When "Control" first begins, an elderly man is taking his granddaughter for a ride on the subway. They encounter another man who stumbles onto the subway platform, badly injured after a vicious assault. The injured man turns out to be named Horace Gorman, and he was more than badly beaten, he was actually castrated. He claims that a homeless man had assaulted him, yet the SVU detectives have their doubts about his story. Still, Elliot and Olivia canvas the underground shantytown with a Transit cop as a guide. They come across a particularly creepy fellow named Samuel who has Gorman's "goods" in a bag. Samuel claims that an angel sent from God had delivered the "package" to him. He is eventually ruled out as a suspect because of his affliction that makes him painfully sensitive to bright light. There was no way Samuel could have assaulted Gorman in the harsh glare of the subway platform. However, he did receive the bag with its gruesome contents from Gorman's assailant. While they now have a witness, Elliot and Olivia still need to find the perp.

As the SVU detectives try to figure out where should they take their investigation next, they receive some surprising news: Gorman had checked himself out of the hospital, against medical advice, and has promptly vanished. Checking out Gorman's home, Elliot and Olivia discover that the man is a major packrat: his apartment is jammed from floor to ceiling with newspapers, boxes, and another assorted items, including several photo books filled with pictures of women clad in wedding dresses. All of them are wearing the same dress, along with a dog collar. Olivia recognizes one of the women; her name was Hilary Barclay, and four years ago she arrived at the SVU for help, claiming to have been kept a slave in a dungeon by a man for several months. Hilary was a junkie at the time, and after Olivia initially investigated her claims, she deemed Hilary to be making it up. Now, of course, it appeared that Olivia had made a dreadful mistake.

Gorman, who is independently wealthy, had been kidnapping women and keeping them as slaves in a dungeon. The SVU detectives, upon finding Gorman's dungeon, rescue his latest victim whom he kept chained up. While Gorman didn't kill his victims--he let them go after completely breaking their will, with threats to kill their families if they talked--the number of victims he held captive and tortured increased to six more after Olivia ignored Hilary's pleas for help. Getting a lead on Gorman's whereabouts after Olivia had left the squad room to take Hilary home, Elliot, Munch and Fin head over to a seedy hotel--only to find Gorman dead in a room, with Olivia standing over his lifeless body.

The title "Control" has a double meaning here. While it obviously refers to the control that the sadistic Gorman has over his captives, it also refers to the lack of control that Olivia feels throughout this episode. Rattled over her earlier decision to ignore Hilary's story, and feeling guilt-ridden towards Hilary and the new victims who suffered at Gorman's hand because she did not act, Olivia's confidence in her abilities as a detective takes a nose-dive. Mariska Hargitay does a great job showing the conflicted sides of Olivia Benson. In her zeal to make up for her past misjudgment, she acts recklessly, at first putting herself at risk physically (by charging after Gorman by herself, without the proper back up), and then later, when her overzealous behavior makes Olivia a target of the defense attorney during the trial. "Control" is an excellent episode overall, filled with in-depth characterization and plenty of great plot twists that keep the viewer on the edge of their seat until the very end.