Clock (Season 8, Episode 2)
Premise: A 17-year-old who looks like a child disappears from a school trip, and Stabler finds she has run off with a 30-year-old man the law cannot touch.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 8, Episode 2
- Starring
- Det. Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), Det. John Munch (Richard Belzer), Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Det. Dani Beck (Connie Nielsen), Capt. Donald Cragen (Dann Florek), ADA Casey Novak (Diane Neal), Dr. George Huang (BD Wong), ME Dr. Melinda Warner (Tamara Tunie), TARU Ruben Morales (Joel de la Fuente)
- Guest stars
- Betsy Hogg as Janey Speer, Jason Butler Harner as Greg Hartley, Gregory Harrison as Nathan Speer, Deborah Raffin as Maia Graves, Robert Vaughn as Tate Speer
- Director
- Jim Hayman
- Writers
- Allison Intrieri
Summary
“Clock” opens after a school trip to a science museum, where two gifted students go missing: Connor Wesley, 13, and Janey Speer, 17, who has Turner syndrome and looks like a much younger child. A $300 ransom call proves to be a hoax that Connor arranged with another boy, Jake Taylor, to pay off a baseball bet, and Connor says Janey stayed behind. Huang explains that girls with the condition are often very bright but may never mature physically. With Benson away, Cragen tells Stabler that a new partner is being found for him, and Stabler works the case with Fin and Munch. At the precinct, his daughter Kathleen, 17, is furious that he has driven off her boyfriend, Kevin.
Museum video shows Janey leaving with her mother, Maia Graves, who walked out on her twelve years earlier and, now sober, is seeking joint custody from Janey’s father, the wealthy hotel owner Nathan Speer. A witness then reports a girl being pushed into a silver Lexus, and garage video shows an unknown man taking the family’s car. Warner identifies a testosterone gel from Janey’s backpack as part of a study run by Dr. Shulman, who enrolled Janey with Maia’s signed consent. Through Maia’s laptop, Janey visited sites about sex and lingerie, emailed Connor to plan his fake kidnapping and paid a bar worker, Dan O’Shell, to drive her downtown in her father’s car. A travel agent took the man who came in with Janey asking about island tickets for her father, but he is Nathan’s assistant, Greg Hartley, 30. Hartley slips away, and marble dust on his boots leads Stabler and Fin to a Speer hotel closed for renovation, where Janey is found in agony.
Hartley insists the sex was consensual, and no evidence of rape is found: Janey injected herself with the fertility drug Menopur and lost an ovary. She tells Stabler she wanted a baby before an early menopause and that she loves Hartley. As she is 17, Novak has nothing to charge, and Hartley tears up a $20,000 check Nathan offers him to leave. Kathy, meanwhile, asks Stabler why he still has not signed the divorce papers, and he answers that he does not know.
Spoiler, the ending: Nathan asks the family court to keep Janey at home. Stabler testifies that Hartley was fired from a job in Nassau County over a relationship with his employer’s 15-year-old daughter, and Janey’s lawyer, Walsh, presses him on his own daughter and failing marriage. Janey tells the judge she will live with Hartley. Afterward a woman detective stops Hartley kissing Janey on the street, Stabler tells her the court has allowed it, and she introduces herself as Dani Beck, his new partner.
Why it stands out
- Connie Nielsen first appears as Det. Dani Beck, cast as Stabler’s temporary partner during Mariska Hargitay’s six-episode absence.
- Robert Vaughn plays Janey’s grandfather, Tate Speer, with Gregory Harrison and Deborah Raffin as her parents.
- Kathy Stabler raises the unsigned divorce papers, following her filing for divorce in season 7.