Written By Dawn De Noon and Lisa Marie Petersen
Directed By Daniel Sackheim
While out jogging, a couple discover a baby in a stroller. At first glance, he appears to be abandoned, but a note left in the stroller tells them the mother has been abducted, and the SVU squad races against the clock to solve the puzzles and uncover the clues scattered throughout the city by a taunting copycat serial killer (Doug Hutchison). With the help of his mother (Anne Meara), the squad is able to save a survivor of the original crimes (Elizabeth Franz).
Tropes
- Abusive Parents: Humphrey was afraid of the dark, so his mother used to leave him home alone and locked in a closet while she went out to the movie theater.
- The Chessmaster: Humphrey uses a few people to his own ends, including a whacked-out street bum.
- Continuity Nod: Casey comments that she once again interrupted Judge Terhune's poker games to get a warrant.
- Criminal Mind Games: Humphrey deliberately sets up the episode as a series of challenges.
- Deadpan Snarker: Humphrey was pretty good at this:Humphrey: She got away from him, but not me.
Elliot: Well, she's a sixty-five year old woman.
Humphrey: Not looking good for sixty-six. note - Evil Genius: Humphrey has quite the knack for puzzles, and is definitely one of the smarter villains SVU has ever faced.
- Faux Affably Evil: Humphrey, to the surprise of no one.
- Finger in the Mail: Humphrey cuts off the ear of his first victim and sends it to SVU, warning them that they are running out of time before he kills her.
- Four Eyes, Zero Soul: Humphrey has thick, black-rimmed glasses. He's also a psychotic Serial Killer.
- Freudian Excuse: Humphrey. He even lampshades this when Huang comes in to interview him: "With you people it's always the mother." Played straight, of course, in that it is the mother. Humphrey's childhood loathing of his abusive mother completely consumed him in his adult life; it is implied that he sabotaged himself in journalism school (by plagiarizing his thesis) solely because she approved of him. Then when he emulates RDK he makes a point of targeting mothers of sons (whom he identifies with) as his victims, and is unable to rape them (and thus live up to the name of the man he is impersonating) because it would be like raping his mother. (This initially works in his favor because although the ME quickly notices the victims weren't raped, she chalks it up to the various sexual dysfunctions the original RDK might have picked up in the past quarter-century.) When the detectives finally notice his mommy issues, Cragen asks the obvious question: "Do we know if the mother is still alive?" She is.
- Glory Seeker: Humphrey doesn't care about money, he just wants the fame.
- I Have No Son!: Humphrey's mom states that he's always been a disappointment and a disgrace to his namesake: Humphrey Bogart.
- It's All About Me: When Ida is brought to the station, she does nothing but talk about how embarrassed she is by her son's predicament. She appears to have always been this way, neglecting her son when he was a child just so that she could go to the theater and watch her Humphrey Bogart movies in peace.
- Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: Stabler's frustration leads him to try this, but he's interrupted by the others before he can either get Humphrey to talk or choke him out.
- Misery Poker: This exchange between Casey and MunchCasey: I just set a world record getting these search warrants, not to mention risking my life to interrupt Judge Terhune's poker game ... again!Munch: Poor baby, I've been up for forty hours.
- Named After Somebody Famous: Humphrey, after Humphrey Bogart.
- Obviously Evil: One look at Humphrey is all you need to know that he's an absolute creep.
- Oh, Crap!: Humphrey, once his mother enters the interrogation room.
- Or Are You Just Happy to See Me??: Humphrey gives Elliot a variant during his interrogation:
Humphrey: Why detective, is that your phone vibrating or do you just find me terribly exciting?
- Properly Paranoid: Jeanette Henley has spent the last 25 years living in constant fear that RDK would come back for her, and (in a manner of speaking) he did. Ironically Jeanette is implied to be a Poor Judge of Character as she's the only person who interacts with Humphrey who does not find him creepy or off-putting, and fails to notice that Humphrey's comment that she reminds him of his mother is a very bad thing.
- Riddle for the Ages: The fate of the original RDK is never revealed, though the detectives speculate that he was probably apprehended for some other crime, which explains his disappearance.
- Ripped from the Headlines: The episode is a fictionalization of two famous Serial Killer cases.
- First is the return of the serial killer known as BTK (Bind, Torture, Kill), who had recently re-emerged after over a decade underground. At the time of filming and broadcast, it had not yet been determined that the original BTK had indeed returned or if it was just a copycat, and the episode decides to go with a copycat. (The real BTK actually had re-emerged and was apprehended just a few months after the episode originally aired.)
- Second is the copycat Zodiac Killer
who started hunting in New York over 20 years after the infamous Zodiac killings in California. Like the real Zodiac, the copycat taunted law enforcement with letters, and while the copycat was apprehended, the original Zodiac (like the episode's actual RDK) was never found.
- Shout-Out: Doug Hutchison plays a Smug Snake who gets dragged kicking and screaming in the closet by the protagonists. Sound familiar?
- Smug Snake: Humphrey oozes this.
- Sole Survivor: Jeanette Henley was the only survivor of the original RDK attacks.
- Villainous Breakdown: Once Ida Becker tells Stabler and Huang about his childhood, Humphrey drops all his smug pretenses and becomes a quivering and angry Psychopathic Manchild.Humphrey: Shut up! Please! Shut up! Don't you ever shut up?! DON'T YOU EVER SHUT UP?! I'll kill you, you BITCH! YOU BITCH!
- Villain of the Week: Humphrey Becker, an imitation of the BTK killer.
- When the Clock Strikes Twelve: Humphrey leaves a note telling the detectives the victim will be dead if they don't "find him by tomorrow." Munch wonders if "tomorrow" means "same time tomorrow or midnight tonight?" Cragen responds, "Let's assume worst case scenario." Midnight — which turns out to be right, unfortunately for the victim.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Humphrey is afraid of the dark and small spaces. Once the Detectives lock him a closet, he completely breaks down.
