Written By Patrick Harbinson
Directed By Ted Kotcheff
Det. Benson, on her way out for the evening, receives a call comes from a little girl who says she's locked in a room alone. After further investigation, it's discovered she's a child pornography victim who's been missing for years. Even as her fellow officers decry the call as a hoax, Olivia stays on the line and eventually manages to track the girl down.
Her performance in this episode won Mariska Hargitay the Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series in the 58th Primetime Emmy Awards.
This episode provides examples of:
- Buried Alive: Poor Maria's fate, though she's thankfully rescued by Olivia and the rest.
- Cassandra Truth: Several other members of the unit think Maria may be a fake, but she turns out to be for real.
- Chekhov's Gun: One of the many details Maria gives Olivia about her captor is that he has a blue case for his glasses. Seeing Richard Dwyer with the same kind of blue case is what gets Olivia to realize he's Maria's abductor right as he's about to flee the scene.
- A Day in the Limelight: The episode focused predominantly on Olivia.
- Death Faked for You: Maria's cousin sold her into sexual slavery and then claimed she got lost in the desert at the US-Mexico border.
- Distress Call: In the background music. When Fin discovers where the ground was disturbed and they start digging up Maria, the background music has Morse code running through it: SOS, the traditional signal for distress.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Maria basically lived in Hell for years, and is utterly terrified of her captor, to the point where she almost doesn't give Benson the information she needs to rescue her. But in the end, her desperation to live wins out, and she's rescued.
- Greater-Scope Villain: Maria's cousin, who doesn't appear in the episode proper, faked Maria's death and sold her to a pedophile for money, which sets off the plot.
- Hope Spot: Just when the SVU team is ready to properly track down Maria's location using her phone, Richard returns and hangs up the phone after drugging Maria.
- Idiot Ball:
- The squad becomes convinced that a bored teen is bothering to spend hours of continuous chatter (well beyond the point at which the voice on the phone wants to hang up) impersonating a child sex slave in an elaborate plot just because the sex slaver's phone has some electronic countermeasures on it. Benson is treated by the narrative as irrational because she refuses to believe the hoax theory. The squad is so invested in the hoax theory that when they find the burned-down Felipe's Burgers near where the victim is held, they don't bother to search the area til the end of the episode.
- The pedophile doesn't bother to kill Maria before burying her alive.
- Instant Sedation: Downplayed. It's revealed that Richard used chloroform to knock Maria out before burying her alive, but since we never see Richard administer the drug, it's hard to pinpoint when it was done. Maria becoming sleepy towards the end of her call with Olivia suggests it happened right before Richard took the phone and hung up.
- Married to the Job: Olivia was on a middle of a date when she's called on duty.
- Police Brutality: Benson fails miserably at extracting a confession from the mild-mannered pedophile this way, so she has to rely on detective work instead.
- Race Against the Clock: Due to various circumstances that threaten Maria’s survival, Olivia is desperate to get anything on a location to find the girl.
- Sex Slave: Maria's cousin sold her to become this.
- She Cleans Up Nicely: Benson was about to go on a date when the call came in, so she spends most of the episode in a flattering dress.
- Smug Snake: Richard is convinced that Olivia can't find him. Fortunately, he's wrong.
- Surprisingly Happy Ending: For most of the episode, Olivia and the rest of the team have considered that Maria may just be a prank. When they clarified she's legit, her chances of rescue is pretty low. When they finally found the suspect, they find out that Maria is Buried Alive somewhere. Against all odds, Olivia and the rest were able to save her.
- Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: The pedophile doesn't bother to just kill Maria, instead burying her alive in a shallow, eaaily-excavated grave.
