Surrender Benson

All summer long SVU fans have been anticipating the fifteenth season premiere. In May we left our favorite sex crimes detective with a gun to her head, the finger on the trigger belonging to William Lewis, the most sadistic rapist the show has ever seen.

We pick up with Liv as she wakes from unconsciousness. The team at SVU is unable to reach her after the two days Cragen ordered her to take off. Fin and Rollins head to her apartment and find it in disarray. Cragen and Nick arrive and Nick finds a pan on the stove with keys that smell like burnt hair and flesh. A ping on Benson's cell phone leads detectives to Lewis' halfway house, but of course, finding her and the psycho could never be that easy. Instead they find the phone with the fur coat masturbator we met in Her Negotiation, a brief moment of comic relief during an hour filled with torture and sexual assault.

Defense Attorney Vanessa Mayer (lawyer/girlfriend of our rapist) meets Cragen at the station. Mayer says she just saw Lewis and that they were together all of the previous day when they visited Long Island and had a Guess Who's Coming to Dinner with her parents. Our detectives decide it's probably a good idea to check on Mommy and Daddy Mayer.

At the Mayer residence SVU finds Mr. Mayer dead and a trunk with evidence suggesting that Benson is alive. They continue to search the house and find Mrs. Mayer bloody and hanging in a closet. The good news? She's alive and now we have a witness. According to our newest victim, Lewis returned after he and Vanessa left for the train station after their family dinner and Liv was with him. Trembling with tears, Mrs. Mayer informs, "He made her watch while he raped me."

Liv has been sexually assaulted (remember prison?) in the past but for a woman who spends her life fighting for victims of "especially heinous vicious felonies" to be forced to watch as a helpless woman is brutally raped by a psychopath--that's new a new traumatic territory for SVU. Shame it doesn't end there.

Mrs. Mayer reports that Liv was gagged and silenced with duct tape and Lewis ordered her to keep her eyes open through the assault. "Anytime she tried to close them he put a lit cigarette on me." Rollins asks if Benson was with Lewis when he left but Mrs. Mayer can't handle anymore so now Team SVU has no idea if Benson is alive or dead. Back at the station, a fearful Cassidy opens up, "Two days, Munch. What's he doing to her, man?" There's definitely some major character development in Cassidy's future in the aftermath of this shit storm.

Cut to Benson and Lewis in a car. Liv is bound and duct taped. Lewis forces Vodka down her throat. "Vicodin, the sleeping pills--they give you dry mouth, right?" (Gross. I want to castrate this guy myself.) According to our rapist-murderer, they're off to "someplace special." Liv wants water and he gives her a little before pouring the rest of the bottle out the window. He puts the duct tape back on her mouth and "kisses" her hard. (Who else needed to take a vomit break here?)

SVU is still on the hunt. All resources being used to locate Benson. The team now knows that Lewis went to a hardware and liquor store. They know he force fed her alcohol and drugs. Cassidy wants to know if Lewis lets his victims live. "Not all of them," says Rollins. They know he's in Long Island and that's where they will concentrate their efforts.

Back in the Rapistmobile (like the Popemobile but with less Pope and more rapist), Liv is bound and duct taped on the floor as Lewis sings. (I, for one, was in no mood for vehicular karaoke but it was an effectively creepy touch). A police cruiser pulls Lewis over and when the baby-faced cop walks up to the window it's fairly obvious that this is going to be his last traffic stop. Officer Freshface spots the open bottle of Vodka on the floor of the car and catches on quick. But not quick enough for Lewis, who headlocks him through the window and shoots him in the head.

SVU on the scene of the shooting. The search continues at hardware stores and gas stations in the immediate area.

Lewis pulls up to an empty home and drags Liv inside. They head to the bedroom and Liv looks to the bathroom. She needs to pee. "Let's go," says Lewis. "Do you need help? I can help you." He pulls Liv against him, gun on her the whole time.

Nick and Fin find the hardware store and question the owner. Lewis purchased tarp rope, wire and a blow torch and told the owner he was going camping.

Back at our new House of Horrors, Liv is tied to the bed and trying to break free. Lewis returns and rips the tape off her mouth and shows her where and how he's going to tie her feet. "Do you want me to burn your clothes or cut em off? Gotta be some scissors around here, right?" He goes to the kitchen and brings back something sharp. And now shit gets real(er).

"What's the matter? Sad? Thinking of someone you're never going to see again? Mom? Dad? Boyfriend? No, huh? Someone else? Someone who you would give anything to see just one more time?"

And there it is, SVUers. Hitting us directly in the feels where a gaping hole was left in our hearts by one Detective Elliot Stabler. Who doesn't want Elliot right now?

Lewis continues: "You're gonna cry his name out at some point. They always do. Just try to put him out of your mind because you're not making it out of here alive." Liv changes her tune to appeal to the deviant sex predator in an effort to prolong things to give the team more time to find her. "You might want to keep me around. Find out what you like." She turns the tables and talks about his previous victims as if his actions were a turn-on. She tells him to uncuff her because she knows he "likes a fight."  Lewis shoves the gun in her mouth. "You don't tell me what to do." Liv: "I wanna live. I'll do anything. Anything anything anything." (Watching her beg is heartbreaking.) "Yes you will," Lewis says. There's a knock at the door and Liv screams for help. Great timing for the housekeeper to show up with her young daughter. Lewis answers the door and we see immediately that the child is afraid of him. The mother senses something is wrong and tries to leave but Lewis pulls them into the house.

SVU on the scene (or so we think). Music is blasting and they enter the house. They find a teenage couple making out. Wrong fucking house. (Go figure.) Liv learns that Lewis is holding the housekeeper and her daughter. He expresses his desire for the little girl. Liv says she thinks he's not man enough to get it up for a real woman. She will do anything to keep that innocent little girl and her mother safe. "I think you're afraid of me," she taunts Lewis, who unbuttons his pants. But before he can drop trou, Liv pulls a metal rod she loosened from the bed and swings like it's the major league, hitting him in the face and Lewis hits the floor. Rapist down! He tries to hit back but Liv has him overpowered and goes for his gun. She will shoot if he tries to move. Liv finds and tells the housekeeper to leave with her daughter. They are illegal and Liv tells them to run or the police will find out they are witnesses.

Now we have Lewis cuffed to the bed. Liv looks in the mirror and what she sees isn't pretty. Looking at a helpless Lewis, it's obvious that Liv is in charge now. She kicks him. Hard. "I haven't called anybody yet. I think I want you to suffer first. I could burn you or cut you. Or I could use a blow torch." She picks it up, pulls the trigger and smiles. Something has shifted in our heroine and a new darkness has come over her--something that has been building from years of working sex crimes but took this current abduction/assault/torture to activate.

Liv clutches the blow torch and continues, "See you--you know what to do. Your whole life you know what you want and you just do it. What I wanna do--I wanna shoot you in the head right now--watch you bleed out. Maybe that's too easy. My old partner, he'd know what to do. He wouldn't question himself after what you've done. He would kick your teeth in. Break your legs, break your arms, break your back, break your face. Maybe I should call him. Maybe I should get him to use that metal bar on you and make you beg for your life." (This is where I began yelling at my television "YES! YES! YES!")

Lewis tells Liv she won't shoot him because she's a nice girl. "That old partner of yours. He sounds very macho, doesn't he? Must have been tough for you all those long nights alone in the car. Did he ever do you? He did, didn't he? You still want him. I can hear it in your voice." (SVUers, your blogger died a bit here.) "You're all bottled up. All your life you've been listening to stories. Women telling you about the worst night of their life. What about you, huh? What are you working through? Something your daddy did to you? I'm onto something, aren't I? Call me what you want but I can always smell a victim." Liv kicks him. Lewis continues.

"My daddy used to leave me at my babysitter. He'd take her in the back and do her on the waterbed. He passed out, right? She comes out of the room and asks if I want to play. She puts me in her mouth. God it felt good. Then my daddy came out. He slaps her in the face. She's bleeding from the nose and mouth, then he grabs her, pulls her pants down and does her on the floor all while she's screaming, begging him to stop."

Liv: "Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?" "I think you missed the point," says Lewis. "My daddy got up, pulled up his pants, brought me in the car and took me to Dairy Queen for ice cream. One of the best days of my life. The moment I knew what I was put here for. I know what I want. What about you?"

Liv knows. "I know exactly what I want. I want you dead. I want a bullet in your head. I want you in the ground. Nobody will miss you, nobody will mourn you." Lewis eggs her on, tormenting her to shoot him but she puts the gun down. "I knew it," says Lewis. "You don't have the balls." And that's all that Liv needs to hear. She picks up the metal rod and proceeds to beat the ever-loving shit out of him. She screams as she beats him and the sound is primal and chilling.

Is Lewis still alive? We're hitting the second hour with SVU on the scene. Fin tells Liv that Lewis is still alive and she responds "I don't know how." Liv gives her statement to a detective. Cragen tells her Vanessa Mayer's mother is being released from the hospital. The department will put Liv up in a hotel. She has a concussion, broken wrist and two cracked ribs. Cassidy comes to take her to his place. As they leave she sees all of her colleagues. They look at her as she walks by them without casting a glance in their direction. Back at Cassidy's, Liv cuts her hair off in the bathroom (and for those of you who watched Season 2 of The Newsroom, we all know that means she's been through a trauma.)

Liv meets with her new therapist. "He still got to me. But not the way you think." No need to argue about this, fans. She's talking about Elliot and we know it. What does this mean for the fifteenth season of SVU? The lack of closure we had from Stabler's exit always led me to believe that Christopher Meloni would be brought back at some point. This season would be the perfect opportunity to do so. Unfortunately, an Elliot Stabler return doesn't look promising. I think we should start a massive campaign for (at the very least) a small arc for Meloni to return. February sweeps, anyone?

When we pick up two months later, Liv enters her apartment. The place is still a mess and you have to wonder why the hell the SVU team didn't arrange for a crime scene cleanup crew to go in and fix things up for her. Liv has flashbacks of her attack as soon as she walks through the door.

Liv takes a self defense class. In therapy she is angry. She clarifies that she was assaulted and not raped. That the other victims had it worse that her. But her therapist isn't having any of it and validates her trauma even when she cannot. She speaks of going back to her apartment. That it's a dark place--that she hasn't thrived there. She says she's ready to return to work. Doc asks if SVU is really the best thing for her. She's reevaluating her home, her relationship. Is she thinking about the toll her job takes? Does the thought of doing something different frighten her? "What I'm afraid of is walking back to my squad room and everybody looking at me and wondering if I'm okay."

And with that statement, we are now set up for the second half of the fifteenth season premiere. I am working on my review of Imprisoned Lives (as well as last week's American Tragedy) and then I will have to cover tonight's episode, Internal Affairs. I am hoping to be 100% caught up on this blog by the end of this weekend. The good news (blog-wise) is that I'm currently unemployed and have no legitimate excuse to abandon ship.

Thanks for reading, SVUers. Looking forward to spending this season with you.