Season 16 of "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" is coming to a close with the penultimate episode, "Parole Violations," focusing primarily on Detective Carisi's (Peter Scanavino) family.
According to the official synopsis, the episode will introduce Carisi's sister Belle (Marin Ireland) and her fiancé Tommy.
Belle begins to prepare for her wedding and for the upcoming birth of their first child. However, Tommy accuses his parole officer (Molly Price) of rape. This forces Carisi and the rest of the team to dig in deeper and see if there is any truth to the accusations, or if Tommy is just making excuses to get the authorities off his back as he lapses again into bad habits.
"Most of the other detectives come from some kind of family where there's a problem. And I think kind of the interesting thing about Carisi is he comes from a family that's very close-knit and very tight... I've got sister and I love them, it's a tight family," Scanavino said during an interview with E! News.
In the promotional video released for episode 17, Mariska Hargitay's Detective Benson tells the group that they need to approach it the same way they would if the rape victim was a female. Because the victim in this case is a male, not all of them believe his story, particularly Carisi.
In the preview clip, Carisi states, "He's a guy. He had to have been into it enough or nothing would have worked."
However, since the case involves his sister and soon-to-be brother-in-law, Carisi may experience difficulty in objectively dealing with the case.
This will be the first time that the series gets to dig into Detective Carisi's background since he was promoted as a series regular at the beginning of season 16.
"Parole Violation" is set to air on the NBC network tonight, March 25.
