Monster (Season 27, Episode 21)
Premise: A suppressed search frees a man caught with a kidnapped boy in his trunk, and SVU must rebuild the case before he takes another child.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 27, Episode 21
- Starring
- Capt. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Sgt. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Sgt. Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish), Det. Terry Bruno (Kevin Kane), Det. Jake Griffin (Corey Cott), Capt. Renee Curry (Aimé Donna Kelly), Chief Kathryn Tynan (Noma Dumezweni), ADA Dominick “Sonny” Carisi Jr. (Peter Scanavino)
- Guest stars
- Daniel London as Richard Caine, Paul Guilfoyle as Judge Walter Conover, Michael Harney as Detective Donald Torres, Caroline Grogan as Analisa Russell, Joseph Elliot Rodriguez as Officer Frank Rodriguez
- Director
- Brenna Malloy
- Writers
- Story: Nicholas Evangelista; Written by: Michele Fazekas
Summary
“Monster,” the season finale, starts with a minor crash in which rookie officers Frank Rodriguez and Jess Acosta question a driver, Richard Caine, spot a gun under the passenger seat and find a bound boy, Bobby Deboer, in his trunk. At a hearing six months later, a bystander’s video shows Rodriguez leaning into the car before he saw the gun. Judge Walter Conover rules the search illegal, suppresses the gun, the rescued boy and the confession Caine gave Benson, and frees him. Caine tells Benson he hopes they can move past it.
Griffin tells Benson that a gun from his late father’s storage unit traces to a 1997 robbery Jimmy Griffin responded to, showing it was planted on Dennis Reeves with Tynan’s help. Carisi warns that nothing tied to the car search can be used, so the squad starts over, and Benson apologizes in person to Bobby’s parents. A union form leads to an alias, Matthew Parker, a dead man whose identity Caine used in Jacksonville, Florida. Retired detective Donald Torres flies in and explains that boys vanished there and their remains washed up on Neptune Beach, and that Parker disappeared before he could be arrested. Tynan picks Griffin up in her car; confronted with the gun and his father’s payoffs, she says she told Jimmy to dump the gun and chose to plant it rather than turn in her partner, and asks how far Griffin would go for Benson.
Caine’s Florida car, still impounded, has sand in the trunk and leads to Midland Beach on Staten Island, where a homeless man says Caine digs. The squad unearths three boys’ remains, including a missing Jacksonville boy, Oliver Cohen. Carisi still calls it circumstantial, until a DNA genealogy match on a T-shirt from the old car points to Caine. By then he has removed his tracker, and an 11-year-old, Eli Brooks, is taken in Queens. Caine’s estranged wife, Analisa Russell, remembers he went camping with his step-grandfather, Matthew Parker. At the campground Eli is found alive, but Caine opens fire in a chapel, wounding Griffin and an ESU officer. Cornered and taunting police about his victims, Caine is taken alive with a bullet in his leg.
Spoiler, the ending: Griffin survives after losing part of his intestines. At the hospital Tynan tells Benson she will have her badge for endangering her team. Benson replies that Griffin recorded Tynan’s admission; she has no wish to end Tynan’s career, she says, but will not let Tynan end hers. The squad gathers around Griffin as the season closes.
Why it stands out
- The Season 27 finale, written by showrunner Michele Fazekas, the first woman to run the series.
- Paul Guilfoyle guest stars as Judge Walter Conover, who quotes the Supreme Court’s Mapp ruling as he frees Caine.
- Griffin’s recording of Tynan’s admission brings to a head the season-long storyline about his father’s shooting of Dennis Reeves.