Written By Julie Martin and Warren Leight
Directed By Laura Belsey
The chance connection of a 25-year-old rape-murder case in New York is connected to several unsolved cases across the country. When the prime suspect, now wheelchair bound and transferred up from a Miami prison, is interrogated, he confesses to all the murders barring the New York one. FBI Agent Dana Lewis relentlessly pressures him, convinced that he's the one, but Benson and Amaro have their own doubts about his guilt...and Dana's presumed innocence.
Tropes
- The Atoner: The episode retcons Dana's entire career, making her dedication to the job an attempt to atone for the murder she committed at the beginning of it and her undercover work a means of hiding from herself.
- Chekhov's Gun: Dana starts going on about how the fifth victim was two months pregnant, which nobody else brought up (and was not part of the case file); it turns out the pregnancy was Dana's motive for murder.
- Good Girls Avoid Abortion: The mirror image. Dana got pregnant by her casual boyfriend, and got an abortion hoping to keep him. He broke up with her anyway, and then got another girl pregnant and got engaged to her. She was driven into a jealous rage that led her to murder the pregnant fiancée.
- Jurisdiction Friction: Dana and the SVU detectives clash over jurisdiction for about 20 seconds before agreeing to work together.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Invoked by BensonBrian, let me ask you something. That bus that hit you, broke your spinal cord, didn't just cripple you, it made you impotent. You've had 25 years to think about that accident. Ever think it was karma?
- Love Makes You Crazy and Evil and Stupid: FBI Agent Dana Lewis murdered her ex-boyfriend's fiancée in a fit of rage after she learned the other woman was pregnant (when she told him she was pregnant he made her get an abortion and a few months later dumped her and told her he was getting married) and pinned the crime on a serial rapist/murderer she was hunting, Brian Traymor, who used his NBA connection to lure women from bars (the victim didn't care for sports, however). 20-something years later, Brian is caught and isn't too keen on confessing to the one crime he didn't commit, especially since he hates redheads. He is also shocked to learn that his "last victim" was pregnant and wonders why a pregnant woman, especially a kindergarten teacher, would be anywhere near a bar.
- Psychological Projection:
- When Dana tries to get Brian to confess to the murder she committed, she finds commonality with him by expressing her own feelings:It's been a tough road, all these years. People looking right through you, nobody knowing what you are capable of. I bet it did feel good, to tell the truth, like a weight lifted off your shoulders. It's like a pressure pushing down on your head, like a brick. I think the man who did all that is not the man you are today. Unless you own up to it, you can never move on. I want you to have peace. You remember. So pretty, young, those eyes. Do you remember?
- Dana feeds Brian the detail that he supposedly found out about the victim's pregnancy while she was begging for her life. Benson suggests this is actually how Dana found out about the pregnancy.
- When Dana tries to get Brian to confess to the murder she committed, she finds commonality with him by expressing her own feelings:
- Ripped from the Headlines: The twist involving Lewis is based on Stephanie Lazarus
, a police officer who committed a love triangle murder in 1986 and wasn't caught for over two decades. The decision to use a popular recurring character as the murderer, in effect killing her off, was not popular with the fan base.
