Episode 18/11: Betrayal

Fan Review by Mari

CAUTION: POSSIBLE SPOILERS!!!

This episode opens with a man laying on a couch, the kind you find in a shrink's office, and he is talking to someone, saying weird and creepy things like, "I love your raven hair against your pale skin...I don't give a damn about the laws of my profession...I just want more...I want more of you, my baby, and I never want it to stop." I can't possibly be the only one who was totally creeped out by this guy's speech and how he delivered it. Later, he's found shot in his office. Yes, it turns out HE is a shrink. Who was he talking to? Or about? When the detectives investigate the scene of the crime, a mattress and the belongings of a young girl are found in a closet. Whoa...

The doctor, Isaac Waxman, has a family, and when his wife Catherine (guest star Moira Kelly) is interviewed, she is strangely uncooperative. So his patients are also canvassed, in the search for a suspect. Some clues lead to a skate park. Lupo always finds himself using whatever he can to gain information from reluctant witnesses. In this case, he uses a big scar (I wonder if it's a real scar of Sisto's) on his leg. A troubled teenaged girl named Amanda admits that she was the one sleeping in Dr. Waxman's office closet, but adamantly denies any unprofessional conduct from the doctor. She claims that her parents are the enemies, and that Waxman was helping her. Since this seems to be a dead-end in the search for the killer, Green and Lupo are steered in a new direction. Another patient of Waxman, a teen boy named Brandon, is about to commit suicide online, and is stopped just in time. It is revealed that Waxman had Brandon on herbs and meditation instead of "traditional" medicine for depression, and Brandon's parents, having no faith in alternative treatments, sent their son to a new shrink, who of course, prescribed the standard antidepressants. What if Brandon felt that Waxman deserted him? they theorize. Would he have been the one who shot and killed him?

In a surprising interview, Brandon reveals that he not only loved Dr. Waxman and respected Waxman's treatment preferences, but that Waxman SAVED him from becoming a violent killer. Brandon had fantasized about bringing a gun to school and killing classmates. There WERE homicidal and suicidal ideations going on in his mind, but no, he would never have killed his doctor. His doctor saved his sanity, Brandon insists.

Again, a dead end. Waxman's office and desk are searched, and tapes are found containing those creepy narratives about some young woman (or girl), name of "Meredith", that the doctor is obviously (and no doubt sickly) enamoured of. When Catherine listens to the tape, she is visibly shaken, and now a new suspect, along with a new motive, is the focus. Her children, one of them a very "Wednesday Adams"-esque daughter, give conflicting alibi statements for their mother. It takes Green stepping over the bounds and reading Catherine's psychiatric file to her to get her to tearfully confess. Yes, she killed her husband. "He has a sickness. I heard the sickness in his voice when I heard that tape."

Here I must say something. I understand the statute of limitations was long past in this case, but am I the only one that felt that Waxman WAS a sicko? It is revealed that he is 20 years older than Catherine. That wouldn't have been an issue with me, had Catherine not been FIFTEEN at the time she and Waxman (who was obviously no less than 35 in those days) began their affair. The fact that Catherine was a patient, a disturbed young girl, and that Waxman DID violate her trust and abuse his role in her life, only makes me say, "Yeah, she DID deserve a metal." Nobody else seems very disturbed by Waxman's overt pedophilia.

Whether or not Catherine truly sees her late husband as someone who abused and raped her, or is using the facts in a clever defense scheme is hard to dicipher. She tries to convince everyone that daughter Emma was confused as to her mother's whereabouts during the murder. Not to be outmaneuvered, Michael Cutter threatens Emma, telling her that if she lies for her mother, he will go after her younger brother Donny for the truth, and that Donny will be traumatized by the whole messy thing. Cutter's tactics do not sit well with Lupo, but Cutter always plays to win. That's just how he is made. Emma admits that she somehow found her Dad's tape recorder and listened to the creepy stuff he said. Then she left it in the kitchen for Mom to find. Interviews with Catherine's mother reveal that Catherine lied about several things, including where she walked the family dog. A gun is found in the river, and Catherine is arrested.

Immediately, she proceeds with her defense scheme mentioned a few paragraphs ago: she claims her husband, Isaac Waxman, abused his role as her psychiatrist and seduced her into a sexual relationship with him that progressed into their eventual marriage. She fires her defense attorney to act as her own, calling her children to the stand and having them testify that Isaac was such a control freak that he didn't even let the family plant flowers in the yard without his stamp of approval.

For the prosecution, Cutter places a Dr. Stromach on the stand, an academic researcher who arrogantly claims that any relationship between an adult and an adolescent is not considered abusive or potentially emotionally damaging. Outraged, and rightly so IMO, that other doctor (I forget her name constantly, but she has been on episodes of SVU as well) agrees to go to bat for the defense. McCoy and Cutter are pissed of course, and threaten Dr. Whatshername that they don't care who she is. Always in it to win. And they make good on their word. Cutter tears her apart on the stand. This is the first time I've ever felt that McCoy and Cutter are capable of being heartless. It was just really low. Of course I have to admit I agree with Whatshername's assessment of Dr. Waxman...honestly, the guy is a pedophile, and even if Catherine had been over 18, she was his PATIENT for god's sake!

Still, Cutter, having done some searching, tells Catherine that "Meredith", the object of all that ickily adoring banter on the audiotapes, is only a town, a town in New England that Waxman used to take his "bride" to for romantic getaways. Suddenly Catherine is tearful and horrified to learn that she has gunned down her husband over nothing more than a memoir. So it seems, she didn't see Isaac as the man who abused her trust. She had thought he was having an affair with this Meredith, and killed him out of scorn. All these claims that he raped her and forced her to marry him are false...

Nevertheless, I can't get over how disgusting he was, as a professional healthcare provider, to initiate a sexual relationship with his underage patient. So she believes she loved him and is sorry she killed him at the last. Yuck...I thought he was a sleaze. I think he's the first "victim" I didn't care about.

This episode is definitely one of my least favorites. It didn't have any technical problems of course. I guess it's just the unlikeable direction the story (and some of the characters) took.