The Ledger

11.13 Phobia

In this episode (11.13), one member of a gay couple is killed, and their adopted infant son is kidnapped. Looks like a jealous biological parent might be involved. Briscoe and Green investigate, while McCoy and Carmichael seek justice.

The episode begins with a couple discussing their son moving back in with them when they discover the victim, one of their neighbors named Bradford. The responding police discover an empty baby carriage and a baby bottle several yards away from the body, and conclude that a kidnapping happened, too. Briscoe and Green question the people standing around, including a seltzer water delivery guy who says he doesn't recognize the victim.

After the opening credits, we learn that the baby is prone to seizures and requires medication. The remaining gay parent of the child receives a ransom call demanding money, and Green and Briscoe go undercover with a bunch of other cops to bust the perpetrator. They leave the money in an envelope under a bunch, and a bike messenger drives by and picks up the envelope. They pursue him in their car, and watch as he approaches another man in a Volkwagen Passat sedan. (The musical score to the scene is interesting, a little bit of an eerie tone -- very unusual for the show.) The cops rush in, and the messenger admits that another guy paid him $50 to pick up the envelope. The businessman in the Passat he was talking to says he saw another guy in a blue van with license plates that ended in "MNKY". The dets let the men go, and trace the plates to a motorcycle shop, where the proprietor reluctantly says that the van belongs to one of his employees who calls himself "hose monkey." But hose monkey isn't there -- he's at his second job...as a seltzer water delivery man! They question the delivery man -- the same guy from the teaser -- and he says he just tried to collect the ransom to take advantage of an unexpected opportunity, and that he didn't kidnap the child.

The dets head over to the Agency for Child Services and learn that the child's biological mother, Ms. Goddard, was a drug addict who once came in trying to get her baby back, even though she had previously voluntarily signed it away. The other lead they pursue is the child's medication -- he requires a form of phenobarbitol for his seizures, so they visit various pharmacies trying to figure out if anyone has picked up this medication lately. They eventually find a woman named Susan Powers picked up a matching prescription. They visit the bookstore where she works, and a female employee their is evasive, but Susan's number is on a phone list next to the cash register. They call the number, and the woman blurts out "it's the police" to warn Susan on the other end of the line. They trace the number, and head over to the apartment. Predictably, no one is there, but there's an unusual sign on the wall that talks about some rules for answering the phone -- never disclosing the location, etc. They trace the lease on the apartment, and learn that it's leased by a woman who co-ordinates an "underground railroad" for battered and abused women. After being convinced by the detectives (and Van Buren) that the woman they are looking for is a kidnapper and not actually and abused woman, she rolls and leads them to the mother, who has borded a bus. They board the bus at Port Authority, arrest the woman. All this, and we're still only 22 minutes into the episode.

In several scenes where the actress playing her overacts, an angry Ms. Goddard, the missing baby's biological mom, steadfastly refuses to admit where the baby is. Eventually, McCoy offers a deal to Goddard if she'll just describe how the murder took place and where the baby is. She accepts, and she tells them that the baby's biological father killed the gay adoptive parent and kidnapped the baby, in her presence and acting on information she provided. The detectives head up to Peekskill and arrest the baby's father, Mr. Kelly, and recover the baby. 31 minutes in. In a touching scene, Briscoe and Green reuinite the baby with his remaining adoptive father.

Kelly pleads not guilty at his arraignment where his lawyer takes the unusual step of previewing the strategy he's going to use in his case: the father, not knowing he had a boy, was enraged when he found out that his son had been adopted. At a conference with McCoy, Goddard says she purposely told Kelly that their son had been adopted by a gay couple because she knew this would make him so angry he would do anything to recover the baby. Based on this and Kelly's history of hateful behavior towards gays, McCoy seeks to charge him with a hate crime. At trial (beginsa t 40 minutes in), not much new information comes out, but the remaining gay parent testifies about what good parents they were. Kelly is found guilty of Manslaughter 1, and the crime is also determined to be a hate crime.

As everyone clears out of the courtroom, Goddard asks Alvers (the gay parent) to tell her son about her. He says, a bit mysteriously, "One day you'll tell him yourself." I guess this means that Alvers would find a place for Goddard in the child's life one day.

The episode's title refers to Kelly's homophobia, which causes him to commit this crime.

Posted by adm at April 18, 2004 01:11 PM

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