Blood (Season 6, Episode 21)
Premise: A young mother’s assault and her baby’s near death expose a painkiller pipeline running through a frail grandmother’s home.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 6, Episode 21
- Starring
- Det. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), Det. John Munch (Richard Belzer), Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Capt. Donald Cragen (Dann Florek), ADA Casey Novak (Diane Neal), TARU Ruben Morales (Joel de la Fuente), CSU Ryan O’Halloran (Mike Doyle)
- Guest stars
- Melinda Dillon as Jenny Rogers, Matt Schulze as Kevin Rogers, Christine Elise as Carol Rogers, Lauren Hodges as Samantha Beavan, Judith Ivey as Jenny’s attorney
- Director
- Félix Alcalá
- Writers
- Patrick Harbinson
Summary
“Blood” opens outside a club, where Samantha “Sam” Beavan, 21, is sexually assaulted by two attackers who then steal her car and toss her nine-month-old son, Joey, out of it in his car seat. Joey survives but tests positive for opiates from his mother’s breast milk; Sam is hooked on oxycodone after a back injury. She names one attacker, Jake Lumet, who sometimes sells her pills, and the detectives find him overdosing on oxycodone prescribed to Jenny Rogers, an elderly woman who shares an apartment with her son, Kevin, and his wife, Carol. Bruised and begging on the street, Jenny picks out Jake as the man who robbed her, but Jake claims she sold him the drugs, and records show she got the same painkiller from two doctors in ten days.
Meanwhile Kathleen, Stabler’s 17-year-old, is picked up for driving drunk, and Stabler quietly gets the charge reduced to a traffic summons. Cragen later warns him that the paper trail could expose everyone involved, but Stabler says he would do it again. TARU enhances the club’s security video and shows that the second attacker was a woman. Sam names Carol Rogers, who sold her pills. At the Rogers apartment the detectives find Carol stabbed to death and learn that Jenny sleeps in a closet. Joey dies of pneumonia after inhaling milk, and Sam, found high, says she is glad Carol is dead. A pay phone call leads to a Queens storage unit where Jenny has locked herself in among her late parents’ belongings.
Jenny’s lawyer argues self-defense, describing years of abuse, and Jenny explains that she sold her house to cover Kevin’s gambling debts and that Carol tormented her. When skin under Carol’s broken fingernail proves to be a man’s, Jenny says she saw Kevin flee the apartment, and he is charged with murder. At trial, after visiting Kevin in jail, Jenny testifies that she never saw him and lied to the grand jury, and the case is dismissed. An adult protective services caseworker finds little food in Kevin’s apartment but says the law does not let her act. Kevin’s lawyer files a harassment complaint, and Stabler later arrests Jenny for begging at midnight and sees a fresh burn on her arm, which she will not blame on her son.
Spoiler, the ending: Learning that Kevin is using again, the detectives press a dealer named Naldo into selling to him, and Kevin is arrested for possession with intent to sell, a charge likely to end in a year of mandated treatment. Jenny is not relieved. She tells the detectives they have taken her son away and asks what she has left to live for.
Why it stands out
- Stabler bends the rules for his teenage daughter Kathleen (Allison Siko) after a drunk-driving arrest, using his standing as a police officer to make the charge disappear.
- Melinda Dillon guest-stars as Jenny Rogers, with Judith Ivey as her lawyer.