SVU: Beecher/Keller Forever Edition

Last night, fans of "Oz" got what they've been waiting for for over 7 years: a Beecher/Keller reunion on SVU. Was it worth it? Did it reach Oz-levels of homoeroticism? I'll let you know in a minute.

We got two episodes of the show last night now that Leno is no longer fouling up the 9 p. m. time slot. The first hour featured special guest star Kathy Griffin chomping up the scenery as some obnoxious lesbian activist who secretly loves men or some shit. I don't know. I came in at the half hour mark & I hate Kathy Griffin, but I did see that NBC chose to cut the not-so-hyped lesbian lip lock. Hmmm....

Having lost much interest in the show over the last few seasons, I wasn't even gonna watch the 2nd episode. The ballyhooing of special guest star Mischa Barton wasn't winning the show any points. However, what the hell else is on at that hour on a Wednesday?

The episode starts with a woman dressed like a hooker strolling down the street and being holla'ed at by some dude. I think he's offering to be her pimp. She blows him off and approaches some shadowy dude in a car. We next cut to her beaten and strangled corpse being looked at by the Dynamic Duo. They find a prayer card next to the body. Liv notes that another pro was killed in a similar manner and the same kind of card was left at that crime scene previously. Puzzled faces, credits, then commercials.

When we comeback, the squad is going over the evidence. It's here that I squealed with glee when I saw Lee Tergesen's name. Either you loved "Oz" and know exactly why that is fabulous or you don't give a shit, so I won't spend time telling you about the saga of Beecher & Keller.
(If you insist on knowing, go to Television Without Pity and read their "Oz" recaps, particularly starting with season 2.

Anyhoodle, I might have been lost in memories of hot man-on-man love (or running my bath), so I don't know exactly how we get to our red herring. (The dead hooker might have had a friend who knew Red Herring was a client.). The guy is some rich douche whose wife tried to break him of his past hooker habit through religious shaming. Hubby had a tough time with it & started asking wifey for some special favors. She was having none of it and I don't want to say SVU seemed to be excusing philandering with hookers by blaming prudish wives ("The mouth is not a proper receptacle for the seed") but I just said it, so there's that.

Since we haven't seen Ms. Barton yet & it's only about 20 minutes into the episode, you won't be surprised that Elliot's own shaming session with Red the Herring gets interrupted by news of another attack, but this time the victim is alive.

Do you know who that victim is? Do ya? Do ya? You can have an Oreo if you said Mischa Barton. She's sitting in an ambulance sort of refusing treatment while a bunch of other hookers yell at her not to tell the cops about almost being killed. Suddenly, a TV pimp shows up in the crowd and urges Mischa (hooker name: Sunshine) to keep her mouth shut. The detectives can't resist the urge to get in someone's face and act all badass, so while they're distracted threatening the pimp, Sunshine manages to hop into a car & flee the scene.

Back at the squad, research finds Sunshine (real name: Gladys) & her sad story in the system. Seems she was born to a drug addict and ended up in and out of foster care til she aged out. She's been being busted for hooking since she was 12 yeas old. Sad.

Our Duo track her to an aunt's house. Liv goes to harass Gladys about talking to them about her assault which is a common enough trope on this show, but I'm quite certain doesn't happen to rape victims too often in real life. At least, I hope not.

Liv sneers at the fact Gladys' aunt has only provided her niece an old couch in the corner of her daughters' bedroom on which to sleep. Crazily, Gladys is grateful to have a place to stay. How stupid is she, right?

Liv tries the empathy route, telling Gladys how she knows she was lured into prostitution by that smooth talking skeezeball pimp (who had a ridiculous TV pimp name like Silky or something, but I can’t remember what it was. Update: upon rewatching I learned the pimp's ridiculous name is Marmalade), claiming he wanted to show her a better life. Gladys breaks down and tells Liv about how he pretended to love her, then made her have sex with his friends, then told her she might as well get paid for it and suddenly she was a hooker…at 12! Gross.

Meanwhile, Elliot is in the kitchen insulting the hell out of Gladys' aunt. He accuses her of pimping Gladys out to help support her and her kids. Auntie, who has MS, basically tells him to go fuck himself. She says she took in her sister's kid despite her own difficulties & she don't have time for his accusatory bullshit.

I might have been turning off my bath water or heating up a Banquet frozen dinner because I can’t remember how we got to our next perp. Oh wait. I believe Liv’s guilt trip works on Gladys. She tells them that the john seemed all normal and nice, but them he got weird and asked if she was ready to meet her father. Then he started to strangle her. She passed out and came to with the cops there. She also mentions another pro who had an encounter with the murderous john.

They head to a diner to meet this other YOUNG lady who is about to tell them her story when Marmalade walks in. She tells her friend to wait for her outside while she goes to pay and the Dynamic Duo get in Marmalade's face once again. Before she leaves, Elliot hands her his card and she lays a napkin on the table and tells him to call her if he wants a good time because she loooooves cops. They pick up the napkin upon which the pro has drawn an AMAZING sketch of the perp. I suppose she did that at the register while she was paying. She needs to get off the streets and go to art school because she's kinda awesome.

I think they decided to do a sting to try to catch him. Alls I know is that the detectives end up at a scene where a young prostitute is struggling with some dude in a car. Elliot yanks the guy out and IT’S BEECHER!!! And I was super happy they were actually in a scene together because I was so sure that when Lee Tergesen finally did show up on SVU (after having appeared on both the other Law & Order incarnations…Trial by Jury does not count), the writers would be mean to us “Oz” fans and not give them any scenes together.

Anyway, Liv pulls the girl from the other side of the car and she tells them that Beecher asked her if she was ready to meet her father (*ding*) and started choking her, so she cut him. Beecher claims she attacked him, but Elliot presses him against the car, whisper-sneers something vaguely menacing in his ear, and cuffs his hands behind his back. Wow! That last part sounded like it could have been a scene from “Oz”.

Now, Elliot is questioning Beecher at the station. Beecher says he’s a minister who only wants to save the hookers from their lives of sin. He claims he didn’t kill them, only tried to talk to them about their evil, whorish ways. Elliot shows him the dead girls’ pictures and Beecher says he didn’t kill them, but whoever did sent them to heaven, so he really did them a favor.

Elliot decides to use Beecher’s religious zealotry to his advantage. He starts going on about confession and gets all handsy. Beecher grabs Elliot's arm and starts reciting some Bible prayer (I’m a heathen who was too caught up in the hoyay to pay attention to which one) and Beecher stands up. Now, he and Elliot stand face-to-face with their hands on each other’s shoulders, almost embracing. Then they touch their foreheads together while finishing the prayer and it almost looks like they are gonna kiss and I was totally giddy because that was such a freakin’ shout-out and I think I fell in love with SVU again. (It doesn’t hurt that Stephanie March appears to have returned to the show.) They finish the prayer and Beecher rejects Keller…I mean, Elliot’s advances by saying he won’t be confessing to him today.

*Sigh* I need a cold drink.

So now Liv has convinced Gladys to i.d. Beecher in a line-up. In the room with her and the detectives and ADA Cabott is Beecher’s lawyer (played by “The Wire” alum, Delaney Williams). The lawyer starts playing mind-games with Gladys telling her the cops will arrest her for prostitution because by identifying Beecher she is admitting to being a hooker. Or something.
The cops tell him to shut it and encourage Gladys to make her i.d. They have the line-up dudes say the line about meeting your father. Beecher is 3rd in line and he’s giving Gladys the evil eye. Gladys is wondering why he’s acting like he can see her. The cops reassure her and tell Beecher to say the line. Instead, he goes totally religious wackadoo and starts stalking towards the glass. Gladys freaks and says, “That’s him” and runs out of the room and into a stairwell. Liv goes after her just in time to see Gladys go tumbling down the stairs. Liv screams for a bus (SVU speak for an ambulance) and goes to Gladys’ aid. It’s now that Liv and the audience see that Gladys, who has shown a fondness for big clothes, is a little pregnant. Ruh-roh.

(I’m not so good at condensing these recaps.)

So now, Gladys is at the hospital and the Dynamic Duo are talking to her doctor who tells them Gladys and the baby are fine for now. They ask if they can talk to Gladys and try the old "she's our only witness in a murder investigation". The Doc is all she and her baby are still alive and I plan to keep them that way and then he awesomely saunters right out of the room without glancing back. Why the hell don’t more people do that on this show (and the other L&Os as well)? Most times, the minute the detectives mention getting a warrant people are ready to hand over their first born.

Gladys is telling the detectives that she’s gonna change her life now. She’s gonna stop hooking, so that she can take care of herself and her baby the right way. Liv and Elliot start badgering her to give her baby up for adoption, but Gladys is having none of it. Gladys’ aunt shows up and freaks out upon learning about the pregnancy. Elliot decides to beat up on Gladys’ aunt some more. Again, he accuses her of essentially pimping Gladys and contributing to Gladys’ situation. She tells him to piss off and kicks them out of Gladys’ hospital room.

The next day (?) Alex goes to court to get Beecher held over for trial. His lawyer argues that the i.d. should be thrown out because Gladys didn’t really i.d. his client. Alex points out that Gladys flipped because of his client’s antics. The judge sides with Alex and Beecher is remanded without bail.

Back at the station, Alex explains to Liv that they’ll need Gladys to testify, so Liv should become her new best friend. Liv goes over to the aunt’s place with baby gifts, but the aunt has tossed Gladys out. Liv generously offers Auntie a new guilt trip about kicking out her pregnant niece. The aunt breaks down, explaining that she is just a single mom trying to raise her own two kids on her disability and she just couldn’t fathom taking on Gladys and a new baby. She has no idea where Gladys might be. Liv looks disgusted.

Fin (hey, Ice-T) finds a Craigslist ad Sunshine has placed offering her services. The TARU dude finds a response and the detectives head over and bust in on two frat rats. They find Gladys passed out in a bedroom. Her water has broken and then she has a seizure. Time for another bus.

At the hospital, a doctor tells them they performed an emergency C-section. The baby is only 1 pound and has a plethora of medical problems. The doctor says the kid has between a 17 and 40% chance of surviving and that’s with a gang of expense surgeries and she would likely be blind, deaf, and/or have cerebral palsy. Liv asks if the doc is saying they shouldn’t try any heroic measures and the doc basically says no, much to Elliot “Family Man” Stabler’s chagrin.

At the squad, the Dynamic Duo have a fight about what should be done about the baby. Alex comes in and interrupts it, so Elliot stalks off. Alex explains that Gladys will need to appear at a new ID hearing to make sure Beecher stays in jail and is held over for trial. Liv doesn’t think she’ll want to leave her baby. Alex says if Gladys won’t do it, then Liv should arrest her…for prostitution. Hey, didn’t someone tell Gladys that the cops were gonna arrest her? Who was that?

Oh well. Liv doesn’t want to do it, but she heads off to the hospital anyway. She finds Gladys in the NICU lovingly staring at her baby. Liv tries to gently coax her, but Gladys does not want to leave her kid who could die any moment. (Never mind the fact that she JUST had a baby, like, hours ago.) When Gladys won’t budge, Liv decides to arrest her.

Now we’re at the hearing the next day. Justice is conveniently swift. I’d swear it’s only been like 5 days since they even found the first body. I imagine there are thousands of folks in county jails all over the U.S. who wish our court systems actually worked like this.

Anywayz, Gladys is on the stand being questioned by Alex about her attack. Alex gets her to lay out the details then hands her off to Beecher’s lawyer. He decides to go the “blame the victim” route continuously calling her a prostitute and referring to her by her hooker name. He says his client is the victim which causes Gladys to bug out. She barks that Beecher is the one who tried to kill her and did kill at least two other women. This outburst causes Beecher to bust out his crazy, and he starts screaming about her being a whore. He gets dragged out of the courtroom and seemingly off to Oswald to get his ass branded by a Nazi who will trick him into falling in love with a homicidal sex demon who will break his heart which will drive him to orchestrate the overdose death of the Nazi’s son and to cat-claw a guard to death all of which will lead to the murder of his own son and some serious Beecher whoring around. Awww, I loved that show.

After the hearing, Gladys is all sad and tells Liv the lawyer was right about her and what will she tell her daughter. Liv tells her that she will do the right thing when the time comes. Gladys cries and gives Liv a big old hug.

Later that evening, Captain Cragen comes by Liv’s apartment with a letter that was dropped off at the squad for her. Some legal document naming LIV the legal guardian of Gladys' damn baby along with a letter from Gladys about leaving to soul search and find herself or some such. Liv looks stunned. Me too.

We’re not done. Later, Liv gets a call from the hospital. Something’s wrong with her new ward. The doctors need her to authorize an operation. Liv stands there with her mouth hanging open for two hours while the doctor keeps trying to get an answer from her.

And then we go to credits because SVU is cowardly.

Damn that was long. It’s been a while since I delved into some SVU like that, but the Beecher/Keller reunion could not be passed up.

Long live Beecher/Keller!!! xoxo