The Only Way Out Is Through (Season 22, Episode 8)
Premise: Twenty years after their attack, two sisters seek answers from the man who assaulted them, while Fin tries to keep a manipulative rapist from winning parole.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 22, 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), ADA Dominick “Sonny” Carisi Jr. (Peter Scanavino)
- Guest stars
- Crystal Lucas-Perry as Aneeka Coleman, Sydney Elise Johnson as Imani Coleman, Jane Bruce as Nora Anderson, Bradley Stryker as Jimmy Gunn, Nicola Rossi as Lily Bustani
- Director
- Martha Mitchell
- Writers
- Story: Brianna Yellen & Brendan Feeney & Denis Hamill & Monet Hurst-Mendoza & Melody Cooper; Teleplay: Micharne Cloughley & Kathy Dobie
Summary
“The Only Way Out Is Through” finds Benson called away when Noah, whose school pod has a COVID case, comes down with a fever, so the squad handles three cases without her. Sisters Aneeka and Imani Coleman come in after their mother dies of COVID. In her storage locker they found clippings about Darryl Clark, who held them at gunpoint for three hours about 20 years ago, raping 11-year-old Aneeka while nine-year-old Imani was made to watch. Benson remembers the case; she and Munch interviewed the girls’ mother. Rollins explains that Clark took a 35-year deal on six other rapes, and the deal barred any prosecution for Aneeka’s assault. The sisters want to face him, and Clark, about to be moved to a federal prison in Utah, agrees to a restorative justice meeting at Sing Sing.
Kat’s cousin, Lily Bustani, says tech billionaire Xavier Garcia, whom she contacted through a direct message, kept going after she told him to stop on their first date. Carisi warns that the case will be hard to win, so Lily meets Xavier for lunch while the squad listens. Meanwhile Fin is preparing to oppose parole for Jimmy Gunn, who raped four women. His only willing victim, Nora Anderson, refuses to testify, but the prison chaplain, Ronnie Blevins, says Gunn has written her letters of apology for years. Nora reads them and agrees to meet Gunn, who asks her forgiveness.
At Sing Sing, Aneeka reads Clark the diary she kept after the attack, and he concedes it sounds like something he did. A brawl in the yard locks the prison down, leaving the sisters waiting with Rollins, and old wounds open: Imani says that everyone, their mother included, treated her suffering as lesser, and Aneeka says that seeing Imani pray during the rape helped her endure it. At lunch, Xavier admits he heard Lily say stop and apologizes, and Kat moves in to arrest him as the conversation turns flirtatious.
Spoiler, the ending: At the parole hearing, Gunn echoes Nora’s own words about losing her road map, and she realizes the apology was staged to keep her silent. She tells the board who he really is, and parole is denied. When the lockdown ends, the Coleman sisters decide they have nothing more to say to Clark. The DA’s office approves an indictment of Xavier, but Lily, back in touch with him, refuses to go forward, and Carisi closes the case. Noah tests negative. Benson, chosen for an NYPD Women in Law Enforcement award, doubts she should accept it with the Jayvon Brown lawsuit pending, but the squad urges her to attend.
Why it stands out
- The Coleman case reaches back to the squad’s early years: Fin recalls interviewing the girls’ mother with Munch, and the sisters ask for Cragen or Munch when they arrive.
- Benson’s Women in Law Enforcement award sets up the ceremony she is heading to at the start of the next episode, “Return of the Prodigal Son.”