Recaps are Spoilers Off per policy. All spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned
Written By Chris Brancato
Directed By Peter Leto
Students at Westmore University witnessed a woman being raped live over campus internet, but only contact police after the broadcast is over. Further investigation leads to a wild goose chase culminating in Stabler confronting the alleged kidnapper/rapist alone. However, the alleged kidnapper has his own motives for what he did, and forces Stabler to help him find his missing kid brother.
Tropes:
- Activist-Fundamentalist Antics: Gregory Engels has tried for eight years to get his kidnapped brother back. The police and everyone else stopped caring many years ago, so now he resorted to kidnapping and raping Lizzie Harmon just to get the police's attention. Oh, and Lizzie is of course in on it, pulling off a little Romanticized Abuse show to the audience as her "rape" gets broadcasted on the web.
- Affectionate Nickname: Because three-year-old Jason couldn't pronounce Greg's name, he instead called him "Gig". He still calls him that when they reunite in the end.
- All According to Plan: The entire rape ruse was thought through more than a week ahead of time. Lizzie falsely told her mother that Greg had been kind of stalking her ever since they met, and he made numerous calls to her from different numbers in a place that had surveillance so that the police would identify him. This was all so that Greg could force the police to find his missing baby brother.
- Animal Motifs: Monkeys. At each crime scene, the suspect, Greg Engels, leaves behind a monkey themed "Hear no evil, See no evil, Speak no evil" sign. In his main hideout, he as "Monkey see, monkey do" spray painted on the walls. He also calls his accomplice "my little monkey". It's a reference to his little brother's last known outfit, which had a monkey, and foreshadows his motive that he wants his missing little brother found. He also mentions that it gives the police what he's felt for years, a feeling of being toyed with.
- Big Bad: Greg orchestrates the entire episode's events to try and force the police to find his missing little brother. Subverted since he was Good All Along, as the abduction and rape of Lizzie Harmon was entirely staged, with the "rapist" and Lizzie herself as willing participants to help.
- Bittersweet Ending: More sweet than bitter. Greg is arrested for faking a rape-and-kidnapping of Lizzie Harmon, but his brother is rescued, and the detectives allow them to see each other before Greg is taken away.
- Bystander Syndrome: Invoked by name. Multiple witnesses to Greg's brother's kidnapping didn't intervene because they thought someone else would. One witness even gives this as her explanation as to why she didn't do anything.
- Driven to Villainy: Lizzie Harmon is taken captive and raped with one of her kidnappers threatening to kill her when confronted unless his demands are followed. Turns out it was all a ruse (with his partner and the victim herself) to get the police to search for his younger brother, after being pushed aside so many times for other events, knowing that they would do so if the life of a young girl was at stake.
- Embarrassing Tattoo: A tattoo was supposed to mean "Try or Die" in Chinese, but what it actually meant was "Pie or Die."
- The Extremist Was Right: The villain of the episode is a young man whose little brother was kidnapped eight years ago, never being found because law enforcement gave up without much of a fight. He was absolutely convinced that they could easily have found him even with the trail being eight years cold if it weren't for the fact that the world simply didn't care enough about his brother, so he resorts to, with both the accomplice and "victim" in on it because they're his friends, kidnapping a young, pretty college girl and having his accomplice physically abuse and rape her on camera, then demanding the FBI find his brother before he lets her go. They find his brother in less than half a day.
- Foreshadowing: At one point, Elliot comments that whatever fear his baby brother felt upon being kidnapped is the same kind of fear that Lizzie's currently feeling, and Greg reacts with confusion before becoming hostile. It's because she's not actually suffering, because it's a ruse that she's a part of.
- I Did What I Had to Do: Change the pronoun to "we". Greg, Doug, and Lizzie all conspired to make it look like she, a pretty, white, blonde college girl, was being captured and raped by Doug, with Greg appearing as the mastermind. They did this to force the police to reopen the investigation into the disappearance of Greg's younger brother, which works, and at the end when the ruse is revealed, Lizzie outright says that they wouldn't have had to go through these antics had the police done their job eight years before.
- Knight Templar Big Brother: Greg would do anything to find his missing younger brother. This includes having a friend of his kidnap and rape an innocent girl to force the police to reopen the missing persons case. Or actually, to conspire with said friend and said girl to create a hostage scenario to do this. And it works!
- Missing Child: Lizzie Harmon's mother is understandably horrified by her daughter's disappearance and the rape videos that keep being broadcasted. Thankfully, she was never in any danger, but as the police point out, she still went through a hell of a stressful trauma.
- Greg's brother was abducted and is still missing years later.
- Missing White Woman Syndrome: The episode centers around a kidnapped white teenage girl. The culprit is a teenager named Greg who is skilled with computers and threatens that he will kill her if his demands are not met. He periodically sends them videos of her undergoing torture and being raped but it turns out the whole thing was staged and everyone was in on it. They were using this societal tendency to get the attention of the FBI so that they could ask their help in finding Greg's little brother who was kidnapped a few years ago. The girl was never in trouble or harmed and neither was anyone else.
- Outliving One's Offspring: The perpetrator of Jason's kidnapping lost her own son, around the same age as Jason, to cancer. She kidnapped Jason to replace him.
- Police Are Useless: The SVU once again disproves this as a universal, but it still applies nonetheless since the police gave up looking for Jason Engles after only a couple of weeks. Lizzie even openly accuses the police of this, claiming she, Doug, and Greg wouldn't have done this had the police did their job and found Jason eight years earlier.
- "Rashomon"-Style: The three descriptions of the car that abducted Jason Engles, according to Elliot, described it as, "Green, beige, and midnight blue; sedan, station wagon, and hatchback." It turns out one of the three (green station wagon) was correct.
- Romanticized Abuse: The episode runs on the principle that no one can resist watching a good rape. The episode starts with a video broadcast of Lizzie Harmon getting raped by a masked man popping up on the intranet of a university campus. It turns out that Greg, the guy who had the woman kidnapped and raped, was filming it to get attention. His baby brother was kidnapped, and the police gave up searching after a certain point. After this cold case is solved, the unsurprising reveal is made that they were simply playing make-believe rape as a little Activist-Fundamentalist Antics plot to get the police's attention.
- To be fair it was said they tried closing the window but couldn't. And everyone couldn't tell if it was real or not.
- Spotting the Thread: Going back over the witness statements, the detectives realize that one of the witnesses mentioned another person, someone who was never questioned or even identified as a potential witness, being present in the area just before the kidnapping.
- Surprisingly Happy Ending: Given that the episode begins very bleakly with a rape being broadcasted across a university campus, it ends on a surprisingly happy note, if bittersweet. The Villain of the Week turns out to be Good All Along Well-Intentioned Extremist who was trying to find his missing baby brother. He used a rape ruse to do so, meaning Lizzie was never being assaulted by Doug. To top it off, the police succeed in finding said brother virtually unharmed, and the two get to have a reunion at the end that even puts a smile on Stabler and Benson's faces.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Greg orchestrates the abduction of Lizzie Harmon at the hands of one of his friends to force the SVU detectives to reopen his baby brother Jason's missing persons case. Lizzie herself, along with the accomplice are this too, as it was a ruse all three of them orchestrated. Lizzie and the accomplice did it to help Greg find his brother. And it works, too.
- Wham Shot: The police break down the door where Lizzie is being held and find the rapist and Lizzie herself sitting on the couch like nothing's wrong.
- Worth It: Greg states that it's worth being arrested and punished for faking a kidnapping and rape because he accomplished what he set out to do: to get the police to revisit his kidnapped brother's cold case.
