LAW & ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT Boss Previews a ‘Different Kind of Hostage Crisis’

LAW & ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT ended its 2019 run with a heck of a cliffhanger: Detective Bucci (Nicholas Turturro)—who was reeling after his daughters were lured back to abuser Steve Getz (Vincent Kartheiser)—set his sights on Rollins (Kelli Giddish) in an attempt to get justice.

But while Bucci has Rollins (on the Thursday, January 9 hour), it leads to the detective unexpectedly opening up. “Rollins ends up revealing more about herself to Bucci—and to us—than we’ve ever known,” SVU executive producer Warren Leight teases. “It’s almost [a question of] is it [done] in an effort to gain his confidence or does the distance from her children and the understanding of Bucci’s point of view of his kids having been screwed up [lead to it]? Something happens on that trip in the car with him, where she has, essentially, an emotional breakthrough.”

With the parallels between herself and Bucci, “it all starts to bang around in her head,” he continues. “She’s always pretty tough and she acts out rather than thinks things out…And it’s that stunning realization you have as a parent, that you’re screwing your kids up the same way you were screwed up. It’s a tough road for her, but I think it leads her to some insight that that she hasn’t wanted; some some self-analysis she has avoided for her whole life up until this moment. It’s a different kind of hostage crisis.”

Of course, in Rollins’ absence, her team is frantic to discover where she is. Which leads to the newest member of the squad, Kat (Jamie Gray Hyder), making a pretty big faux pas. “[She] asks, ‘Is it possible that she is in on this?’” Leight teases. “And if looks could kill her, she would be dead twice in that scene. It’s a completely legit question, but it didn’t go over very well.”

The drama also acknowledges that, as of now, Rollins’ colleagues are the closest thing she has to a healthy family life. “It goes by quickly, but Kat says, ’Is there anyone we should call who’s in her life right now?’ and Benson goes, ’It’s just the girls and us,’” Leight says. “And I think the squad is very aware of that. Kat comes from a supporting supportive family; Carisi has cousins and aunts and uncles. And Rollins is on her own—in some ways not unlike Benson this year. But they’re on their own and that means that our guys have to look out for her. You see Carisi sweating bullets and blaming himself.”

Which means they’ll stop at nothing to save their colleague. “There is a sense of ‘We’ll drive all night and pull over a car; we gotta find her,’” Leight says. “The thing is, it’s almost impossible. He could be anywhere. He may be a hothead, but he’s smart. He knows how he would look for someone like him, so he’s avoiding the obvious things.”

LAW & ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT, Thursdays, 10/9c, NBC

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