Debt (Season 6, Episode 2)
Premise: Two small children left alone in a Chinatown apartment lead the squad to a mother who owed smugglers for her daughter’s passage, and to the gang that collects such debts.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 6, Episode 2
- Starring
- Det. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Capt. Donald Cragen (Dann Florek), ADA Casey Novak (Diane Neal), Dr. George Huang (BD Wong)
- Guest stars
- Ming-Na Wen as Li Mei, Jack Yang as Ricky Yao, Aaron Yoo as Tommy, Loren Dean as Roger Baker, Jenny Wong as Ping Wu
- Director
- David Platt
- Writers
- Amanda Green
Summary
“Debt” begins in a Chinatown building, where a crying baby leads police to six-year-old Hannah Wu, who has been feeding her infant sister, Suzie, for about a week since their mother, Jiao Wu, went to meet a man. Jiao, an undocumented immigrant, was matched through a dating service with Howard Kendall, who turns out to be a Wall Street mail clerk rather than a trader. He admits shoving her when she called off their engagement and hands over a fake Hermès bag she made at work. The counterfeit trail runs through a Canal Street vendor to an Eldridge Street sweatshop and then to Jiao’s sister, Li Mei.
Li Mei admits that Jiao has a 15-year-old daughter, Ping, left behind in China, and that Jiao owed smugglers known as snakeheads for bringing the girl over. Over Cragen’s doubts, Stabler poses as Li Mei’s boyfriend while she asks around Chinatown. Immigration officials say Ping was caught at JFK with bad papers and freed on bail by a phony relative after lawyer Roger Baker filed an asylum claim. Li Mei is then beaten in an alley and told that Jiao’s throat was cut and the debt is now hers, and a photo left at the foster home shows Ping dressed for prostitution. Police follow Li Mei’s payment and arrest gang boss Ricky Yao and his teenage collector, Tommy.
Stabler persuades Tommy, the son of immigrants from Fujian, that Yao preys on his own community. Tommy says Yao had him bring a shovel to a brothel in Flushing, and Jiao’s body is found under its newly paved garage. Yao offers to help find Ping in return for a lighter sentence, and Novak refuses. To keep him from reaching a phone, Stabler arranges a “mistake” that puts Yao on a bus to Attica while Benson questions women picked up in a vice raid. One says Baker filed her asylum claim and then sent her to Yao. In a sting, Baker offers a new detainee the same arrangement, and he admits springing smuggled people on false asylum claims so Yao can put them to work.
Spoiler, the ending: In court the judge calls the Attica transfer a glaring violation and releases Yao on his own recognizance pending the grand jury. Baker points police to a brothel on Mosco Street, where a gunman takes Ping hostage during the raid. The standoff ends with the gunman shot and Ping unharmed, and Stabler is told that Internal Affairs is waiting for his gun. Yao’s case is not resolved on screen.
Why it stands out
- Ming-Na plays Li Mei; executive producer Neal Baer praised the episode for showing a side of Chinatown rarely seen on television.
- The episode opens with a notice that it was inspired in part by a true incident, though no specific case is named.