A teenage boy dies as a result of "extreme fighting," a variation of Backyard Wrestling. The case eventually leads to a girl who isn't who she pretends to be.
Tropes
- Becoming the Mask: On some level Cassandra/Denise seems to genuinely believe she's sixteen.
- Combat Sadomasochist: Scott's doctor says he's this.
- Double-Meaning Title: The title refers to the "fake" fighting the boys are doing and Cassandra's secret.
- Double Standard Rape: Female on Male: Scott's slimy attorney accuses Stabler of this. He does have a point, as Novak is willing to cut Denise a deal for probation, which presumably would not be offered to a 28 year-old man who had sex with teenage girls.
- Garbage Wrestler: What the boys seem to be emulating, especially with the light tubes, thumbtacks, and barbed wire bat.
- Kayfabe: Referenced in-universe when Olivia notes that Professional Wrestling is supposed to be fake.
- Make It Look Like an Accident: Scott is jealous of his friend's relationship with Cassandra, so Scott intentionally slices his friend's femoral artery during simulated combat. He gets away with that murder, too.
- Older Than They Look: Cassandra/Denise
- Ripped from the Headlines: Based on the Treva Throneberry case. An episode of the original show also did this case.
- Too Dumb to Live: The boys engage in a variation of Garbage Wrestling where, without any discernable training, they bash each other with foreign objects until one is presumably incapacitated. Though it's mitigated somewhat by the fact that the boy who dies was intentionally killed by Scott.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: The detectives' first lead is a woman who believes an ex-con kidnapped her son years prior and kept him all this time. She even mistakenly identifies the victim, Riley Cuskey, as her now-teenage child. She and the man she's accusing disappear from the plot once we learn Riley's true name and cause of death, and we never find out what actually happened to her son.
- Womanchild: Cassandra/Denise is an adult woman who can't cope with being adult, so she pretends to be sixteen to stay in foster care.
