Good news. That gum you like is coming back in style. Photo: Craig Blankenhorn / NBC
Rollins Really Doesn't Know When To Fold 'Em
Or when to walk away. Or when to run. Or how not to ruin her life by working off her debt at an underground casino by doing a LOT of bad stuff.
Stupid Rollins the dumb idiot decides to take her addicted-gambler business to an illegal casino operated by Declan Murphy (Donal Logue!) and Sondra Vaughn (Sherri Saum!), where she runs up a $15,000 tab she can't pay. When Clare, who's working as a(n underage) barmaid, recognizes her and tips her bosses that Rollins is a cop, Sondra and Declan decide to seize the opportunity to keep Rollins as their pet dirty cop.
Among other things, Rollins is tasked to steal an unlicensed gun that Carlos, one of Declan and Sondra's thugs, was caught with at a traffic stop, so that the charges will have to be dropped due to the lack of evidence and his DNA won't be entered in CODIS.
Once Sondra believes that Carlos's DNA is not on file, she sends him to the house of Marcelo Guarana, a deadbeat Brazilian diplomat who thinks his job makes him untouchable to show him how wrong he is by assaulting him, raping his wife, and stealing some significant art from the consulate they're living in. (Of course Rollins ends up catching the case, and of course Mrs. Guarana -- who met Rollins earlier when Rollins drove Guarana home drunk from the casino -- assumes that Rollins is there to make sure she doesn't pursue the case, so she doesn't.)
Logue and Saum don't count, since they're introduced in the cold open, but once we see Lothaire Bluteau playing Anton Nadari, an art gallerist, we know he's more involved in this whole business than merely having employed Carlo as a delivery driver. And, sure enough, he's Sondra's boss and the father of her unborn child.
Declan, after Rollins has offered to regain his trust with "favours": "She went below and beyond the call of duty." Declan, on Rollins, after Amaro spots Rollins with him and then tracks him down to warn him to stay away from her: "She's not half-bad, once you get past the used part."
WHERE TO BEGIN. Rollins does all kinds of shit for Sondra and Declan: in addition the gun thing (which finds her impersonating another officer), she tails a juror. Then when Amaro and Fin figure out that Rollins is tangled up in this illegal casino business, Fin tells Benson he needs to tell Rollins that they know, and Rollins asks for them to wait to bring her in until the next morning so she can figure out what to do with her dog...whereupon Rollins demands a meeting with Sondra's boss (not knowing it's Nadari) and gets her way by holding a gun to Sondra's womb. But before things get too hairy, Declan pulls a gun on everyone and identifies himself as a cop! He's Vice and he's been undercover this whole time! And Rollins has been working for him ever since she tried to blow him! Which means that Mrs. Guarana was raped on their watch! GOOD JOB, OFFICERS!
Amaro, who's alarmed by Rollins's weird absences and sketchy behaviour in light of Benson's whole season-spanning ordeal with Lewis; Fin, who's Rollins's partner (and even tries to give her money, aw); Benson, because this happened on her watch.
"I'll pretend I didn't hear you say that." "Whatever you're doing, I want you to stop now." "So we're looking for a dummy."
We don't get that far (though we hear Sondra cut a deal of some sort), but even though Declan had her fully off the books, he and Rollins both get to keep their jobs, and they both feel really bad about the part they played in facilitating Mrs. Guarana's rape, which I'm sure is a huge comfort to her.
Maria has called Benson a couple of times to say she's worried about Amaro! Benson covers that Rollins was working with Vice from the beginning, but she doesn't trust Rollins anymore!