Undercover

S09E15

By Daniel

Time to pay Rick Tyler a visit over in his Brownsville apartment. The detectives walk into the place (the door is open), hearing someone singing. "Dirtbag's taking a shower," says Olivia, all incredulous at this for some reason. While Rick sings about "silky thighs," the detectives check out the place, featuring a picture of the happy pre-prison family, as well as boots with dirt that could potentially be garden soil. Olivia calls Rick's name. "That you, baby? I got soap in my ears," he yells. And apparently soap in his eyes, because he can't see through the translucent shower curtain that two people have entered his bathroom and are searching the medicine cabinet, finding a prescription bottle of Oxycodone, and a big bag o' weed. "Let's go, Little Ricky," says Elliot, after the surprised Ricky finally pulls open the shower curtain.

Back at the precinct, Ricky says he hasn't seen Ashley in forever since the child services worker won't let him near her. Maybe because you MOLESTED HER, explains Elliot. Ricky swears nothing happened that time the child services worker found Ashley in bed with her naked uncle.

Ashley's giving the same story to Olivia, saying they were just sleeping in the bed. "All you people think about is sex. He didn't abuse me. He loved me."

The story that shakes out is this: the drugs are legit, and the pot is for pain. Ashley's mother's not a drug dealer; she was just buying the pot for Ricky, and it's because she got caught with his pot that he's fighting for custody of Ashley. So get her to tell us what happened, says Elliot. "This is way above your pay grade, man," says Ricky, who doesn't want to say any more. Elliot figures out that's because Ricky knows who did it to her. "You're only going to protect him," says Ricky.

So it's a cop? Prison guard, says Ricky, at Risa's (Ashley's mom) prison. He forced Risa to supply him with drugs, which he deals to the inmates. Ricky was the one getting it to her, but Risa made him stop so he could get clean in order to get custody of Ashley. And Ashley confirms that when the drug pipeline dried up, he raped Ashley in retaliation. Ashley says he told her, "'I gave your mother a message, but she wouldn't listen. Now I'm giving it to you.' Then he raped me." Ashley agrees to release the rape kit, and Olivia promises to protect her. Ashley wants to know who's going to protect her mom: "He's raping her too." Well, if you haven't seen any previews for this episode, I think maybe the title gives away who's going to be protecting Risa.

Bad news: When Olivia and Elliot go to the hospital to pick up the rape kit, they find someone else has already picked it up, but the nurse on duty was too busy to make sure the person she thought was a cop actually signed for it. The badge number he left, though, turns out to be New York Corrections, but it's a retired number. "Without that rape kit, we got nothing," says Cragen. Except Risa Tyler, points out Elliot.

Since Risa's not likely to risk being seen talking to a cop for fear of reprisal, Elliot puts on a suit (calm yourself, ladies) and pretends to be her lawyer so he can meet with her. He tells her about the attack on Ashley. "You gotta keep her safe! Promise me!" she tells Elliot. Not that she's willing to give Elliot the name of the guard. Then she gets dragged off by a mean prison guard saying, "Visitation's over."

Fin and Munch are tag-teaming the Wall O' Technology to tell Olivia and Elliot that a criminal check on the foster parents indicate they're clean. See, it's not enough to say someone doesn't have a criminal record; you have to project an image of their driver's license on a giant computer screen to really hammer it home. They couldn't find any history of abuse, either. But Ashley's mother is doing twelve years in Sealview on a drug bust. "I thought they closed that dump," says Fin, who is told it was reopened because, as Elliott says, "They're locking up a lot more of the ladies these days." Ashley's father has been out of the picture since before Ashley was born. But Ashley's mom moved in with Ashley's uncle Rick.

And there's your molester. "I caught 'em in bed together," says a child services worker, explaining that Ashley loves her uncle and denied everything, but she got stuck in a group home anyway. But whenever Ashley gets placed with a foster family, Rick starts showing up at all hours. "He's got a real thing for her," she says. "He use his thing to rape her?" says Elliot. Man. Was the writers' strike still on when this was written? The child services worker has taken out an order of protection for Ashley, but Rick's applied for custody. Elliot asks if he's got a shot, and the child services worker says, "Over my dead body. He's a perv."

Ashley's giving the same story to Olivia, saying they were just sleeping in the bed. "All you people think about is sex. He didn't abuse me. He loved me."

Turns out contraband -- drugs and a shiv -- was found in Risa's cell, and she's going into solitary, the warden tells Elliot, still under the impression Elliot's a lawyer. Elliot flashes his badge, and the warden gets pissed at his little charade. Elliot's all, I impersonated a lawyer, but you got a rapist working for you. He asks for a list of all the guard with abuse complaints, but she won't give it without a warrant, since her co-operation doesn't extend to violating her employees' privacy. Oh, and given the security cameras everywhere and the prisons zero-tolerance policy on drugs, she says Sealview's clean: "Nobody's raping anyone." We have that on a plaque at my office! Seems to have improved things. Elliot, who from a life knows something about prison sex and rape, doesn't appear convinced.

Back at the precinct, Munch says there were forty-two allegations of rape at Sealview last year; twenty were unfounded, and twenty were unsubstantiated. The other two weren't prosecuted because, as Munch puts it, "It comes down to a crack ho's word against a CO's." Unfortunately, Ashley has wandered in to hear that last part. "Don't call my mother a whore!" she yells. She knows her mother's in the hole, and that a cop was around asking questions. Olivia gently tells her drugs were found in her mother's cell. "Are you stupid?" yells Ashley. She might have a point, since the detectives don't appear to have considered the possibility the rapist guard planted the drugs. Ashley's similarly unimpressed to find out that the prison guard stole the rape kit: "He's smarter than you are?" Hee! The answer to both her questions appears to be yes. "I never should have trusted you," she snaps, and stomps off, and Olivia has a heart-to-heart, with Ashley saying half the guards at Sealview mess with her, with abusive strip-searches. "So don't tell me you can help! Because there's nothing you can do!"

Olivia asks Cragen to let her go undercover into Sealview. Cragen is, as you would expect, totally open to the idea and gives it an immediate and unqualified thumbs-up. No, of course he doesn't, but they argue for about five hours and finally Cragen wears down and gives his approval, probably hoping she gets shivved and stops bothering him. He orders her to work with Huang to come up with an airtight persona. Does that include checking to see if any inmates in there might already know Olivia?

So Olivia's cover is that she's a druggie. Serious addict facing withdrawal. Abused. Man's favorite punching bag. You know what that means: bad makeup and messy hair! She gets sentenced with a real court appearance (no crossover featuring the razor-sharp cheekbones of Alana De La Garza?). Shots of messy-hair Olivia stumbling off the corrections bus while Huang explains how she's going to shower and use the toilet with everyone else. "At times you're going to feel humiliated and degraded," he says, although maybe he's just talking about Mariska herself covering her boobs with her hands for the prison shower scene. "You're going to see thing you'll wanna stop with every fiber of your being," narrates Huang. Olivia, now wearing an orange jumpsuit, gets frisked by a guard who cops a feel, and when she struggles, she's thrown to the ground and whacked by ... Fin! Who's gone hardcore undercover as a prison guard. You want sacrifice? Olivia's showering with junkies and getting strip-searched by potential rapists, but Fin cut off his ponytail. "Not bad for your first day on the job," the other prison guard tells Fin.

Down in the infirmary, the nurse tells her she shouldn't mouth off to the guards. Olivia notes a body under a sheet nearby. "What guard did she piss off?" she asks. "Risa? She hung herself," says the nurse, and Olivia pretty much blows her cover with her reaction (and poor cover-up when the nurse asks if she knew Risa).

Ashley's less than thrilled to see Elliot at her mom's funeral. "I promised your mom I'd look out for you," he says, which he should realize isn't super-reassuring when they didn't do such a hot job of looking out for her mom. "My mother didn't kill herself. She'd never leave me like that," says Ashley. Elliot's skeptical, but Ashley got a letter from her this morning that was full of optimism.

ME Warner confirms it, since Risa's hyoid bone was broken, which even Elliot knows doesn't happen in a hanging. Warner says Risa was strangled and then strung up to make it look like a hanging. But the local ME won't reexamine, since the prison's in a poor town and Sealview's the biggest employer, and he doesn't want to make waves. "So what's to stop him from doing it again?" asks Elliot.

Well, there's Olivia, strolling through the exercise yard, absolutely stunned that a women's prison looks nothing like all-inclusive resorts at Costa Rica. Before long, she literally bumps into another inmate who notes that she's "jonesin'" and Olivia, I mean "Kat," says she just need to get straight. The other inmate, Shawna, says, "The only way you're gonna score is by flat-backin'." "Kat" seems OK with that, and Shawna suggests making her "merchandise" more attractive, like some other inmate who's cinched her top up under her chest. "Here come your buyers now," says Shawna. It's Fin and that other prison guard, chatting. "Feeling better today?" he asks her. "Peachy," says "Kat," who gets informed that the correct answer is, "Yes, thank you, CO." He also makes her apologize to Fin, aka Officer Johnson (hee -- "Johnson") for getting blood on his shoes. Eventually, she does. Then the other guard knocks over a rack of basketballs, and orders Olivia to pick them up. Conveniently, he strolls away so Fin can tell her that Risa's death wasn't a suicide. She tells him to check out his new best friend. "Done," says Fin, who strolls back over to his partner, who calls Olivia "sweet cheeks" as they swagger off.

The guy is Matthew Parker, Munch tells the crew, including Chester, who has finally shown up for a scene. He has no criminal record, but a couple of complaints from his wife before she became his ex. Dude's got sixteen subscriptions to hard-core porn sites. "Who needs that much smut?" asks Cragen, and Elliot says, "A guy who can't get it any other way unless he's raping inmates," because Elliot has to turn it into some kind of studliness contest. Parker's drifted from women's prison to women's prison, probably leaving each one before an inmate got up the nerve to report him. No one brings up how absolutely amazing it is that out of the four-hundred employees we were told worked at the prison, Fin managed to get partnered up with the guy they're looking for on his very first day.

Meanwhile, Ashley's back in the hospital. Elliot's worried when he sees Warner there. "Is she dead?" he asks, and it must be nice for Warner to realize that her colleagues see her as the Angel of Death. She explains that she's just there as a public health official because Ashley has multi-drug-resistant TB, which is deadly if it's at an advanced stage. Elliot remembers that Ashley was coughing yesterday, and Warner tells him he needs to get tested. Olivia too. Elliot's all, yeeeahhh, that's going to be a problem, what with Olivia undercover at Sealview. Warner says Sealview has just been locked down because six cases have been found there, and they surmise that Ashley probably picked it up from the guard when he raped her.

Elliot gets on his cellphone to tell Fin to get Olivia out of there, and Fin says he can't because of the lockdown. Fin's prison captain pops into the locker room to report for a TB test, so Fin says into the cellphone, "I'll take care of it, baby. Love you too."

Fin's in the lineup behind Parker (of course), who says it's going to take three days for the test results to come back, and they have to stay there until then. Fin bitches, but Parker isn't sweating it. "Night shift has its benefits, get what I'm saying?" Fin doesn't say anything, and Parker says he's got his eye on that "fish" that Fin tangled with. Man, this is the most wildly successful undercover operation ever. Forget the weeks and months usually needed to gain trust!

Parker strolls off, but Fin can't follow, because the nurse has run out of syringes and has to go back to the dispensary to get them. Fin's ordered to stay put.

The mess hall has been turned into a testing centre, and Olivia crabs about the lockdown with Shawna and some other inmate, until "Officer Friendly" comes over and orders Olivia to come with him. She refuses, and then she and Shawna and the other chick start a minor riot over wanting some answers about what's going on. Parker manages to get Olivia's arms behind her back, and he handcuffs her as riot squad hustles into the room. The captain watches what's going on.

After the commotion has died down, he walks over to Parker and Olivia and asks who started it. "This one," says Parker. "Looks like you're going to the hole," says the captain, leading her away. Parker looks slightly nervous.

Oh, it's a switcheroo! The captain's not talking her to the hole at all, but to some dank basement corridor, where he tells Olivia to shut up and do as she's told. Olivia finally notices a couple of mattresses against a wall. "No, no, no," she protests, as the captain says he wants what every guy wants, and she's going to give it to him. Relax, Olivia. I think he just wants a beer.

He throws her onto the mattress, while Olivia screams for help. "You must like it rough," he says, as she pleads with him. He plants a kiss and her, takes off his belt and starts throwing her around. Then the captain makes the mistake of taking off her handcuffs so she can get more comfortable, and she elbows him good a couple of times, giving her the chance to run off. "There's no way out," he tells her.

Meanwhile, Fin has finally decided that maybe he should go try to look out for Olivia instead of waiting around to get tested for TB. I mean, it's not as if he's looking to leave the prison.

Back in the basement corridor, the captain is threatening to kill Olivia, and says he'll say she tried to escape and he had to use "necessary force."

Fin heads to Olivia's cell, but her cellmate doesn't know where she is. Shawna, a few cells down, says Kat's busy but she doesn't have a date tonight. Fin orders her to talk him where there aren't any cameras.

The captain's found Olivia hiding behind some boxes. She pretends to give herself up, and he whacks her a couple of times with his baton to show her who's boss. He gets an elbow in the balls for his trouble, and Olivia runs for the door, screaming for help.

Not far away, Shawna's quite taken with Fin's enthusiasm as she leads him to the Sealview No-Tell Motel, but she tells him they can't go down there, because the doorstop on the door in question is up, which is the prison equivalent of the college dorm sock on the doorknob. Fin, wisely, ignores this. And the captain's caught up with Olivia, smacks her around and handcuffs her to the door, sitting down. He unzips his pants. "You bite me, you're dead," he says, and Olivia screams while he grabs hold of her head.

Which is when Fin finally comes riding in like the cavalry, identifying himself as a cop. "She was trying to escape," says the captain. "And you had to drop your pants to stop her," snaps Fin. Olivia, regaining her composure, gets to her feet and tells Lowell Harris he's under arrest for the raping of Ashley Tyler and the attempted murder of a police officer. "You're a cop?" he says. Olivia nods: "Who's the bitch now?" she says.

But there's still a few minutes left, which means there's a twist coming. I guess the attempted rape of Olivia isn't enough. Olivia's interrogating Harris, pointing out that Sealview was his first women's prison after stints at ten men's prison. She says he was dumped at Sealview because he "didn't have the balls" to handle men. And he hates women, so that's why he rapes them. And if he hates women, then that must mean he likes men. All this unnerves Harris, who calls Olivia a "filthy whore" and tells her to shut up. And we're all trying to figure out the point of this.

And here it comes: a lawyer on behalf of the corrections officers union shows up so "this decorated officer" won't be smeared in an attempt to justify their "sleazy undercover operation." Harris and Parker both tested negative for TB, and Ashley's infection was traced back to a group home. "He almost killed me!" says Olivia, and the lawyer says Harris didn't know she was a cop, and corrections officers have every right to strike an inmate to force compliance. "But not the right to try and rape me!" yells Olivia. Yeah, does the lawyer really want to argue this one in court? "She's lying," says Harris, much calmer and more confident now. The lawyer assures Olivia that Sealview's investigating the allegations, but Harris is going home. They leave, and Olivia tells Cragen that this isn't over. She thinks maybe Ashley can identify him, but Cragen tells her Ashley's taken a turn for the worse.

And later, Olivia sits at her desk and stares at a picture of Harris. Elliot comes over to commiserate, saying she'll get him, but Olivia says he'll most likely be transferred and promoted. Elliot asks what happened in the basement. "Nothing," she says, and Elliot gives her the Smouldering Gaze of You Can Tell Me, and Olivia just says she's fine. Her phone rings, and she's off to the hospital, because Ashley's awake.

Ashley's in an isolation booth. Turns out she's going to be fine. Thank heaven for small mercies. She tells Olivia that she wants him to die for what he did to her and her mom, but she doesn't think she can ID him because she never saw his face. "But you saw his body," says Olivia, and asks if there was anything unusual about Harris's penis, like a scar or tattoo or anything. Ashley thinks about it. "He has a big mole," she says.

Apparently that's good enough, because Olivia and Elliot march down the corridor with the warden in tow, who tells the detectives to get him out of the prison. The detectives arrest him while the inmates cheer.

Warner takes a picture of Harris with his pants down. "Captain, huh? You look more like a private to me," says Elliot, and I'd really like to ask what Elliot's overcompensating for, what with his small-dick jokes this episode. Warner wryly says they'll have to enlarge the picture for the jury, but the mole's right where Ashley said it was (beyond "on his dick"?). "See ya in twenty years, captain," says Olivia as Elliot leads him out.

Warner wants to know how Olivia knew to ask about special penis characteristics. "I saw it," Olivia finally admits ... although, wouldn't she already had to have corroborated Ashley's story in order to get the arrest warrant? I'm no expert on U.S. law, but given they couldn't hold Harris based on what he did to Olivia, I can't imagine cops can arrest someone on suspicion he might have a mole on his dick. Warner comes right out and asks if Harris raped her. "It's the closest I've ever come," she says. Yeah, check back with her after the sweeps, Warner.