In the list of creepy perpetrators that the SVU squad has had to deal with Austin Pendleton in this episode has to rank in the top five. But the squad doesn't deal with him as a perpetrator but as a victim.
SVU gets called in by Transit Police and finds Pendleton with his unit whacked off with a sharp instrument. Later on when he books from the hospital in locating him they find he's been the stalker of several women, he kidnaps them, tortures them, puts them through 'marriage ceremony' and then lets them go. It's so bizarre that no one except Samantha Mathis reported him. And on the day she did a few years back Mariska Hargitay found her drunk and incoherent and didn't believe her.
Finding the torture chamber built under a synagogue made believers of the whole squad. And then other victims come forward and the mass of evidence piles up. And then Pendleton is found dead.
SVU looks at both Mathis and her mother fashion mogul Jacqueline Bisset. So what happened and who did it, for that you watch the show for.
As an added treat David Thornton shows up once again as smarmy criminal defense attorney and he's always a creep even when he's defending good people. But it's Pendleton's chamber of horrors and method of torture that will leave you gasping.
