The One You Feed (Season 24, Episode 2)
Premise: After a Bronx gang attacks a tourist family on the subway, Benson works the case with a Gang Unit captain who cares more about taking down the gang’s leader.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 24, Episode 2
- Starring
- Capt. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Sgt. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Det. Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish), Det. Joe Velasco (Octavio Pisano), Det. Grace Muncy (Molly Burnett), Chief Tommy McGrath (Terry Serpico), ADA Dominick “Sonny” Carisi Jr. (Peter Scanavino), Trial Division Chief Lorraine Maxwell (Betty Buckley), Judge Colin McNamara (Stephen C. Bradbury)
- Guest stars
- Maurice Compte as Capt. Mike Duarte, Brooklyn Shuck as Nora Whitman, Lucy Taylor as Christine Whitman, Julian Anthony Martinez as Ricky Pinto, Daniel Taveras as Sabo Santiago
- Director
- Norberto Barba
- Writers
- Story: Kathy Dobie & Nolan Dunbar; Written by: David Graziano & Julie Martin
Summary
“The One You Feed” opens with the Whitmans, an Ohio family touring colleges, riding the L train into Manhattan when four masked teenagers from a Bronx gang, BX9, turn on them. Robert Whitman is slashed with a machete, and his 14-year-old daughter, Nora, is raped in front of her mother and sisters. Chief McGrath pairs Benson with Capt. Mike Duarte of the Bronx Gang Unit, who moves his team, including Det. Grace Muncy, into the SVU squad room. Robert dies in surgery. Nora picks out her rapist, Ricky Pinto, 15; prints and witnesses name Sabo Santiago, 15, who held her down, and Manuel “Matisse” Rivera, and the machete wielder, known as Sleep, is Cesar Rodriguez, a suspect in four gang killings. Duarte wants the boys flipped against BX9’s leader, Oscar Papa.
Sabo, arrested and threatened with a cell next to rival gang members Duarte once arrested, gives up Ricky but not Sleep. Duarte and Velasco falsely tell Matisse’s girlfriend, Elena, that his DNA was found on Nora, and she leads them to a gang hideout. Duarte goes in without waiting for Benson and Fin. Matisse is shot and dies on the way to the hospital, which internal affairs rules a justified shooting, and Sleep falls from the roof with Duarte in pursuit. Fin learns that Sleep and Ricky once burned Duarte’s car outside his home, and Benson suspects he pushed Sleep. Muncy vouches for her boss, and the medical examiner rules the fall an accident. Duarte also asks Velasco to join the Gang Unit.
Rollins, back at work after being shot, admits to Benson that she has skipped sessions with the department psychologist and describes being hit while guarding a young girl. Nora, after hesitating, identifies Ricky in a lineup, and Muncy calms her by describing how she still talks to her own late mother. Sabo and Ricky plead not guilty to rape and are remanded. Duarte proposes using Ricky, whose cousin drives for Papa, to bug Papa’s car, and the defense lawyers offer Papa in exchange for immunity, witness protection and dismissal of the rape charges. Carisi refuses, Benson protests that two rapists would walk, and Trial Division Chief Lorraine Maxwell takes the question to her superiors.
Spoiler, the ending: Maxwell tells Duarte the DA’s office will not drop the charges. Sabo and Ricky then each turn against the other and plead guilty, Sabo for five years and Ricky for 15, and the Whitmans return to Ohio without a trial. Velasco tells Benson he wants to stay at SVU, and she puts him in charge of training Muncy, whom she has brought over from the Gang Unit with McGrath’s support. Duarte accuses Benson of poaching his best detective.
Why it stands out
- Molly Burnett makes her first appearance as Det. Grace Muncy, who leaves the Gang Unit for SVU by the episode’s end.
- Maurice Compte joins as Capt. Mike Duarte, and the BX9 story returns later in the season: in “Jumped In,” the gang’s Tremont clique attacks Benson in retaliation for this case.
- Rollins’s shooting, which she recounts here, took place in the Law & Order hour of the previous week’s “Gimme Shelter” crossover.