The Successive Dysfunctional Marriages of Peter Caine
This one was originally published back at the old blog on December 17, 2009. Josh wrote it. It stands to reason that you can read this and then listen to our episode on “Manipulated,” MMB 128 - She’s Breastfeeding Every Child in the Waiting Room.
Last time, we saw Kwai Chang Caine's son from Kung Fu: The Legend Continues, he was turning heads by doing the scrawny, non-Aisha Tyler, non-John Henson, non-Greg Kinnear host of Talk Soup on the American version of Queer As Folk. At the time, the development came as a bit of a shock, but—given the way his father died—maybe there is just something about being a Shaolin monk (or being raised in a Shaolin monastery) that I didn't understand as a child.
Regardless, as we pick back up Peter Caine's life in the Law & Order: SVU episode “Head“ from the fifth season, Captain Cragen's team is hot on the trail of a 'potty perv' who has cammed up a Java Jake's toilet. Once they nab their man, he turns them onto a sexual assault of a minor by a female that the nerdy pervert caught on a camera in a Central Park toilet.
As the mystery is unraveled, it becomes evident that Peter's wife, a middle school principal, has been molesting a twelve-year old. When confronted with the horrifying revelation that his insatiable wife is diddling tweens, Peter takes a shot at Stabler. Luckily for Elliot, Peter seemed to have forgotten most of his Shaolin training, and Stabes can duck the swing easily. Sure, Peter was one of New York's finest before moving to Pittsburgh for a while, but Stabler could only have extended professional courtesy so far.
Now, were one to scramble to explain how his wife may not be as pleased as she should be, one could be tempted to looking toward Peter's dalliances in Pittsburgh dulling his skills with the ladies. Such an assumption would be erroneous, however. What really happened was that his wife had a tumor that was bearing down on the part of her brain that controlled her inhibition center. Unfortunately for Peter, his wife ended up pregnant with the child of the 12-year-old, and this marriage dissolved in spite of his faultlessness.
Luckily for us, Peter Caine remarries with plenty of time to spare. Having used the surname Ring in “Head” (most likely to leave any trace of Shaolin background and Hal Sparks escapades in the rearview), he has now had to change that name one more time, no doubt a measure made necessary after the shame of having his wife attempt to runaway with a twelve-year-old boy. Peter is now known to the world as Linus McKellan, no doubt taking his first name from his favorite Finnish software engineer, Linus Torvalds, from whose mind the inception of the Linux kernel sprung forth.
As the seventh season episode “Manipulated” begins, Vicki Riggs, a lawyer, is found shot dead in her apartment. It soon becomes known that she had been stripping on the side, for love of the dance. After her former fiancee and her pseudo-stalker are cleared of the crime, SVU's attention turns toward Peter/Linus, who was caught in the background of a video kissing Vicki outside of her apartment.
It would be reckless of me not to mention that Peter Caine is now married to The Hand That Rocks The Cradle, who is wheelchair-bound. While she's not ominously breastfeeding the kid she's babysitting or doing Tom Cruise on a train, we all know she cannot be trusted. Ever.
When Stabler and Benson visit the "McKellans" at their Mount Pleasant home, they see blood on the coat sleeve he was wearing in the video capture and bring him in for questioning. It is here that we find out that he was having an affair but that it was only a fling because he still loves his wife—who he has not been able to have sex with since their car accident that left her paralyzed.
After Judge Petrovsky deems that evidentiary procedure was broken in determining his identity from the picture with unapproved and unproven technology, SVU is back to square one until one of Vicki's stripper friends turns up dead and Peter Caine's semen is found inside her. It is soon determined that someone went hand-over-hand across a cable from the neighboring building and rappelled 15 storeys* and climbed in Josie Post's window to kill her.
*Yeah, I just went British on yer ass. It looks better, and the alternate spelling makes for clearer differentiation. Piss off.
That someone was a mountaineering enthusiast who happened to be an employee at a private defense contractor that The Hand That Rocks The Cradle had represented on a past case. As they are putting the puzzle together, Dr. Warner comes in and gives them the final piece.
There were enzymes from THTRTC's saliva mixed in with the semen sample found in Josie Post.
What.
The.
Fuck?
Well, when the police successfully freeze Cliffhanger's assets, he flips on THTRTC, who had also been having him steals viruses to make herself sick (the classic Munchausen's case that gets tossed out there every third episode of House) and keep her husband waiting on her hand and foot. When Huang questions her, it is impossible to look past her steely blue eyes and even begin to believe her. After Petrovsky rules that THTRTC is not fit to stand trial and agrees to place her in lockdown in a private hospital at the expense of the defendant. This is where Huang steps up to the plate and proffers the following idea:
Show her that Tessa [THTRTC] is a manipulative, calculating bitch, who planned this defense meticulously. Just like the murders.
When Benson and Stabler try to talk sense to Peter Caine, it dawns on him that she's been playing him all along, and he wheels her and her wheelchair into their pool.
When he tells her she's on her own, we all know that—after more than a decade of diversions—he finally is going to go back to rebuild the Shaolin temple that burned down when he was a child, so that he can carry on in his father's tradition.
