Written By Patrick Harbinson
Directed By Guy Norman Bee
Benson and Stabler enlist Huang's help in probing the connection between a teenage boy undergoing psychiatric treatment, the deaths of two high-school students, and an illegal marketing campaign by a major pharmaceutical company.
This episode provides examples of:
- Artistic License – Medicine: Aptril is a fictional drug, and the chemical name given for it (phenyloxypropylamine) is not a psychoactive drug, although it is a real substance closely related to fluoxetine (more commonly known as Prozac).
- Berserk Button: Stabler presses on Jane the drug rep's button by picking up the photo of her children and questioning her about them. It gets her to slip up and say just enough that Alex can infer the company was aware of the letters going out to Aptril patients.
- Exact Words: When questioned about the murder weapon, George says that he didn't shoot anyone with the gun, not that he didn't take it. It's later revealed that he was the one who gave it to Joey.
- Predatory Big Pharma: This episode involves a school shooter who was under the influence of a new drug that had been wrongly prescribed as the consequence of a greedy pharmaceutical company.
- Space Whale Aesop: "If big pharma markets unapproved drugs to your kid he'll become a school shooter" because it's hard to make good drama out of the more mundane side effects.
