Do Not Fuck With Jacqueline Bisset's Daughter, She Will End You.

In Season Five, the ladies and gents at SVU decided that they were going to pick up on another thread from the seminal '80s boarding-school/coincidental-banging-of-roommate's-mother-in-the-Windy-City flick Class that was already touched on briefly in the previous (and arguably equally seminal) Munch My Benson entry, Just What Were You Up To, Andrew McCarthy? Where the prior article dealt with Andrew McCarthy, this one will deal with the object of his affection in that film, one Ms. Jacqueline Bisset.

Now, as a refresher, Class documents Jacqueline Bisset's life in the early 1980s. She is the mother of Rob Lowe, the progenitor of the celebrity sex tape and speechwriter for Wild Thing Ricky Vaughn's dad when he was President. Rob Lowe was also Andrew McCarthy's roommate at a boarding school where John Cusack also coolly hid lit cigarettes in his mouth. Andrew McCarthy met Ms. Bisset without knowing who she was at a hotel in Chicago at which point he enjoyed a weekend he would never forget, only to discover when entering the Lowe manor* that the woman of that blissful weekend was the mother of his then roommate.

*Did she keep her maiden name?

In "Control" from the fifth season, it becomes evident that Bisset's daughter, Hilary Barclay, was held captive by a creepy old dude. All right, maybe that's over-simplifying...

When investigating a subway castration, Detectives Benson and Stabler key into the dickless Horace Gorman's apartment, which is filled with newspapers in five-foot high stacks and wedding albums of him and multiple women from the streets. Now it is these women who the new castrati abducted, kept in a dungeon that was formerly part of the Underground Railroad, broke, married, and raped repeatedly. And all along the way, he forced them to keep a diary while he kept one himself, documenting his dominance from both standpoints.

As the castration is delved into, Gorman goes off the grid only to be found dead by Olivia. Hilary becomes--*

*It should be noted here that whiskey and exhaustion took a firm grasp of me, and I fell asleep, laptop on lap here. It was now two days later (and about 23 hours of work later), and I was finally getting to pick back up, but fate intervened, so now it's a week later, but this sumbitch is gonna get finished whether it likes it or not.

--the primary suspect as the faux vampire (porphyria sufferer) who was their initial suspect fingers Hilary as the archangel who brought him Gorman's severed member. When they go to Jacqueline Bisset's apartment, she is there with her formerly estranged daughter. As Benson and Stabler are cuffing Hilary, Bisset steps forward and states that it is she that killed Gorman.

Now, we know that her son went to Duke for law before working for Rick Vaughn's dad in the White House and eventually mounting a congressional campaign, but we can safely assume that he wanted to not only distance himself from the potential controversy of his half-sister having been held captive and raped by a skeezy old dude who was then presumably killed by his mother but also that he was probably unqualified to mount a defense in a criminal case such as this. After all, his seven years at Gage Whitney Pace seem to have been spent trying to shelter corporations from litigation in the event of disastrous events such as oil spills, and the crossover from one area of the law to the other has to be pretty nominal, despite the fact that judging by the video below he's like a shark when that blood is in the water.


Given Lowe's absence, his mother and sister opt for the legal support of Lionel Granger--a curious decision to be sure as he seems to be aspiring to look like a used car salesman (or a Big Ten basketball coach), a segment of the populace that could hardly be deemed likeable. Given that you would want to appeal to the kind hearts of the jurors, Granger's selection would seem to stack that deck against you from the start. Regardless, here we find Granger mounting a defense, and it starts with pointing the finger at Olivia. Having had the reasonable doubt angle played and blame pointed in Olivia's direction, Novak has no choice but to put Benson on the stand. Wearing a sleek, form-fitting blue sweater under her jacket, Lionel proceeds to grill Olivia, pointing out her two previous kills on the job, while not managing to keep his slicked back hair in check.

After Granger plays the Olivia as a possible suspect card, Munch swoops in with an expert to save the day. Having enlisted a forensic metallurgist, they discover that the murder weapon has to have been a mid-Ninth Century Syrian knife because of the 99% pure gold, 1% rhodium composition of the metal that was found on the scraped sternum of Gorman--one that could easily be from the antique business that Bisset operates. The weapon is found under the sink in Bisset's business, and reasonable doubt is out the window.

As the noose tightens around Bisset's neck, her daughter steps up on the witness stand and confesses to having committed the crime. Judge Petrovsky will not grant a mistrial, and the case is dismissed. As Hilary sits in holding, Novak brings in a tape that Hilary's lawyer has provided, showing her on a time-stamped video ordering a latte.

It turns out that Jacqueline Bisset will come after you if you fuck with her daughter. Sure, her daughter castrated the old perv, but Bisset killed the fool.