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How much plot can YOU cram into 42 minutes? Or, Law and Order: SVU’s tale of the psycho twins

How much plot can YOU cram into 42 minutes? Or, Law and Order: SVU’s tale of the psycho twins published on 1 Comment on How much plot can YOU cram into 42 minutes? Or, Law and Order: SVU’s tale of the psycho twins

I've been watching a lot of Law and Order: SVU lately [enough to realize that the script writers have an unhealthy obsession with prison rape jokes, which they are apparently contractually obligated to shoehorn in once per episode]. Among the many eps that I've watched is "Identity," ep 12 from season 6. I remember enjoying this ep especially because it features a pair of identical twins, of which I am one, as you no doubt know. I also remember this ep for its particularly exploitative and melodramatic plot twists. Heck, this thing has enough melodrama and occurrences for an entire season of a show! Let me summarize for you…

A corpse drops off the top of a building right through the windshield of some guys with blue balls. Stabler, Benson and the ME wonder who the dead chump is. His bling labeled "SCA" seems to be a clue. Also someone bit his penis real hard. DUNT DUNT! 

Credits.

Dead guy is apparently Luis Vega, who had rape charges, since dropped, filed against him by Claudia. Also SCA means that he's part of the Society for Creative Anachronism gang called the Stone Cold Assassins.

Munch and Fin talk to Claudia. As part of her initiation into SCA, she had to have sex with eleven guys. She stopped after three. Luis, number four, raped her when she was near her house.

Stabler and Benson talk to some SCA Rubies, or young teenage girls who are members. The Rubies suggest that it was a homeless "deaf mute" woman, who had been sleeping on Luis' roof, who killed him. DUNT DUNT!

At St. Anne's Homeless Shelter, an employee quotes statistics at Stabler and Benson, then takes them to meet Katie, who's teamed up garbage picking with Betty. Katie swears she's innocent and runs away, even when Stabler tells her that SCA is on her tail. The St. Anne's employee offers to deal with Katie and get her to the precinct for her own safety.

Stabler and Benson then follow Betty, who apparently gets money from Luis for the trash she pulls, credit card statements, utility bills, etc., which is, as Stabler observes, "everything you'd need to steal someone's identity." Feds bust the SCA's ID theft ring; Munch advocates shredding junk mail.

And it's time for the 10-minute plot twist! The St. Anne's employee reports Katie dead, her throat cut. The ME adds that Katie's bite marks don't match those on Luis' penis, so she was the wrong person. Additionally, the person who did bite Luis' penis had XY chromosomes, so we're looking for a male pecker chomper.

Benson and Stabler arrest Hector Ramirez, Katie's murderer, based on the shelter employee's ID. After Benson and Stabler accidentally walk the cuffed Hector into a pole [hah!], he reveals that Katie was signing "Graffitti!" before she died. Munch and Stabler find some clues in the graffitti on the building that Luis fell from. One is "Syk" and the other is "B22B."

A member of the anti-graffitti task force quotes statistics [do they all do this?] to Munch and Fin, then identifies "B22B" as "Born to Be Bad," a graffitti crew from an East Side prep school. There's no "Syk" tag, but "Syko" is one Logan Stanton. DUNT DUNT!

Fin and Munch grab Logan, who spouts attitude, at school. Under interrogation from Stabler and Benson, Logan insists it wasn't him. The SVU shrink calls him "emotionally disturbed" with "anger issues."

The Stanton parents appear in the station, annnnnnd…it's time for the halfway-mark plot twist! Logan's twin sister, Lindsey, played by the same boy actor with a very unconvincing wig, says that Logan was sleeping in his room, not out biting someone's penis.

However, a DNA swab from Logan matches his DNA with the DNA from the bite marks on Luis' dick. Stabler, Benson and the annoying SVU shrink [not the fabulous Dr. Huang, played by B.D. Wong] go to arrest Logan. Both Logan and Lindsey resist arrest, never being shown in the same frame, except for two seconds when they're staring at the annoying SVU shrink.

In interrogation, Lindsey says to Benson that it was her up on the roof instead of Logan. The tag was supposed to be "Syke," not "Syko." She says that Luis tried to rape her, so she "bit down as hard as she could" and he fell off the edge. Benson obviously thinks it's bullshit, especially since the DNA from Luis' penis had XY chromosomes.

Stabler wonders why Lindsey is taking the blame for Logan. The annoying SVU shrink says, "They're twins," as if that explains everything, describing them as "enmeshed." Stabler asks Logan why he's taking the fall for Lindsey. Logan wants to see his sister.

The annoying SVU shrink has been poking in the twins' medical records illegally, which she reveals to ADA Novak. "Entire chunks have been redacted" from the twins' medical histories, and the twins' therapist has removed the annoying SVU shrink from the case. More interestingly, the twins' therapist is a "sex therapist," which prompts Novak and the annoying shrink to assume that the twins are engaged in incest because, with no proof whatsoever, the annoying shrink declares Lindsey and Logan "abnormally close." She wants to put them together in the same room to "see how they interact."

When put together, Lindsey and Logan hug each other, then start speaking in a secret language, pissing off Stabler. Then the twins' extra annoying [and super creepy] therapist Dr. Blair breaks things up. "I think my patients need me," he says. Yeah, you tell that to yourself, pervert.

To find out more about the Stanton family's secrets, Stabler and Benson interview current and past nannies. The current nanny reveals that Lindsey and Logan act weird, avoiding each other, after their "therapy" appointments. A past nanny says that Lindsey often instigated violent fights with Logan, probably because her mom was always criticizing her looks. Another past nanny adds that, when she was a toddler, Lindsey was in and out of the hospital for chronic bladder infections…and she really, really hated to wear dresses. Also she has exterior scarring in her pubic region.

Stabler and Benson confront the Stanton parents with their findings, adding that, if Lindsey and Logan are having sex, the parents may be changed with endangerment of minors. The Stantons kick the detectives out of the house, when, on the street, Stabler and Benson meet up with the current nanny. She says that Lindsey was caught kissing a girl, and Mrs. Stanton was so fazed that she had to be sedated.

Benson, Stabler, Munch and Fin speculate how the new development plays into their incest theory when…yes…it's time for the last quarter plot twist! The annoying SVU shrink reveals that it was Lindsey, not Logan, up on the roof. How? "I know I shouldn't have," admits the annoying shrink, but she poked into the twins' files again and found out that Mrs. Stanton gave birth to identical twin boys. Lindsey is "genetically male."

In the interrogation room, Mr. and Mrs. Stanton explain to Stabler and Benson that, when she was little, Lindsey received an involuntary penectomy in the process of being circumcised. [Ow!] "All the experts…said that he [Lindsey] would never be normal," Mrs. Stanton says because apparently they were consulting outrageously uninformed experts. Certain that even a prosthesis "would never fool anyone," the cruel and uncaring Stanton parents decided that a boy without a penis was better off being raised as a girl. They cite "the humiliation of explaining it to the girl he fell in love with" because their heterosexist, bigoted little minds can't comprehend a boy who could develop a secure sense of masculinity in the absence of a functioning penis. Blame it on Dr. Blair, the super creepy sex therapist, who promised the Stantons that a non-consensual gender reassignment was the best policy.

When Benson and Stabler visit Dr. Creepy, he glibly states that "it's easier to make a hole than a pole" — what a dip! — and spouts a lot of crap about children being "born psychosexually neutral." When Benson says that Novak will take a statement from Lindsey, which will surely "raise a few questions for her [Lindsey]," Dr. Creepy insists that Lindsey not be told that she was born a boy. He decides that he should be present for Lindsey's statement, "for her welfare." Go away, Dr. Creepy!

Confused, Lindsey balks at signing her statement, saying she feels like she's "going crazy." Dr. Creepy tries to brush off her questions, but the annoying SVU shrink barges in and blurts out that Lindsey was "born a boy." Lindsey cries and says, "I knew it!" She asks to know her name. It was Lucas. Dr. Creepy declares that Dr. Annoying is going down.

Dr. Annoying packs up her office when Stabler and Benson come to see her. Stabler assures her that she "did the right thing." Maybe telling Lindsey that she was born Lucas was the right thing, but I disapprove of how Dr. Annoying obtained that information. In fact, I think she was in breach of ethics.

Just then, Cragen calls Stabler and Benson into his office. Annnnd…it's time for the five-minutes-left plot twist! Logan wants to file sexual assault charges against Dr. Creepy because he showed him and Lindsey pictures of people having sex and also made them "pretend to have sex."

Dr. Creepy, in interrogation under Stabler and Benson, claims, "It was part of their treatment." In between statements of smarmy bloviating bilge, he does get in a good point about people needing to be "more healthy about the human body and not put taboos on it," but this is overshadowed by the fact that he forced two kids to have sex in front of him.

In a throwaway scene, the St. Anne's employee — remember her? — picks up a check for $6,000 to give Katie an apppropriate funeral. She also agrees with Novak that she will testify in court against Ramirez. Then Stabler gets a call that — plot twist! — Dr. Creepy has been murdered. Good riddance.

The ME states that DNA from spit on Dr. Creepy should ID the killer, but the security tape complicates things. It shows a kid with a hood up, face obscured, coming into Dr. Creepy's office, then leaving it a while later. Which one?

Back in separate interrogation rooms, Luke and Logan have their stories "locked," according to Stabler. Their ticket stubs alibi one of them through the time of the murder, but they won't confess anything beyond that. Their identical DNA would have been marked by Luke taking estrogen, but he stopped just long enough ago to get it out of his system.  "They came up with the perfect crime," observes Benson, and the camera fades out on Luke and Logan, leaning together, barred only by the wall between them.

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