This Recap subpage has unmarked SPOILERS per policy. You Have Been Warned.
Written By Judith McCreary
Directed By Kate Woods
A young woman is attacked in her home and left comatose, with the only witness being Katie, her learning-disabled daughter with extraordinary audio recall abilities.
Tropes for the episode:
- Bewildering Punishment: A brain-damaged Corrine who doesn't remember her infidelity to Ben doesn’t understand why her husband is cold to her, and is leaving her while taking Katie away.
- Bittersweet Ending: Thanks to Katie's testimony and Casey's legal knowhow, Alex Parven is forced to plead out to assaulting and almost killing Corrine and is sent to prison, while Corrine, after being touch-and-go in her recovery, wakes up and is healed enough to be released. However, she has lost her unborn baby as well as all memories of her affair with Alex's father Joel (the father of her lost baby) and her resentment of her husband and daughter, and Ben is unwilling to forgive and forget her infidelity and her irresponsibility with their child (even in spite of her not remembering any of it, though Ben thinks she's faking) and refuses to allow her to come home, to the point of forcefully separating her and Katie and dragging the latter away, much to both of their dismays.
- Cuddle Bug: Katie repeatedly asks people for hugs, including Judge Petrovsky while on the stand.
- Double Reverse Quadruple Agent: Ben started selling chemical dispersal technology to enemies of the US to pay for his daughter’s healthcare. However, the FBI turned him and forced him to provide his buyers with disinformation. Notwithstanding, he turns again just before his wife is attacked, but by episode’s end is back to being an FBI informant.
- Faking Amnesia: Ben implies to Stabler that he believes Corrine is doing this.
- From the Mouths of Babes: The reason why Ben refuses to let Katie testify about her mother's attack - he is afraid she will blurt out that he is still selling secrets to adversaries of the US.
- Healthcare Motivation: Ben sells dual use biochemical aerosol technology to US adversaries in order to fund his daughter’s continuing care.
- Innocent Awkward Question: Katie has Williams syndrome, which gives her limited intelligence but extremely good hearing and near-perfect aural recall. The latter allows her to remember everything the assailant said in graphic detail before the assault, but also means that the noise scared her, so she was unable to see the assailant's face. When they bring their most likely suspect in front of Katie, she says that he doesn't sound like the man who assaulted her mom, and the detectives are stumped... up until the suspect's son says something, and the little girl immediately makes a beeline for him and demands to know why he called her mother a bitch, since that's a word for a female dog.
- Literal-Minded: Because of her condition, Katie fails to understand that "Bitch" is also an insult and is rather annoyed that the perpetrator called her mom a female dog.
- Mistaken for Gay: Fin and Lake are mistaken for a gay couple by a woman waiting for her doctor's appointment. Much to the annoyance of Fin, Lake decides to roll with it by placing his hand on Fin's knee.
- Pointed Ears: Katie has one pointed ear. This is actually common with sufferers of Williams Syndrome.
