A Vicious Circle (Season 27, Episode 3)
Premise: A bomb at a fertility clinic destroys a rape suspect’s DNA sample, and the murder of the clinic’s owner leads the squad from antinatalist protesters to her own divorce lawyer.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 27, Episode 3
- Starring
- Capt. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Sgt. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Det. Joe Velasco (Octavio Pisano), 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
- Norbert Leo Butz as Mark Olson, Sweta Keswani as Dr. Ila Mukherjee, Daniel Raymont as Kirk Young, Johnna Dias-Watson as Loudon, Jeff Adler as Ted Simons
- Director
- Oscar René Lozoya II
- Writers
- Story: Nicholas Evangelista; Written by: Brant Englestein
Summary
“A Vicious Circle” opens with Bruno and Griffin arriving at a fertility clinic, Roosevelt Women’s Health, to collect a rape suspect’s banked sperm sample just as a homemade bomb goes off in a bathroom beside the lab. Fire destroys the lab, the sample and about 10,000 embryos. The suspect, Ted Simons, has kept his DNA out of the squad’s hands for months in the rape of Katie Wilkins. Curry and Velasco bring him in and bluff that the sample is already being tested and that he faces federal terrorism charges. He changes his story, admits he may have slept with Katie, denies the bombing, and the squad takes something he handled before he can stop them.
Then the clinic’s owner, Dr. Ila Mukherjee, is found strangled in a vacant building, her neck marked with a spiral pattern, and the squad realizes her office was on the other side of the bomb. Her divorce lawyer, Mark Olson, blames her estranged husband, plumber Chris Clemente, for refusing to settle, and Clemente hands over his drain auger. Mukherjee had received threats linked to antinatalism, a movement that holds that having children is wrong. At a protest the squad arrests Kirk Young, a 53-year-old activist, and questions his much younger girlfriend, Loudon, who reveals that Kirk told her he shot his previous girlfriend, Autumn Diaz, at her request. The squad finds his gun and learns that Autumn was pregnant; he is charged with her murder, but his alibi for Mukherjee holds.
Tynan meets Velasco with two DEA agents, who want him for undercover work in San Diego against a cartel boss, and Benson tells him to go where he can do the most good. Clemente’s auger is clean and does not match, and Mukherjee’s phone shows she was meeting a second divorce lawyer, Lindsey Kruger, on the day she died. Kruger says Olson was dragging out the case to run up fees. Olson owes money, works from an office a block from where the body was found and has filed a $100,000 lien against her property over fees she never owed, and a judge tells Carisi he nearly sanctioned Olson. A search of his office turns up an auger whose spiral matches the bruises.
Spoiler, the ending: Carisi questions Olson, laying out his theory that Olson, using cocaine and short of money, killed his client to protect his fees and his license, set off the bomb to frame the protesters and then pointed the squad at Clemente. Olson scoffs until Carisi reveals that Mukherjee’s blood was found inside his office couch cushions, and Olson asks for a deal. Velasco visits Fin, who is recovering at home, and then says goodbye to Benson.
Why it stands out
- Octavio Pisano’s last episode as a series regular: Velasco leaves for a DEA undercover assignment. Pisano returns as a guest star in the season’s 17th and 20th episodes.
- Fin appears only briefly as he recovers from the premiere’s attack; Ice-T’s guaranteed episode count was reduced this season, and he attributed his fewer appearances to budget concerns after Kelli Giddish’s return.