"Florida" Holds Some Surprises for SVU

NBC Recap

By Trublu
PTR Staff Writer

The long anticipated episode where Olivia finally confronts her past has finally arrived! There was something for every viewer in this episode (as long as you’re a fan of Olivia, of course). Before the real fun begins, we are shown the inside of the interrogation room, where Elliot and Olivia are trying to get a perp to confess, without much success. They are doing their beloved “good cop, bad cop” routine, with Olivia being the bad cop this go around (as if we expected anything else for this episode).

Things are going well, or so it seems, until Cragen pulls Olivia from the room. FBI agent man is back on scene, and he wants to know why Olivia sent money to Simon! *Collective gasp.* Here starts the great moral dilemma of the episode: why would Olivia send Simon money? On one hand, he is her brother, and family always changes things. However, on the other hand, Olivia has never been a real family person (the fact that she didn’t have a lot of family could have been an influencing factor) and there is strong evidence against Simon for the rape. Normally, Olivia won’t put up with rapists, never mind fund their potential escape.
Threatened by a photo that doesn’t exist (she’s been “Copped!” *think “Punked!”*) Olivia admits to FBI guy that Simon is her brother, and he seems to understand why Olivia is acting the way she is. Captain Julia, however, doesn’t see through Olivia’s act, and accuses her of being in love with Simon. *Ugh.* It was almost painful, listening to Julia describe how Benson must be so desperate that she picked a rapist, but the scene clearly illustrates her hatred for Simon, and so it was actually very well done.

Now we’re back to the original perp from the beginning of the episode that no one remembered or was paying attention to anyway. Good cop, bad cop is gone; now it’s just bad cop. Olivia gets in some good (cheap?) shots before Elliot and Cragen come in to break up the party. Ironically enough, the perp accuses Benson of having a thing for rapists. Him and Julia must share a brain!
The next scene was something I never thought I’d see on SVU: Cragen actually touched somebody. *Second collective gasp.* I know, I know, everyone was in shock over this one. Especially since he was grabbing Olivia by the arm! Did anyone else see the mixture of fear and disbelief in Olivia’s eyes? That’s by far something I wasn’t expecting, even more so than the bodily contact of two main characters on the show.

Elliot: What were you doing?
Olivia: Oh, the poster boy for rage is going to tell me how to handle my anger?

To that I say: ouch. Just plain ouch. This is a classic case of “Olivia is really angry right now” syndrome, where Olivia chronically hits below the belt when she’s annoyed or feeling trapped.

Simon: You’re so screwed up you can’t believe there is good in anyone.

This is where the episode stops being about just Simon and starts involving Olivia’s dad. Even though she knows he is dead, her disgust with what he did to her mother is something that she carries with her every day, and it influences the decisions that she makes. Her decision to become part of the SVU is an obvious one that is a byproduct of her origins. The fact that she’s never had a relationship last longer than half an episode is another such situation. Olivia looks with such distain at her brother when she thinks about what he’s done to his victims, just as her dad did to his victims. She tells FBI guy after he flees from the bookstore that he tried to run over her with his car.

Making matters worse for Olivia but better for us is the conversation that Olivia and FBI guy have at Simon’s mother’s home. Even though she has Alzheimers, she remembers the past clear as a bell, and can remember Olivia’s father talking about her daughter, and even attempting to contact her once. This naturally leads Olivia to more questions. (The episode should have been called “Questions” instead of “Florida”.) She begins to believe that her mother lied about being raped in the first place. However, Olivia declines to a rendezvous in Florida, where Simon’s mother indicated he owned a home.

The writers ruin all the wonderfulness with an absolutely horrid cut scene and voice over my Mariska/Olivia. It shows her going through each case that was similar to her mother’s, after learning from an employer that her father’s company supplied college dining halls (where her mother worked). She finds other cases with the same pattern, and even visits one of the victims, who tells her to go away. She is explaining all this to Huang, who is presumably sitting patiently in the background while Olivia spills all. Presumably is all we’ll ever know, though, since while Olivia was talking we were watching her in some sort of horrible flashback sequence!

At least we know that Olivia’s senses are at work, since when she gets home she senses Captain Julia lurking mysteriously. While at the station making a statement, Olivia pulls off an awesome feat: using the famed “fake call on your cell phone” trick, she manages to steal some evidentiary photos and confirms that they aren’t real.

Finally everything falls into place, as Olivia learns that Julia’s sister OD’d on drugs (remember waaaaay back to “Philadelphia?”), and that Julia had probably figured out where Simon lived. Thanks to a miraculous memorization of upstate New York by Elliot, everyone finally realizes that “route 94 in Florida” is actually “route 94 and Florida” an intersection address. The arrive to gunshots, and the most pivotal part of the episode begins.

If family always changes the situation, then having your brother being the one holding a gun to a shot and bleeding captain is an awkward situation indeed. Olivia’s ability to trust (or lack thereof) comes into major play here, since she essentially has to pick Julia’s story over Simon’s, or vice versa.

I was actually watching my TV non-stop through this segment; no notes, lots of flies were allowed to fly into my slack jawed mouth, and the scene alone could earn Mariska another Emmy nomination, very easily. And, this supplies multitudes of directions for the writers to go with Olivia. Her “trust floodgates” have been opened, and Simon is definitely on her radar, now that she knows he’s innocent. She also thanked Elliot for trusting her, another major step.

My guess is that even with the staggered filming (next week does look like an Elliot week) we’ll be seeing a lot of Benson. More specifically, Benson and family related issues, because that storyline is definitely not over yet.

Overall, I give “Florida” one of the higher ratings of the season, though it was no “Responsible”.