier in the season.
- Rollins’s past in Atlanta comes up again: she once took psychology classes at Georgia State, where Adler was a guest professor.