Written By Ken Storer
Directed By David Platt
The death of a 17-year-old girl leads to the reveal of a man who deliberately spreads HIV to his many sexual partners out of misogynistic rage towards his deceased mother.
Tropes
- Artistic License – Biology: You cannot give someone HIV by spitting on them, as the episode implies.
- Artistic License – Law: Rebecca is freed at the end of the episode because Peter drops the charges against her. This is a common trope but unrealistic nonetheless. Dropping the charges is not a black and white issue. Rebecca attacked Peter in front of a packed courtroom, so Peter's cooperation is not needed, and he could be called to testify even if he didn't want to. Additionally, she committed several other crimes not related to what she did to Peter, such as endangering others (she's lucky she only hit Peter) and sneaking a weapon into a courtroom, charges that wouldn't be dismissed out of sympathy.
- The DA's office decides to have Alex handle the prosecution of Rebecca despite the fact that she's already the prosecutor for Peter's trial. In real life, this would present such a massive and obvious conflict of interest that even if a DA were to make such a baffling decision to assign both cases to the same prosecutor, no judge in their right mind would allow it to go through. Not to mention that Alex, having been present when the attack took place, would be a potential witness against Rebecca, which should also be a reason to exclude her as a prosecutor.
- Bland-Name Product: The hookup apps Peter used include "Craigsphone" and "Faceunion".
- Bystander Syndrome: The episode opens with a building full of people ignoring a screaming woman.
- Crazy-Prepared: Cabot dismantles Rebecca on the witness stand by showing her every HIV awareness poster that has ever been posted in her neighborhood since before she got infected.
- Cool Old Guy: Peter's beloved grandfather, a wealthy man who helped to raise him. He ends up dying by the end of the episode, but not before both convincing his grandson to take responsibility for his actions and leaving his fortune to his victims.
- Entitled to Have You: The killer's motive in the murder case that kicked off the episode.
- Euphemistic Names: Peter gives himself the internet moniker Big Peter (peter being a nickname for penis).
- Eye Scream: Peter Butler, a man who is knowingly spreading around HIV, is put on trial. One of the women he has infected comes up to him at the end of part of the trial and sprays him in the face with hydrochloric acid, maiming him and blinding him in one eye. Yikes.
- Halfway Plot Switch: The episode switches from the rape-murder of a troubled highschool girl to the ethics of sex with HIV.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Peter's grandpa kills himself in order to shake Peter out of his immorality.
- Improbable Aiming Skills: Rebecca manages to hit Peter in the face with an acid spray from across the courtroom.
- Incurable Cough of Death: When we first meet Rebecca she is "just getting over the flu". Of course we learn later that she has AIDS.
- It's All About Me: Henry, murderer of Anna, whines in apparently genuine confusion "why can't you just leave me alone ... why are you doing this to me?" when the detectives confront him with the evidence that he beat Anna to death after she rejected him.
Henry: How could she do that to me ... ON MY BIRTHDAY?!
- Karma Houdini: Rebecca gets to go free despite her vigilante attack on Peter and endangering numerous of people.
- Moral Luck: The detectives arrest Peter, accuse him of being a murderer, a serial rapist, and "every woman's worst nightmare" with no evidence whatsoever. He later turns out to be intentionally spreading HIV, which they had no way of knowing when they accused him.
- My God, What Have I Done?: It's revealed at the end of the episode that Peter's mother did not run away and abandon him, as Peter's grandfather had told him, but rather had actually gone to prison for killing her abusive boyfriend when he started abusing Peter. Peter's grandfather told him the false story because he thought the truth would be too hard on him (as Peter might feel that he was to blame for what happened to his mother if he knew what really happened), but this ended up making Peter a misogynist who, after contracting HIV from a prostitute, used the disease to strike back at the female gender by infecting any woman willing to have unprotected sex with him. Realizing the monster he helped create, Peter's grandfather ultimately disinherits Peter and uses the money to set up a fund to pay for treatment for his victims, then commits suicide.
- Never My Fault: Both Peter Butler and Rebecca Ellison have shades of this. Rebecca never acknowledges that she chose to have unprotected sex with a partner she didn't know well enough to know if he was clean; meanwhile, Peter insists that Rebecca and the other women he infected are entirely to blame because they didn't ask him to use protection, completely disregarding the fact that he also had a choice in each instance of whether or not to use a condom and chose not to do so unless the woman explicitly asked even though he knew he was HIV-positive and at risk for spreading the disease.
- Sex Is Evil: The detectives assume Peter is a monster because he has casual sex with a large number of women, before they had any evidence that he committed any crime at all. Benson goes so far as to call him a "sexual predator" merely for having a lot of hookups.
- Slut-Shaming:
- Peter tells Benson that he "only sleeps with whores" and they were "asking for it" when he gave them what they were asking for (eg HIV).
- The defense attorney sneers that Rebecca is so promiscuous he doubts she remembers all her sexual partners.
- Spiteful Spit: Peter attempts this towards Benson whilst she confronts him in lockup. Thankfully, she turns her head at the right and manages to sidestep his (decidedly dangerous) action.
- Villain Has a Point:
- When the detectives accuse Peter of destroying women's lives, he points out that every one of them consented to sex without a condom with a complete stranger. Alex later uses this argument herself.
- After Peter was attacked in court, Granger filed a civil lawsuit. The detectives said that the women Peter infected were the real victims. In fact, the state is responsible for the safety of prisoners regardless of what crime they committed.
