Written By Tara Butters and Michele Fazekas
Directed By Alex Zakrzewski
A 14-year-old girl vanishes and an FBI agent is killed with all the evidence pointing to a producer of child pornography. Stabler's investigation, however, reveals that the case is bigger than he originally thought as he chases the pedophile across the ocean to Europe.
Tropes
- Always Save the Girl: Tassig and the brainwashed Mia are fleeing together. Stabler, forced to choose which of them to go after, opts to grab up Mia and let Tassig go. He gets chewed out for this, because now Tassig has no further incentive to stay in a country where he could be captured, which means among other things the cops have seemingly lost their opportunity to rescue the younger victim they are seeking, whereas had he taken Tassig and let Mia go, (Logan says) some other cop would eventually have grabbed her up.
- Blatant Lies:
Webmaster: We only sell passwords, we don't know what people put on their websites -
Stabler: What are you telling me, lady, that you don't know what the website "child dot rape" is all about? Shut up.
- Double Standard: Unusually averted; when they discover their original victim, Meredith, has child porn on her computer, the detectives treat her exactly as though she were a male sexual predator (until they discover she was actually a vigilante informant).
- Hypocrite: After seeing the child sex trade in Prague, Stabler says he wouldn't just stand back and let it happen, which is exactly what he's doing as he says it. Agent Logan wastes no time calling him out on this.
- Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: Bishop gets physical in an interrogation before the U.S. Attorney steps in. When Stabler finds himself in a place where the United States Constitution doesn't apply, he doesn't even pretend to hesitate.
- Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot: While murder and child pornography aren't minor crimes, when Stabler returns from Prague, he discovers that his narrow quest to find two victims has unearthed so many pedophiles that one law enforcement agency cannot possibly deal with them all, so a massive multi-national taskforce must be convened.
- Neck Lift: When Tassig the pedophile mockingly suggests Stabler can't beat him up without permission from "this bitch" (Europol Agent Logan) Stabler grabs him by the throat, lifts him so high that Tassig's head brushes against the light bulb dangling from the ceiling above them, and satisfyingly choke-slams him onto the desk behind him.
- Psychological Projection:
Logan: You run a child pornography website. You are in posession of over a hundred thousand illegal images -
Tassig: Why are you so obsessed with children?! That is disgusting!
- Put on a Bus: Olivia "catches a child abuse case in the ER" and sits this episode out.
- Title Drop: When Stabler gets back to the US his investigation has exposed so many pedophiles he's told he has "opened Pandora's Box".
- What You Are in the Dark: The episode has Stabler chasing a pedophile to the Czech Republic and back, and uncovering a huge child prostitution ring in the process. At the end, he finally goes to arrest the particular pedophile that they've been looking for. Upstairs, with his gun drawn, he finds the man asleep, alone, in a room with no witnesses and too far away for anyone to intervene in time. You can see the battle raging on Stabler's face. He wakes the perp up and arrests him instead.
