The Ledger

5.22 Switch

In this episode (5.22), a woman with multiple-personality disorder kills a psychiatrist in a hospital office. The question is, Which personality killed her. Briscoe and Logan investigate, and McCoy and Kincaid figure out how to prosecute the deeply disturbed murderer, after first considering her father as a suspect.

The episode begins with two janitors walking down a hospital hallway. One janitor is instructing the new janitor about what found object can be kept by them. They then discover a psychiatrist, Lillian Hampton, dead in her office. Briscoe and Logan arrive to investigate, and note that she wacked over the head with a trophy.

They talk to her boss, who says he overheard the victim arguing with someone that night. Her last appointment was with a woman named Megan Nelson, whom they interview. Megan is mousy and polite. They talk to another witness who says he saw a man at the scene in a green Jaguar. This leads them from a parking attendant to the vic's ex-husband. Furthermore, prints in her office point to two felons, one of whom is a crazy guy with a strange relationship with his cat. He says he doesn't like the victim, but he didn't kill her. They listen to the victim's voicemail, which leads them to a gym, and the gym has the same name as one found on a gym bag at teh scene. They visit the apartment of the person who owns the bag, Bobby Walker. But guess who answers the door! It's Megan Nelson! She reluctantly explains that Bobby is one of her personalities. During interrogation, she reveals she has three personalities.

Briscoe and Logan talk to Olivet about multiple personality disorder. They search her apartment, and find computer files and a diary that seem relevant. They also talk to her superintendent who says that her father harassed Megan. They talk to the father, who had a restraining order filed on him by Megan. He admits he was at the appointment with the victim and his daughter.

They do a voice-lineup with the father to see if he was the one the vic's boss overheard arguing. The line-up confirms it was the father, a search of his apartment turns up blood matching the victim's, and he's arrested (28').

McCoy and Kincaid talk to Megan re her alibi. They talk to her previous therapist, Dr Coleman, who suggests that problems with her father was the reason for her many sessions with him. They eventually conclude that Megan was somehow involved in the murder, since she was present. They charge her with conspiracy to commit murder. They want to open her medical records to figure out what was going on with her father, but they can't until she files an insanity defense, which forces her records open.

Olivet examines the records and determines that Megan has some kind of traumatic memory that was close to being revealed before she stopped her treatment with Dr Coleman, and before Dr Hampton, the victim, was killed. Records suggest that Megan's mother's death may have been caused by her father, and Megan may have witnessed it.

McCoy meets with Megan to pressure her to testify against her father, which she is reluctant to do. As he increases the pressure, she predictably switches personalities and re-emerges as Bobby, the masculine, protective, cocky personality. "He" confesses to killing the doctor. But Olivet points out that the male personality of female patients tends to be protective, so perhaps "Bobby" was just covering for Megan. There is a motion hearing to determine whether Megan is competent to testify on her own behalf. As part of this proceeding, a doctor forces Megan to switch personalities on the stand, and her testimony makes McCoy think that she's responsible for the killing. He accuses her and, predictably again, she switches to her third personality, "Nancy," who confesses to the murder. A plea deal is arranged (off camera), and she's hospitalized.

Wow, so it only took 5 seasons for L&O to do a multiple personality episode? These things are the same every time, practically a genre unto themselves, so I guess L&O did a decent job with it. Strangely, this episode was written by a woman named Sybil, which is funny, since "Sybil" is the name of a well-known TV movie and book about a woman with multiple personality disorder.

Posted by adm at June 26, 2004 02:30 AM

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