Zone Rouge (Season 25, Episode 5)
Premise: A message on a train ticket revives the search for Maddie Flynn, and Benson teams with an FBI agent to follow her abductor along the railway.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 25, Episode 5
- Starring
- Capt. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Sgt. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Det. Joe Velasco (Octavio Pisano), Capt. Renee Curry (Aimé Donna Kelly), ADA Dominick “Sonny” Carisi Jr. (Peter Scanavino)
- Guest stars
- Jordana Spiro as Special Agent Shannah Sykes, Patrick Carroll as George Brouchard, Allison Elaine as Maddie Flynn, Leslie Fray as Eileen Flynn, Josh Cooke as Agent Harrison Clay
- Director
- Bethany Rooney
- Writers
- Story: Gabriel Vallejo; Written by: David Graziano & Julie Martin
Summary
“Zone Rouge” opens on a train, where a passenger on the phone tells his girlfriend that the drowsy kid near him is a heroin addict. At SVU, Renee Curry starts as an investigator, bringing homemade doughnuts and getting a cool welcome; Benson tells Fin that McGrath, who has since stepped down, approved the move. A train ticket reading “Call NYPD” reaches the squad from Pittsburgh with a photo of a drugged-looking boy, and Benson insists it is Maddie Flynn with dyed hair. The acting chief refuses to approve her travel. Pittsburgh SVU reports that a young woman with a baby handed the ticket to an officer three days after the date on it, and Eileen recognizes Maddie’s handwriting. A station camera in Buffalo catches the man with Maddie, and Tanya Garcia identifies him as George, adding that he keeps girls high with fentanyl dissolved in their water and roams small in-between towns he calls his “zone rouge.”
Pittsburgh police identify the woman as Heather Pittenger, girlfriend of drug courier Cash Bowford, and Fin drives Benson to the airport without approval. In Pittsburgh she meets FBI Special Agent Shannah Sykes, who wrote the profile and has traced the tickets to the name Brice Escoffier. Heather says she found the ticket in Cash’s pocket and hands over his work phone, which holds a number from a man he played chess with on the train: George Ross Brouchard, who has a long record. Police board his inbound train, but his bag holds cash, not Maddie, and Sykes has to be pulled off him. Back in New York, Carisi says he needs more to charge kidnapping. Brouchard mocks Benson for letting Maddie pass her at the tunnel and offers her location for a prison with a mountain view, but the FBI recovers deleted texts arranging Maddie’s sale to Leonard Fleming, a house painter near Rochester with juvenile arrests for voyeurism.
On the drive, Sykes tells Benson that her sister disappeared while walking to a public pool in Allentown when they were children. At a remote house where Fleming’s late mother once lived, its floors covered in leaves, they find Maddie and arrest Fleming as he runs. Maddie says George did not touch her and Fleming only watched her.
Spoiler, the ending: Maddie is reunited with her parents at the hospital. Fleming accepts 25 years on the kidnapping charge, with 10 more to come on federal charges, while Carisi negotiates Brouchard’s plea. Clay tells Benson that Sykes wants a change, and Sykes asks to be embedded with SVU. At a press conference, the police commissioner credits Benson’s squad and Clay with bringing Maddie home.
Why it stands out
- Jordana Spiro joins the season as FBI Special Agent Shannah Sykes, who is embedded with SVU from the next episode.
- The title is George Brouchard’s name for the overlooked in-between places he drifts through.
- Ends the search for Maddie Flynn begun in the season premiere, “Tunnel Blind”; Brouchard’s trial follows later in the season.