Perfect (Season 4, Episode 24)
Premise: A teenage girl found dead in an alley leads the squad to a fertility doctor whose shelter for runaways is a cult using girls in a fake human-cloning scheme.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 4, Episode 24
- 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), Dr. George Huang (BD Wong), ME Dr. Melinda Warner (Tamara Tunie), Defense Attorney Trevor Langan (Peter Hermann)
- Guest stars
- Gale Harold as Dr. Garrett Lang, Barbara Barrie as Paula Haggerty, Kimberly J. Brown as Jessica Morse, Laura Harring as Joan Quentin, Robert John Burke as IAB Sgt. Ed Tucker
- Director
- Rick Wallace
- Writers
- Robert F. Campbell & Jonathan Greene
Summary
“Perfect” opens with a robbery chase and a police shootout, after which officers find a teenage girl dead in the alley with a bullet in her head. IAB Sgt. Ed Tucker asks SVU to take the case, fearing a cop shot her. The bullet that struck her came from the robber, but the medical examiner finds the girl had been dead for hours, that marks on her arms are cockroach bites from being held immobile, and that she died of a clot caused by days without water. She is Samantha Tassler, 14, missing from Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, for eight months. She was eight weeks pregnant, and her ovaries show hormone treatment like that used for in vitro fertilization.
Her handmade platinum infinity necklace leads to jeweler Ross St. Clair and his client, Dr. Garrett Lang, a former fertility researcher who runs an anti-aging clinic and gives the pendant to patients. Lang’s tax filings point to a Chelsea foundation for at-risk girls, where the detectives find Jessica Morse, a 14-year-old missing for a year, and four other girls from well-off families in other cities. Caretaker Paula Haggerty is arrested, but the girls insist they ran away, and Huang sees signs of a cult. Another foundation house is cleared out before police arrive, and Lang and Haggerty share a lawyer, Joan Quentin. Samantha’s parents mention a tutoring center, which links every girl to Knowledge Builders and its recruiter, Ms. Kinderski.
Jessica, also pregnant, says Lang told her she is carrying a clone of a couple’s dead child. The detectives storm Lang’s lab during a procedure and arrest him; his records show grieving parents paying for cloned babies, but Cabot cannot make fraud or sexual abuse charges stick. Then DNA puts Haggerty’s saliva on Samantha’s cheek and shows Lang fathered Samantha’s and Jessica’s babies. Told this, Jessica reveals that Samantha threatened to expose Lang and was taken away as punishment. At Lang’s trial, he testifies that only Haggerty ran the house.
Spoiler, the ending: With Trevor Langan standing in for her lawyer, Cabot urges Haggerty, whose own daughter ran away in 1975, to stop shielding Lang, and Jessica visits her. Haggerty testifies that Lang ordered Samantha kept in a bare basement room with no food or water, took water away from her on the sixth night and had her body left like a homeless girl’s. Lang erupts and is removed from court, predicting that someone will clone a human; no verdict is shown.
Why it stands out
- Barbara Barrie was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series for playing Paula Haggerty.
- The episode was Gale Harold’s prime-time broadcast network debut.
- Kimberly J. Brown plays Jessica Morse, the missing girl found at the cult’s shelter.