Written by Jose Molina
Directed By Jean De Segonzac
When questioning fraternity members about the murder and sodomy of their strict pledge master, Benson and Stabler are met with silence with every turn until they are led to a fellow student/fraternity brother who claims to have been previously raped by the victim.
Tropes
- Accidental Misnaming: Xander Henry refers to Dr. Huang as "Dr. Wong". Dr. Huang was played by B.D. Wong.
- Amoral Attorney: Zig-zagged. The murder victim's father is an attorney and takes the case for the frat member who set the murder in motion so that he can protect the name of the fraternity. Once he realizes that the defendent is actually guilty and is the source of his son's death, he intentionally tanks the case. This, however, would simply be a different version of amorality for an attorney, as you are duty-bound to do your best for your client.
- Coffin Contraband: Tyler's fraternity brother places the fraternity paddle that he used to sexually assault Will Carey in Tyler's coffin. Luckily for the detectives, the coffin is ceremonial only as Tyler is cremated, and the personal items from the coffin are removed and stored until the next-of-kin instructs the funeral home on what to do with them, giving Benson and Stabler time to find the item before it can be destroyed.
- Deadly Hazing: Played with and zigzagged. Will is raped during his Fiendish Fraternity initiation, which results in him killing his rapist at a later date and in a separate incident. He also tries to kill himself over the trauma of being sexually assaulted, but survives.
- Double Standard: Briefly discussed. When it turns out that Will Caray really was sexually assaulted by Tyler Henry, setting up his killing in revenge, Casey comments that she'll plead him out and he'll likely get a reduced sentence. Cragen questions this, but Stabler simply asks if this was a woman killing her rapist, would it be as much of an issue?
- Even Evil Has Standards: Tyler was involved in many brutal hazing rituals and made porno tapes of Chloe, Alicia, and possibly other girls who were either goaded into stripping while drunk or didn’t know he was filming them. However, he told Rob to stop sodomizing Will with a wooden handle and physically stopped him when Rob kept doing it.
- Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor: The pledge master being called "Brother Dahmer" is a bad sign, and the detectives and Casey are all disgusted by it.
- Fiendish Fraternity: The fraternity are all abusive snakes, with both Rob Sweeney and Tyler Henry being sadists who physically abused the pledges, and ultimately violently raped, the freshman Will Carey during his Initiation Ceremony, driving him to kill Tyler and to attempt suicide.
- I Banged Your Mom: Tyler did the "I banged your girlfriend" variant a few weeks before the episode, showing his fraternity pledges an old Home Porn Movie of himself and Pledge Nathan's girlfriend, Alicia.
- I Never Said It Was Poison: Alicia claims that Nathan (who didn't kill Tyler but did help dump his body) was with her during the murder, only for the detectives to point out that they never said when the murder happened. She tries to claim that she was with Nathan all week, but this is quickly disproven.
- I Remember Because...: Nathan and Alicia's alibi, a movie date, checks out because a theater employee remembers Alicia's pink hair.
- In Name Only: Tyler Henry was listed as the Treasurer of the Panhellenic Council, which is actually the national organization of African-American fraternities and sororities. Tyler is not African-American.
- Lame Pun Reaction: Benson sports one when Stabler makes this quip about their perp who dumped Tyler's body in a sewage processing plant.Stabler: Whoever dumped our victim really knew their crap.
- Loophole Abuse:
- Tyler, a lawyer's son, has a free porn site that gets its income from advertising to avoid some of the regulations that would govern a pay-per-view site.
- Xander Henry initially managed to exclude the Fraternity Ledger as evidence via legal maneuvering. When his conscience gets the better of him Xander opens the door for Novak to reintroduce it as evidence after proving the witness perjured himself.
- Scholarship Student: Chloe is the daughter of an ex-convict truck driver, has a basketball scholarship (even hazing victim and Sympathetic Murderer Will is upper-class), and is the only prominent black student.
- Shout-Out: The pledge name: "Pledge Master Dahmer" seems to be a reference to serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.
- Tyler's website, the Rack Menagerie is an allusion to the play, "The Glass Menagerie" by Tennessee Williams.
- Smug Snake: Rob Sweeney—and it was a delicious sight to watch his comeuppance in court.
- Title Drop: The title of the episode was mentioned in reference to what a Fraternity was supposed to be.
