All Pain Is One Malady (Season 24, Episode 22)
Premise: As SVU and Organized Crime close in on the revenge-for-hire site Shadowërk, a serial attacker unconnected to the site preys on strangers across the city.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 24, Episode 22
- Starring
- Capt. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Sgt. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish), Det. Joe Velasco (Octavio Pisano), Det. Grace Muncy (Molly Burnett), Det. Terry Bruno (Kevin Kane), Det. Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), Chief Tommy McGrath (Terry Serpico), ADA Dominick “Sonny” Carisi Jr. (Peter Scanavino)
- Guest stars
- Annalisa Chamberlin as Kate Wallace, Ainsley Seiger as Det. Jet Slootmaekers, Jock McKissic as Randy Gordon, Bryan Burton as Jacob Bettencourt, Cisco Lopez as Manny Lopez
- Director
- Norberto Barba
- Writers
- Story: Kathy Dobie & Nolan Dunbar; Written by: David Graziano & Julie Martin
Summary
“All Pain Is One Malady” continues the hunt for Shadowërk, a dark-web site where customers pay strangers to commit rapes and murders. The FBI is watching an escrow office in Dublin, Ohio, where the site’s server sits, but Chief McGrath, pressed by federal agents and Interpol, orders every New York suspect arraigned at once. Benson warns that the site’s creator watched the federal warrant system and had a judge killed. As McGrath announces a joint task force to the press, the customers and hired attackers are arraigned, among them Billy Vitale, Harvey Bergman, Junior Suarez and Kate Wallace’s ex-boyfriend, Gil Hughes. Organized Crime’s Jet Slootmaekers writes a virus to slow the site and force its owner to replace the server.
Kate, who stayed in New York to see her rapist charged, skips court. She tells Fin and Bruno that on a walk by the piers a tall stranger forced her into oral sex, and she hands over the hood she spat into afterward. Gil, held at Rikers, is ruled out, and nothing about her appears on the site. The same man then assaults 14-year-old Manny Lopez at a bus stop; Manny’s mother refuses a rape kit, and Bruno takes her aside to talk about the hard father who raised him. When McGrath orders the virus released early, the site goes dark, and he storms off to tell federal authorities that the judge’s killer has slipped away. McGrath also offers Muncy a place on a DEA task force. Benson visits Rollins, now a pregnant professor, who predicts the site will return because its creator wants revenge on the world, and admits she misses the job.
A third victim, college student Yves Nettey, fights back and stabs his attacker, and the squad watches hospitals until Randy Gordon turns up at an urgent care clinic with a stomach wound. Kate picks him out of a lineup, DNA ties him to all three assaults, and he admits to seven attacks in the past year, facing life without parole. Over dinner, Stabler needles Benson about an unopened Christmas gift from the adoptive parents of Noah’s half-brother.
Spoiler, the ending: In Ohio, an IT worker no one at the escrow office booked arrives to replace the server and tries to leave with the old one; FBI agents arrest him as Jacob Bettencourt, a Kenyon College student. McGrath sends Benson and Stabler to Ohio, but as they begin questioning the office staff, Slootmaekers reports that Shadowërk is back online, faster than before, with a $50,000 bounty posted on each of them. The story continues on Organized Crime.
Why it stands out
- The season finale and the third chapter of a four-episode crossover that concludes on Law & Order: Organized Crime in “With Many Names.”
- Kelli Giddish appears as a special guest star; Rollins, who left the squad earlier in the season, is now teaching and expecting a baby.
- Molly Burnett makes her final appearance as Det. Grace Muncy.