Risk (Season 4, Episode 12)
Premise: A baby’s fatal overdose exposes cocaine smuggled in infant-formula cans, and Stabler goes undercover against a decorated detective who protects the ring.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 4, Episode 12
- Starring
- Det. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), Det. John Munch (Richard Belzer), Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Capt. Donald Cragen (Dann Florek), ADA Alexandra Cabot (Stephanie March)
- Guest stars
- Robert John Burke as Sgt. Ed Tucker, Matt Mulhern as Brad Kendall, Joseph Murphy as Keith Gerard, Bryan Callen as Derek Pfeiffer, Erica Tazel as Lynn Hauser
- Director
- Juan J. Campanella
- Writers
- Robert F. Campbell & Jonathan Greene
Summary
“Risk” begins as Lynn Hauser seeks help at a basketball game: her 10-week-old son, Jawan, is not breathing. Doctors find cocaine in his system, mixed into his formula, and Lynn admits she borrowed a can of Baby Growth from her employers, Derek and Laura Pfeiffer, parents of four-month-old Tommy. One of the Pfeiffers’ cans holds liquid cocaine of about 90 percent purity, prompting a federal recall, and the bad cans trace to the brand’s plant in Juárez, Mexico. Derek, a stockbroker at Chandler Hinton, recently erased $300,000 in debt and has just returned from Mexico City. Jawan dies.
While Stabler questions Derek at his office, IAB Sgt. Ed Tucker takes him away, claiming Cragen approved it. Derek is then found strangled with a computer cable in a bathroom at his firm. His boss, Keith Gerard, says Derek had been demoted, and Laura reports that a man with a badge came asking for the formula. Tucker admits IAB is hunting a corrupt officer who exposed two Narcotics undercover attempts on the ring, and he agrees to support an SVU operation. Posing as a shipping executive, Stabler tries to sell cocaine at a Wall Street bar Derek frequented and is beaten and blackmailed by decorated Narcotics Det. Brad Kendall and his sidekick, Frank Barry.
Kendall has Stabler arrange a shipment of ten boxes of terracotta tiles made of cocaine base from Mexico City. With DEA help the load reaches a cover house in Forest Hills, where Benson poses as Stabler’s wife. When Kendall realizes it is a sting he draws on them and runs, and Stabler, chasing him alone, fires twice when Kendall turns his gun on him. Kendall dies, and Stabler is put on modified assignment. DNA on the cable ties Kendall to Derek’s murder, Customs records show Laura made five trips to Mexico with the baby, and Gerard reveals the Pfeiffers had no children. Laura is then found shot at her sister’s Staten Island home, with Tommy, actually her nephew, crying nearby and a one-way ticket to Rio.
Barry’s body washes up at Jones Beach, and in Queens a gardener and his wife are shot dead while their baby survives. An invoice shows the gardener worked for Gerard, who is running the operation. The detectives find him in his firm’s daycare center holding a mother and child at gunpoint; Cragen talks him into letting them go, and he is taken into custody.
Spoiler, the ending: The DA’s office declines to take the shooting to a grand jury and IAB clears Stabler within two days. The squad finds ten more mothers whom Gerard paid $20,000 each to travel with their babies. Stabler tells Benson his sessions with the department psychologist have not helped much.
Why it stands out
- Robert John Burke plays IAB Sgt. Ed Tucker, a recurring adversary for the squad who appears in 30 episodes between 2002 and 2020.
- Bryan Callen, one of the original cast members of MADtv, plays Derek Pfeiffer.