Written By Dawn De Noon and Lisa Marie Petersen
Directed By Juan Jose Campanella
Recap pages are Spoilers Off per policy and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned
An elderly lady suffering from Alzheimer's breaks into an apartment she remembers from her past, leading detectives to discover that she had been previously mistreated at a nursing home before being released into the custody of her money-hungry son.
Tropes
- Abusive Offspring: In addition to financially exploiting his dementia-stricken mother, Joe Sherman also has a habit of leaving her restrained to her bed at nights (something he claims to do for her protection). His housekeeper also reveals that he speaks harshly with Bess whenever he's stressed. The detectives initially suspect he was also the one who burned her with cigarettes, though he's ultimately proven innocent in this regard.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Said verbatim by Benson when Stabler says he "doesn't want to grow old" during their investigation of Jubilee Towers.
- Creepy Uncle: As a child, Bess was sexually abused by her uncle. Her childhood best friend's younger sister explains that back then he was known as a "funny uncle", and that she and her sisters were never allowed to sleep over at Bess's house when he lived there.
- Elder Abuse: The episode focuses on how Bess Sherman has been abused by both her son Joe and nursing home attendant Hal Shipley, as well as Hope Garrett. Back when she was a child, Bess had also been sexually abused by her uncle. The problem being that her dementia made everyone think she was only remembering the past abuse until they figured out she was being hurt right now. Hope Garrett has also been doing this to a lot of other elderly people to get attention for herself as a hero and to get more money for the nursing home from grateful families.
- Glory Seeker: Hope Garrett injects residents at the nursing homes with epinephrine which increases heart rate and looks like a heart attack all so she could stage a rescue.
- Parental Savings Splurge: The detectives investigate the case of Bess Sherman, an elderly woman who was tortured and forced to sign cheques. They interrogate her son Joe, who immediately points the finger at her grandson Andy (his own son), who he describes as a deadbeat who dropped out of uni. When they interrogate the grandson, he explains that the only reason he dropped out was because his dad frittered away his college funds on bad business ideas, and he considers his grandma the only relative who cared about him.
- The Scapegoat: Hal Shipley becomes this after Hope Garrett injects Bess with a near-fatal dose of epinephrine and uses his history of being abusive towards his patients to frame him as the culprit.
- Snake Oil Salesman: Joe and his "investors", who are into get-rich-quick schemes. His latest business venture is "The Trifecta Wizard", an "unbeatable" horse-racing predictive software program. One of the people they interview is a used car salesman who claims that investing in a car (a mid-1990s Toyota Camry sedan) is like buying a Monet that appreciates in value.
- Villainous Breakdown: The episode ends with Hope Garrett having one at trial, resulting in them needing to be dragged out of the courtroom.
