Written By Julie Martin and Warren Leight
Directed By Michael Smith
Benson continues to be held hostage by William Lewis. As SVU tries to locate the pair, a string of rapes and murders make them start to lose hope.
Tropes
- Artistic License – Law Enforcement: Lewis is pulled over by a cop and kills him, and the cop's car is not found til the next day. In reality cops report on radio anyone they pull over before getting out to interrogate them precisely so as to avert this kind of problem, so if you kill the cop who pulls you over you will have law enforcement swarming over you within minutes.
- Asshole Victim: Lewis' lawyer's father is murdered and her mother raped and tortured, which is terrible for them but it's hard to sympathize with the lawyer herself given her deranged attitude towards Lewis, and the fact that she bailed Lewis out with her own money.
- Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: the hardware store owner lists what Lewis bought: tarp, rope, wire ... And a blowtorch. He looks guilty before mentioning the blowtorch, and says Lewis and "his wife" were "going camping". He did not ask why a blowtorch would be required for a camping trip.
- Cold-Blooded Torture: Lewis tortures his victims with cigarettes, heated keys and hangers.
- Contrived Coincidence:
- Cragen has ordered Benson to go home for two days, so no one will notice her missing. Cassidy is supposed to go see her, but is called on to work at the last minute so he blows her off, only leaving her a message and not talking to her in person. This gives Lewis two days to be alone with her (and get clear of her apartment) he otherwise would not have had.
- Lewis uses a stolen credit card at the hardware store, and conveniently the credit card terminal is down so the store owner doesn't run the card (and discover it is stolen) until the next day.
- Downer Ending: Benson is rescued from psychopath William Lewis before he can rape and kill her, but she has been tortured, forced to watch a rape and two murders, and is completely traumatized.
- Freudian Excuse: Lewis tells Benson his Start of Darkness came when his father's prostitute gave him oral sex as a small child and then his father hit her. Benson lampshades this, asking if she's supposed to feel sorry for him, and Lewis zigzags it, saying that was the best moment of his life.
- Gratuitous Rape: averted in Benson's case as Lewis never actually rapes her, since doing so would not actually advance the plot.
- I Did What I Had to Do: Tutuola tells Benson she did what she had to do by nonfatally beating a handcuffed Lewis with a metal bar instead of just shooting him when he was a legitimate threat to her safety justifying lethal force.
- Idiot Ball: Benson doesn't shoot Lewis when she has the opportunity to do so and would have had it considered justified, instead subsequently beating him with a metal rod and leaving him alive to cause her further problems.
- Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Benson disobeys orders in order to save Amelia.
- Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Instead of just killing Lewis and saving herself a lot of trouble (and the lives of others) Benson gives an apparently unconscious Lewis a little soliloquy about how she wants to torture him. Lewis lampshades this when he opens his eyes.
- Would Hurt a Child: Lewis invites the housecleaner and her five year old daughter, Luisa in so he can threaten Benson with this.
