Law & Order: SVU Season 28 Episode 2 Offered A Disturbing Case That Asked Big Questions

Law & Order: SVU Season 28 Episode 2 left me with more questions than answers, and that’s a good thing.

At its best, SVU is more than a procedural; it exposes cracks in the justice system, the impossible choices survivors are forced to make, and how pain can ripple outward.

Although there were some missteps along the way, “Midway” did all that, making me feel like SVU has finally found its way back to what it used to be.

A Missing Child Case Turned Tragic, And Knowing It Would Be Didn’t Make It Hurt Less

I’d seen some of the press photos before Law & Order: SVU Season 28 Episode 2 aired, including two in the ME’s office, so I knew that this case likely had a tragic ending.

But that didn’t make it hurt any less.

I kept hoping that I was wrong and that Leo would be found alive, but as soon as Mary said he was “with Bob”, I knew what she meant.

I was as heartbroken as those cops when they found Leo’s body.

It wasn’t just that he was an abuse victim who was now dead; that was bad enough.

It was his mother wanting so desperately to be reunited with her son, a perpetrator who thought she was protecting the kid from more abuse, and that half a second of hope that I’d interpreted everything wrong and the kid was alive.

Leo’s Death Was Not Gratuitous

Police procedurals too often use the death of kidnapping victims, especially children, for shock value, but Law & Order: SVU Season 28 Episode 2 avoided this trap.

Instead, the death was something terrible that had to happen for the rest of the story to work. If Leo had survived, the story would have been different.

That might have been an interesting path to go down — a kid who was already abused once being abducted at the carnival after a fight with his dad.

But that story wasn’t the one Law & Order: SVU Season 28 Episode 2 wanted to tell, and it might not have been as powerful.

Instead, Leo’s death opened the door to a lot of uncomfortable questions about the woman who killed him.

From the moment the SVU team met Mary, something was off about her, and she seemed to believe she was being attacked when she was arrested after punching Curry with no real provocation.

Her story was almost as devastating as Leo’s, and that was the point.

I’m Double-Minded About Mary’s Mental Health Issues

I’m very sensitive to how mental health issues are portrayed on television, especially when it’s done in a manner that could be harmful to real people who have mental illnesses.

Law & Order: SVU is better than most when it comes to depicting severe mental illness, and in some ways, “Midway” handled Mary’s illness extraordinarily well.

The police acknowledged that she was sick, for the most part. They had to question her about where Leo was when there was a chance he was alive, but afterward they backed off until her doctors at Bellevue said she was stable enough to talk.

They also discussed her own history of abuse, how it influenced the crime, and openly questioned whether a prison term was really justice for this woman.

The crime itself is what gave me pause. Television too often uses the stereotype of mental health issues meaning violence and danger to others, and so having Mary kill a child seemed problematic — yet without that, the story wouldn’t work.

The saving grace here, at least for me, is that Mary didn’t set out to kill Leo — or at least that’s how I understood it.

Her abuser used to drug her and hold her in a crate, and she found it peaceful, so she did the same thing to a kid who she thought was being abused.