It could be said that I tend to focus on the guest stars, and there will be some talk here about a guest star. However, this episode needs to be written about.
It's not often that I am left trying to put my world back together after an episode of "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit," but the finale from Season 10, Zebras, fucked my ass up.
The episode kicks off with a father and daughter rollerblading* in Central Park. The dad running into a railing and going head-first into a bush, from which he comes out covered in blood despite showing no visible cuts. That blood is from a murdered woman, who has the word guilt scrawled across her forehead in blood.*I know, I know, rollerblading is so 1994, but if you saw this guy's get-up, you would understand why someone would be on rollerblades in this day and age (no, it wasn't Chris Klein).
Within a few TV minutes, the crew at SVU has interviewed a Parks and Recreation supervisor who points them towards a schizophrenic young man who is either: a) Ben Hawkins's grandson*, or b) Zombie Bobby Kent from Bully. This dude is batshit crazy, and totally killed this innocent mother walking her strollered (yeah, I'm making up words here, but you know what I'm saying, right?) child through Central Park because she was an "operative" who wouldn't heed his command to "abort her mission."
*I mean it couldn't be Ben Hawkins, could it? Sure, he had some special biblically-tinged powers, but I doubt he was immortal. If he was in his early-20s in the Dust Bowl circa 1934, it is safe to assume (barring the aforementioned immortality possibility) that this would be his grandson. After all, with Sophie dragging a not-dead Brother Justin off at the end of "Carnivale," it doesn't seem like Ben Hawkins was going to have a chance to settle down and start a family for at least a few years, placing the birth of his first child no earlier than 1940 by conservative estimates. It would be a stretch to expect his great-grandson being born in 1979. Especially given their familial responsibilities.
While Detectives Benson and Stabler trick Ben Hawkins III into coming down to fill out a form, a search warrant is fetched. With the warrant in hand, Munch, Tutuola, and spastic CSU Tech Dale Stuckey recover the murder weapon from a boot in the suspect's closet. When the knife is brought back to the lab, everyone's favorite Forensics Tech, Ryan O'Halloran matches the blood on the knife to the victim. Just as Stabler thinks their case is made, Zombie Bobby Kent's lawyer makes her way into the lab, where she peruses the paperwork and finds that Stuckey logged the knife in on the same voucher number that the evidence collected at the murder scene was listed on, so the evidence won't be admissible due to the potentiality of contamination.
In court, the inappropriate fuck-up Dale Stuckey tries to impetuously argue that he didn't contaminate the evidence, to which Angela Bower scoffs and tells him to check himself before he wrecks himself.
As Munch and Fin follow the skating murderer, he slips them at Coney Island (was he trying to hook up with the Warriors?), and another body turns up, only this time there is a soda can with Ben III's bloody fingerprint on it at the scene. When Stabler and Fin follow a lead yielded by Munch reaching out to his paranoid ex-wife, they find Hawkins, but his lair is booby trapped with a homemade poisonous gas that almost kills them.
They finally get a call from his scared shitless lawyer, Julia Zimmer, who has an enraged murderer in her office ranting about betrayers and CIA mind control. As they are leaving the parking ramp with Zombie Bobby in the backseat, Zimmer is set to follow in her car. Unfortunately for her, that car is not going anywhere. It fills with the same gas from the lair, and Zimmer dies trapped in her car.
When CSU gets to the ramp, Elliot hands the perp off to a uni, and instructs him to
Take zombie boy off to the prison ward at Bellevue. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.So I guess we've got our answer as to his identity. Since he died in the swamps of Florida, I'm going to assume that voodoo was involved, a la Weekend at Bernies 2.
The thing is with Zombie Boy in custody, the revenge keeps coming. Angela Bower sits on a syringe filled with Potassium Chloride while being advised to stay in a hotel until everything has settled down. Luckily for Jonathan Bower, his mom will be all right. While Benson and Stabler are in the hospital, the results of the DNA test run from a mosquito retrieved from Zimmer's car that will presumably finger Zombie Boy are about to be completed, and Stabler heads off to the CSU Lab to meet up with O'Halloran.
At the CSU Lab, the DNA sequencing is almost done when there's a knock on the door. O'Halloran hollers for Elliot to come in, turns to the computer that has just made its match, and gets met with a knife through his sternum. With O'Halloran lying dead just out of view on the floor, Stabler walks in, asks for O'Halloran, finds that the DNA match wasn't who they thought at all, and gets clubbed over the head with a microscope.
Stabler wakes up to the red-eyed, pasty faced Stuckey staring him crazily in the eyes, who explains how he masterminded everything after the zombie's release to pin a murder on their original suspect in between casual carvings of Stabler's chest with the knife he used to kill O'Halloran. Just as Dale's about to stick the knife into Elliot's chest for good, Liv walks in and driving Stuckey off while Elliot tries to non-verbally implore her to stay away. As she approaches Elliot, who is duct taped to a chair, Stuckey slips in behind her and raises Elliot's gun toward them.
Having given up her weapon at Dale's command, Liv decides that the best thing for her to do would be to seduce that pasty little Canuck (who was clearly crushing hard on her) while playing up a disdain for Elliot punctuated by slapping the shit out of him. As she wears him down, he steps up to shoot Elliot, she gets him to kiss her while Stabler watches. With his back turned to Stabler, Liv gives him the signal, mid-smooch, and Stabler kicks Stuckey in the fucking taint.
Let me say it one more time.
Stabler kicks Stuckey in the fucking taint!
After the righteous taint kicking, Liv disarms Stuckey and gives him an upper-cut with her elbow right to the jaw. Shitbird is out cold, Liv tells Stabler she knew something was up when Stuckey said Elliot had gone out for sushi, and they look over the havoc that dipshit Dale Stuckey hath wrought.
Unfortunately, the death of Ryan O'Halloran could have been prevented if only he and Stabler hadn't been joking when they had the following exchange as it became clear that it was Stuckey's clerical error that was going to cost them the Zombie Boy Case:
O'Halloran: Stuckey. (shakes his head in disbelief)It's too bad they didn't off the little bastard when they had the chance.
[...]
Stabler: I'm gonna kill him.
O'Halloran: I'll dump the body.
Stabler: Before we add more toxic waste to the Gowanus Canal, I'm gonna try and save this case.
Nonetheless, I don't think anyone watching this episode for the first time thought that it was going in this direction, although that could just as easily have been because no one could have believed that the tiny red-eyed halftard Dale Stuckey could have masterminded tying his own shoes, let alone a scheme to pin a quadruple homicide on a paranoid schizophrenic who was locked up while two of them took place.
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