Law & Order: SVU's internet dating goes awry while Grace Muncy struggles with Joe Velasco's absence. Here's a spoiler-filled recap of the NBC series.
At a bar, two young women named Zoe and Jenna scan the available guys. Zoe is still dealing with the death of her husband Brian and is feeling down; Jenna tries to set Zoe up with a match from her dating app. When Jenna leaves, though, Zoe matches with a man named Klaus from Stockholm. They message all week and Klaus's texts -- and sexts -- are immediately controlling and entirely composed of red flags. But they make a date to hook up and Zoe follows Klaus's instructions on what to wear, where to stand, and how to address him even through text as "Sir." The Christian Grey wannabe is giving off all the bad vibes.
Elsewhere, Detective Grace Muncy runs up to Captain Olivia Benson, worried about Detective Joe Velasco's absence. Even though he's on leave until he brings his gang friend of years ago to justice, Muncy misses him. She wants permission to contact him but Benson denies it. In his place, Detective Toni Churlish has been temporarily transferred from the Bronx to Manhattan SVU. ("Wanna make our closed rate 100%?" Benson asks, a slightly exaggerated law enforcement angle.) Just then, Muncy gets an incoming call from Velasco, but Sergeant Fin Tutuola advises her not to answer the call.
Then Zoe comes into the precinct -- she believes she was raped. Speaking with Muncy and Fin, she recounts how her recent texting quickly became kinky and BDSM-focused. When they finally met up, she tells them Klaus was really into her pleasuring herself while blindfolded by her dead husband's neckties. She says he had a hard time actually getting into the act, though, and reports he was "small." And it all went wrong last night when he ignored her "no" and her use of their safe word. Jenna speaks with Churlish and Benson and says she and her husband took Zoe in after her husband died, which coincided with Jenna's baby being born. She tells them Zoe confided in her about the rape and muses that she feels responsible for pushing Zoe to get back out there.
The team goes over the case so far: semen recovered from Zoe's clothes, the fact that Zoe bought the hotel room not Klaus, and the picture of Klaus was taken from another website -- making him a catfish. Churlish wonders if Jenna's husband might be involved but Muncy is still bitter about Churlish having secretly recorded Velasco. Then, plot twist! There is a DNA match to the sample from Zoe's clothes: a familial relative of her dead husband.
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