Intoxicated (Season 6, Episode 19)
Premise: A mother who tried to have her teenage daughter’s adult boyfriend charged with rape is found beaten to death, and the young couple become the suspects.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 6, Episode 19
- 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 Casey Novak (Diane Neal), Dr. George Huang (BD Wong)
- Guest stars
- Danielle Panabaker as Carrie Lynn Eldridge, Cathy Moriarty as Denise Eldridge, Jon Foster as Justin Sharp, Glenne Headly as Attorney Simone Bryce
- Director
- Marita Grabiak
- Writers
- Jonathan Greene
Summary
“Intoxicated” opens when Denise Eldridge finds her 15-year-old daughter, Carrie, in bed with her 21-year-old boyfriend, Justin Sharp, and reports it as rape. Both deny having sex, and Carrie, who clashes constantly with her mother, asks Benson about emancipation. At the hospital Denise demands a rape kit, but children’s rights lawyer Simone Bryce, whom Benson has called, arrives and backs Carrie’s refusal. Cragen warns Benson against taking up Carrie as a cause, and Novak declines to bring a weak endangering charge against Justin. The next day Benson and Stabler find Denise beaten to death in her apartment, with Justin’s coat on Carrie’s bed.
A witness saw a young man with a bloody shirt push a screaming girl into a stolen car, and police stop Justin’s friend, who had swapped cars and phones with him. Bryce will not say whether Carrie has called her, so the detectives trace her incoming calls and the borrowed cell phone upstate to Justin’s family’s summer house, where both teenagers are taken into custody. Justin denies the killing, and Bryce admits she told Carrie that minors whose parents are dead and who have no guardian stand a better chance of emancipation. The school principal describes signs of neglect, and Justin’s manager finds web camera video of a bloodied Carrie begging Justin to come. Benson tells Carrie that Justin has talked; Carrie confesses, learns he said nothing and screams at Benson for lying.
Held at a juvenile center, Carrie is defended on the ground of premenstrual dysphoric disorder, and Huang finds her history consistent with it, citing an English case that ended in manslaughter. At trial Justin refuses to say whether Carrie confessed to him and is held in contempt. The medical examiner reports that Denise had advanced cirrhosis from drinking, which the defense plans to use. Searching the apartment again, Benson finds Carrie’s birth control pills, which show she killed her mother on day six of her period, during the week such patients are free of symptoms.
Spoiler, the ending: Carrie then tells Benson that her mother, drinking, threatened to get Justin fired, slapped her and kept hitting her until Carrie struck back with a lamp. Benson urges Novak to offer a plea and reveals that at 16 she fought off her own drunken mother, and that Bryce, then a law student, helped her. Carrie pleads guilty to manslaughter and is sentenced to five years in a juvenile facility, though 11 jurors would have convicted her of murder.
Why it stands out
- Benson reveals that at 16 she kicked her drunken mother across a room after being attacked with a broken bottle, and that Simone Bryce helped her afterward.
- Glenne Headly guest-stars as Simone Bryce, with Cathy Moriarty as Denise Eldridge and Danielle Panabaker as Carrie.