Law & Order: Special Victims Unit

1999
4.8
9.87K reviews
TV-14
Rating
Eligible
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Season 5 episodes (25)

1 Tragedy
9/23/03
A frantic 911 call is logged and it appears a woman is being attacked in her car. Detectives Benson (Mariska Hargitay) and Stabler (Christopher Meloni) think it could be the carjack rapist, but after much digging, they discover the victim is Annika Bergeron (Karen Goberman). Her only relative is her sister, Laura (Marisa Ryan), who lives in New Jersey and tells the detectives that Annika is eight months pregnant. Her doctor also warns them that she has a dangerous condition and must have a caesarian section or both she and her baby will die.
2 Manic
9/30/03
Detectives Benson (Mariska Hargitay) and Stabler (Christopher Meloni) are called to a chaotic situation at a high school. Two star basketball players are found in the gym, stripped and shot to death, and what appears to be a third victim, Joe Blaine (Rory Culkin), is shot in the head.
3 Mother
10/7/03
A top forensic psychiatrist, Dr. Greta Heints (Susanna Thompson), is found assaulted and bound in a crack house. She regains consciousness but doesn't seem too eager to help Benson (Mariska Hargitay) and Stabler (Christopher Meloni) find her assailant. Her husband says she got a call on the private patient line the night of the attack and then went out.
4 Loss
10/14/03
A young woman wearing only a fur coat is found dead, with her tongue cut out. Her identity is shaky and records only go back two years. But it turns out, the victim, Livia Tellez, is really Livia Sandoval, an immigrant from Colombia who's been here seven years. She took her civil service exam in 2000 and was snapped up from the Police Academy by the DEA to be an undercover agent and infiltrate the Colombian drug cartel.
5 Serendipity
10/21/03
A newborn is found dead in a sewer. Benson (Mariska Hargitay) and Stabler (Christopher Meloni) go to a nearby apartment to question a very pregnant woman, but she's found dead. The woman, Brianna Morris, was going to give her baby up to Ron (Jack Gilpin) and Kelly (Barbara Garrick) Wolcott, who were excited about the adoption. But Ron found out Brianna had second thoughts about keeping the baby.
6 Coerced
10/28/03
Adam Forbes (Dylan Bluestone), a five-year-old, is missing from his apartment, and his mother initially blames her ex-husband Peter (James McCaffrey), but it's soon clear a stranger kidnapped him. Shortly thereafter, a major stabbing-death incident at the grocery store down the street links the primary suspect, Kevin Walker (Leland Orser), to Adam. Benson (Mariska Hargitay) and Stabler (Christopher Meloni) frantically question Walker on the whereabouts of the missing boy.
7 Choice
11/4/03
While patrolling, police stumble upon an attack in progress at Momma Sue's restaurant on the owner, Jennifer Fulton (Josie Bissett). Fulton is in a hurry to leave after being examined at the hospital and her husband, Craig (Ricky Aiello) is concerned, which leaves Benson (Mariska Hargitay) and Stabler (Christopher Meloni) to believe the suspect was not her husband, but could have been an underage drinker she busted earlier. The young man is Leon Ardilles (Victor Rasuk) and it turns out he was in the restaurant that night, but Jennifer was already injured. Finally, Jennifer admits that her husband has a history of abuse and had attacked her for drinking since she is 11 weeks pregnant.
8 Abomination
11/11/03
Benson (Mariska Hargitay) and Stabler (Christopher Meloni) have trouble identifying a male murder victim in his 20's found in a pile of sheets in the West Village. The victim is James Reed, a former member of the ReGenesis group, who was studying at Hudson University for his Master's where his thesis was to prove groups like ReGenesis not only don't work but also steal people's money. Detectives are led to Roger Tate (George Segal), a professor with a reorientation business who had problems with Reed's project.
9 Control
11/18/03
Horace Gorman (Austin Pendleton) collapses at a subway station. He is rushed to the hospital and although he survives, his genitals have been cut off. While Gorman claims a homeless man did it, Detectives Benson (Mariska Hargitay) and Stabler (Christopher Meloni) are not sure sure until they are led to Samuel (Joseph McKenna) who lives in the Grand Central subway tunnel. In Samuel's "space" they find a mannequin holding a paper bag, which contains Gorman's "missing parts." Samuel claims he received them as an offering, the Jewels of Sodom, from an archangel.
10 Shaken
11/25/03
Sarah Rendell (Nicole Leach), a 19-year-old babysitter and Veronica Nash (Olga Merediz), an officious, older nanny are watching children in the park. Lucy, who's under Sarah's care, disappears and they call the cops. Stabler (Christopher Meloni) finds her lying in the bushes with a massive head injury. As Lucy fights to survive on life support M.E. Warner (Tamara Tunie) drops a bomb, claiming her injury was caused by being shaken about 12-48 hours earlier and not at the park.
11 Escape
12/2/03
There's an escape at the Virginia Correctional Facility. Double D (Michael Kenneth Williams) and Michael Baxter (Stephen Lang) are on the loose. Deputy Marshall Andy Eckerson (Craig Bierko) goes to N.Y. to team up with Detective Benson (Mariska Hargitay) to track them down. Benson and Eckerson are concerned Baxter is going to find his stepson, Lee Healy (Milo Ventimiglia), who said he was raped by his stepfather, and that testimony sent Baxter to jail. Can the Detectives find Lee and his mother, Carin (Nancy Allen), and warn them before it's too late?
12 Brotherhood
1/6/04
The body of young man is found in a tank at a wastewater treatment plant. M.E. Warner (Tamara Tunie) is able to identify a tattoo that says TE and it's the symbol for the fraternity Tau Epsilon. Benson (Mariska Hargitay) and Stabler (Chris Meloni) discover the deceased is Tyler Henry, treasurer of the Panhellenic Council. Medical examiners discover a very expensive violin bow had been pushed up Tyler's anus and detectives trace it back to Nathan Angeli (Noah Fleiss), a former pledge who got kicked out of Tau Epsilon.
13 Hate
1/13/04
A young woman, Mira Elbisi, is brutally raped and burned, and after identifying her, Benson (Mariska Hargitay) and Stabler (Christopher Meloni) suspect her husband and mother-in-law. The Detectives take take her husband and mother-in-law, Al-Shani (James Rana) and Jazlyn (Lorraine Serabian), into custody. Both claim they were at their office while they're being questioned, when another incident happens. A young Arab student is burned and the same type of fuel oil found, along with the pipe.
14 Ritual
2/3/04
The dismembered body of a black boy is found in Central Park, amidst what appears to be Santeria type ritual materials - candles, bowls with blood. Benson (Mariska Hargitay) and Stabler (Christopher Meloni) trace the candles to a Santeria group but the leader says there's no way any of the members would hurt a child. There haven't been any reports of a missing child, but he does have an unusual scar on his abdomen. M.E. Warner (Tamara Tunie), still unable to identify the victim, says that based on tests to the bones, the child has only been in New York about four weeks, and before that was in Nigeria...
15 Families
2/10/04
The body of a 16-year-old girl is found while Benson (Mariska Hargitay) and Stabler (Christopher Meloni) are chasing down a rape suspect.
16 Home
2/17/04
A young, emaciated boy is found by neighbors scrounging for food. Benson (Mariska Hargitay) and Stabler (Christopher Meloni) suspect the boy, Jacob (Jesse Schwartz), is a victim of abuse and are reluctant to let him go home. They question his mother, Marilyn Nesbit (Diane Venora), and it appears she controls Jacob with food and is very restrictive about what he can eat. Jacob and his teenage brother, Adam (Joseph Cross), are both home schooled and their house is immaculate. While the situation is strange, it is not enough to prove Jacob's mother is an unfit mother and he returns home. That night, Stabler's cell phone rings, and it's Jacob...
17 Mean
2/24/04
The body of 16-year-old Emily Sullivan is found brutally murdered in a car. Detectives Benson (Mariska Hargity) and Stabler (Christopher Meloni) confirm the identity of the victim at her well-appointed house in Westchester, where her parents tell them she was supposed to have been sleeping at Andrea Kent's (Arielle Kebbel) for the night. When they visit Tanner Day School, the upscale private school Emily attended, the Detectives discover she had sent hundreds of threatening text messages to Agnes Linsky (Lindsay Hollister), an overweight, unpopular schoolmate and they suspect Agnes' father.
18 Careless
3/2/04
A 6-year-old boy is brought to the emergency room from a midnight church service because he has stopped breathing. Sam (Cress Williams) and Lori-Ann Dufoy (Malinda Williams) are his devastated foster parents. While it is unclear what happened, the medical examiner points out a ring mark on the boy's skin. His parents say their son, Jamie, had all kinds of problems, including ADHD and epilepsy, making him extremely difficult to control. At first, Fin (Ice-T) and Munch (Richard Belzer) think the priest at the church might have killed him, especially when they realize it was his ring that made the imprint, but M.E. Warner (Tamara Tunie) says he was already dead when he got to the church.
19 Sick
3/30/04
Students at the University of Denver spot very threatening messages in a chat room that are coming from the computer of Jeremy Ostilow (James Colby), a rich toy executive.
20 Lowdown
4/6/04
Jeff York (Dean Strange) is found strangled to death in a neighborhood frequented by prostitutes. With his wallet missing, It looks like a trick gone wrong. The victim turns out to be an Assistant District Attorney from the Bronx, someone Olivia (Mariska Hargitay) has dated. At first, Benson and Stabler (Chris Meloni) think he was killed because of a case he was prosecuting; the defendant, Alvarez (Carlos Pizarro), threatened him in open court but his alibi checks out. A condom with lipstick stains was found at the scene, but on closer examination, it turns out to have been staged.
21 Criminal
4/20/04
Rebecca Wheeler, a graduate student at Wallace University, is found dead by a cop in Central Park with virtually no clues left at the scene of the crime.
22 Painless
4/27/04
Christina Nerrit (Karen Young) is left for dead in her apartment, a plastic bag over her head and her hands cuffed, but survives. Initially, Benson (Mariska Hargitay) and Stabler (Christopher Meloni) think her married boss was the culprit, since he was seen leaving her apartment. But urine tested from her bathroom indicated the victim or perp is a female... suffering from kidney failure.
23 Bound
5/4/04
Donna Brooks is found dead in her apartment, and a "gentleman suitor," Richard Sutton (Richard Easton) is there, and thought to be dead but alive... he suffered a heart attack when he found her dead body. Donna's grief-stricken daughter, Joset (Isabel Glasser), says her mother had pancreatic cancer and was close to the end, but she still had plenty of time to date a variety of men. Several have alibis and Benson (Mariska Hargitay) and Stabler (Christopher Meloni) now think Sutton could be the killer. He's finally well enough to communicate and claims Donna was killed in the morning and that he has an alibi.
24 Poison
5/11/04
A young girl is in a coma after ingesting detergent, and although her mother is suspected of poisoning her, a very biased judge makes the case difficult to prosecute, which eventually leads to an investigation into his past.
25 Head
5/18/04
A woman drops her cell phone in the toilet at a coffee house and finds a spy cam. Benson (Mariska Hargitay) and Stabler (Chris Meloni) track the camera to a high tech shop and ask the techno geek, a woman named Charlie (Amy Sedaris), where they were installed. When the Detectives track down the man they think was the voyeur and go to his apartment, Charlie answers. It turns out her brother Wade (James Urbaniak) is the pervert, and he had been using the toilet cam to spy. Everyone is thoroughly disgusted by him and ready to charge him with the max, when he admits he saw a real crime happen.

About this show

From the creator of the longest running drama series on television, "Law & Order", comes a powerful series chronicling the life and crimes of the Special Victims Unit of NYPD. Each episode follows the exploits of detectives Elliot Stabler, Olivia Benson, John Munch and Odafin Tutuola as they attempt to solve the city's most complex cases. They diligently follow lead after lead, relentless in their quest for justice and the search for truth.

Ratings and reviews

4.8
9.87K reviews
Jennifer Compton (Jen)
December 16, 2018
I've always loved SVU, because it had a variety of crimes to investigate, but the current season (20), and the one before, has them going full libtard...and you NEVER go full libtard! Pretty much every episode is about someone being raped. Olivia was always my fave, but this season she is just terrible. They had an episode that was taken from the Brett Kavanaugh sexual assault allegations, and even though the they had just started the investigation of the rape, and there was no evidence against the suspect they were interrogating, Olivia told ADA Stone that he is guilty, she can tell he did it, just by looking at him! She believed the victim with ZERO evidence against the man they arrested. Olivia is a detective, a cop, and she is supposed to believe in due process, and that a person is innocent till proven guilty. She was basically saying this suspect, this PERSON, shouldn't have the right to due process, and she doesn't care if an innocent man gets punished for a crime he might not have done. She was saying the exact same things that the Democrats were saying during the Kavanigh hearings, like we should believe all women, even if there is no evidence. I had to make myself watch this current season, after that episode. They are trying to put liberal talking points in the episodes, and sliding in things to get people to agree with the liberal agenda. I will never watch this show again. I don't care how much I loved it in the past. But it's all good, because I have something even better to watch now. I get to watch Detective Stabler in his new SyFy show, "Happy!" I loved the first season and cant wait till season 2, which should be coming on in the Spring. The first season was shown during Christmas, and the 2nd is supposed to take place at Easter. CANNOT WAIT! Stabler is much better on this show, than on SVU!
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Jean Luc Pressoir
February 3, 2021
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit is an awesome police crime series I known for a long time so different from Law & Order, Miami Vice, New York Undercover, Chicago P.D., and Chicago Justice. Special Victims Unit represents more sexual related crimes than any other police division. The New York City Police Department have the Special Victims Division is a lot Special Victims Unit that investigates sex crimes in all five boroughs of New York City (Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and the Bronx). Law & Order: SUV is one of my long time favorite shows my family, friends and I grow up watching the series then and now. I wish hoping someday Atlanta Police Department start having a Special Victims Unit or Special Victims Division just like with New York City Police Department.
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Ameska Edwards
February 14, 2014
I love law n order all of them my favorite people play n it my girl Olivia her partner ice t his partner the head man n the special victims unit even the one that be going to the courts five star I watch it every day even when I'm at dailysis Tuesday Thursday Saturdays I'm clued cuz its always different I give it a five star y'all what make TV, TV thank u fa giving me a reason to watch TV I love this show ain't nobody better then law n order special victims unit five star show
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