Law & Order: Special Victims Unit – Post-Rage

By starrymag | May 23, 2025

By: Kaylyn Bell

 

 

Captain Benson (Mariska Hargitay) spots Velasco (Octavio Pisano) working late and invites him out for a drink. As they walk over to the bar, Velasco thanks her for not giving up on him. She jokingly confesses that there were a few times she thought about throwing him out but says he isn’t a lost cause. They arrive, and the whole squad is there congratulating him. Velasco asks what’s going on, and Silva (Juliana Aidén Martinez) tells him he’s been promoted to detective second grade. Benson explains that she called the chief and told him he’s earned it.

A woman, Gretchen Stewart (Betsy Brandt), is woken by incessant knocking at her front door, and she grabs her gun.

The next morning, Benson and the squad arrive at the crime scene. Bruno (Kevin Kane) and Silva explain that a psychiatrist was found bludgeoned and sexually assaulted in her home. Curry (Aimé Donna Kelly) asks who the woman crying is, and Bruno says it’s the victim’s assistant, Nora (Christine Heesun Hwang), who found her. Silva adds that there were reports of a gunshot in the area last night, but no one responded.

Benson and Curry go to enter the apartment and notice signs of forced entry. Inside, a CSU tech (Matt Tang) shows a gunshot in the wall above the doorframe, which was fired from across the room. Curry suggests the gun fired during a struggle.

Silva and Bruno speak to Nora, who says she went to check on Gretchen after she didn’t answer the phone, and she found her barely conscious.

A uniformed officer (Raven Jeannette Cotton) shows Benson and Curry a photo of Gretchen before she was taken to the hospital, and Benson notices that the attacker made her comfortable with a pillow and blanket after. Curry asks why he’d do that, and Benson explains that it’s a post-rage comedown where they feel regret. Benson finds a notebook with pages ripped out and acknowledges they’re looking for one of Gretchen’s patients.

Benson meets the squad at the station for an update. They inform her that the gun is missing from the scene, but it belonged to Gretchen. Bruno points out that there must’ve been a reason she purchased it three months ago. Benson instructs Bruno and Silva to follow up with Nora and figure out who Gretchen treated between the dates the pages were ripped out of the notebook.

Nora says it looks like a week’s worth of session notes were ripped out, and Gretchen sees about eight people a day. Silva asks for a list of patients Gretchen saw that week, and Nora tells them to get a subpoena because it’s privileged information. Nora says Gretchen never mentioned being scared of a patient, but they could talk to her friend Dr. Gary Schwartz (Michael Torpey), who she went out with last night.

Bruno and Silva arrive at Gary’s house. He says Gretchen told him about a complicated couple she’d been treating, in which she was trying to help the woman leave her “problematic” husband.

At the hospital, Curry tells Benson about their suspect, Anthony Fierro (Nico Coucke), who has two prior arrests for domestic violence against his wife. She explains that his wife was unwilling to testify, and they went to couples counseling instead. The doctor (Yvonna Kopacz Wright) greets them with an update that the assault tore Gretchen’s retina, and it seems to have been done with just his fists, suggesting a lot of rage.

Curry and Benson introduce themselves to Gretchen and ask what happened. She explains that her office buzzer wouldn’t stop, and when she walked downstairs, a man appeared and was pressing his thumbs into her eyes; then she fell and blacked out. Benson asks about Anthony, and Grechen explains that he’d become increasingly paranoid, and she switched him to one-on-one sessions since his wife took out a restraining order against him. Benson asks if she helped with that, and Grenchen says that’s why she brought her gun with her to answer the door. Curry tells her that her gun is missing, and Gretchen becomes worried for Anthony’s wife.

Silva and Bruno watch Anthony from the street under the supervision of Benson and Curry. Anthony gets in a quick ride, and Benson tells them to follow cautiously because he is likely armed. Velasco and Fin (Ice-T) follow in a second car. Traffic halts on the bridge due to an accident, and Fin says they should get him now. Benson gives them the go-ahead, and they exit their cars. Anthony runs when he notices them and starts shooting to keep them back. Anthony starts to panic once he’s surrounded, so he drops the gun as instructed by Velasco. Once the weapon is down, Anthony jumps off the bridge, landing on a car.

Benson arrives at Carisi’s (Peter Scanavino) office after they are both bombarded with calls from their superiors regarding their main suspect dying. Benson says the M.E. is ready to rule it a suicide. Carisi tells her it’s good that Velasco is cleared then because while Anthony did pull a gun, it wasn’t Gretchen’s. He asks her how confident she is that Anthony is responsible for Gretchen’s assault, and Benson says Anthony made verbal threats in their last session. Carisi tells her to get concrete evidence and rule out the rest of her patients.

Officers are unable to find Gretchen’s gun or journal pages at Anthony’s hotel. Fin and Velasco head to the garage to inspect his car.

Bruno and Silva meet with Anthony’s wife, Anne (Sarah Goeke). She says they started counseling for his ketamine use because she couldn’t stand the paranoia; he was convinced she was cheating on him and even hired a PI. Silva asks about Gretchen helping her leave him, and Anne says she gave her the confidence to believe she deserved better. Bruno asks if she knows Anthony’s whereabouts on the night Gretchen was attacked, and she says his hotel because their shared email has a receipt.

Benson and Curry inform Gretchen that Anthony is not her attacker like they thought. Benson says it’s not safe to return to her apartment and asks if she has a friend she can stay with.

At the precinct, the squad reviews the four new suspects that they found from the information provided by Gretchen and Nora. All of the men had alibis except for one mystery man, Keith Sparks. Curry says they’ve been unable to locate him because there are 230 in the area. Benson adds that Gretchen barely remembers his name because he only came in for an initial consult, and she does those for free, so there’s no record. Silva reports that a therapist was just raped and murdered in her office.

The squad meets homicide at the scene. The woman, Lauren, was murdered with blunt force to the head, and her eyes were gouged perimortem. Fin points out that their perp has escalated to murder, but Benson says she thinks Gretchen just got lucky.

Benson and Curry speak to Gretchen, who is now staying with Gary. She says she and Lauren sometimes referred patients to each other. Benson says they think it’s the same man, and he just didn’t kill her by chance because her gun threw him off. They also inform her that Lauren’s work records are missing from her computer and ask again about Keith Sparks. Gretchen shares the email address he gave her. After they leave, Benson tells Curry that he could be using a fake name and his real signature is his MO. Benson suggests they look for prior victims.

Velasco and Fin meet with the M.E. (Natalie Liconti). She says the cause of death was a punch to the back of her head, there is evidence of a sexual assault, and they’ve sent DNA to the lab.

Bruno and Silva ask Lauren’s husband (Liam Craig) if she ever mentioned a dangerous patient to him, and he says no but to check her notes. They remind him that her computer was taken, and he takes out a file from his bag with her handwritten notes. He explains that she was using them to write a book, and they have patient details, including names and dates.

Bruno and Silva interrogate one of Lauren’s patients, and he quickly confesses to killing her. As they question him further, he also confesses to assassinating the former president, who is still alive, and he loses credibility. Carisi asks if this is all they found from Lauren’s notes when Curry enters with news she got a hit from VICAP for an open murder with the same MO in Connecticut.

Curry and Fin arrive at the precinct in Connecticut, where a detective answers questions about the murder case. He says the deceased has a son who keeps calling about the case, so he’d be happy to hear someone’s looking into it. Curry asks if they can visit the woman’s home office, and the detective says they can, but it’s been five months, so it’s not an active crime scene anymore.

Curry and Fin visit the apartment and walk through the attack in the now empty apartment. The woman’s son, Alex (Grant Jay), is present, and Curry asks him if she charged for initial consults at her practice. He says no, but she took $50 off for whoever referred them.

Fin and Curry speak to everyone on the list of referrals that Alex provided them. One of the people from the list, Mindy (Leslie Black), says she referred a co-worker, Ted Schramm (Brian Krinsky), but he’s not here because he transferred to a location in Manhattan. They ask for a picture of him.

Benson shows the picture of Ted to Gretchen, and she confirms that he is the Keith Sparks she had an initial consult with.

Benson instructs the squad to arrest Ted.

Velasco, Silva and Bruno arrive at Ted’s work, and he runs, but they are able to catch up with him in an alley where he is arrested.

Fin and Benson convince Ted to talk in interrogation by posing it as free therapy and emphasizing the resolve it can provide if someone’s feeling shame or regret. Ted says he’s been seeing psychiatrists since he was a kid. They ask why someone would blind women, and he says whoever did it didn’t want to be seen for who they are. He explains that everyone starts out innocent until the lies about how wonderful the world is make you angry. He continues that parents lie and teachers have favourites, and psychiatrists are supposed to help, but they don’t; they just shift blame. Benson shows a picture of one of the dead women and asks if that was her fault. Ted says it’s all of them because they didn’t get rid of his pain, and he didn’t want to do it, but they had to be punished.

Benson and Curry tell Gretchen that they’ve arrested Ted, who they are certain was her attacker, because her notebook pages were found in his apartment. Gretchen thanks them and says that, despite it not being a popular belief in her profession, some people are beyond help. Benson says their jobs are similar that way. Gary arrives with dinner, and they escort themselves out. Gretchen assures them that what happened to her isn’t going to stop her from helping people, even if some people are beyond it.

Carisi finds Benson on her way out of the office and tells her that Ted pled not guilty and is going for an insanity defense, but the attacks were premeditated, so he’s confident Ted will never see the light of day.

The squad supports Velasco as he receives his promotion to detective second grade at a ceremony. Benson watches him proudly and recalls his time in her unit.