Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (TV Series)

Legacy (2000)

Mariska Hargitay: Detective Olivia Benson

Photos 

Quotes 

• Olivia Benson : [Olivia goes up to the roof of the police station at night to find Munch standing at the ledge of the building]  It's good work, John... took a chance with that bluff about Emily coming out of her coma. I'm not sure what we would have done if Jamie had pressed to see her...

  John Munch : [snapping]  She didn't care about the kids!

  Olivia Benson : ...How did you know...?

  John Munch : We searched her house I looked at that four-year-old

  [referring to the little boy who'd been watching Munch in the hallway during the home's investigation] 

  John Munch : it was just like that little girl that used to live across the street from us in our old neighborhood on the Lower East Side. She had that same look in her eyes.

  Olivia Benson : What look?

  John Munch : ...Sad, lost... she used to stand on her porch every afternoon when I came home from school... like she was waiting for me. Sometimes, she'd have a black eye or a bloody lip. Never said anything to me, just looked at me like she was trying to tell me something, but I was too full of my own teenage crap to pay any attention.

  [takes a deep breath, looking on the verge of tears] 

  John Munch : One day, I came home she wasn't there... found out her mother threw her through a plate glass window! Went to the funeral, saw her dad... it's the first time I saw a grown man cry...

  Olivia Benson : [looking shocked]  What happened to the mother?

  John Munch : They sent her to a sanitarium... she told my mother she didn't understand what all the fuss was about.

  [glances to the side, avoiding Olivia's horrified gaze] 

  John Munch : "She was the one that had to get a new window!" Months later, I'd come home and I'd look up at the porch.

  [blinking back tears] 

  John Munch : I swear, I saw that little girl standing there, looking at me with that look... I almost let her down again.

  [walks away sorrowfully, leaving Olivia staring blankly into the distance] 

• John Munch : [about Jamie]  She seems almost disappointed.

  Olivia Benson : Her husband may never walk, her daughter's in a coma, her stepson is going to jail and her ex-boyfriend's facing deportation. She's not disappointed, Munch. She's numb.

• Captain Donald Cragen : [about Jamie's reason for abusing Emily]  It's an interesting tactic: Abuse the kid, pin it on the ex, Dad goes to jail, Mom wins custody by default.

  Olivia Benson : And if her daughter dies in the process?