Written By Lisa Marie Petersen and Dawn De Noon
Directed By Rick Wallace
A gangster is pushed from a rooftop for what appears to be revenge for a sexual assault. However, when the assault victim also turns up dead, the detectives realize the case is far more complicated than initially thought. They are then led to a set of seemingly fraternal twins who may have more in common than just DNA, and their sex therapist who seems more interested in what the twins mean for his research than their own wellbeing.
Tropes
- Abusive Parents: The Stantons don't explain the truth of what happened to Lucas and instead choose to raise him as a girl as well as send the twins to a very depraved therapist who has them simulate sex acts to give Lindsey the "correct" sex role attitudes.
- Artistic License – Biology:
- The medical examiner shows a DNA sample to have XY chromosomes. However, as anyone who has actually seen a karyotype before will know, Y chromosomes are very small, in sharp contrast to the very large X-shaped X chromosome. This "Y chromosome" looks like a Y: It is really an X chromosome with one leg missing. This was possibly done because the crew didn't think most viewers would be able to identify a real Y chromosome.
- At the end of the episode Casey suggests the estrogen treatments Lindsay has been taking should enable the detectives to distinguish between her DNA and Logan's.note
- Card-Carrying Villain:
- The gang members wear comically huge, expensive bling denoting their gang membership. One of them insists she's not a gang member.
- Dr. Blair, when asked if he denies any of Logan's molestation allegations, brags he's writing a book about them.
- Foreshadowing: Lindsay is the one who clocks Stabler, signalling she is the violent one.
- Groin Attack:
- The episode-opening victim is found with "deep bite marks on his penis".
- As Stabler says when Lindsay's early childhood trauma is revealed, "they took off too much."
- Half-Identical Twins: Up until the climax, Logan and Lindsey were thought to be as such but then it turns out Lindsay was actually a boy named Lucas who was castrated in a botched circumcision which makes them actual identical twins.
- Karma Houdini: The doctors who botched Lucas's circumcision get away without being sued for medical malpractice and are responsible for giving him sexual reassignment surgery to have him be raised as a girl.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Dr. Blair, on the other hand, is extrajudicially punished for his crimes.
- Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: The therapist who has the twins simulate sex acts and the doctors who botched Lucas's circumcision are responsible for the twins' relationship toward each other taking such a depraved turn.
- The Perfect Crime: The twins' revenge against Dr. Blair involved them checking into a double feature at a theater wearing identical clothing, the usher not knowing which one got up and left (because it was too dark), and committing the murder after Lindsay had flushed the estrogen out of her system, so their DNA would be identical. All this makes it impossible to determine which one killed Dr. Blair unless one of them sells the other out, and the detectives know that won't happen, so the twins are released. Benson even invokes this trope word-for-word.
- Police Brutality: When Katie's killer brags that she was awake and begging for her life at the time she was killed, Stabler "accidentally" bangs his head into a pole.
- Properly Paranoid: Munch brags about how right he is to be paranoid about people stealing his mail from the trash when the gang members are found to be engaged in an identity theft scheme.
- Ripped from the Headlines: Based on David Reimer, who committed suicide the year before this aired.
- To Be Lawful or Good: Hendricks violates doctor-patient confidentiality to protect Linsday from being falsely accused and tells Linsday she was born male, right after she's threatened with losing her license for doing so.
- Twin Banter: Lindsay and Logan communicate in their own secret twin language. Stabler, a father of twins himself, recognizes what they're doing (his did the same thing), and tells them to knock it off.
- Twincest: Logan and Lindsey were forced to simulate sex acts by their therapist in order to train Lindsay to have the "correct" sex role attitudes.
- Unsettling Gender-Reveal: When it's revealed that Lindsey isn't a girl but is actually a boy named Lucas due to a botched circumcision.
- Wrong Genetic Sex: The episode starts with a rapist getting killed by his victim, and the DNA evidence leads the detectives to teenage boy Logan Stanton, who just happens to have an ironclad alibi. It turns out his twin "sister" Lindsey is actually his twin brother Lucas; it seems he lost his penis when they were circumcised as babies, and the doctors who botched the operation covered their tracks by completing the job and talking his parents into raising him as a girl.
- You Have to Believe Me!: Lindsay tells the detectives she was the one on the roof, but abruptly stops explaining and says only that she has to talk to Logan.
