WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Law & Order: SVU Season 23, Episode 12, "Tommy Baker's Hardest Fight," which premiered Thursday, January 20th, on NBC. This article also contains descriptions of sexual assault.
It's fighter weigh-in time for the FWO, the royalty-free Law & Order universe version of UFC. Tommy Baker, the golden boy, shows up late. Meanwhile, there's no rest for the weary, and Capt. Olivia "Liv" Benson is in the middle of another week without a well-earned rest as acting Deputy Chief McGrath (a continual candidate for Most Obnoxious Character) has her work nights to log paperwork alongside Detective Odafin "Fin" Tutuola.
Detectives Amanda Rollins and Joe Velasco head to a bar to watch the fight together. Rollins, who grew up near Tommy Baker's family, calls in her kids' sitter to stay longer. Is Rollins getting back to her old ways and being a little too flirty? After years of waiting for her and ADA Sonny Carisi to get together, she best not be. (Rollisi's been through too much!) As they wait for the fight, though, they realize Tommy isn't showing up. Elsewhere, police discover Tommy Baker badly beaten and near death in a parked car.
Rollins calls Benson back to the hospital to interview her hometown champ, Tommy. He was found with his phone open to Grindr and has obvious sexual assault trauma. Fin interviews the cops who found Tommy and grills than about why they: A. Opened his phone and B. Pulled his pants up. Double evidence tampering. At the scene, Velasco says the car was wiped clean of prints. The always delightful McGrath shows up to the hospital, with some worrying signs of exhaustion and even more-than-usual annoyance.
Benson and Rollins interview Tommy's wife, Chrissy, who shows no signs of knowing about his double life. She details their day together and then vehemently denies that "Grindr rumor." But surprise! It's not because she's homophobic -- she's known Tommy was gay for years and has been a good friend and a good beard. She doesn't believe he'd be on Grindr because he's in a long-term relationship with another man, Phil.
Rollins and Benson go to talk to Phil and learn the two met when Phil was Tommy's physical therapist. He says that after Tommy's likely win, Tommy was planning to finally come out in the ring and on national TV. Only Phil, Tommy, Chrissy and Jax, the owner of FWO, knew. Fin confirms that the Grindr account was just created yesterday, so someone was definitely trying to set Tommy up -- and likely prevent him from coming out. Both money and reputation point to good motivators for either the wife or the organization owner at this point.
McGrath is yelling at his daughter Katie on his phone as Liz walks in. In typical fashion, McGrath is pre-annoyed. She tells him the Grindr date was staged and he snaps, then says his teenager is driving him crazy. He says they fought last night, she locked herself in her room and so he, with zero self-awareness, broke her door in. Major dad red flags, on the same level as his at-work presence.
Tommy hasn't woken up yet, but the squad's found he had a ton of debt. This fight would have been crucial. They also determine there's no way he could've sustained his wound just in the truck. Tracking Tommy's day, Rollins and Fin visit his training center and talk to his friends and peers there. One of them tells Rollins that Tommy and Jax got into a shouting match in his office. Suspicious.
Meanwhile, Fin and Benson talk to Chrissy and she seems shocked to hear Tommy and Jax fought. She tells Liv and Fin that Tommy stayed in the apartment that day and may have worked out in the condo gym. There are no cameras in the gym, though, and no footage of any guests entering the gym. A door leads to the garage, but it can only be accessed by a key. Liv looks around and finds possible blood.
Jax meets with Fin and Liv, schmoozing them from the start, But they dive right in, bringing up his argument with Tommy. Jax smiles and threatens to walk out and let them talk to his lawyers. He lost too much money on the fight for these accusations. In another non-homophobic twist, it turns out Jax was pleased about Tommy's sexuality in a rainbow capitalism way: they'd had a whole marketing and merch campaign planned out around Tommy being the "Rainbow Warrior."
Instead, though, Tommy had come in to tell him he'd changed his mind and he wasn't going to come out after all. His dad, the apparently actually homophobic Duke Baker, had found out and Tommy was terrified of what he would do if he went ahead with the announcement. Then, we get confirmation -- the blood in the gym matches Tommy's blood type. They're running DNA tests. Fin asks if Benson heard about the rumors of a "domestic incident" at McGrath's house. Cops were called to his house and he told them to report it as a non-incident, doing very little to make a "not all cops" case with the scrutiny the NYPD is already under. Fin encourages Liv to use that to blackmail advantage, as a true friend would.
Rollins talks to Duke Baker, playing up the charisma of their shared Georgia roots. His visit up to New York was meant to be a surprise -- Tommy and Chrissy didn't know he was coming. Rollins coyly asks if Duke had been staying away from Tommy because of Tommy's upcoming announcement but he says he always knew Tommy was gay and so that's why he was tough on him and wanted him to be strong. In another downer of a twist, Duke's got pancreatic cancer and has two months to live - there's no way he's strong enough to have hurt anyone. He just wants to spend time with his son. He says he and Tommy talked on Thursday before the weigh-in and Tommy seemed distracted by a suspicious phone call about his finances. But all he wants to do is tell his son he's proud.
The squad finds out Tommy just started leasing a Porsche, though it was found in possession of a friend, Ricky. It definitely seems like Tommy and Ricky were more than just friends and Liv asks Chrissy about that. But she says it can't be, because she and Ricky are romantically involved. Ricky, it turns out, has been taking a whole lot of money from the Baker account and Tommy had just found out the night before the fight. Fin checks out Ricky's apartment and he's long gone, leaving a whirlwind behind. Motives, motives, motives.
Chrissy's being interrogated by Liv and Rollins at the station and they wonder if she knows more than she's letting on about Ricky's disappearance and Tommy's assault. Liv asks if Ricky was blackmailing Chrissy, but she denies it. However, she does admit that she had kept seeing Ricky a secret from Tommy and that she was giving him more and more money and presents to buy his affection. She worries now that Ricky did this to Tommy.
There are still no hits on Ricky's whereabouts but Chrissy's Visa was used to buy a first-class train ticket. Velasco and Rollins head out. Ricky sees them and runs, but they catch him. Ricky swears he's being set up and him throwing punches at Velasco is unrelated.
Ricky denies that he hurt Tommy - he was living too large off of Tommy's closeted life. He swears he hasn't been at the building gym in months, though, and that this is a crime of passion. Chrissy is by Tommy's side in the hospital while Fin and Liv visit Phil in the hospital chapel. The jig is up. The doctors expect Tommy to make a full recovery, they say, and Tommy's going to tell them what really happened.
Fin tells him to tell the truth and so he does: He loved Tommy but even though Tommy was going to come out, he said he would never leave Chrissy because she was his family. He partnered up with Ricky, then, to take financial advantage while he still could. Ricky got greedy, Tommy found out and so Phil met with Tommy to straighten things out. But Ricky ambushed them and he threw a weight at Tommy's skull, then checked for his pulse and said he was gone. Phil swears he didn't know Ricky was going to violate Tommy and leave him for dead.
"Tommy was trying to make it easier for people to come out," Liv says. "You made it harder." She reads him to filth in classic Liv fashion. McGrath pays a visit to Liv and she hints that she knows something's up with his family life. She says she won't betray his confidence even though she rarely agrees with him. In a rare show of respect, McGrath seems willing to listen to her as Liv, Therapy Queen, suggests he enrolls in anger management. She can talk almost anyone down from any ledge, physical or psychological. He'll think on it, but he's not sold.
Tommy is then seen on the television, finally coming out to the world and making a moving speech against hate and for tolerance, a true survivor.
New episodes of Law & Order: SVU air Thursdays at 9 p.m. on NBC.