Written By John P Roche
Directed By Fred Berner
The rape of a dancer by a man with a distinctive tattoo reminds newcomer Amanda Rollins of an unsolved case from back in Atlanta. However, their main suspect may actually be telling the truth about his innocence despite DNA evidence tying him to the rapes.
Tropes
- Armor-Piercing Response: Amaro has nothing to say after this.
- Gabriel: I'll tell you something else, Detective.Amaro: Oh, yeah what's that?Gabriel: Your rapist is still out there.
- Disappeared Dad: Amaro tries to convince Gabriel to confess to avoid being this to Luke.
- When Gabriel attempts suicide, he tells Amaro "tell Luke his daddy didn't rape anybody".
- Disproportionate Retribution: Gabriel was adopted by good parents, went to college, and has a loving wife and a son. This earned him the ire of his twin brother who framed him for rape simply for being a lot luckier in life.
- Double Standard: Gabriel is friendly and cooperative with the SVU even going as far as not requesting a lawyer because he is innocent and believes the detectives can prove it. His wife speaks wonders of him, including how he remained by her side when she miscarried, and is incredulous at the idea his husband was secretly a monster and she never saw any signs of this during 15 years of marriage. Even another ADA claims to believe in his innocence and his profile doesn’t match with that of a rapist. Once the detectives find enough evidence to take him to trial, however, they do so, and close his case as soon as they can. Gabriel is transferred to the tombs where he attempts suicide but the detectives rule it out as him taking the easy way out. It never occurs to them the man might actually be innocent and there is more to the case than they bothered to check.
- Evil Twin: The detectives arrest Gabriel Thomas for a series of rapes, even tying him via DNA evidence and a distinctive tattoo, but further investigation into Gabriel's background leads them to a twin brother that he did not even know about, but knew about him.
- Forced to Watch: Brian’s adoptive mother burned her husband alive in front of him when he was only a teenager.
- Greater-Scope Villain: It’s subtly revealed Brian’s adoptive mother is his motivation for rape as implied by the phrase he tells to his victims, the fact they’re all blonde like her and forcing him to go through a traumatic experience when he was forced to testify against her because she burned his adoptive father alive in front of him.
- Lana:: Tell me you love me mommy. He kept, he kept saying.
- Green-Eyed Monster:
- Ultimately ties into Brian's motivations. While Gabriel get to grow up with a loving family, get into a good college, and have a loving wife and son, Brian was coldly casted out by his own mother, put into an abusive household where his foster mother killed his father, and got rejected by his birth mother after finding her. So he took advantage of his and Gabriel's identical nature to go on a rape spree and let his twin brother take the fall.
- The biological mother of the twins says the reason why Brian's adoptive mother murdered her husband was this, although it's not clarified who she was jealous of.
- Idiot Ball: The detectives find a match between Gabriel’s DNA and five different rape kits then immediately take it to trial. They don’t bother to check his alibi for those rapes or match his fingertips with the ones found in a screwdriver at a crime scene. It turns he has an alibi but couldn’t say anything because the detectives didn’t bother to disclose the information to him or during trial, and the fingertips wouldn’t match because they belong to the real rapist.
- Imposter Forgot One Detail: Multiple on Brian's part.
- Gabriel has no scar and clean teeth, while Brian has a chipped tooth and a nasty scar on his abdomen, neither of which he tries to hide.
- Halloween 2003, Brian assaults another victim while Gabriel has been in the hospital over 100 miles away all night following his wife's miscarriage, which every doctor and patron there confirmed his presence.
- Exploited by the SVU, who pays for Gabriel's bail but keeps him in detention still while the news circulate his freedom, tricking Brian into attacking Rollins in broad daylight without actually checking to see if Gabriel's even free.
- Lastly, Brian's plan using DNA misdirection to get off scot-free is nearly foolproof... but he lost his screwdriver in one attack, allowing the police to keep his fingerprints on file. While Brian and Gabriel do have the same DNA due to being identical twins, their fingerprints are vastly different from each other, which also ties to his downfall.
- Ironic Echo: Whenever Brian attacks someone, one of the things he says is "Look at me. Look at my face." When Rollins is in full Break Them by Talking mode with Brian in custody, she throws his lines back at his face.
- Let's Get Dangerous!: The ADA doesn’t think they can get Brian for reasonable doubt. The detectives suggest to lure him out and catch him in the act but Novak is against the idea of putting other women at risk. Then Rollins reminds everyone the serial rapist has a thing for blondes.
- Properly Paranoid: Amaro. As the evidence piles up, more and more detectives of the SVU lose faith in Gabriel’s innocence. Only Amaro has doubts even going as far as to question if there could’ve been an error with the DNA match. It turns out Gabriel was framed by someone no one could’ve suspected because not even Gabriel knew he had a twin brother.
- Sympathy for the Devil: How Rollins gets Brian to confess. She praises his intelligence for creating a nearly perfect plan to frame his twin, consoles him over the horrible childhood he had to endure and condemns his brother for getting a better life that could’ve been his. While we don’t hear Brian’s confession, the detectives release Gabriel implying Rollins’ strategy worked.
- The Reveal: Gabriel Thomas has a twin brother who has been following him in every city in order to go on a raping spree that he can pin on his brother to get away with it.
- Wham Line: When the detectives discover Gabriel is adopted and proceed to locate and interrogate his biological mother.
- Biological Mother: I was 17, couldn’t look after myself let alone two babies so, I gave em’ up.Amaro: Two babies? So twin boys?Biological Mother: You don’t miss a thing, do you?
- Wham Shot: Once the detectives discover the existence of a twin brother, they use his name, address and birth date to locate him in the database. The entire department is left stunned when a picture of him reveals he is indeed identical to Gabriel and has used this to frame him for all rapes. Rollins in particular looks at Amaro incredulous that his gut was right.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Rollins give one to Amaro for punching Brian several times even after he’s been disarmed because they could’ve lost their case to police brutality.
