Law and Order SVU S17E8 Review

This episode was released on November 11, 2015, so this review is obviously late, but better late than never. A quick recap of this episode; missing child case turned into a murder investigation, and then a DNA hunt across the streets of NYC. This episode was hooking, because of the many different characters, but a little confusing because of the DNA chasing. Lab results of Lily(the girl who was missing, then murdered) showed that her killer was likely to be a relative, so the detectives question Brandon, a partial family member who's DNA is in the system. He refuses to give detectives a list of his male family members, stating that he was adopted. His birth father, who we later find out is Ray Marino, turns out to have been dead for five years, and was quite busy with women when he was alive. Dodds and Carisi question his two sons from a second mother, but their DNA doesn't match. The detectives, with no leads and no information, have Ray's body exhumed and it is turned out that he had a third marriage, and one of the sons, Gary, was the killer. He confesses, and the case is closed. This episode gets 4 out of 5 stars from me, due to the confusion of the family tree, and that what person the detectives are pursuing is never exactly clear. I liked how Sergeant Dodds was shown to have emotion, unlike his father, at the end of the episode when he turns down going to dinner with the other detectives, stating that he has "paperwork." When Benson questions him, he asks her if it ever gets any easier. She tells him to not take the job home with him, and she wishes someone had told her that after her first tough case. I liked that the case always kept you wondering what was going to happen next, it definitely was not predictable, with how many marriages that Ray Marino had. The episode closes with Dodds opening Lily's case file and staring at it as we fade to black.

Let me know in the comments below whether or not you liked this episode and why or why not. Did you think that the DNA hunt was confusing, did you like how Dodds was portrayed as a more emotional character and more. Let me know!