Weak (Season 6, Episode 9)
Premise: A serial rapist preys on physically vulnerable women, and the detectives must rely on a witness with schizophrenia whose memories return as vivid, broken fragments.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 6, Episode 9
- 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), ME Dr. Melinda Warner (Tamara Tunie), Dr. Rebecca Hendrix (Mary Stuart Masterson), Judge Lena Petrovsky (Joanna Merlin)
- Guest stars
- Amanda Plummer as Miranda Cole, Dallas Roberts as Thomas Mathers, Becki Newton as Colleen Heaton, Geneva Carr as Margo Sanders, Ward Horton as Alan Richter
- Director
- David Platt
- Writers
- Michele Fazekas & Tara Butters
Summary
“Weak” opens with Benson coaxing Colleen Heaton, a wheelchair user, to let police into her apartment after a man climbed in through a window with a broken lock, raped her and pushed her chair out of reach. He told her she was not as good as he had imagined when he first saw her. Within the hour Samantha Traber is raped from behind in her apartment after coming home with her baby, and before dawn a man drags Gina Kownacki, on crutches after knee surgery, into an alley; she strikes him with a crutch, drawing blood, and he knocks her out. The women recall stale cigarette smoke, sunglasses and a hooded sweatshirt, a witness saw a man drive off in an old Ford Taurus, and Colleen’s nail salon recalls a male customer in sunglasses with filthy, bitten nails.
Miranda Cole, a woman with schizophrenia who is off her medication, wanders into the squad room raving about terrorists. At Bellevue she is treated by Dr. Rebecca Hendrix, a former police officer who went through the academy with Benson. Shop clerk Lori Switzer, 24, is then raped and killed, her neck broken. Benson clashes with Hendrix over access to Miranda, whose account echoes the attacks. Miranda’s rape kit matches Raymond Ettinger, a fellow patient, but Hendrix believes she was raped earlier. Miranda checks herself out when her hold expires; with help from her sister, Margo Sanders, the detectives and Hendrix find her hiding in her apartment, where she has preserved evidence in the kitchen and remembers her attacker demanding that she say his name, Thomas.
Car records lead to Thomas Mathers, a data entry clerk who lives with his boyfriend, Alan Richter, and who has left a trail of unsolved peeping and break-ins. His alibi falls apart when his mother, a heavy smoker, says he visited her that night only briefly, and he is arrested for Lori’s murder. Questioned with Hendrix present, Mathers denies being gay and lashes out at Benson. But DNA from his cheek swab does not match the blood from the crime scenes, he is released, and tension between Benson and Stabler grows.
Spoiler, the ending: Hendrix and Warner notice that a cut on Mathers’ neck was slow to clot, and Stabler, passing himself off as a doctor, learns from Mathers’ college that a bone marrow transplant for leukemia gave him blood with a donor’s DNA. Miranda leads Benson to the library where Mathers watched her, and that evidence gets him held without bail. Hendrix then tells Benson that Miranda has killed herself.
Why it stands out
- Mary Stuart Masterson makes her first appearance as Dr. Rebecca Hendrix, a former police officer turned psychiatrist who returns later in the season.
- Huang does not appear; the squad is told he is on assignment in Washington, D.C.