Alternate (Season 9, Episode 1)
Premise: A woman with multiple personalities is suspected of harming the baby in her care, and her parents’ murder puts an insanity defense to the test.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 9, Episode 1
- Starring
- Det. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), Sgt. John Munch (Richard Belzer), Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Det. Chester Lake (Adam Beach), Capt. Donald Cragen (Dann Florek), ADA Casey Novak (Diane Neal), Dr. George Huang (BD Wong), ME Dr. Melinda Warner (Tamara Tunie)
- Guest stars
- Cynthia Nixon as Janis Donovan, Laura Allen as Cass Magnall, Bronson Pinchot as Dr. Henry Carlisle, Joe Grifasi as Hashi Horowitz, Isabel Gillies as Kathy Stabler
- Ripped from the headlines
- Inspired in part by the case of Lyle and Erik Menendez, brothers convicted of killing their parents in Beverly Hills in 1989, and by Sybil, the 1976 TV film about a woman with multiple personalities.
- Director
- David Platt
- Writers
- Neal Baer & Dawn DeNoon
Summary
“Alternate” opens with Cragen temporarily moved to the Chief of Detectives’ office while the squad takes the blame for a run of scandals, including Benson’s help to her fugitive brother and Stabler’s cover-up of his daughter’s DUI. Munch, who quietly passed the sergeant’s exam, is left in charge. A woman in glasses calling herself Dr. Anna Young reports that her patient, Janis Donovan, scrubbed her one-year-old, April, raw while cursing her. At Janis’s apartment the crib holds only a doll, and a neighbor’s photo shows that “Dr. Young” is Janis herself. Her real psychiatrist, Dr. Henry Carlisle, confirms she is his patient, a fired babysitter describes lost hours and a Russian woman named Petra answering Janis’s phone, and her car leads the squad to Inwood Hill Park.
In a cave there, Janis speaks as Tammy, a six-year-old, and says a man named Burt took the baby; then Petra slaps Stabler and demands a lawyer. Huang explains dissociative identity disorder, which he ties to long childhood sexual abuse. Another identity, Dori, who is smitten with Stabler, fires lawyer Hashi Horowitz, and under Carlisle’s hypnosis Burt says April is gone for good. Then Cass Magnall arrives: she is April’s mother and Janis’s younger sister, freed from prison a day earlier, and April is safe with her landlady. Cass says their father raped her after Janis ran away at 16, while their mother watched. Carlisle sees no grounds to commit Janis, and she goes home with Cass.
The next morning their parents, Francis and Molly Donovan, are found shot dead in bed, with Janis’s bloody fingerprint on the door. Janis, as Dori, turns up at Stabler’s home with a knife while his pregnant wife, Kathy, is there; Stabler disarms her as she blames Burt. A judge finds her competent, Cragen returns to command, and Janis rejects a plea. Horowitz is allowed to argue that an alter committed the murders, Novak’s cross-examination with the shotgun and photos sets off an outburst, and the jury finds Janis not guilty by reason of insanity.
Spoiler, the ending: Afterward, Novak spots that a law journal on multiple personalities and criminal responsibility linked to Cass is stamped as property of Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, where Cass was held. Cass’s former cellmate says the sisters planned the killings by letter, using Sybil as a model, and restored computer files show Janis studied the disorder. Janis gloats that double jeopardy protects her, but Cass is arrested for the murders as a co-conspirator, and Janis calls after her that none of it was her fault.
Why it stands out
- Cynthia Nixon won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series for playing Janis Donovan.
- The season premiere reveals that Munch has passed the sergeant’s exam, and Adam Beach’s Det. Chester Lake, seen twice before, joins the main cast.
- Showrunner Neal Baer co-wrote the episode with Dawn DeNoon, his first lead writing credit since season 7’s “Storm.”