Character in the TV series Law & Order
Fictional character
Dr. Elizabeth Olivet is a fictional character on Law & Order, the TV crime drama. Carolyn McCormick portrayed her from 1991 to 1997 and in 1999. The character was revived in 2002, although her appearances were infrequent and her last was in 2009. Since Law & Order’s cancellation, the Dr. Olivet character has occasionally been on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, most recently in 2018.
Before the debut of Law & Order: Organized Crime, Dr. Olivet was one of five characters who had appeared in all of the Law & Order series set in New York City. The other four are Lennie Briscoe (Jerry Orbach), Ed Green (Jesse L. Martin), Arthur Branch (Fred Dalton Thompson), and Elizabeth Rodgers (Leslie Hendrix). Dr. Olivet and police psychiatrist Emil Skoda (J. K. Simmons) are the only Law & Order characters to make crossover appearances on New York Undercover, another Dick Wolf-produced series. The character has appeared in 75 episodes of the Law & Order franchise (66 episodes of Law & Order, six episodes of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, one episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent and one episode of Law & Order: Trial by Jury).
Character biography
Olivet is a clinical psychologist who consults for the NYPD's 27th Precinct and the District Attorney's office in Manhattan. She usually interviews murder suspects to assess whether they are legally sane and assists the DA's office in preparing psychological profiles.
In her first appearance in an episode, the precinct hired her as grief counsellor for Det. Mike Logan (Chris Noth) when his partner Max Greevey (George Dzundza) is murdered in the line of duty. After a rocky start, she helps Logan cope with the loss, and the two form a close bond.[1] The character appears in several subsequent episodes.
Olivet does not offer easy answers on more complicated cases. This tendency frustrates Executive Assistant District Attorney Ben Stone (Michael Moriarty) and particularly his successor, Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston), whose prosecution strategies are sometimes hampered by her diagnoses. She also favors compassionate, involved psychotherapy in mental institutions, rather than imprisonment or antipsychotic drugs for genuinely disturbed criminals, often clashing with the detectives' sense of justice.
In the 1992 episode "Helpless,” Olivet is a victim and becomes a patient after she is molested and raped by a gynaecologist, Dr. Alexander Merritt (Paul Hecht). While Merritt eventually is imprisoned, Olivet’s emotional scars never fully heal. In the episode "Point of View,” Olivet's rape returns as an issue. She is subpoenaed to testify in court on behalf of the fictional murderer Mary Kostrinski (Lisa Eichhorn), who she had interviewed about her self-defense claim that her victim was trying to rape her. During cross-examination, Stone reluctantly questions Olivet about her rape to undermine her credibility. After the Kostrinski character makes a deal with Stone for a reduced sentence and a new murder suspect is arrested, Stone apologizes to Olivet, whose character forgives him.[2]
In the 1993 episode "Promises to Keep" Olivet is called to help the police and DA. When a man is accused of killing his girlfriend, by orders of his psychiatrist.
The volatile relationship between McCoy and Olivet begins with their first encounter in the 1994 episode "Blue Bamboo.” In that episode, Olivet interviews a defendant (Laura Linney) who murdered a sexually abusive employer and informs McCoy that she believes the abuse traumatized the woman. McCoy retorts that she does not belong on his witness list.[3] After that, McCoy and Olivet had a strained relationship. Occasionally, his character would be more diplomatic. For example, he convinced her to help him convict an alcoholic (Eddie Malavarca) accused of murdering his foster parents in the episode “Privileged”.[4]
The character was effectively written out of the show in 1997 by stating she was going into private practice. In the 8th season, the Dr Emil Skoda (J.K. Simmons) character replaces her. In 1999, Olivet returns in the episodes "Refugee" and "Killerz.” In 2002, Olivet was in the episode "American Jihad.” In the 2006 Law & Order: Criminal Intent episode "To the Bone,” she is implied to have started a family in a conversation with Logan.[5]
In the 2008 episode "Betrayal", the McCoy and Olivet character foil returned. McCoy is now the Manhattan District Attorney. Olivet tells McCoy that she will be a defense witness contradicting the prosecution's expert and Clinical Psychiatrist, Dr. Lydia Stronach (Nancy Hess), who had done studies on child sexual abuse that a professional authoritative body had officially censured as dangerous and damaging. McCoy reveals to Michael Cutter (Linus Roache), his successor as Executive ADA, that Olivet had sex with a patient, a police detective whose partner was murdered. It is implied that Logan was the detective. When Cutter cross-examined Olivet during the trial, she confirmed the affair but stated she stopped treating the still unidentified detective shortly after the relationship began.
Olivet made her last appearance in 2009 in the "Human Flesh Search Engine” episode.[6]
