YMMV / Law & Order: Special Victims Unit S10 E12 "Hothouse"

• Award Snub: Many believed that Sarah Hyland should have been at least nominated for an Emmy for Guest Drama Actress.
• He Really Can Act: Sarah Hyland's terrific performance as Jennifer Banks is one of the most fondly remembered guest appearances in the show's history. What's even awesome is that her appearance here predates her Star-Making Role in Modern Family.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Sarah Hyland, best known as oldest daughter Haley Dunphy on Modern Family, plays Jennifer Banks, and turns in an absolutely stunning, jaw-dropping performance.
  • Aya Cash, best known as Gretchen Cutler and Stormfront, plays Elsa Lychkoff's Cool Big Sis.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Jennifer Banks. Benson and Stabler want to go relatively easy on her because she's only 14 and wasn't in her right mind when she committed her crime of murdering her roommate, Elsa, due to the drugs she was taking to improve her performance at her elite prep school. But the fact remains that she killed Elsa over a petty dispute, tried to cover up the murder by suggesting that Elsa's abusive father was responsible, and never once showed remorse for her actions, even flat-out stating that "I'm glad she's dead."
  • While in the interrogation room, Jennifer brings up that no matter how hard she studied, Elsa's grades were always better than hers. She even tried begging Elsa to deliberately fail one exam for her, so that Jennifer's grades would be the highest in the school for once. Presumably, this was intended to show that she was under incredible amounts of pressure to succeed, which she was. But Jennifer also knew that Elsa's father physically abused her for not living up to his expectations, as evidenced when she tried to pin Elsa's death on him. This makes Jennifer look even worse, as she was essentially saying that she didn't care if Elsa was being abused as long as she, Jennifer, got to be the school's star student. Not helping matters is that Jennifer is already much more privileged than her victim, coming from a wealthy and loving family. She had a lot less to lose than Elsa, but decided to take everything from her anyway, just because she couldn't stand to be in "second place".