This recap contains unmarked spoilers. You Have Been Warned
Written By Gwendolyn M Parker and Warren Leight
Directed By Michael Slovis
A baby is kidnapped from a playground by her biological mother and the ensuing custody battle reveals the shady practices of a lawyer and complicated scheme of a legal expert.
Tropes
- Amoral Attorney: Without their knowledge, Braydon and Josie Leddy's unseen lawyer forged papers claiming Tessa to be the biological child of Braydon and a surrogate mother. Her birth parents are actually Dia Nobile and Kent Webster, which causes huge trouble for the Leddys when Dia shows up wanting her daughter back, using the fraudulent adoption papers as evidence.
- Baby Be Mine: The episode begins with baby Tessa being abducted from a playground, while both of her parents are present and only distracted for a moment. The kidnapper turns out to be their baby's biological mother, and then poking around in their adoption papers reveals that Tessa isn't even biologically their child because their lawyer went behind their back, faked her adoption papers, and lied to them about her being the child of Braydon and a surrogate mother. The judge orders Tessa remanded to foster care until everything can be sorted out, and her parents' heartbreak is clearly evident.
- Believing Their Own Lies: Dia is fully convinced that Kent wants to leave his wife and daughter to form a new family with her and baby Tessa, even when he makes it clear that he doesn't.
- It's All About Me: It doesn't matter to Dia that her baby daughter was adopted by loving parents and her lover has a wife and daughter of his own. She'll do whatever she has to in order to make both of them hers.
- Karma Houdini: While Hannah's anger at Dia was understandable, the murder was not justified. For that matter, neither was Jillian covering up for her with a false confession, or Benson and Amaro letting her off the hook by pretending to believe the false confession. It's also implied that Cragen knew what they were all doing and looked the other way. Jillian was already dying so spending her few remaining days in a prison infirmary instead of a hospital wouldn't make much of a difference, and the rest suffered no consequences whatsoever.
- Kent Webster and his unseen father never received any punishment for tricking Dia into giving up her daughter for adoption, or the anguish they caused the Leddys. Wendel Feeny died before his part in the fraudulent adoption was revealed.
- Malaproper: Jillian is suffering from a terminal brain tumor, which causes some of her words to come out wrong, such as saying "block" instead of "clock".
- Reasonable Authority Figure: The family court judge overseeing Tessa's case reassures her adoptive parents that she knows they've raised the girl with love and care, but needs to further investigate to make sure they had no involvement with the forged adoption papers.
- Ripped from the Headlines: A politician with a sick wife cheats on her seems to be based on the John Edwards extramarital affair. The politician's tendency to send pictures of his private parts seems to be based on Anthony Weiner.
- Room Full of Crazy: Dia has a room in her loft decorated exactly like Tessa's nursery in the home of her adoptive parents, right down to the colorful letters spelling out her name on the wall.
- Take Me Instead: The episode ends with Jillian Webster, whose terminal brain tumor left her reliant on a cane to walk and too weak to handle a pitcher of water, confessing to beating in the head of her husband's physically healthy mistress with a 20 pound hunk of crystal, while also swearing under oath that her 15 year old daughter came straight home from school that afternoon and never left the townhouse.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Even though Dia is dead by the end of the episode, we never find out if Tessa was returned to her adoptive parents.
- Verbal Tic: When they first talk to Jillian Webster, SVU notices that she has a tendency to mix up words due to her disease. Later when they pull up the 911 call for Dia's murder, the caller also mixes up her words (says "skirt" instead of "hurt").
- Vocal Dissonance: Dia's voice makes her sound like a teenager rather than a woman in her 20s. Considering her Psychopathic Womanchild personality, it's probably intentional.
- Yandere: Dia Nobile will stop at nothing to have her baby daughter and Kent Webster for herself, even if she has to break up both of their families to do so.
