WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Law & Order: SVU Season 23, Episode 15, "Promising Young Gentlemen," which premiered Thursday, March 10, on NBC. This article also contains descriptions of sexual assault.
College girls are pre-gaming for a formal dinner with the Bishop Club, ecstatic to be two of only nine girls who were invited. Their RA warns them to be careful. Meanwhile, Rollisi is alive and well as ADA Dominick "Sonny" Carisi and Detective Amanda Rollins are driving through Carisi's hometown on the way for Amanda to finally meet the Italian matriarch herself, as well as Carisi's cousin, Mia Marino, who turns out to be the RA from earlier. It's a bustling family and Mama Carisi lightly grills Rollins on her two kids, ribbing on Carisi that he's clumsy with babies. After dinner, Carisi's dad calls and tells them his mom liked Amanda.
Meanwhile, the college girls are playing drinking games with the Young White Rich Boys' Club on the party bus. As they arrive at the venue, the boys tell them to leave their phones, bags and coats behind. The boys invite the girls back to their "brandy club" as long as they swear to secrecy. Then, in a flash forward, Mia calls her Uncle Dom and says she needs his help -- one of the girls in her dorm, Annabelle, has been raped.
Captain Olivia Benson meets Carisi, Rollins, Mia and Annabelle at the hospital. Liv and Amanda interview Annabelle who tells them she was pretty drunk and went to the Bishop Club formal dinner, that they invited them to an afterparty and had made the girls leave their purses on the bus. At the afterparty, a guy named Austin told her she had to look upstairs for her purse and then she passed out. She then woke up to Austin raping her while other guys, who Austin "affectionately" called Tweedledee and Tweedledum, held her down. Detectives Odafin Tutuola and Rollins interview Annabelle's friend about the night and she corroborates Annabelle's accounts, identifying the Tweedles as Brad and Jacob. She says she wasn't invited past the first room because she wasn't wasted enough.
Fin and Amanda investigate Whitaker Yates who swears a rape couldn't have happened at their club and he refuses to let them look around. It's a "private club" but Fin and Rollins make their case. They ask to speak specifically to Austin, Brad and Jacob but, of course, Whitaker holds out, trying to name drop dead presidents instead. Fin and Rollins track down the Tweedle boys and they automatically claim there was no rape and pull the "I'll call my father" card while saying Annabelle totally asked for it. Austin claims that Mia, though, is just a man-hater who would have told Annabelle to lie. But Liv knows better; that this is an orchestrated attack.
The rich parents arrive to swoop in and retrieve their kids from the squad room. The squad is rightly frustrated and turn to the workers and help that interact with the rich kids, the ones who would've seen the plan go down and who have no old money club obligations to protect the boys. Fin and Rollins interview the waiter from that night at the club and threaten him with multiple accounts of serving alcohol to minors. He caves and tells them he had "no empty glasses" instructions from the boys. The bus driver identifies Annabelle as being upset that her purse wasn't on the bus anymore. He'd had standing instructions to drive the purses over to the club. Following the lead, they speak to Oscar at the club who bemoans that the boys aren't respectful like in the old days. He confirms that Annabelle was in a bad state and left crying.
Fin and Rollins take note of the portraits around the club and notice a familiar face: Detective Andy Parlato-Goldstein from hate crimes. The squad and Carisi chat with Parlato-Goldstein the next day who says that 20 years ago it was a more chill club, but he gives them insight. And what's more, he's a convenient inside man who can go undercover for them. He does the secret knock at the Bishop Club and is greeted to chants of him being a living legend. They take him on a tour of the house, showing him the "boom boom" room upgraded to the "Grand Prix" room, where they seat him on a throne in honor of the legendary drinking game he created. They then serenade him with a remixed club song that betrays their violent hatred of women and outlines, step by step, how they attack and rape girls. Carisi's satisfied and is going to charge the whole club with Conspiracy to Commit Rape 1.
Benson meets with the university president who is upset that the Bishop Club isn't making progress, but she says she spoke to them and they have a different side to the story. She also says that the rape taking place off-campus complicates things. Liv doesn't have time for red tape and excuses though, and she tells them they're already arresting every member of the Bishop Club. A crowd gathers outside, led by Mia, filming the arrests. In true fashion, as they're arrested, the rich kids joke and snicker, having a right fun time of it all, cosplaying as people who would ever dare to be arrested.
And, of course, Chief McGrath is upset at Liv for arresting the whole club. He claims he doesn't like the spoiled bratty kids either, but this looks like "cancel culture." He then asks Liv how his delivery was -- too angry or well-controlled? She haltingly answers that he's kind of getting better...
At the initial hearing, all of the boys, unsurprisingly, plead not guilty. Meanwhile, their defense team goes on TV to claim it's "open season on young men." Liv is over the internalized misogyny. Rollins then gets a text from Carisi that Mia and her advocacy group were attacked at the Bishop Club. She says the march was peaceful until the Bishop Club taunted and attacked them with pepper spray. Liv says this feels like a war on all women and Parlato-Goldstein asks a good question: Why isn't rape charged as a hate crime? The metaphorical lightbulb above Liv's head glows bright. Perhaps it's time they started to.
The university president complains to McGrath and he actually has SVU's back, briefly, saying they were within their rights to make those arrests. Liv says she believes the president's intentions are good, but historically, rape allegations at Hudson die with campus security. Liv and Fin say they want to attach a hate crimes charge to the rapes since the boys made it clear they hate women. Fin is surprised as, for the second time, McGrath does the right thing and supports them wholeheartedly.
Parlato-Goldstein, Carisi and Liv discuss the probability of a conviction sticking. Carisi needs evidence that their motivation was hatred of women. Parlato-Goldstein gets a text that might help: Bishop Club texts of photos of Annabelle's naked body with derogatory words written on her. The slurs, the banners, the pictures -- all of it is evidence Liv can use to prove they hate women. There's no precedent but they're arguing that they aim to create one, as they attacked those girls based on their sex, which is a protected class. Of course, the defense wants to dismiss the attached hate crime to the rape charges and throws out buzzwords like "woke" and "PC" with a smirk, but it doesn't matter -- her motion is denied.
Jacob's father then steps in and says he won't let his son be charged with a hate crime. Jacob says he knows everything that happened that night and he's willing to testify. He says that, as pledges, they were forced to write on Annabelle's body and he's sorry for all of it. He says that Austin gave Annabelle a piggyback ride upstairs to look for her planted purse and he and a number of other boys watched Austin rape her. Jacob held her arms and Brad held her legs. He insists he didn't rape her but Liv menacingly tells him he'll have to live with helping her be raped for the rest of his life.
Carisi meets with Brad, who is too dumb to take a shortened jail time deal to corroborate Jacob's story. His lawyer finally convinces him. Parlato-Goldstein and Carisi meet with Austin, who decides to be anti-Semitic on top of everything. In the end, they don't have to go to trial and Austin is convicted. Furthermore, the Bishop Club is closed for good, as bittersweet an ending as possible for a legacy of systemic rape.
New episodes of Law & Order: SVU air Thursdays at 9 p.m. on NBC.