Law & Order: SVU Premiere Recap: How Does Benson’s Newest Detective Fit In With the Squad? Plus, Grade the Ep!
A wary new detective? Dialogue shouted over the sounds of the shooting range? Carisi yelling at full volume in the courtroom? SVU is back, baby!
The NBC procedural kicks off Season 26 by adding another cop to Benson’s squad and giving us a fairly routine case o’ the week, albeit with a threesome. In a moment, we’ll want to know what you thought of the hour. But first, a brief recap of “Fractured.”
Benson picks up a young woman in her car. From their conversation, we learn that this is the squad’s newest hire, Det. Kate Silva (played by Griselda’s Juliana Aidén Martinez). Silva’s dad is a longtime cop and the current deputy commissioner; Benson is a fan of his. They drive to the shooting range, joining Curry, Fin, Velasco and Bruno for a little skills session.
While there, Silva tells Velasco that she’s not sure why Benson is testing her: She was an established Brooklyn homicide cop. “You went from homicide to SVU?” Velasco wonders. “Must be a glutton for punishment.”
A study session among law-school roommates turns into a girl-girl-guy threesome when the fourth roommate steps out. He returns and sees, through the slightly ajar front door, that his friends are habeus-ing each other corpuses; he leaves without them seeing him. Later, when Male Roommate Who Got Some is sleeping on the couch, he hears noise at the door and blearily assumes it’s the returning roomie. He opens the door in the dark without really looking at who’s entering; the man at the door knocks him out and then menacingly moves into the bedroom of one of the women who live there.
By the time Fin, Olivia and Bruno arrive, the police have ascertained that the female roommate named Shelley was murdered, the female roommate named Elodie was raped, the male roommate named Damon has head trauma and other roommate, whose name is Teddy and who ostensibly was out on a date, is freaked out.
Investigators find a camera hidden in the smoke detector in Shelley’s room… only someone turned it off right before the murder. There is, however, footage of the threesome, the bulk of which took place in her bedroom. Benson is super irked that Elodie didn’t mention the hook-up during her post-assault interview, which… c’mon Liv. Are you really that shocked that a woman who’d just been violently attacked didn’t voluntarily offer up the details of her pre-attack sex life?
Meanwhile, Teddy admits to Bruno and Fin that his date fell through and that he got a peep of the three-way. When his alibi checks out, the cops track down Sam, a guy whose IP address also had access to Shelley’s camera. He claims Shelley asked him to install it, but claims innocence otherwise. But Silva and Velasco find the murder weapon — a hammer — in Washington Square Park, and paired with Sam’s appearance in a park surveillance tape, lands him on trial for murder.
Curry and Benson, off a tip from Elodie, find out that Shelley had been attending women’s empowerment group for months. As part of her involvement, she recorded a testimony in which she said that she was going to start saying no to negativity in her life, staring with Sam. Sam takes the stand to say that she just meant that she was practicing maintaining boundaries with people, but it falls flat after Carisi gets him to admit that he’d asked Shelley out — and she’d friendzoned him — right before her death. Sam’s testimony ends with him repeatedly crying “I’m sorry!” on the stand. And… that’s it, I guess? All we see after is Elodie thanking Carisi and Benson, Carisi waxing philosophical about the unanimous verdict, and… yeah, we’re not getting anything else about the case. See you next Thursday!
