Tragedy (Season 5, Episode 1)
Premise: A heavily pregnant artist disappears in what looks like a carjacking, and the detectives race to find her before a dangerous labor kills her and her baby.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 5, Episode 1
- 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)
- Guest stars
- Shirley Knight as Rose Granville, Kellie Martin as Melinda Granville, Gabriel Olds as Daniel Lester, Karen Goberman as Annika Bergeron, Marisa Ryan as Laura Bergeron
- Director
- David Platt
- Writers
- Amanda Green
Summary
“Tragedy” opens with a garbled 911 call from a cell phone in which a woman begs a man not to kill her as he orders her to drive. The squad first blames a carjack rapist it has hunted for a month, but the phone belongs to Annika Bergeron, a painter eight months pregnant and on bed rest. Her doctor explains that placenta previa means labor could kill her and the baby, and the blood in the Tahoe she borrowed from her sister, Laura, now sitting in the tow pound, gives her about 36 hours. A police dog follows her scent beside the FDR Drive to skid marks left by a second car, and the detectives decide the carjacking was staged.
Phone records show a pay-phone call minutes before Annika left home and an online search for directions to a hospital in Passaic, where Laura lives. Laura, deep in debt and living partly on Annika’s money, admits lying and names the father: Annika’s ex-boyfriend, carpenter Daniel Lester, now engaged to Melinda Granville, daughter of his boss, developer Rose Granville. Daniel, who was in Boston, says he never knew about the baby, but he has old assault arrests. Rose posts a $100,000 reward, and a caller who knows the father’s name insists that Daniel deliver the cash. At the handoff Daniel grapples with the man, Greg Jezic, a paroled enforcer, who is hit by a car and dies.
Jezic’s apartment is full of surveillance photos of Annika, and he received $10,000 by wire from a Cayman Islands account. His former Sing Sing cellmate, extortionist Sam Marlett, once worked in the Granville mailroom and had a recent visit from Daniel, but he will not talk. Cayman bank brochures turn up in Daniel’s desk, and after Stabler leans on him, Daniel confesses yet cannot say where Annika is. A bloody gas receipt from Jezic’s pocket, read under laser light, sends Stabler and Fin to empty beach cottages in the Rockaways, where they find Annika in labor. Stabler delivers her daughter, Celia. Annika says a woman paid her abductor and that Melinda had come to see her, then dies of blood loss.
Spoiler, the ending: Shown his newborn daughter, Daniel stops shielding Melinda and is released. Melinda admits she guessed the baby was Daniel’s a month earlier and told her mother, and that she has just learned the Cayman account belongs to Rose, not Daniel. Rose, who knew Marlett from the mailroom, says the baby would have ruined her daughter’s marriage. She is arrested for Annika’s kidnapping and murder, and Daniel walks away from both women.
Why it stands out
- The episode opened the fifth season on NBC on September 23, 2003.
- Shirley Knight plays Rose Granville; she had also guest-starred in the Season 3 premiere, “Repression,” as Dr. Wharton.
- Kellie Martin plays Melinda Granville, with Gabriel Olds as Daniel Lester.