Impossible Dream (Season 21, Episode 2)
Premise: When the chief operating officer of a cancer-screening start-up is shot in Central Park, the trail leads to his fiancée, the company’s billionaire founder, who answers the murder charge by accusing him of abuse.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 21, Episode 2
- Detectives
- Det. Kevin Bernard (Anthony Anderson), Det. Frank Cosgrove (Jeffrey Donovan)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Nolan Price (Hugh Dancy), ADA Samantha Maroun (Odelya Halevi), DA Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston)
- Guest stars
- Rachelle Lefevre as Nina Ellis, Brian Keane as Brian Morrison, Jared Canfield as Derek Seaver, Zabryna Guevara as defense attorney Amanda Stanley, Dana Costello as Catherine Fox
- Ripped from the headlines
- The story was drawn from the Elizabeth Holmes trial: the founder of the blood-testing company Theranos was convicted in January 2022 of defrauding investors and acquitted of defrauding patients.
- Director
- Michael Pressman
- Writers
- Story: Pamela Wechsler; Story & teleplay: Rick Eid
Summary
The Investigation
“Impossible Dream” opens with the body of Kyle Morrison, shot twice in Central Park with his wallet and phone missing. He was chief operating officer, part-owner and fiancé of Nina Ellis, founder of Hythena, a medical-testing company about to go public. A husband who threatened Morrison after his wife’s Hythena cancer screening missed her advanced cancer has a hospital alibi, but a deleted email from the chief technology officer, Derek Seaver, calls the tests a sham.
Ellis paints Seaver as a disgruntled employee on the verge of being fired, and a 9mm Glock recovered from a Scarsdale sewer near his home, after a caller reported a man in a blue Tesla dumping it, seems to settle the matter. Seaver insists he quit: the tests are right only about half the time, Ellis faked the data for federal approval, and Morrison had decided to pull the products and delay the stock offering. Police find traces of blood on a coat Ellis wore that day and trace the sewer tip to her. Arrested as she leaves for London, she is released on $5 million bail and tells reporters she is eager to share her truth.
The Trial
Defense attorney Amanda Stanley persuades the judge to bar testimony from customers harmed by the tests. The prosecutors pick jurors likely to distrust the rich, but Ellis switches to a battered-woman defense, testifying that Morrison beat her, raped her and threatened to kill her. Maroun worries that attacking her account could set back the #MeToo movement, and three jurors have reported domestic violence in their own lives or families. Morrison’s father refuses to bless a manslaughter plea that would brand his son an abuser, and Price insists on going to verdict.
Price cross-examines Ellis about roughly 4,000 complaints on 8,000 tests sold, dozens of lawsuits and the company’s bankruptcy, then challenges her abuse claims, and she says Morrison broke her arm three months earlier. Price is told he has alienated the jury, and the detectives are sent to check her hospital visit. Riding coach Catherine Fox testifies that Ellis broke the arm falling from a horse during polo practice in Southampton, with Morrison nowhere around.
Spoiler, the ending: The jury finds Ellis guilty of first-degree murder. Leaving court with no protesters outside, the prosecutors debate the slogan that a victim’s truth is the only truth, concluding that it holds only when the victim is honest.
Why it stands out
- The episode aired on March 3, 2022, the same day Hulu premiered The Dropout, a miniseries about Holmes and Theranos in which Sam Waterston plays Theranos board member George Shultz.
- Rachelle Lefevre, the vampire Victoria in the first two Twilight films, guest stars as Ellis.