Recap / Law & Order: Special Victims Unit S5 E9 "Control"

Written By Dick Wolf

Directed By Ted Kotcheff

When the detectives probe the castration of a serial sex offender (Austin Pendleton), they discover the culprit may have been one of the women he abused. Benson realizes she interviewed the man's first victim but refused to believe her story.

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Tropes:

• Artistic License – Religion: Samuel calls himself Samael, which Huang identifies as Lucifer's name before he fell from heaven. Which isn't true for any version of Samael in any Abrahamic religion. At most, he's another name for Satan or is the being who took the role of Satan in Judaism.
• Asshole Victim: Gorman was a Serial Rapist and despite the focus on finding the person who castrated and murdered him everyone agrees that he deserved it.
• Blaming the Victim: Benson admits she thinks her mother "let herself get raped" because she was drunk, and Benson disbelieved Hillary because Hillary was also drunk.
• Bunker Woman: Gorman imprisoned his victims in an underground cell.
• Cassandra Truth: Benson and Hillary's mother refused to believe her when she said she'd been kidnapped.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: When Gorman's other victims come forward, it's noticeable that they vary in race, age, body type, etc.
• Groin Attack: The cops have a lot of fun with this one.
  Cop: We still haven't found the package.
  Benson: What package?
  Stabler: Mr. Gorman's.
  Stabler: His penis and testicles were cut off. They're still missing.
• Karma Houdini: The case against Hillary's mother Juliet gets dismissed because Hillary admitted to Gorman's murder in court only to then reveal in private that Juliet did kill Gorman and that she can't be tried again because of Double Jeopardy.
• Mama Bear: Hillary's mother explains that of course she killed her daughter's rapist, any mother would.
• Meta Casting: Mickey Hargitay (Mariska Hargitay's father) cameos as the grandfather who appears in the episode's cold open.
• Mistakes Are Not the End of the World: What Stabler tells Benson in regards to the latter not believing Hillary.
  Stabler: Everyone makes mistakes. Get over it.
• My Greatest Failure: Benson treats the crimes of Gorman as this. She didn't believe the first victim, Hillary, and she thinks that because of her inaction Gorman victimized more women.
  • Hillary's mother also has this mindset because she, too, did not believe Hillary's story. When Hillary becomes a suspect in Gorman's murder, she even tries to take the heat for her daughter.