Fat (Season 7, Episode 20)
Premise: Stabler and a hot-headed temporary partner hunt the teens who maimed a schoolgirl, and uncover the beating that started it.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 7, Episode 20
- 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), CSU Ryan O’Halloran (Mike Doyle)
- Guest stars
- Anthony Anderson as Det. Lucius Blaine, Rooney Mara as Jessica DeLay, Omar Benson Miller as Rudi Bixton, Natalie Cole as Serena Waldren, Paul Calderon as Assemblyman Eric Molina
- Director
- Juan J. Campanella
- Writers
- Patrick Harbinson
Summary
“Fat” finds Benson gone to the Computer Crimes Unit and Stabler paired with Lucius Blaine, a brash detective from Queens SVU. A 16-year-old, Jessica DeLay, is found unconscious behind a barricade with head wounds, signs of sexual assault with an object and one finger cut off. Her fake health department ID shows she worked tobacco stings, but the shopkeeper she helped catch is far too slight to match the footprints. Warner finds a second blood type on Jessica’s clothes, from a very heavy girl in puberty who appears to have undiagnosed diabetes.
Reasoning that the attackers knew she played piano, the detectives visit a school orchestra she recently played with, and a call from her stolen phone leads to Kenny Bixton, 16, and his sister Mia, 14. Blaine questions Mia with no parent present and promises her immunity; Stabler pulls him out, and the two come to blows in the squad room. Cragen refuses Stabler’s threat to quit, and Benson stops by to talk about their split. A bloody souvenir bat turns up in Kenny’s room, and the siblings admit the attack. Jessica had worn the cap of their older brother, Rudi, a diabetic in a wheelchair, and bragged of taking it from an overweight man on a park bench; Rudi had been beaten weeks earlier and later lost three fingers to gangrene.
Jessica denies it, a lawyer ends the interview, and Novak charges the siblings. After Assemblyman Eric Molina complains on television that a person of color got no such attention, headquarters hands Rudi’s beating to SVU. Rudi remembers a camera flash, and Computer Crimes follows uploads from Jessica’s phone to a members-only hate site, where a photo shows Rudi on the ground and Jessica’s friend Tommy Strahan. Rudi picks Tommy out of a lineup but not Jessica, and Tommy’s lawyer argues the identification was tainted by news coverage, so both go free. Rudi returns to the precinct with a gun and kills Tommy.
Novak tries Rudi for second-degree murder. Defense attorney Serena Waldren leads Rudi through his childhood diet and the closing of the clinic that once helped him. Novak’s cross-examination provokes him into saying he is glad Tommy is dead. Fin then finds school security video of Jessica in Rudi’s cap, and her old yearbook shows she once weighed 230 pounds and attended a weight-loss school in California. Confronted with the photos, Jessica admits joining Tommy’s attack.
Spoiler, the ending: Novak passes the admission to the defense. The jury convicts Rudi of second-degree murder while he lies in the hospital with kidney failure after the amputation of his left foot. Blaine says goodbye to Stabler and leaves the squad, and the episode does not say whether Jessica is charged.
Why it stands out
- Anthony Anderson plays Det. Lucius Blaine, Stabler’s temporary partner; he later played Det. Kevin Bernard on the original Law & Order.
- Rooney Mara, credited as Tricia Mara, plays Jessica DeLay, and Natalie Cole plays defense attorney Serena Waldren.
- The episode falls during Benson’s stint in Computer Crimes after she asks for a new partner in “Fault.”