Written By Dawn De Noon
Directed By Arthur W. Forney
A baby boy is found in the trash and evidence at the scene leads detectives to a well-to-do college student whose lawyer father might have his own motivations beyond family loyalty to defend his daughter.
This episode contains examples of:
- Amoral Attorney: Ella's father has a license to practice law. He's also her baby's father and uses it to see her when she is in prison.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Ella pretends to be innocent all the way through but in reality, she's a raging narcissist who thinks nothing of killing her babies.
- Child by Rape: Deconstructed. Ella describes her babies as these. She ultimately is proven to be lying, as she's having a consensual relationship with her father. It's an argument whether this qualifies as rape too.
- Confess to a Lesser Crime: When she collapses in the hospital, Ella admits to being pregnant by rape and claims not to have unknowingly abandoned the baby. She does know, and she's done this before, committing premeditated murder.
- Corrupt Politician: Ella's father, hoo boy. He's an attorney who uses what power he has to support his daughter during her trial and manages to get her on an insanity plea. He also plans to use his power to gain custody of the baby even after receiving an order keeping him from retaining custody.
- Evil Redhead: Ella has very distinct long red hair, and she dumped two babies, successfully killing one, and being close to killing another.
- Expy: Manhattan Institute of Technology for Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
- False Rape Accusation: Ella makes two of these, making it a very heavy episode even by SVU standards, preying on Olivia's goodwill by insisting to have been raped and she's pulled this trick in the past. In a weird way, she might be telling the truth even though she believes the relationship with her father to be consensual.
- Freudian Excuse: Ella thinks she has one because of her emotionally abusive mother. Whether or not you agree is up to you. In a more straightforward example, Olivia uses her own (being a Child by Rape) on Ella.
- Good Cop/Bad Cop: Elliot is the bad cop, Olivia is the good. Craven throws out Elliot, though, which leaves Olivia alone, although it also backfires on her until Ella admits to her first baby's murder, though it's ultimately all for naught.
- Insanity Defence: Ella pulls one with her lawyer claiming she's suffering from postpartum psychosis and that's the reason why she tried to dispose of her baby. She unfortunately succeeds and the SVU team wonders how quickly she will "recover" and return to her father.
- Ivy League for Everyone: Ella's college is obviously meant to be MIT, but because of the New York setting, it's called the Manhattan Institute of Technology.
- Karma Houdini: Ella is an extreme example. She gets a light sentence for the abandonment on an insanity plea. Even after she accidentally confesses the premeditated murder of her first baby to Olivia, it's implied that she won't suffer serious consequences because she's already had one jury deem her insane and it's on the record. Downplayed, because her reputation is trashed; the entire world knows that she murdered her baby and that she was in an incestuous relationship with her father.
- Lack of Empathy: Ella does not care about her son whom she willingly abandoned. When Olivia gets her to confess that she planned to get rid of him by abandoning him, she lets it slip that she also killed her first baby the same way. Once she makes a full confession, it's clear she was relieved she didn't have to hear them crying and them existing anymore.
- Love Martyr: Ella claims to be one, and her father might be one, too, if you believe he didn't manipulate Ella into their sexual relationship, but that's ambiguous.
- Manipulative Bitch: Ella is able to manipulate Olivia, she manipulated the cops that investigated her first baby's death, and she eventually manipulates an entire courtroom.
- Motive Rant: Ella gets one in prison when she explains why she killed her babies immediately after birth.
- Papa Wolf: Elliot goes ballistic on Ella during the interrogation, demanding to know why she chose to give birth to her son and abandon him instead of having an abortion early on or dropping him off at a hospital or firehouse to be adopted. Being a father himself, his team understands why he was so furious with Ella.
- Parental Abandonment: The episode opens with the team discovering an abandoned baby in a box covered by a trash bag. Olivia finds out at the end that not only did the baby's mother deliberately abandon him, but also his dead sibling before him.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Everett got Ella out of even having to face questioning for her first baby's murder.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: And then he puts his house up as collateral to pay Ella's bail.
- There Should Be a Law:
- Olivia's incredulous reaction to learning that Ella and her father sleeping together isn't a crime.Olivia: Adult incest isn't a crime?
Casey: Not a sex crime. Under New York penal code, it's listed right next to adultery as an offense affecting the marital relationship.
Olivia: That's insane.
Casey: It's an "E" felony; he'd get... probation. - In fact, since Ella and her father live in New Jersey, which has no laws whatsoever on the books against incest between consenting adults (though whether Ella is in fact consenting to the relationship is a point of debate), Everett would be facing no penalties whatsoever for his actions, unless SVU can prove incestuous acts were taking place within their jurisdiction.
- Olivia's incredulous reaction to learning that Ella and her father sleeping together isn't a crime.
- Three-Month-Old Newborn: Ella's baby is a rather big newborn.
- Villainous Incest: Ella and her father. Olivia thinks he's more villainous. Casey isn't so sure.
- You Just Told Me: After the hospital refuses to tell Olivia whether Ella gave birth, she goes straight in and pretends that they told her everything - at which point Ella immediately tells Olivia everything she needs to know and implicates herself.
