Written By Paul Grellong
Directed By Aaron Lipstadt
While investigating the death of college student Caroline Pereira, SVU discovers that she was heavily involved in gambling and selling term papers for cash, and the suspects involved in the case include her roommate, a well-known athlete and her childhood friend.
Tropes:
- Chekhov's Gun: The diamond ring that Caroline won off a football star in a poker game. Adam takes it off her corpse and gives it to Gloria, and at the end of the episode, the detectives arrest her for evidence tampering because she knew it was stolen from a murder victim but kept it anyway.
- Determinator: Adam believes he and the Victim of the Week Caroline are these. They're brilliant and work hard to study in Hudson, but they're poor so they have to reluctantly do things they didn't initially like such as selling term papers and illegal gambling just to catch up with their richer, entitled, but less brilliant schoolmates.
- Double-Meaning Title: The episode title "Class" can refer to the fact that the victim, the perp, and several secondary characters are students. It also refers to the apparent class divide between the rich and the poor among the students (and one personally experienced by Stabler in his youth).
- Entitled Bitch: Gloria. Doubles as a Rich Bitch. Despite caught buying term papers from the victim, she believes Hudson will not expel her because her parents are rich donors to the school. She also looks down on her boyfriend Adam (who is poor) as beneath her and was merely using him.
- Donut Mess with a Cop: There is a sticker inside Stabler's locker that says, "Bad Cop - No Donut."
- Hooker with a Heart of Gold: A variation of sorts. In the cold open, the Hooker "Vegas" was working in a seedy alley when she hears sounds of a struggle nearby and rushes there...to shoo off what she thought was another hooker working in her territory. She instead witnesses the perp dumping the body of the Victim of the Week, so she calls 911.
- Kick the Dog: Gloria casually testifies against Adam in court, portraying him as worse than he really is, not even bothering to look at him while doing so. When he tearfully asks why she threw him under the bus, she just mocks him. Even Casey is disgusted.Novak: That was cold.
- Ripped from the Headlines: Part of the plot of the episode was inspired by the the Elizabeth Paige Laurie cheating scandal
. - Stock Aesops: When Fin and Stabler "invite" Gloria Kulhane to the precinct while she was in class, Fin hilariously throws in an almost-sincere "Sorry for interrupting... Stay in School," to the onlooking students.
- Sympathy for the Devil: Adam committed murder, but Elliot pities and empathizes with him for being looked down upon by rich folks and ultimately being a pawn of his overly demanding girlfriend, Gloria.
- Undercover Cop Reveal: The illegal poker runner "Riley" is revealed to be an undercover cop named Doug Kersten.
