This episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent begins with a young woman on the phone with her parents, promising to pay back some money. She returns to the US from Guatemala and we later cut to A scene of her trying to hide from an assailant. She passes out and her blouse is ripped open.
Detectives Logan and Barek investigate when the young woman’s body is found mutilated and disemboweled. They identify her as Kerri Leminski from Cleveland Ohio. She had opiates in her system, hinting that she may have been a drug mule. After a reevaluation about a genetically inherited disease rules the victim out as a drug mule, they find out that she liked to help downtrodden people. The detectives find out that one of the people she helped, Ramon Sanchez was found dead.
Among Kerri’s personal effects is a charity brochure touting a “Martin” from Guatemala who supposedly received a cleft palate surgery, who looks a lot like Ramon. Detectives find out that Kerri had volunteered for this charity, the Frederick Foundation before taking her trip to Guatemala. Upon talking to Dr. Ansel who runs the foundation, detectives find a post op sketch of Ramon. An office assistant states that the sketch was made by Antonio, a nurse’s aid. Logan and Barek notice that not only is Antonio living beyond his means, he is also donating money to a local clinic. After Logan notices that the background wall on a Frederick Foundation brochure of a little girl looks a lot like a wall in the clinic, they track down the mother of the girl who had surgery. She reveals that she had the surgery in NYC but was told to spread word that the operation was done in Guatemala.
Logan and Barek travel to Guatemala and find out that Dr. Christine Ansel (played by Samantha Mathis) has been paying a local clinic to state that she performed multiple surgeries there, but in actuality never performed even a single procedure. Detectives dig deeper into the foundation and find out that it is named after Fred Ansel, Christine’s brother who died young. Her parents adore Fred, but seem dismissive of Christine as ”just a plastic surgeon”. Detectives find out that Christine botched her very first surgery due to suffering from double vision.
Detectives interrogate Antonio the nurse’s aid, who reveals that he is untrained in actual surgery, but has a steady hand. Dr. Ansel found him performing back alley surgeries in Costa Rica and blackmailed him into performing surgeries under her supervision. He also reveals that on the day Kerri died, she was complaining of cramps and a fever, to which Dr. Ansel had instructed him to make one incision.
Logan and Barek finally confront Dr. Ansel in front of her parents. While she confesses, her parents compare her to her dead brother. She flings a wine glass at her dead brother’s portrait before being lead away. Logan and Barek look on as the elder Angels immediately take to cleaning the portrait instead of assisting Christine in any way.
This episode contains examples of the following tropes
- Back-Alley Doctor: Antonio was conducting surgeries without training or licensure in Costa Rica. He somehow made it to Texas where he was working as a nurse’s assistant when Christine Ansel found him. She noticed that Antonio has the steady hands required of a surgeon and hires him ostensibly as a nurse’s aide. In actuality she has him perform facial reconstruction surgeries under her direction and supervision.
- Bilingual Backfire: When some Hispanic girls Logan and Barek interview, start telling what they saw, their mother tries to warn them in Spanish not to “have big eyes and a big mouth”. Barek, who can speak and understand Spanish, retorts in Spanish to the girls’ mother that being uncooperative would be really bad.
- Blind Mistake: Christine Ansel botched a simple nip / tuck surgery due to suffering double vision. Her malpractice insurance premiums doubled as a result and she decided to have Antonio surreptitiously conduct surgeries in her name.
- Flush the Evidence: A group of Guatemalans living in a flight attendant’s house try this when Logan and Barek go there to talk to the flight attendant about Kerri. Sensing that something suspicious is happening, Logan bursts in - and finds “balloons” of cocaine still floating in the toilet bowl. He quips that “balloons don’t flush so easily”.
- Replacement Goldfish: Leon and Ana blatantly had Christine for the sole purpose of replacing their son, to the point of forcing his ambitions onto her rather than ever giving her a chance to figure out what she might like to do with her life.
- She Knows Too Much: Kerri was murdered by Christine because she found out that Christine never performed even a single surgery in Guatemala.
- Vicariously Ambitious: Leon wanted to be a doctor, but he couldn’t afford medical school and had to settle for business school instead. He transferred his ambition onto his son Fred, who as a child, expressed a similar desire to be a doctor. When Fred died young, Leon placed Fred on a pedestal, claiming that had he survived, Fred would have been a great doctor. This ended up pushing Christine into a medical career just so her dad would approve, and continuing to fake a surgical career even after an eye defect made it impossible for her to perform surgery.
- The Unfavorite: It is clear that Leo and Ana Ansel hold their dead son Frederick up to a standard that their daughter Christine can never meet. They are dismissive of Christine’s career as a plastic surgeon, stating that “Fred would have been a real healer”, and the only thing she does that they approve of is the foundation work (because in their eyes, that's the closest she comes to emulating Fred). At the end, when Christine flings red wine at a portrait of Fred before getting arrested, Leo and Ana’s first instinct is to clean the portrait.
