Written By Amanda Green
Directed By Kate Woods
The paternity of a missing young boy (Thomas Langston) is placed into question when his nanny is murdered and all signs point to his mother's internet love interest (Matthew Nicklaw), sparking a custody battle between the money-grubbing mother (Anastasia Griffith) and her current husband (Mark Valley) over who has a better claim to the child. Stabler starts to wonder if he really is the father of Kathy's child given that they were apart for quite sometime but faces the possibility of losing his partner, Kathy, and the baby when Kathy and Benson are in an accident that makes Kathy go into labor.
Olivia is unharmed and smashes her way out after calling NYPD Dispatch for FDNY assistance, and as FDNY Engine 99, Truck 64, Battalion 30, and FDNY EMS arrive, along with NYPD backup, Kathy wakes up, but things go From Bad to Worse when she says her water broke. Guided by the FDNY Paramedics, Olivia helps get Kathy fluids. Meanwhile, Elliot is told by Fin of what happened and rushed back the Sheriff's Office to catch the NYPD Air Unit back to Manhattan. FDNY soon get the roof off with the Jaws of Life, get Kathy out as her contractions get worse, and Captain Cragen arrives with additional backup, along with Elliot on the phone to talk to Kathy. Once they get her out, they load her into the ambulance, Cragen tells Olivia that NYPD are securing all intersections on the way to the hospital, and the ambulance roars to Mercy Hospital as Olivia and the FDNY Paramedic with her deliver Elliot and Kathy's new son. While Kathy is overjoyed to see her new boy, she soon passes out, as the paramedic sees her vitals are crashing. He tells the driver to call Mercy and prep the Trauma Room as he struggles to save Kathy's life, but as Olivia is given the son to hold onto and the paramedic works futilely to save Kathy's life as the monitor reads extreme tachycardia, Kathy's heartbeat flatlines.
When Elliot arrives at Mercy, Olivia tries to stop him from going into the room, but when he gets past and goes to check, Kathy is there, alive, recovering, with his new son in her arms. After Elliot is relieved to see both his wife and new boy are alright, he rejoins Olivia to head back on patrol, but when Olivia asks for the boy's name, Elliot reveals that Kathy wanted to name him "Elliot" as well.
This episode provides examples of:
- Asshole Victim: Arguably, Leah Keegan. Regardless of whatever issues she had with her husband Jake, she was still planning to take Tommy (who Jake has raised as his son since he was born) away from him to be with her lover, while also greedily bleeding him for pay child support and alimony. She does this without any apparent concern for Tommy's well-being at being separated from his father and laughs (off-screen) when Jake begs her not to take his son from him—driving him over the edge into killing her.
- Cast the Expert: The firefighters and paramedics extricating Kathy from the car were real-life FDNY.
- Clean, Pretty Childbirth: Kathy goes into labor while in the ambulance with the help of Olivia and a male Paramedic. The baby comes out mostly clean with just a few splotches of blood and placenta.
- Disc-One Final Boss: Jodi Simmons' murderer, Raphael Gardner, who is caught and arrested fairly early in the episode.
- Drunk Driver: The driver who caused Olivia and Kathy's car accident was drunk, as a cop on the scene tells Olivia that his car "reeks of booze" and a brief glimpse showed him disoriented.
- Halfway Plot Switch: The episode's plot shifted twice. It went from Jodi's murder to Tommy Keegan's paternity fraud and subsequent murder of Leah and Matt by Jake, and finally Kathy's Maternity Crisis.
- The Immodest Orgasm: Leah is really enjoying Matt's company when the detectives find them.
- Interrupted Intimacy: Leah and her boyfriend are in the throes of passion when the detectives burst in on them. Because they believe Leah is a kidnapping victim, they initially assume he's raping her.
- Maternity Crisis: More than two-thirds of the way through the episode, the case is solved, then suddenly Olivia and the very pregnant Kathy Stabler get into a car crash after a normal visit to the OB. Then Kathy starts going into labor as she's pinned by the crushed car..
- Modesty Bedsheet: Leah Keegan and Matt Kramer after the aforementioned Interrupted Intimacy.
- Ms. Fanservice: Leah Keegan gets a loud sex scene.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Elliot when he inadvertently reveals that Tommy is not Jake's son near Jake while ironically telling Olivia they shouldn't tell him that.
- Not Good with Rejection: Raphael Gardner isn't this in the slightest after his online girlfriend Jodi Simmons turned him down because of his age.
- Right Behind Me: After finding out that Tommy is not Jake's son, Olivia and Elliot were discussing whether they should tell Jake... only to realize that Jake overheard them when they got close to him.
- Surprise Car Crash: Happens to Olivia and Kathy; Olivia gets out relatively unscathed but Kathy, heavily pregnant, is trapped in the wreck, and to make matters worse, the stress of the accident sends her into labor while she's still pinned and unable to move. They both make it, but it's a close call, as Kathy's heartbeat goes into extreme tachycardia and flatlines while in the ambulance, but the paramedic and the Mercy Hospital staff save her.
- Sympathetic Murderer: Jake, who had just found out that his wife has been cheating on him for years with another man and his son isn't his biologically, leaving open the possibility that she could not only leave him but take the child who is for all intents and purposes his son away from him as well, as his parental rights would be more dubious due to the paternity issue.
