A young boy named Ryan Davies is found raped and murdered in a park near to his home. The detectives soon zone in on a suspect named Bill Turbit who has a previous child sexual assault in his past, but eventually they start having doubts about if he's the right man when they realize the burden of proof comes from the same pair of teenagers they keep running across named Mike and Jimmy.
Tropes present in this episode
- Accidental Murder: Mike claims they strangled Ryan just to shut him up after he wouldn't stop crying. But it's implied the other teen Jimmy, who is much more savage and brutal than his friend, did it deliberately to snap his neck.
- The Alibi: Turbit claims that he couldn't have committed the crime because he went out to a bar to celebrate acquiring a rare stamp. Plenty of people witnessed him but the bartender claims that he left for a long enough period of time that he could have plausibly committed the crime. Turns out the bartender lied and Turbit was there the whole time.
- Ambiguously Gay: Jimmy and Mike are extremely close best friends, with Jimmy even saying Mike "came back to him" after he was given a scholarship to a private school. Plus there's the fact they got obsessed with the idea of raping a young boy, something most teenagers wouldn't think of as "too good to forget" and something that got "stuck in their heads". It's not hard to read them as a pair of closeted teenage boys, especially since it was the late 90s when many young men were in fear of coming out.
- Chekhov's Gun: Ryan's glasses, which are missing when he's first found, and Turbit's missing bike chain which he claimed was stolen. Both are eventually found at the right crime scene with DNA that matches the two teenagers.
- Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?: The teen who committed the rape on Ryan, Jimmy, staunchly denies that he's gay and claims he just did it for fun.
- Hidden Depths: Mike is apparently smart enough to quote classic authors like Aldous Huxley. It ties in with him having the higher emotional intelligence of the pair of teens.
- Honor Before Reason: Despite the bartender knowing if he just stays silent about Turbit's alibi, he'll go to prison forever, he can't bring himself to lie to Stabler. Turns out he was a former cop and couldn't keep the truth from a fellow officer.
- It Amused Me: The teenage boys' reasoning for raping Ryan and then framing Turbit for the crime. They thought it would be "funny" to recreate Turbit's crime and then see the consequences of their actions.
- Knight Templar Parent: Ryan's father believes Turbit committed the crime and so he guns him down outside the courthouse.
- Manchild: Turbit's previous victim still dresses and acts very much like a small boy despite being twenty-one. Justified in that he's still not done processing the trauma of being raped and nearly killed all those years ago.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Turbit says he thinks every day about what he did to his victim, always feeling guilt for what he did.
- Mike honestly is horrified by what happened and breaks down during interrogation.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: Cassidy is usually seen as a buffoon by those around him, both by his colleagues and suspects. He uses this to his advantage in this episode, playing the part of the bumbling detective to get Jimmy to reveal they are lying about Turbit's involvement in the crime.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: Jimmy says that Ryan was a retard and it's definitely meant as an insult.
- Shout-Out: The pair of teenagers refer to Munch and Cassidy as the Men in Black. Mike quotes Aldous Huxley stating "Maybe this world is another planet's hell" and Jimmy calling the private school Mike had gone to as being full of Richie Riches
- Sinister Suffocation: Jimmy strangles Ryan so hard with a bike chain that his throat has clear marks on it afterwards of the individual chains.
- The Sociopath: While Mike shows genuine remorse for his crime, Jimmy shows none, sneering that Ryan "was a loser anyway" when confronted with the evidence he committed the crime.
- Teens Are Monsters: A pair of teenage boys rape and murder a little boy for virtually no reason at all. They do so just because they can and then try to ruin a man's life for it, framing him so he'll be sent to prison in their stead. At the end of the episode, an innocent child and the man framed for the crime are both dead due to their callous actions.
