Recaps are Spoilers Off per policy. All spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned
Written By Charley Davis
Directed By Peter Leto
A 14-year-old girl (Juliet Brett) is found in the Hudson River; Thinking she was smuggled into the country by sex traffickers, Benson poses as a madam only to discover that the girl was an honor student and the real threat (Sarah Hyland) to her life was much closer to her.
Tropes
- Abusive Parents: Joseph Lychkoff put his two daughters through Training from Hell from a young age in order to make them into geniuses, forcing them to learn advanced mathematics in a freezing cold room for hours daily and viciously punishing them for mistakes with beatings and cigarette burns. He threw his elder daughter Katrina out of the house at 16 for supposedly not being as smart as her sister Elsa, because she had an IQ of 135 and Elsa's was 165. She sees him again for the first time in years during the episode, and his first words to his wife are, "She is dead to us."
- Addled Addict: Even after provigil wore away at Jennifer's memory, sanity, and landed her in jail, she screams "I need provigil! Please get me some!"
- Always Someone Better: No matter how hard she studied, Jennifer couldn't outscore Elsa on tests.
- Apocalyptic Log: Jennifer's notebook showing the signs of Provigil abuse. The first few pages are filled with neat handwriting that gets gradually smaller and smaller until the next page is covered in an unreadable mess of words scribbled all over the place, a classic sign of hypergraphia
. Benson shows it to ADA Gill to convince her to give Jennifer a lighter sentence. - Bait-and-Switch: At first the audience is led to assume the Victim of the Week, a young Eastern European girl covered in scars and bruises, was brought to the US by a sex trafficking ring. Then it turns out she was a top student at an elite academy with an abusive father, but he didn't kill her either. She also wasn't raped and murdered by any of the students at the school, a few of whom have criminal records already—the real culprit is her roommate, who couldn't stand being the #2 student while the victim was #1.
- Blatant Lies: Alik is arrested for arranging to sell underage girls to an undercover Benson. As he's being dragged away in handcuffs he screams "Those girls are friends of my family!"
- Book Safe: Jennifer keeps a plastic baggie filled with Provigil that's hidden in a hollowed-out textbook.
- Broken Ace: 14-year-old Elsa was a genius prodigy, the top student at the highly-competitive Morewood Academy with dozens of scholarship offers, and the youngest ever winner of the Bradshaw Prize for Applied Mathematics. No one knew that her father had put her through Training from Hell her entire life to make her a genius, that he abused her regularly, or that she secretly hated Morewood and was planning to drop out before her untimely death.
- Both Sides Have a Point: Whether to try Jennifer as a juvenile or an adult. Benson and Stabler aren't in favor of putting her away for life because she's a teenager, wasn't in her right mind when she killed Elsa, didn't set out intending to kill her, and didn't have sadistic intentions, making her unlikely to kill again. Gill, the ADA, points out that Jennifer has a genius-level IQ of 160 and is smart enough to have tried to cover her tracks during the initial investigation, not to mention the sheer brutality of the crime committed (smashing Elsa's head into the railing several times and pushing her over the side of the ship to dispose of the body).
- Brilliant, but Lazy: Danny was smart enough to go to Morewood, but he dropped out because he was tired of them forcing him to constantly be the best and never settle for less. Considering the extremes they go to in order to increase test scores, he wasn't exactly wrong when he called the academy "toxic".
- Comically Lopsided Rivalry: Jennifer studied and studied but she just couldn't beat Elsa's natural genius. When she laments that Elsa received all the attention, getting her picture in the newspaper and receiving scholarship offers, her mom tries to make her feel better by saying, "Well, sweetie, you have a college fund..."
- Comically Small Bribe: Tragic example — Grace Metcalf, who runs an organization to help trafficked girls, mentions a girl named Anna and her little sister who were sold by their mother for 50 euros.
- Consummate Liar: Jennifer is smart enough to try and plant fake evidence implying Elsa was killed by a sex trafficker or her abusive father. It comes back to bite her in court, as the ADA takes it as proof that she's clear-headed enough to have been in her right mind when she smashed Elsa's head against the ship railing and threw her over.
- Cool Big Bro: Elsa saw Danny as this, as he tried to help her experience a regular childhood, and she apparently trusted him enough to disclose her utter contempt for Jennifer to him.
- Crapsaccharine World: On a smaller scale, the seemingly-ordinary elite academy of Morewood that deliberately instructed its students on how to obtain prescription ADD pills in order to improve their performance, leading to one girl staying up for six days, going insane, and subsequently murdering her roommate. Even before that, it was obvious that the school cared more about its reputation than the well-being of its students, when Benson asked the headmistress if she knew about the victim's broken wrist and cigarette burns, and the headmistress's first response was not "Oh no, that's terrible", but "Are you insinuating that happened at Morewood?" The headmistress also lied to Benson and Stabler that the two roommates were best friends, when in fact they despised each other to the point of one of them asking to be moved to a new dorm.
- Cut Himself Shaving: When the pimp Alik was arrested, he was hurling threats to Olivia as he's dragged away. In response, Fin "accidentally" slams Alik's head on a wall.
- Damn You, Muscle Memory!: To illustrate the extent to which sleep deprivation can affect a person, Olivia describes a case where a sleep-deprived cop accidentally Ate His Gun; he woke up having an asthma attack, but in his sleep deprived state, mixed up the actions for the inhaler with the reflex to grab his gun, and ended up sticking the gun in his mouth and pulling the trigger.
- Death of a Child: This episode's Victim of the Week is Elsa Lychkoff, a 14-year-old math prodigy whose body was found floating down the Hudson River. When Stabler sees her tri-bar cross necklace (meaning she's Russian Orthodox), he sadly comments, "She still believed in God...you'd think he could have protected her just a little bit."
- Debate and Switch: The detectives argue with the New Jersey prosecutor over how to deal with Jennifer. Benson and Stabler believe she's just a kid and shouldn't be treated the same as an adult killer. The prosecutor argued that Jennifer was privileged, highly intelligent, fed the police false leads, and showed no remorse. In the end, Jennifer receives leniency after it's revealed that she had a psychotic break caused by prescription drugs that her school was encouraging its students to abuse.
- Dirty Harriet: Olivia goes undercover as a madam due to the squad being under the assumption that Elsa was brought into the U.S. by sex traffickers.
- Drama Queen: Jennifer, though it's all but stated that her erratic behavior is due to her being sleep-deprived.
- Drugs Are Bad: A rarity for this show, this episode isn't about the dangers of recreational drugs like cocaine and heroin, but prescription drugs. Morewood instructed its students to lie to their doctors about having ADHD so they could get access to stimulants like Adderall and Provigil. Jennifer took too much Provigil, stayed up for six days, went insane from sleep deprivation and ended up murdering Elsa after an explosive argument.
- Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Jennifer Banks, especially once she starts losing it. Her Exhausted Eye Bags from sleep deprivation add to the look.
- Exhausted Eye Bags: Jennifer has these from sleep deprivation due to taking too much Provigil, and they get worse and worse throughout the episode.
- Fallen-on-Hard-Times Job: After Katrina's father disowned her, the only job she could get was waitressing despite her high IQ because she didn't have a high school degree.
- Gone Horribly Right: Elsa and Jennifer, as the #1 and #2 students at Morewood, were put in the same dorm room so they'd push each other to come out on top. They did...so hard that Jennifer ended up murdering Elsa when she just couldn't take being in second place any longer.
- Good with Numbers: Elsa Lychkoff was a junior math prodigy who won the Bradshaw Prize for Applied Mathematics with her paper on dense triangle-free graph conjecture.
- Greater-Scope Villain: Morewood Academy is essentially the overall Villain of the Week of the episode, but they barely factored into the story.
- Halfway Plot Switch: The episode goes from finding who killed Elsa Lychkoff to helping her murderer, Jennifer Banks, get a reduced sentence.
- Hard Work Hardly Works: Jennifer hated Elsa because she studied so hard and never got any recognition for her efforts, while Elsa was so brilliant that she became Morewood's top student without even trying, showing up in the newspaper, winning contests, and getting dozens of scholarship offers, including one to MIT.
- Hate Sink: Elsa’s killer turned out to be a Tragic Villain. Her abusive father on the other hand, had no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
- Higher Understanding Through Drugs: Brutally deconstructed. Jennifer believes that her use of Provigil is a case of this, but it's clear to everyone else that she was just completely out of her right mind, as exemplified by her journal where she began to write in spirals partway through.
- I Coulda Been a Contender!: Self-inflicted by Danny, a former Morewood student who dropped out one month before graduation because he was tired of the insane pressure to succeed that was being put on them by the school.
- Insane Troll Logic: While trying to convince the New Jersey prosecutor to go easy on Jennifer, he points out that she had prosecuted other teenagers who were poor boys of color and insinuates that she was only going hard on Jennifer to prove she was colorblind. In other words, Stabler was taking the position that the moral thing to do was give Jennifer greater leniency because she was rich, female and white.
- Insanity Defense: Jennifer gets one when Benson discovers she was using Provigil to stay awake for days on end so she could study, causing her to lose her mind from sleep deprivation. She's still found guilty, but gets a reduced sentence of 7 years. The judge's parting words to her are "You're a very lucky young lady. Don't squander your good fortune."
- Insufferable Genius: How Jennifer describes Elsa, though we only have her word to go on since Elsa is dead. (For what it's worth, Elsa's friend Danny indicates that Elsa's silent treatment was a reaction to Jennifer's hostility.)Jennifer: She wouldn't even talk to me. Like I was too insignificant, too stupid to waste her breath on.
- Elsa's father uses his genius to justify his poor treatment of his family.
- Karma Houdini:
- Alik makes a deal to get deported to Ukraine, where it's implied he will buy his way out of punishment, instead of going to prison. All he had to do to get such a sweet deal was give the name of a girl he had nothing to do with and only knew her name because she appeared in the newspaper.
- Downplayed for Morewood Academy. They supplied their students with drugs and forced them to compete among themselves, which ultimately results on one of their students murdering another. While we don't see them get punished, Dr. Warner promises to tip off a friend in the health department about their conduct, and Jennifer's trial will likely put them in hot water, too.
- Mistaken for Pedophile: Benson and Stabler assume Danny had bad intentions when they hear he hung out with Elsa, who was 14.
- Mistaken for Prostitute: When SVU sees the wounds and scars on Elsa's body, they initially believe she is a Disposable Sex Worker. The scars were actually from her father and his abusive training regimen to make her a genius.
- Moment of Weakness: Jennifer boarded the ferry wanting to talk to Elsa, but the other girl screamed at her and called her a stupid, pathetic loser who was only at Morewood because of her rich family. Jennifer, already suffering from sleep deprivation and Sanity Slippage due to Provigil abuse, stabbed Elsa repeatedly in the chest with her pen, smashed her head against the railing several times and threw her over the side.
- Not What It Looks Like: Elsa constantly hanging out with a guy in his twenties understandably sets off alarm bells for the detectives. Danny turns out to be a harmless Big Brother Mentor who really does care about Elsa and was hanging out with her in a purely platonic way.
- "Ray of Hope" Ending: Jennifer is ultimately sentenced to 7 years in a juvenile detention center, with hope that she'll be able to get help and rebuild her life after her sentence is over.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: Jennifer’s culpability for killing Elsa was diminished by the fact that the adults at their boarding school were fostering an environment of extreme competition and encouraging their students to abuse powerful prescription drugs. However, Benson and Stabler didn’t know any of that when they decided to advocate for her. As the New Jersey prosecutor correctly pointed out when Benson and Stabler first spoke to her, all they knew at the time was that she purposefully fed them false leads and never expressed any remorse. Their only real reasons for sympathizing with Jennifer were their distaste towards Morewood as an institution (which is justified, but doesn't automatically excuse Jennifer) and having a gut feeling that something more was going on with her (which isn't infallible, although they turn out to be right in this case).
- Rotating Protagonist: Elsa Lychkoff and Jennifer Banks share the Victim of the Week role, with Morewood Academy being the Greater-Scope Villain of the Week.
- Rule of Symbolism: When the detectives have enough evidence to confront Jennifer about Elsa's death, she's studying for a chess tournament by the time they catch up with her. On the board, she's in Zugzwang—a position in which every move makes things worse.
- Scars Are Forever: Katrina has scars on her lower legs from her father making her kneel on rice grains for hours as a child.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: Danny and Elsa both believed that Jennifer only got into Morewood because of her rich family. To Jennifer's credit, she is genuinely intelligent and hardworking...just not as smart as Elsa, which drove her crazy.
- Second Place Is for Losers: A motto that's hammered into the students at Morewood, maybe a little too hard.Danny: (in a mocking voice) "Be the best. Great isn't good enough. Maximize your potential." They even feed their students a special diet to increase brain activity. Omega-3s and all that crap.
- Slippery Slope Fallacy: In-universe; the New Jersey DA asks Benson and Stabler if her next case — a teenager who brutally raped and killed a younger child with no remorse — should also be tried as a juvenile and get out at 21, as though them advocating for leniency in Jennifer's case means they want the same leniency for all teens charged with murder regardless of the circumstances.
- Smart People Play Chess: Jennifer is studying for a chess tournament when the detectives show up to interrogate her for the second time.
- Speech Impediment: One of the Morewood students being investigated has a lisp.
- Stepford Smiler: Implied for Elsa; the only time we see her alive, she's smiling proudly as she accepts a prestigious mathematics award and talking about how she always dreamed about it. The detectives discover that she actually hated the life of academic achievements her father had forced her into and didn't even want to go to MIT, even though she could have made it there.
- Teens Are Monsters: After Jennifer's sentence is handed down, the end of the episode has ADA Gill preparing her next case, a teenager who raped and murdered his six-year-old stepsister, showing no remorse and gesturing he'd do it again.
- Tragic Villain: Jennifer did kill Elsa, but did it due to a combination of substance abuse, sleep deprivation, and mental breakdown.
- The Unfavorite: Katrina's father kicked her out of the house so he could focus entirely on Elsa's education, believing she was the only one with "true potential".
- Useless Bystander Parent: Downplayed—Elsa's mother did try to confront her husband about him beating their daughter, but he said it was necessary since her test scores were improving. She shows clear regret for her actions.
- Villain Protagonist: Jennifer Banks shares the Victim of the Week role with Elsa Lychkoff despite her murdering the latter. Unusually for the trope, she's a Tragic Villain instead of being the typical machiavellian or unscrupulous.
- Villainous Breakdown: While in interrogation, Jennifer has a Motive Rant that puts most serial killers to shame.Jennifer: No, don't tell me what to DO! I'm sick and tired of everyone always telling me what to do! What to say! How to think! How to act! I just wanted to talk to [Elsa], that's all. I just wanted to talk to her and then take the next ferry back. But she screamed at me! Why was I following her?! She called me a loser! She said I was pathetic and dumb and that I was only at Morewood because my family is rich, that I'd never be able to make it on brains alone like her! She tried walking away, and so I grabbed her arm, and she pushed me! So I jabbed her chest with my pen, and she pushed me again! And so I pulled her hair, and I slammed her head into the railing, OVER! AND OVER! AND OVER AGAIN!
- We Used to Be Friends: Some of Jennifer's dialogue implies that she and Elsa were friends or at least on good terms before the pressure to outscore each other got to them and they started hating each other.Jennifer: (talking about taking Provigil) My brain was finally working. I could understand everything. I wrote it all down. I realized I could talk to Elsa. Make her like me again.
