Critic’s Rating: 4.8 / 5.0
4.8
I can’t think of anything more tragic than the case on Law & Order: SVU Season 26 Episode 14.
The victim was fulfilling her dream of visiting New York City, only for someone to turn it into a nightmare, and then the defense attorney continued tormenting her.
This emotional episode finally gave us everything that Law & Order: SVU was supposed to be, offering a nearly flawless story from beginning to end.
Law & Order: SVU Season 26 Episode 14 Did Its Cold Open The Right Way
If you’ve been following my reviews a while, you know how much I hate the new version of cold opens.
Most episodes of Law & Order: SVU insist on acting like mini-pilots for new shows starring the week’s victim, complete with their life story and a detailed crime.
Thankfully, we were spared that overly stretched-out opening sequence this time.
Law & Order: SVU Season 26 Episode 14 instead offered just enough information to make it clear who the victim was and set up the case.
This is the way to do it. We didn’t need a play-by-play of Megan’s entire vacation.
We only needed the three scenes we got: Megan dealing with a creepy couple in Times Square, a quick snapshot of how much she was enjoying herself prior to the attack, and the cops arriving on the scene.
It was a relief to have a proper cold open, for once.
This one didn’t give away the entire story.
We didn’t know for sure what happened to Megan until she began having flashbacks while being accosted by the defense attorney on the witness stand, and that was how it should be.
Hopefully, when SVU returns on March 13, we won’t be back to superlong and annoying cold opens.
For now, though, this one was a job well done.
All The Defense Had On Law & Order: SVU Season 26 Episode 14 Was Character Attacks
When a rape case goes to trial, defense attorneys are often relentless in their attempts to discredit the victim by making it appear she wanted sex with their client (or that she brought the rape on herself.)
This particular defense attorney was vile.
She repeated long-debunked tropes about how Megan having had a couple of drinks meant that she wanted to have sex with a stranger.
What year is this? In 2025, we should not only know that a woman being drunk doesn’t make a rape her fault, but that if she is drunk and her assailant is sober, it doesn’t matter whether she consented at the moment.
If she was so drunk that she supposedly lost her inhibitions and came onto her rapist, then she was so drunk she was incapable of giving consent. That’s still rape — why did no one bring it up?
Megan Was Telling The Truth, But Her Behavior Didn’t Help Her Case One Bit
One area where Law & Order: SVU often excels is showing how trauma can almost cost survivors their cases.
Many survivors are unreliable witnesses because their trauma makes it hard for them to remember exactly what happened or share it in a coherent, linear fashion.
Some survivors change their stories several times, while others might be ambivalent about reporting.
Unfortunately, the court system doesn’t understand trauma very well, and seemingly bizarre or inconsistent behavior can come across as lying or instability.
Megan learned that the hard way during her case.
She didn’t think the cops would really catch the man who raped her and mounted a parallel investigation, getting in their way and herself into trouble.
Punching her rapist made her look unstable, and Benson refusing to arrest her made it look like she got special treatment.
The defense could have made a lot more out of Megan’s behavior than it did.
What it did do was bad enough without suggesting that Megan had serious mental health issues that precluded her from being taken seriously.
The Defense Strategy Can’t Be Legal… Can It?
It was gross that the defense latched onto Megan’s diagnosis and the fact that she hadn’t told her husband as proof that she was lying about her rape.
But how the heck did that attorney get her hands on that information?
Health information is supposed to be private. Accessing someone’s health records without their permission is a serious violation of the law.
Yet the only sanction that the lawyer faced for bringing up records she had no right to access was Carisi’s objection and the judge’s warning to the defense attorney not to go too far with this.
I’d have liked some more fallout from the defense attorney’s decision to illegally access health records on Law & Order: SVU Season 26 Episode 14, but there was only so much time in the hour.
It Was Hard To Be Sympathetic To Megan’s Husband
Megan’s husband was terrified when he learned what happened to his wife, and soon after, he found out that she didn’t tell him she had MS.
His world was turned upside down as much as hers was, so his behavior should have been understandable. Still, it was difficult to find him at all sympathetic.
His wife had been through a horrible ordeal, but he was petty enough to complain about not knowing the real reason she insisted on coming to New York right now.
Look, I have no doubt he was shocked and scared, but he wasn’t the victim here.
His wife was, and she needed his support and understanding, not his anger.
Carisi wasn’t much better.
I know he has a job to do, but he was so cynical and doubtful at the beginning of this case that I felt like the writers forgot he used to be an SVU detective.
Your Turn – What Did You Think?
Over to you, SVU fanatics.
What did you think of Law & Order: SVU Season 26 Episode 14?
Vote in our poll to rank the episode.
Then, hit the comments with your thoughts.
Law & Order: SVU airs on NBC on Thursdays at 9/8c and streams on Peacock on Fridays.
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