Manic (Season 5, Episode 2)
Premise: A teenage survivor of a school shooting turns out to be the shooter, and his defense puts an antidepressant and its maker on trial.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 5, Episode 2
- 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), DA Arthur Branch (Fred Dalton Thompson)
- Guest stars
- Rory Culkin as Joe Blaine, Mare Winningham as Sandra Blaine, John Cullum as Defense Attorney Barry Moredock, Bill Cwikowski as George Waddell, Amy Hargreaves as Jane Wellesley
- Director
- Guy Norman Bee
- Writers
- Patrick Harbinson
Summary
“Manic” opens on a Saturday with two school basketball stars, Luke Rhodes and Tyrell Dent, shot dead in their gym, stripped to their shoes and socks. Classmate Joe Blaine, 13, is pulled from a locked boiler room with a bullet wound grazing his head, apparently the gunman’s hostage. A pistol taken from student Derek Fowler is missing from the security chief’s lockbox, and Joe’s sketch points to janitor George Waddell, whom the dead boys had taunted. But Waddell, who has emphysema, could never have squeezed out the boiler-room window, and the bullet that hit Joe was fired straight upward.
The detectives conclude Joe shot the boys, turned the gun on himself and hid it, and he escapes through his bedroom window before they reach him. In his room is a drawing dated July 4 of a gunman standing over two bodies in a gym. Waddell admits he gave Joe the gun to frighten bullies. Joe’s mother, Sandra, sets up a false trail toward a Connecticut train, and the squad finds him hidden at her workplace, where he breaks down, raving about a figure called Zoltar. After rest, Joe describes the voices, the bullying and the shooting. Cabot charges him as an adult, but defense lawyer Barry Moredock, alerted by Huang, argues that the antidepressant Aptril set off a manic episode, and blood tests show Joe took a pill about a day before.
No doctor prescribed it; Dr. Engles had tried talk therapy until the family’s HMO refused to pay. At trial Cabot undercuts Moredock’s expert, Dr. Petrus, whose figures rest on one small trial, and confronts Joe with his July drawing. Pressed on where the pills came from, Sandra admits she gave them to him. They arrived unrequested by mail with a letter from her former doctor, Carl Medwin, on the letterhead of maker Tauscher Leto; Medwin signed about two dozen such letters and handed over patient lists in return for free drugs for his clinic. Sales rep Jane Wellesley will not talk.
Spoiler, the ending: Huang urges a plea, and Joe pleads guilty to second-degree manslaughter in return for treatment in a psychiatric institution. District Attorney Arthur Branch scolds Cabot for the deal and tells her to find who is responsible. After Sandra confronts Wellesley, Cabot and the detectives interrupt a meeting led by chief executive Dean Reynolds, confront him with memos bearing his signature that approved the mailing scheme, and arrest him for reckless endangerment and criminal diversion of prescription drugs.
Why it stands out
- Mare Winningham, who plays Sandra Blaine, was one of two Season 5 guest stars nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series.
- John Cullum returns as defense attorney Barry Moredock, a role he first played in Season 4’s “Appearances.”
- Rory Culkin plays Joe Blaine.