Photo: Ali Goldstein / NBC
All In The Family
Liv's first case back is just a standard missing kid, until it's not.
When a kid (Xander Franco) gets separated from his father in Times Square, the sketchy Times Square "Momo" (Rick Lyon), apparently a repeat creep, is suspected of having interfered somehow.
When Liv (Mariska Hargitay) finally gets the kid, who says he's called Buddy, to talk, he reveals that he lives in "House" with "Pa, Ma, Auntie, and Sissy," who turn out to be a kidnapper/rapist and his three female hostages, one of whom he impregnated with Buddy two years into her nine-year ordeal.
In case it wasn't already extremely obvious (it was), producers make poor Barba (Raúl Esparza) say, "Another Ariel Castro. My God," so that they can be certain we get it (we do).
In addition to his captives, the show's abductor, Michael "Pa" Williams (Michael Massee), has a public wife, Dagmara (Sanja Danilovic), who has all kinds of explanations for his activities and absences; the house where he's imprisoned the women was owned by a friend of his mother's, who he claims not to have murdered (though her corpse is found), and whose Social Security cheques he has continued to cash while posing as her son; Pa had April/Ma (Angela Christian), his first victim, help him in his abductions.
Kayla (Agatha Nowicki), Pa's last victim, says, "When I woke up, I was chained to the wall. There was a bucket. They told me that they were my new family, my new ma and pa....After about a week, Pa said that it was time for me to help them, that I could better help him if I wasn't chained. So he took off my clothes and his and had sex with me. I didn't even know that that was what that was called, but Ma explained it to me, and she said that I was lucky -- that I was Pa's favourite."
Liv, who keeps having flashbacks to elements of her ordeal in the last episode, some of which are triggered by the experiences of the victims in this case (seeing the house swarmed with cops and reporters, for example).
We don't see a trial, but that doesn't stop Amaro (Danny Pino) and Fin (Ice-T) from delivering a judgment: "Wonder how long he'd last in prison." "Think he'd kill himself?" "So what if he does."
After two months, Liv comes back to her apartment for the first time; she's still with Cassidy (Dean Winters); she's taking a boxing class and still seeing Dr. Lindstrom (Bill Irwin); Amaro has stopped wearing his wedding ring.