In the Year We All Fell Down (Season 22, Episode 12)
Premise: Benson walks into a standoff at a favorite restaurant, where the owner, ruined by a year of pandemic losses, holds her realtor at knifepoint.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 22, Episode 12
- Starring
- Capt. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), 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
- Sarita Choudhury as Vanessa Blake, Andrew Polk as Joey Leonard, Rafael Feldman as Ira, Michael Egues as Nate Blake, James Morrison as Jim Rollins
- Director
- Jean de Segonzac
- Writers
- Story: Kathy Dobie & Brendan Feeney & Denis Hamill & Monet Hurst-Mendoza & Melody Cooper; Story & teleplay: Warren Leight & Julie Martin
Summary
“In the Year We All Fell Down” traces a year of pandemic losses for Vanessa Blake, owner of a neighborhood restaurant. Her husband, Eddie, a Broadway horn player out of work since the theaters went dark, leaves to care for his ailing parents in Michigan; her 19-year-old son, Nate, moves home when his college dorms close; and her mother dies of COVID-19, with Vanessa able to say goodbye only by video. When realtor Joey Leonard says the brokerage will not extend her loan and meets her to clear out before the marshals come, she holds a kitchen knife on him.
Benson, a longtime customer, arrives to pick up takeout and finds officers at the door. She sends them outside, asks for Hostage Negotiation and Deputy Chief Garland, and persuades Vanessa to release Leonard, who tells police she now has a gun. Garland holds off the precinct commander and ESU, who set up snipers, insisting that Vanessa is in crisis rather than a criminal. Inside, Vanessa hangs up on Eddie during a video call, orders Benson out at gunpoint and admits she blamed Nate for his grandmother’s infection and threw him out. Benson urges her to apologize to her son. Kat learns from the manager, Ira, that Eddie is in touch with Nate. Benson later describes the angry voicemail she left her brother Simon on the day of his overdose and tells Vanessa that Ed Tucker has died, taking his own life after a brain cancer diagnosis. Kat finds Nate sleeping on friends’ couches and talks him into coming.
Meanwhile Rollins’s father, Jim, recovering in a rehab center from a minor stroke, assumes Carisi is her boyfriend. A major stroke sends him to the hospital, where Carisi keeps Rollins company. Jim’s new wife, Amberlynn, who skipped his first stroke, turns up, and Rollins learns from her mother about a life insurance policy. Rollins tells Amberlynn she has outstanding Florida warrants for bad checks and forgery and advises her to leave the state; Amberlynn goes back to Atlanta, and Jim begins to recover.
Spoiler, the ending: Nate appears on a video call, tells his mother he loves her and asks her to come home, and Vanessa walks out with Benson carrying the gun. A crowd of customers is waiting outside, and an online fundraiser for the restaurant has reached $35,000, with a donation from Leonard. As Vanessa is taken in, she tells Benson to go home to her son.
Why it stands out
- Sarita Choudhury guest-stars as Vanessa Blake, a restaurant owner undone by a year of pandemic setbacks.
- Benson recounts two losses from Season 21: the overdose of her half-brother, Simon Marsden, and the death of Ed Tucker.
- James Morrison returns as Rollins’s father, Jim, whose first stroke came two episodes earlier.