Remember Me in Quarantine (Season 22, Episode 3)
Premise: When an Italian exchange student is found dead in a freezer weeks after she vanished, suspicion falls on her party-loving roommate and the drug dealer she brought home.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 22, Episode 3
- Starring
- Capt. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Sgt. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Det. Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish), Det. Katriona “Kat” Tamin (Jamie Gray Hyder), ADA Dominick “Sonny” Carisi Jr. (Peter Scanavino), Chief ME Dr. Melinda Warner (Tamara Tunie)
- Guest stars
- Jordan Lane Price as Lexi York, Jelani Alladin as Sean Thomas, Chris Gray as Brad Keegan, Austin Reed Alleman as Perry Moncaldo, Amy Stiller as Sister Vita
- Ripped from the headlines
- Appears to be inspired by the 2007 murder of British student Meredith Kercher in Italy, for which her American roommate, Amanda Knox, was tried and later acquitted.
- Director
- Juan Campanella
- Writers
- Story: Brendan Feeney & Denis Hamill & Monet Hurst-Mendoza & Melody Cooper; Written by: Julie Martin & Warren Leight
Summary
“Remember Me in Quarantine” begins with a favor: Inspector Rossi of the Italian police asks Benson to find Maria Ferraro, a 20-year-old exchange student from Milan whose father has received nothing but the same text, three times, in a month. At her shared apartment near Stuyvesant Town, roommate Lexi York says Maria moved out without a word and took Brad Keegan’s hockey bag. Her room has been scrubbed. The squad finds Maria inside that bag, in a freezer in the shuttered restaurant across the courtyard. Warner rules it a homicide: Maria had a head injury but was alive in the freezer and suffocated there, and semen from two men is recovered.
Brad, who says he was in the Hamptons, admits having sex with Maria that morning; Lexi, who trades sex with him for rent, admits she brought home a man from an illegal speakeasy during a hazy, drug-fueled weekend. The bartender leads the squad to Sean Thomas, a dealer, who is arrested with Maria’s passport and her mother’s locket. Sean says Lexi gave him Maria’s things as payment for drugs, that the three of them had sex, and that Maria was alive when he left. Lexi accuses Sean, but DNA in her room supports him, and she finally recalls Maria joining them while high on edibles. She cannot say how Maria was hurt. Lexi is arrested amid lurid tabloid coverage, and Kat objects that only the woman is being shamed.
No one believes either suspect staged the cleanup. Brad’s alibi holds, and Sister Vita, a nun at a homeless shelter, recalls Perry Moncaldo, a former roommate who moved out a week after Maria, wheeling in donated clothes; she is wearing one of Maria’s sweaters. Pressed, Perry admits he went into Maria’s room after Sean left, angry that she had broken quarantine with others after turning him down. When she pushed him away, he pushed her back, and she hit her head on a pipe.
Spoiler, the ending: Thinking she was dead, Perry put her body in the hockey bag and texted her father, who is still sick with COVID, to spare him the news. Lexi is released, while Sean stays at Rikers on charges Carisi expects his office will not pursue. Rossi tells Benson that Maria’s father is grateful anyone cared about finding his daughter with so many dying.
Why it stands out
- The cast’s Zoom read-through of this episode’s script, which Mariska Hargitay shared online, came days before Season 22 began filming on September 14, 2020.
- Showrunner Warren Leight said the episode looks at what extended isolation does to people and how close they come to their breaking points.