Rollins' Underwhelming Return On Law & Order: SVU Season 27 Episode 5 Was a Tiny Part of A Bizarre Case

Critic’s Rating: 4 / 5.0

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Rollins’ first case back at the Special Victims Unit should have been a bigger deal.

It was great that she jumped back in as if she never left. She is there to do a job after all.

Still, Law & Order: SVU Season 27 Episode 5 should have done more to commemorate Rollins’ return than have some annoying patrol officer welcome her back enthusiastically.

Her First Case Didn’t Have to Be Rollins-Centric, But She Blended In A Little Too Much

Look, as much as I love Rollins, I get that her first case doesn’t need to be the Rollins Show.

Law & Order: SVU Season 27 has tried to adopt a more ensemble feel than in the past few seasons, which is a good thing.

That whole Maddie Flynn debacle happened because Law & Order: SVU had gotten too Benson-centric, so more balance is welcome.

Still, many fans have been hoping Rollins would return full-time since she left on Law & Order: SVU Season 24 Episode 9.

That’s close to three years of anticipation, so for her to be almost invisible when she finally came back doesn’t work either.

Rollins was there doing the work she was supposed to, but it wasn’t enough.

Rollins’ re-entrance wasn’t completely ignored, even if it wasn’t as big as it should have been.

It’s clear there’s some bigger storyline brewing since that patrol officer bothered her about Curry being former IAB, and Curry said that he was bitter about his buddy getting in trouble.

And there was a semi-acknowledgement when Rollins almost sat down at Bruno’s desk out of habit, and he offered to switch seats with her if she wanted.

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Still, there were no personal conversations between her and Benson, and that seemed weird.

Of course, they were both there to do their jobs, but Benson could have checked in on how Rollins was doing on her first day back, or they could have met for drinks after Benson had to deal with the perp in court.

I’d also have liked Rollins to show a stronger emotional reaction to Natalie’s lies and manipulations.

She mentioned that Kim had once faked a pregnancy, too, but there was no emotion attached to it.

Considering how Kim tried to ruin Rollins’ life after Rollins had put all her energy into trying to straighten out her sister’s life, that should have been a bigger moment than it was.

I Don’t Know What To Make Of This Bizarre Case

I hate when SVU does false accusation cases to begin with.

False accusations do happen, but they’re rare, and SVU is such a huge platform for survivor-oriented content that I’m always afraid any false accusation story will inadvertently reinforce the idea that survivors shouldn’t be believed unless there’s very strong evidence.

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This one was especially annoying because it was so exaggerated.

The point of the story was to show how widespread Natalie’s scam had been, but I couldn’t help wondering how she got away with it for so long.

It’s understandable that the doulas wouldn’t want to share that Natalie pleasured herself in front of them or tried to get them to touch her inappropriately.

That’s as highly personal a crime as any other sexual assault.

However, Lilli was able to get 30 doulas to come forward about being scammed by making one post on a message board for doulas, so why didn’t word of the scam spread just as quickly?

I’d think that the doulas would warn each other about a client who pretended to be pregnant to get pro bono services she wasn’t entitled to, or a suspicious doula would post on the board asking for advice about how to handle this client.

If they had, that should have stopped the scam in its tracks before it got to the point that 30 doulas had been taken in.

The crimes, sexual and otherwise, were not the doulas’ faults, obviously, but it didn’t seem realistic that nobody was aware of this prolific scam until it was too late.

This Case Made Me Miss Dr. Huang More Than Ever

Yes, I’m still bitter that he only got one line during his cameo appearance at Cragen’s funeral on Law & Order: SVU Season 27 Episode 1.

But more importantly, Natalie’s trial could have benefited from the presence of a court psychiatrist.

The defense put on an expert who claimed that Natalie had a disorder that made her unaware that what she was doing could harm others and unable to control her lies and manipulations — who better to refute that than a court psychiatrist with a different opinion?

Granted, last time Huang testified, he disagreed with Benson over whether the defendant was guilty, which caused a rift between them. Still, Natalie’s behavior was so strange that without a court psychiatrist to explain it, the jury was likely to listen to the defense expert even though Carisi had caught Natalie in several contradictions.

Huang or a similar expert might have helped prevent the situation in which the best way to get justice was to drop the sexual assault charges and hope Natalie re-offended while she was on probation.

I didn’t fully understand why Natalie approached Benson after the trial — does she think Benson will be her next victim?

If so, she’s going to get a nasty surprise. As Benson said, she’s as good as knowing when someone is lying to her as she is at using empathy to help victims.

Also, it wasn’t clear to me why Benson and Natalie’s conversation led to probable cause for arrest, since Natalie played the role of the confused victim well. Was it because she admitted Eduardo never raped her? That was the only thing that made sense, but it was weak evidence.

Despite the problems with this episode, I enjoyed it. I especially appreciated that we got a break from Griffin.
What about you? Did you love, hate, or feel something in between for Law & Order: SVU Season 27 Episode 5?
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