Law & Order: SVU season 20 episode 12 review: The Infinity case
Tonight, most of the hour revolved around the Infinity Rapist, a man who was responsible for tormenting and haunting Peter’s father Ben Stone for many years. He had more than twenty victims but was never caught. Yet, at the start of the episode an assault case brought that case back into the limelight, even though it was committed by an obsessed copycat.
Yet, what often happens in the world of crime is this: A copycat tends to draw out the real criminal. That’s precisely what happened here as the real Infinity eventually came back out and from there, the SVU team got to work in order to figure out precisely who the monster really was. This was no easy case, mostly because it took looking over old cases and even genealogy records. It was all thanks to Infinity’s niece, a woman who wanted to trace her DNA through an ancestry site online, that they were able to figure things out. This eventually led them to a man named Edgar, someone who had the patterns of the criminal and the behavior patterns.
Once the team was able to identify Edgar, they still had to find a way to prosecute him … and that proved to be no easy task. At first, they didn’t have the proper evidence or proof to hold him. That’s when the team had to get creative, and that meant finding some other way to bring Edgar in and arrest him. Thanks to the work of the SVU and Stone at that point, they were able to figure out the truth. This was a man who was obsessed with Ben Stone and viewed him as some sort of skewed father figure. They were able to tap into that, though in the aftermath of the case it did cause Peter to think more about how his father wasn’t always there when he was younger.
It seemed like this case was meant to tie into what was going on with Benson and Noah in some ways, as Peter found some joy becoming a father figure of sorts to Olivia’s son. It allows him to pay something forward and show a level of care for someone else — after all of the memories triggered from his old childhood during this case, playing a little bit of catch was a way to let off steam.
CarterMatt Verdict
It’s one thing to have a great case at the heart of an SVU episode; it’s another thing to take that case and get to the fundamentals of who a character really is. That’s what helps to make season 20 episode 12 one of the better ones this season — we understand better who stone is, and also why he works and fights the way that he does.
What did you think about Law & Order: SVU season 20 episode 12 as a whole? Be sure to share some of your thoughts in the comments below. (Photo: NBC.)