Desperate (Season 4, Episode 18)
Premise: A six-year-old boy is the only witness to his stepmother’s rape and murder, and the detectives must reach him while his father, the prime suspect, keeps him from them.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 4, Episode 18
- Starring
- Det. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), Det. John Munch (Richard Belzer), Capt. Donald Cragen (Dann Florek), ADA Alexandra Cabot (Stephanie March), Dr. George Huang (BD Wong), ME Dr. Melinda Warner (Tamara Tunie)
- Guest stars
- Rob Estes as Dan Hoffman, Max Jansen Weinstein as Mikey, Signy Coleman as Kim Hoffman, Sandra Bernhard as Priscilla Chaney, Haviland Morris as Dawn Trent
- Director
- David Platt
- Writers
- Amanda Green
Summary
“Desperate” opens with firefighters breaking into a smoky ground-floor apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, where a six-year-old boy known to neighbors as Mikey sits covered in blood near a woman who has been raped and beaten in the face. She dies after surgery, and the boy will not speak. Blood evidence shows the boy watched the late-night attack from a doorway and then spent hours alone with her.
The woman rented the apartment for cash as Dana McGuire, using a license that a mugger named Leon stole from the real Dana McGuire and sold to a woman who called herself Jill and her son Tommy. Dr. Melinda Warner finds old surgery suggesting Jill could not have children, and DNA confirms she is not the boy’s mother. Benson gains the boy’s trust, and he dials a domestic violence hotline on her phone, and its staff identify the victim as Jill Hoffman, who fled her abusive husband, Dan Hoffman of Rye, with her stepson, Tommy. Rye’s police chief vouches for Hoffman, who claimed his wife and son were in Florida and whose first wife, Kim, supposedly ran off with another man.
As Tommy starts to talk about the night, his father arrives and takes him home. A tablemate at a realtors’ dinner in Manhattan says Hoffman vanished for about 45 minutes that night and returned sweaty and rumpled. Jill had been dancing at a topless bar under her alias, and a coworker says she quit after spotting a man from her hometown; Mike Rizzo, a Rye businessman, admits telling Hoffman about a dancer who looked like his wife. With Judge Alan Ridenour already barring police from questioning Tommy, Cabot indicts Hoffman for murder through a grand jury without notifying him, which keeps him from testifying there, and he is arrested; the judge later excludes Jill’s statements about abuse to shelter staff.
A neighbor recalls Kim’s bruises and a van outside the night she vanished, which leads to Dawn Trent, part of a chain of volunteers who hide abused women. Tracing the chain, the detectives find Kim at a dry cleaner in Torrington and urge her to come back for Tommy. At trial, Hoffman testifies that Jill was unstable and took Tommy to punish him; Cabot asks why he never reported his son missing or checked the strip club.
Spoiler, the ending: Kim reunites with Tommy and promises not to leave again. Called as a witness, Tommy at first cannot answer and is told he may step down, but when Hoffman tells his son he loves him, Tommy says his father killed Jill. Defense attorney Priscilla Chaney moves for a mistrial, and Tommy tells the court he is ready to testify. No verdict is shown.
Why it stands out
- Rob Estes guest-stars as Dan Hoffman, with Signy Coleman as his first wife, Kim, and Sandra Bernhard as his lawyer, Priscilla Chaney.
- Max Jansen Weinstein plays the boy, who is silent through most of the episode.