Since this is a Recap, per policy all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.
Written By Amanda Green
Directed By Rick Wallace
When a young boy is found scavenging for food in the garbage, detectives interview his overprotective mother (Diane Venora); when the boy is later found dead, his older brother confesses to killing him on his mother's orders.
Tropes
- Abusive Parents: Marilyn Nesbitt wants nothing more than to control her sons' lives, and emotionally abuses them by telling them lies about people and the world in general. She physically abused her eldest son, Daniel, because she unjustly blamed him for her husband's death, and it's implied she might have also physically abused Jacob.
- Armor-Piercing Response: When Adam calls out Marilyn for forcing him to kill his brother, she accusingly asks detectives what they did to him, at which point Daniel enters the room. Just his very appearance causes Marilyn to break apart.
- Bittersweet Ending: Marilyn is sent to prison for the rest of her life after all the abuse she put her sons through. Adam is finally freed from his abusive mother's control, and reunited with his older brother, Daniel. But he will have to live with the guilt that he killed his little brother, Jacob, (on his mother's orders) and will need a lot of therapy.
- Blatant Lies: Stabler, to Jacob, interrogating him in the squad room:
What you and I talk about in this room stays in this room.
- Broken Pedestal: Adam eventually realizes that his mother, whose every word he used to believe and obey, is abusive and has been lying to him for years.
- Department of Child Disservices: Invoked. Marilyn convinces her children (and may actually believe) that horrible things will happen to them if they're taken away from her, so much so that they're better off dead, and even tells them that an older son she lost custody of was raped and killed in foster care. In reality, he was placed with a good foster family and was perfectly okay. It's the revelation of this fact that finally makes Adam realize that his mother isn't what he thought she was.
- Family Theme Naming: Jacob, Adam, and Daniel are all Biblical names.
- Freudian Excuse: While not elaborated upon, Marilyn says she grew up with "no mother" and "no safety". Dr. Huang even considers the possibility that she might have been abused herself. Her husband's murder, however, is what pushed her over the edge, as her son Daniel later confirms.
- Homeschooled Kids: The episode anviliciously treats the problem of homeschooling as a potential smokescreen for child abuse with much the same tone as it would treat underage drinking or internet predation in a different episode.
- Insane Troll Logic: Adam's lawyer says that Adam confessing proves that he is incompetent to stand trial.
- Murder-Suicide: This is what Adam intended to do, but the gun jammed when he tried to shoot himself.
- My Beloved Smother: Marilyn is a mentally disturbed example. She controls everything in her sons' lives to the point that she doesn't even want them making any friends.
- Never My Fault: Marilyn is so far gone in her paranoia that she sincerely believes she has done nothing wrong, and everybody is out to get her. She continues this stance after her lies have been exposed and Adam has turned on her.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The squad's failed intervention, and their failure to prevent Jacob from being returned to his mother, triggers the events that lead to his death.
- Oh, Crap!: Marilyn has this reaction when she sees her older son Daniel entering the room and coldly greets her.
- Parental Favoritism: At first, it seems like Adam is Marilyn's favorite son because of his obedient nature. Jacob, on the other hand, she can't speak of without criticizing him, even after he is killed.
- There Should Be a Law: The squad agrees that parents should be criminally prosecuted for putting "warped" ideas in their kids' heads.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Daniel was unfairly blamed by his mother for causing his father's death. He wanted milk for his cereal, so Daniel's father went to a corner store and was shot in a robbery.
- Villainous Breakdown: Marilyn completely falls apart when she sees Daniel (whom she had told her other sons was dead) enter Novak's office and sarcastically greet her, and realizes she has lost control of Adam. As Benson and Stabler drag her out of the room, she continues ranting how the police have killed her family, and desperately pleads with Adam to help her. But Adam, upset with her lies and manipulation, literally turns his back on her.
- Witch Hunt: The homeschool league's Crusading Lawyer accuses the cops of doing this when they investigate Jacob's food-scrounging incident.
