Written By Tara Butters and Michele Fazekas
Directed By Constantine Makris
16-year-old Emily Sullivan's body is found in the trunk of her car, and now Benson and Stabler are investigating. It initially seems that the victim could have been killed by Agnes Linsky (Lindsay Hollister), a girl she had bullied. Agnes failed to get a restraining order against Emily and is near-suicidal from the bullying, giving her a motive. But DNA evidence suggests Emily was killed by her friends Brittany O'Malley (Kelli Garner), Andrea Kent (Arielle Kebbel), and Paige Summerby (Kimberly Mc Connell); Brittany was angry at what she saw as Emily "stealing" her boyfriend. The girls tied up Emily in the car, and then Brittany tortured her to death.
In exchange for a plea deal, Brittany agrees to testify against the other girls. Andrea and Paige try an Insanity Defense that seems to be working until Novak realizes Andrea is wearing a ring that was taken from Emily's body, which seems to disprove her assertions about being horrified and in shock over the murder. She and Paige turn on each other in open court, and both are convicted. But Benson and Stabler are soon called back to the same high school, where Agnes has killed another classmate who had threatened her. Agnes tearfully says that she couldn't see a way out - even with Emily dead and the other girls in jail, the bullying just wouldn't stop.
Tropes:
- Adults Are Useless: You don't say. For the most part, all of the adults connected to Tanner Day Academy do nothing to curtail or stop the bullying Agnes receive: the principal indirectly blames her for her own bullying due to not being popular, the restraining order taken against Emily did nothing, and the parents of the mean girls refused to see anything wrong with their daughters' behavior.
- Alpha Bitch: Brittany
- Beta Bitch: Paige and Andrea. Emily was either this or a secondary Alpha Bitch (it's hard to figure out the dynamic after the fact, but she was the one Brittany felt the most threatened by).
- Asshole Victim: Mr. Linsky turns out to have nothing to do with her death, but Emily Sullivan was a bully who tormented and spread lies about his daughter, Agnes, in school for no reason other than her own enjoyment. He's glad that Emily is dead.Mr. Linsky: We've been trying to get a restraining order against that girl for over a year... and nobody cared. Now, someone kills her, and you're acting like it's some kind of tragedy? She made my daughter's life miserable. And God help me, I'm not sorry she's dead!
- Ax-Crazy: Brittany is the most notable one, but Andrea and Paige too.
- Big Brother Instinct: Troy Linsky, who hates the girls who bully his sister and at one point assaults one of them. (May or may not be an inversion; it's never stated which of the siblings is older.)
- Catfishing: Paige, Andrea, Emily, and Brittany catfished Agnes
on an AIM chatroom by pretending to be a boy she liked to humiliate her. - Chekhov's Gunman: Emily's ex-boyfriend, Lukas, is questioned relatively early in the episode, but his alibi checks out. His name eventually comes up again, and it turns out that not only was he was actually Brittany's boyfriend, he was part of Brittany's motivation to murder Emily.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Brittany and her friends abducted, tortured, and ultimately murdered Emily for "cheating" with Brittany's boyfriend...when the reason Emily did it was because Brittany asked her boyfriend to hit on Emily as a "friendship test".
- Downer Ending: The three popular girls responsible for the murder of another teenager are convicted, but the outcast overweight girl they had been trying to pin the murder on is bullied to the point where she commits a shooting at school immediately after the verdict is decided - because having the real murderers arrested didn't make a difference to the students that worshiped the popular girls and students continued to bully her that badly. In other words, the three popular blonde students were able to corrupt the student body that badly that it ended up inadvertently leading to another murder.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: All of the mean girls have loving (albeit clueless) parents; Emily's own father is devastated to learn of her death.
- Everyone Has Standards: Even Brittany's lawyer comments that she's "off her nut".
- Former Friend of Alpha Bitch: Agnes and Emily were friends as little kids, but Emily got in with the popular crowd and started picking on Agnes.
- Downplayed with another girl, Terri. She and Emily didn't become enemies, but they weren't especially close either since Emily started hanging with the popular crowd, when they had once been practically inseparable.
- Friendship Moment: Elliot and Olivia are visibly impressed by how quickly the jury handed out guilty verdicts, and compliment Casey on it.Elliot: That's very impressive, counselor.Olivia: Remind me to give you the names of all the girls I hated in high school.
- Girl Posse: Emily, Paige, and Andrea were Brittany's.
- High School Is Hell: People will bully you nonstop, teachers and authorities either won't stop it, will join in, or will try to help and fail, and the only way out is to kill someone. Olivia and Casey talk about how much they hated their time in high school.
- Idiot Ball:
- The defendants' lawyers allow them to be questioned so they can incriminate themselves.
- Andrea wears her victim's ring to court while on the witness stand.
- I Want My Mommy!: At the murder trial, Brittany on the stand honestly replies that she found Emily begging for her life and crying out for her mother as she was being killed to be funny.
- Kids Are Cruel: Basically the driving force behind the plot.
- Murder the Hypotenuse: What Brittany thought she was doing.
- Papa Wolf: Agnes's father is this, trying desperately for over a year to get a restraining order against Emily Sullivan. And, like his daughter, he's happy Emily is dead.
- Ripped from the Headlines: Loosely based on the murder of Shanda Sharer.
- Robbing the Dead: Paige and Andrea play the role of a Guilt-Ridden Accomplice and claim that they had no choice but to follow Brittany. This might have worked...until Casey points out that Andrea (on the stand no less) is wearing Emily's ring.
- Spotting the Thread: When Andrea mentions that she lured Emily out of the house by claiming they were going out to celebrate Andrea's birthday, Casey realizes Andrea's class ring doesn't match her birth month — but it does match Emily's.
- Starving Artist: Lukas is an out-of-work actor reduced to dressing as a bunch of grapes for a children's TV show.
- Sudden Downer Ending: Emily Sullivan is dead (and no longer a threat to Agnes), and her killers are in prison, so it's ultimately a good ending for Agnes, right? No. After yet another incident in which she was bullied by another student, she snapped and shot the bully to death.
- Sympathetic Murderer: Not for the main plot, but Agnes shooting another girl who picked on her at the end, especially because what pushed her over the edge seems to be that she finally hoped things might get better, only to learn the hard way that even removing the ringleaders of the bullying hasn't taken the target off her back.
- Teens Are Monsters: Certainly Emily, Brittany, Andrea, and Paige, and judging by the Bittersweet Ending, they weren't the only ones. Casey says as much regarding the three involved in Emily's death.Casey: They're monsters. They're mean, vicious little girls who think that they can do whatever they want, and up until now they've gotten away with it. But not anymore.
- Villainous Breakdown: Brittany, the ringleader, has one when she hears that her friends are selling her out in the interrogation room, pounding on the door and screaming at them to say it to her face despite Cragen's attempts to restrain her.
- With Friends Like These...: Emily - herself a horrible former friend of Agnes's - was murdered by three psychopathic teenage girls and her old best friends for "stealing" Brittany's boyfriend.
- Discussed by Huang, who notes that girls tend to attack their own friends.
Olivia: Well, that's definitely been my experience. The people that have made me feel the worst were always my best friends.
