Dependent (Season 8, Episode 14)
Premise: A mob lawyer’s wife is murdered at home, the evidence points to their drug-using daughter, and a death during an arrest puts Stabler’s career on the line.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 8, Episode 14
- 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), ME Dr. Melinda Warner (Tamara Tunie)
- Guest stars
- Cary Elwes as Sidney Truex, Emily VanCamp as Charlotte Truex, Justin Klosky as Ryan Bedford, Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick as Tommy Truex, Robert John Burke as IAB Sgt. Ed Tucker
- Director
- Peter Leto
- Writers
- Ken Storer
Summary
“Dependent” begins when mob lawyer Sidney Truex, who has moved out of the family home, brings his young son, Tommy, back there and is knocked unconscious. His wife, Maura, has been raped with a candlestick and beaten, and she dies of her injuries; Tommy says only that a monster hurt his father. The couple’s 16-year-old daughter, Charlotte, is not at the friend’s home where she claimed to be staying, and Benson and Stabler find her at the apartment of her 19-year-old boyfriend, Ryan Bedford, whom her mother forbade her to see. Tommy shrinks from Charlotte at the hospital. A private investigator Truex hired points to Luccio Ricci, whose father lost a case Truex handled and who sent the family threats, but Ricci denies involvement. Then Truex wakes and says he saw Charlotte running down the hallway.
Charlotte denies going home. Her classmates admit to a “pharm party” where everyone pooled pills from home, and they say Ryan left in search of stronger drugs and a very high Charlotte later left to go home. In the basement, the detectives find Maura’s pharmaceutical samples torn open, and urine in a toilet tests positive for the drugs Charlotte took and for heavy drinking. Shown her bloodied sneaker, Charlotte confesses, then tries to kill herself in the interrogation room. Truex insists on defending her and seeks an insanity plea, but a psychiatric interview reveals that Charlotte and her mother had come to blows before, and Novak refuses. Warner then finds that the urine came from a man, and Tommy picks Ryan from a photo array as the monster.
Stabler chases Ryan, punches him when Ryan swings at him and kneels on him to cuff him; Ryan stops breathing and dies. IAB Sgt. Ed Tucker suspends Stabler, and Warner, finding a ruptured spleen, rules the death a homicide. Benson persuades Truex to allow a sodium amytal interview, in which Charlotte recalls Ryan demanding drugs from her mother and beating her while Charlotte lay down in her own room. Novak drops the murder charge, but footage of the chase airs on the news, Tucker grills Benson about Stabler’s violent past, and Stabler expects to be indicted.
Spoiler, the ending: When Stabler mentions to Warner that he performed CPR on Ryan, she realizes the chest compressions could have ruptured his spleen after his heart had already stopped. Ryan’s medical records show long QT syndrome, a heart rhythm disorder he was not treating, and Warner tells the grand jury that it, combined with the stress of the chase, killed him. The grand jury declines to indict, and Stabler goes to Kathy and tells her he wants to come home.
Why it stands out
- Cary Elwes plays mob lawyer Sidney Truex, and Emily VanCamp plays his daughter, Charlotte.
- Robert John Burke returns as IAB Sgt. Ed Tucker, who suspends Stabler.
- Stabler, who signed his divorce papers in “Burned,” ends the episode asking Kathy to let him come home.