Authority (Season 9, Episode 17)
Premise: A phone prankster who talks a manager into abusing a teenage employee is acquitted, becomes a folk hero, and then tests Stabler with Benson’s life.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 9, Episode 17
- 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), TARU Ruben Morales (Joel de la Fuente)
- Guest stars
- Robin Williams as Merritt Rook, Monica Raymund as Trini Martinez, Scott Adsit as Dwight Lomax, Ka-Ling Cheung as Dr. Cheng, Joe Scarborough as himself
- Ripped from the headlines
- Inspired by the 2004 hoax call to a McDonald’s in Mount Washington, Kentucky, one of dozens of fast-food strip-search scams by a man posing as a police officer (the man charged there was acquitted), and by Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiments.
- Director
- David Platt
- Writers
- Neal Baer & Amanda Green
Summary
“Authority” opens at a HappiBurger, where manager Dwight Lomax has locked teenage employee Trini Martinez in his office on the word of a phone caller calling himself Detective Milgram, who claimed she stole a wallet. Following the caller’s instructions, Lomax groped and strip-searched her and kept her undressed for half an hour. No such detective exists; the name belongs to the psychologist whose experiments had volunteers deliver what they believed were shocks on command. An online forum shows the hoaxer has targeted chain restaurants nationwide, and camera footage from the store where his calling cards were sold shows a man wearing an Aerodax Labs badge: audio engineer Merritt Rook.
Rook offers a fishing trip in the Catskills as an alibi, with receipts and a smitten waitress, but fishing there has been banned, and the detectives find that the lodge’s number rings through to Rook, who voices the clerk himself. He then says he spent the night with a prostitute who reminds him of his late wife, Juliet. A bank camera image enhanced by Morales puts him at the library pay phone, and he is charged with conspiracy to commit sexual abuse. Acting as his own lawyer, Rook mocks the enhanced photo, and when Novak raises an arson arrest from his boyhood, he says he burned a house where older boys had raped an 11-year-old. He tells the jurors not to be sheep, and they acquit him.
Rook becomes a celebrity, ridiculing Stabler on a morning talk show and staging a pillow fight in Bryant Park. Benson learns that his wife and baby son died in childbirth after Dr. Francis Slifkin ignored Rook’s plea for a C-section. Slifkin later drove into a truck, and his suicide note says Detective Milgram would not stop calling. At a gathering Rook has called at Grand Central, Benson disappears with him, leaving her gun and phone behind. Rook’s co-worker, Dr. Cheng, mentions his old job at a recording studio, where Stabler finds him.
Spoiler, the ending: Rook shows Stabler Benson strapped to a chair behind soundproof glass, says the door is wired with explosives and orders him to shock her, as in Milgram’s test. Stabler refuses even when Rook appears to do it himself, and Rook praises him for not being a sheep, then admits the screams were recorded and the bomb is fake. Benson says she left with him because he claimed a bomb was in the station. Under arrest, Rook sets off a blast and runs off in handcuffs; the detectives conclude he went into the river and drowned.
Why it stands out
- This is the series’ 200th episode, making SVU only the third network prime-time drama to reach that mark, after Law & Order and ER.
- Robin Williams, cast after his friend Richard Belzer told the producers Williams wanted to be on the show, earned an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series as Merritt Rook.
- Talk show host Joe Scarborough appears as himself, interviewing Rook.