I have to admire SVU for being right on top of issues. At a time when California has banned the gay panic defense in criminal cases and I'm involved in efforts to get New York to do the same thing, the gay panic defense gets examined here from a few different angles. There's also an examination of the cult of macho in team sports and what one coach's warped ideas about it.
Young Winston Duke who's from the same section of Georgia that Kelli Giddish is from comes to get a look at Law And Order's mythical Hudson University and its football program run by Coach Glenn Morshower. He tells them in advance he's committed to Georgia Tech, but they still give him the grand tour. The tour also includes a few party favors with a grand climax, some wonderful oral sex in which Duke is blindfolded and when the blindfold comes as does he, the doer is male cheerleader Jimmy Choi.
After that Duke gets a cab which takes him to a gay bar instead of a sports bar. This was the one part of the episode I had trouble with. Realizing he was from the sticks, I find it hard to believe he didn't think twice about all these men being super friendly. When one wants to get better acquainted he punches him out.
As Bush 41 said, this young man is in some deep do-do. A possibility of a hate crime is definitely there. Kelli Giddish wants to pursue this though and she's even joined by Danny Pino whom she hasn't been getting on with in previous episodes. Sergeant Mariska Hargitay relents and they go for it.
Danny Pino's own background in football helps a lot in this one. It all leads back to Moshower who has some of the most homophobic and hateful ideas I've ever seen portrayed on the small screen. His program is truly a rotten one. A little jail time should toughen him up as he wants to toughen his players. He'll get a lovely introduction to male on male sex he never bargained for.
Honors go to young Greg Finley who was one of the jocks in on the joke as they saw it. He makes a life affirming decision at the end of the episode which was quite revealing. You think he's a dumb jock kid at first, but far from it as Finley reveals.
Duke also is quite touching as this country kid who gets into a bad jackpot. He has challenges to face as well as this story concludes.