Midway (Season 28, Episode 2)
Premise: A nine-year-old boy disappears from a carnival, and the search leads SVU to a young woman who was abducted as a small child and raised by her abuser.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 28, Episode 2
- Starring
- Capt. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Sgt. Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish), Det. Terry Bruno (Kevin Kane), Det. Jake Griffin (Corey Cott), Capt. Renee Curry (Aimé Donna Kelly), ADA Dominick “Sonny” Carisi Jr. (Peter Scanavino), DA Nicholas Baxter (Tony Goldwyn)
- Guest stars
- Stella Marcus as Mary, Abby Mueller as Helene Brooks, Anthony Goes as Thomas Brooks, Saidah Arrika Ekulona as Cherise Hamlin, Emily Donahoe as Linda Anderson
- Director
- Juan José Campanella
- Writers
- Kevin Deiboldt
Summary
“Midway” follows the disappearance of nine-year-old Leo Brooks from a carnival, eight months after his uncle was sent to prison for sexually abusing him. Curry, just after going over party rules with her teenage son, Gabe, gets a call from Leo’s mother, Helene, whose earlier case she handled. Helene’s ex-husband, Thomas, says Leo vanished while he bought more cotton candy, and Helene breaks his nose. He waited hours to report it, fearing Helene’s reaction, and later admits he had just shouted at the boy.
A bystander’s video leads Rollins and Bruno to Artie, a man at an encampment near the bridge who has Leo’s green backpack. His rambling account points to a carnival worker in a red-striped vest. That worker, Chet Esposito, a registered sex offender, says he found it on a ride and kept the $17 inside, then asks for a lawyer. His apprentice, who goes by Mary, flees, injuring one of the team, and is caught. Her fingerprints show she is Christine Anderson, who vanished at age five from a Massachusetts department store in 2012.
Benson questions Mary, who insists a man she calls Bob rescued her from cruel parents. She says she took Leo when his father stepped away, to save him from a father who yelled at him, and that Leo is now with Bob. Leo is found dead in a box inside a van. He was drugged with chloroform and died of heatstroke after trying to claw his way out. DNA identifies Bob as Robert Watts, a carnival worker with a 1999 attempted-rape record who died in January. He passed Mary off as his granddaughter, abused her sexually and physically for years and punished her by drugging her and locking her in a crate.
Mary refuses to see her parents, Joe and Linda Anderson. Doctors find her fit to stand trial, and the squad struggles over what justice means when the killer is also a victim. Carisi offers manslaughter with a ten-year split sentence, starting at Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center, but the parents and Mary’s lawyer, Cherise Hamlin, refuse it. In a late-night talk, DA Nicholas Baxter advises trusting the law when every option is bad. In court, Hamlin moves to suppress Mary’s confession.
The ending
Spoiler: At a meeting Benson sets up, she shows Mary a video of Leo from before his abuse and tells her that instead of saving him she passed on her own trauma. Over Hamlin’s and her parents’ objections, Mary says she does not yet feel at home with her family, asks for help so she will not hurt anyone else, and chooses to take the plea. Later, Curry turns up unannounced to drive Gabe home from school.
Case outcome: Mary, plea deal. Prosecuted by Dominick “Sonny” Carisi Jr. Conviction rates
Why it stands out
- The episode opens and closes with Curry and her teenage son, Gabe (Jay Mack), framing a case about a missing child with her own family life.
- Tony Goldwyn returns as DA Nicholas Baxter in a single late-night scene about the case’s options, while new ADA Aidan Hawkins, credited, is never named on screen.