‘Law & Order’ and ‘SVU’ Crossover Recap: Benson Gets Help From Stabler, Plus Who Almost Dies?
It’s a case so big, it takes two squads to solve it. Law & Order and Law & Order: SVU team up in their January 8 midseason premieres to tackle an investigation that starts with an injured woman fleeing the hospital and turns into so much more.
Benson (Mariska Hargitay) and Brady’s (Maura Tierney) squads team up for a case that includes human trafficking, explosives, one detective hospitalized, and a whole lot of terrible people. Read on for a full breakdown of the two-episode crossover.
Law & Order “Snowflakes”
Nadiya walks up to the hospital, blood on the thighs of her pants, but when she’s told her brother is there, she looks concerned. And so by the time Benson and Rollins (Kelli Giddish) arrive to talk to her about a suspected assault, she’s gone. But Riley (Reid Scott) and Brady spot her, only for Nadiya to see someone behind Brady and push her aside — before she’s shot and killed. Riley takes off in pursuit of the car, but it gets away.
And with that, the two squads get to work. Benson gets Fin (Ice-T), whom she says has free time on his hands, the prayer card in Nadiya’s pants to dig into, while Rollins returns to the hospital and is able to get a clear image of her “brother’s” face off the security footage. But when Riley and Walker (David Ajala) find the shooter’s car, they notice the smoke just in time to get back before it explodes and goes up in flames.
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As it turns out, Nadiya wasn’t sexually assaulted but rather gave birth recently, and someone used medical forceps crudely, hence the trauma. The baby could still be out there. Fin finds Nadiya’s priest in the Ukraine, who gives them a timeline for when she arrived in the U.S. (two months ago), and then they find the man who picked her up at the airport. He doesn’t want to talk at first, but Brady pushes, threatening federal crimes and the death penalty. He directs them to the abandoned Brooklyn power plant where he dropped her off, and there, Rollins, Bruno (Kevin Kane), Riley, and Walker find a room of bunk beds and cots (it locks from the outside) and a makeshift delivery room; it’s a maternity ward, and Nadiya was brought there, with other pregnant women.
But it’s even more disturbing. It turns out that Nadiya had a miscarriage, and they learn that she was acting as a surrogate, flown to the U.S. to give birth to someone else’s baby. She wasn’t the only one; all the women are being trafficked to do the same thing. Tracking the car that dropped Nadiya off at the hospital leads to a church where a priest has war refugees living — he only talks after Brady lies about calling in for the wrong zoning, and when Benson calls her out on her recent lies (including to the driver), Brady reveals that Nadiya pushed her out of the way of the bullet that killed her. Nadiya’s friend was the one to bring her to the hospital, after it became clear the man and woman holding them weren’t going to help. Furthermore, the women paid to be surrogates, with a man named Misha telling them they’d give birth to anchor babies and be able to become U.S. citizens. It was a lie. When they track down Misha, however, looking into who applied to carry over “snowflakes,” embryos in liquid nitrogen, to Eastern Europe, he’s already been killed.
But on his phone is a WhatsApp message from someone demanding their baby, and the squads are able to trace it to a couple, Carri and Jason, who adopted one of the babies. They thought it was just a Christian charity and only talk once they get protection on paper that their baby won’t be taken from them nor their identities revealed. They point the police to the lawyer who gave them the baby, and he, after Brady threatens to tell his daughter the truth about him, gives them the couple running the operation. When they track their van to Staten Island and a warehouse with frozen embryos, however, the man, Sergei, flees in a van, leaving the woman, Sara, behind. But Rollins and Bruno shoot at the van, and it, with Volkov inside, goes into the river.
Paperwork on site leads them to a fertility group that thought the couple’s operation was legit; they’d given them extra embryos. Brady tries to interrogate Sara, but she just asks for a lawyer. Furthermore, as Baxter (Tony Goldwyn), Price (Hugh Dancy), and Sam (Odelya Halevi) point out, the trafficking part isn’t a slam dunk against Sara, nor can they tie her to the m orders. She’d get a handful of years, maybe. But then Walker finds encrypted messages between the couple and someone else, who said, “We’ll take them all.” Tracing the IP address leads to a farm belonging to white supremacists and a whole lot of weapons. Bruno hears ticking and gets everyone out of the building just before a bomb goes off and…
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Law & Order: SVU “Purity”
Bruno ends up impaled, and Benson rides in the ambulance with him, so she’s there when he goes into V-fib and needs to be shocked, more than once. But the good news: He’s still alive when he gets to the hospital.
Benson calls and leaves Stabler (Christopher Meloni, who does not appear) asking about the hate group and for him to call her since things aren’t great. The doctor then updates her, Brady, and Rollins: Bruno’s in surgery, and they’re optimistic, but the shrapnel did a number on his spleen and they should know more in eight hours.
Sara tries to play the victim, putting on the waterworks, but neither Benson or Brady buy her claim that she didn’t know what her husband was doing and he twisted what she wanted into something evil. But they also know that’s going to be her defense.
Stabler does come through, sending Benson the name of an informant, who only talks to Fin and Walker after being told if he helps, Stabler says they’re even. He directs them to who bought a whole lot of firepower, Andrew Wells. When the police, led by Benson, go to arrest him, however, his entire neighborhood rages at them. Once in interrogation with Rollins and Curry (Aimé Donna Kelly), he acts exactly as you’d expect a white supremacist, then his lawyer comes in. But while they have him on the weapons and explosives, there is the question of what the racists are doing with babies and who’s funding it. That leads them to a tech millionaire, Jospeh Dahlsonn, whose recent purchase is a genetics company that’s basically operating in eugenics, which is illegal. He claims he has no knowledge of the group’s more violent actions, like purchasing C4, but he supports their want for “protection of the white European culture.” (It’s going to be so satisfying when this guy is eventually put in cuffs.)
Then the case takes a turn in court: Efron (Nia Vardalos) is Sara’s defense lawyer, and she moves to suppress all evidence obtained through Derek due to Brady’s intimidation and removal of his daughter from the car to coerce the information. The judge rules in her favor, and with the evidence they have, Efron also gets a win when it comes to getting Sara out on bail.
Brady’s now blaming herself, but Benson reminds her that cases get under everyone’s skin. Her choices also led them to the pregnant women they’re now helping — only Nadiya’s friend, upon hearing Sara was out on bail, left the safe space they’ve established for them.
Here’s when they get some good news: Bruno’s awake, grumpy, and OK. The squads, meanwhile, get to work trying to find another way to nail Sara. Digging into her uncovers a photo of her with Joseph, his donations to her charity, and delivery receipts to an address near his company signed by his assistant, Brantley. Rollins and Riley are able to get him to talk, and he admits that the shipments were embryos used for off-the-books testing and experimental germline editing. Joseph only wanted to keep the white embryos (destroying the others) and was manipulating the genes to make them stronger. With that, Brady gets to serve a warrant at the genetics company and watch as Joseph is cuffed.
Strauss (Greg Germann) is Joseph’s lawyer, arguing on his behalf against Carisi (Peter Scanavino) and CJ (Norma Kuhling) in an interrogation room as Joseph insists he wants his embryos back. Watching, Price points out that while Joseph is scum, gene editing technology has the potential to save lives. But Benson points out it can also destroy them. Then she gets a call from Nadiya’s friend, Paulina, who’s suffering complications from her pregnancy. Once in the hospital and the baby has been successfully delivered, she admits she doesn’t know what to do but knows she can’t care for the baby. Benson does say adoption is a good option — it’s how she got her son — and promises to take down those responsible. Still, the only decision she can make is the one she can live with.
In court, Sara does play victim on the stand, and when Carisi cross-examines her, he pushes for evidence then finds himself on the wrong side of the judge when he brings up the inadmissible evidence about the charity. However, as Carisi and Price leave the courthouse, Strauss approaches them with a deal offer: All charges against Jospeh dropped and he gets the embryos back, in exchange for him providing evidence that Sara gave the order to kill Nadiya.
No one likes it, but Joseph could even still get the embryos if they don’t make the deal due to the fine print on the paperwork. Furthermore, they also can’t live with the risk of both Sara and Joseph getting away with everything. And so, with Sara the priority, Baxter says to make the deal. When they do, Joseph also directs them to an address they’ll want to visit, telling them that Nadiya wasn’t Sara’s first victim. There, Benson and CJ watch as more bodies, including babies’, are uncovered. This just keeps getting worse and worse…
Joseph’s testimony just proves he’s a terrible person, but it does the job and Sara is found guilty. Furthermore, Paulina is able to stay in the U.S. and is keeping the baby. Bruno’s also out of the hospital before the end of the episode and, while still sore, good. No one likes that Joseph’s going to walk free and keep the embryos, but Benson points out karma has a way of biting back against guys like him — and she’s right. As Brady informs Joseph as he’s leaving prison, the original donor families learned what happened and filed an injunction, so a judge has put a halt to him getting the embryos back. In court, the judge rules that the embryos be destroyed, but Joseph does have the money and power to keep fighting against that ruling.
As Brady recalls, Benson told her that they do the best they can, and, as the captain points out, even when it doesn’t feel good enough.
