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Law & Order: Special Victims Unit Season 5 Episodes
Season 5 Episode Guide
25 Episodes 2003 - 2004
Episode 1
Tragedy
Tue, Sep 23, 200341 mins
When a pregnant woman is kidnapped and carjacked, the squad thinks, at first, that she's the latest victim of a serial rapist, only to realize that she's the victim of an intricate ransom plot.
Episode 2
Manic
Tue, Sep 30, 200342 mins
While investigating a school shooting that claimed the lives of two students, the squad realizes that the surviving victim is actually the shooter and the side effects of a medication may have caused his actions.
Episode 3
Mother
Tue, Oct 7, 200342 mins
Police find a female forensic psychiatrist unconscious and bound in a basement, along with would-be rapists. She turns out to be the author of a book about rehabilitating convicted sex offenders. The detectives identify one of her patients as a suspect, and ask the doctor for his records, but they disappeared when her office was vandalized shortly after she left the hospital. A tape that disappeared during the break-in is brought to police by another suspect's sister, which leads the investigation to focus on victimology.
Episode 4
Loss
Tue, Oct 14, 200344 mins
Investigating the brutal rape and murder of an undercover federal agent and forced to use discretion in order to protect the identities of those agents in the field, the detectives arrest a suspect highly connected with a Colombian drug cartel. As the case proceeds towards trial, Cabot is faced with death threats on herself and her family along with pressure to yield the case to federal authorities.
Episode 5
Serendipity
Tue, Oct 21, 200341 mins
After finding a dead baby in a plastic bag in the sewer, the detectives find the mother, also dead, in her nearby apartment. After talking to her doctor the detectives discover that the mother had planned to give her baby up for adoption and the adoptive parents were paying her doctor's bills. During the investigation they meet Casey Novak, the new A.D.A.
Episode 6
Coerced
Tue, Oct 28, 200342 mins
When a boy goes missing the team investigate. They eventually learn that he was taken by a mentally disturbed man who would kill someone who tried to stop him. They find him but he doesn't have the boy. Stabler wants Huang to medicate him but Huang doesn't want to. Later the man goes berserk, Huang medicates him and he refuses to tell them where the boy is. Later they learn that the reason he freaked out was because Stabler said something to him, cause he wanted Huang to medicate him so that he could find the boy. But Huang tells them that because of what Stabler did, the man could be released. Novak tries to help Stabler but at his arraignment the man mentions the death of a person at the facility where he stayed. Stabler looks into it and discovers that someone with the name he mentions did die at that facility. And it appears that the one in charge of the facility is deliberately withholding medications among other things from the patients so that they could keep the money they get from the government. And the person died because of their callousness. And the man was thrown out because he was ranting about the person's death.
Episode 7
Choice
Tue, Nov 4, 200341 mins
After a man is arrested for attacking his pregnant wife and then seeks to have her charged with neglect for drinking during her pregnancy, Benson learns that this is not the first time a child has been exposed to the devastating repercussions of the woman's uncontrolled alcoholism.
Episode 8
Abomination
Tue, Nov 11, 200341 mins
A gay man who had a brief stint in a Fundamentalist Christian-sponsored sexual re-education course is found murdered, and suspects range from the conversion program itself, a bigoted church group who kept sending him threatening letters, a group of psychologists studying the nature of homosexuality, and two of his ex-lovers, one of whom is the son of one of the professors.
Episode 9
Control
Tue, Nov 18, 200343 mins
The Detectives find themselves hunting for a person who cut off a man's genitals, and left him to die. But what starts out looking like a homeless-crazy man may have done the deed, further investigation reveals a much more sinister reason behind why Mr. Gorman was butchered. Olivia finds herself re-visiting the abduction and rape of a woman she didn't believe four years earlier, because the woman was drunk, and her complaint sounded too outrageous.
Episode 10
Shaken
Tue, Nov 25, 200343 mins
A toddler seems to have been abducted from a park while her babysitter is several yards distant talking to a nanny. Searching detectives shortly after arriving on the scene find the child unconscious behind nearby bushes.
Episode 11
Escape
Tue, Dec 2, 200341 mins
A pair of inmates jump a guard and escape from prison using the guard's clothes. One of the two kidnaps his own son's older half-brother, a son who was born after the escapee was imprisoned for raping the older brother.
Episode 12
Brotherhood
Tue, Jan 6, 200442 mins
The murder and sodomy of a local fraternity pledge master leads the detectives to his pornographic Web site, which features college girls at a local bar. Further investigation points back to the fraternity, whose members are not cooperating, and their code of conduct for prospective pledges.
Episode 13
Hate
Tue, Jan 13, 200442 mins
After an Arab-American woman is set on fire, the detectives discover an intensely xenophobic man aiming to cleanse America.
Episode 14
Ritual
Tue, Feb 3, 200441 mins
When the remains of a boy are found and evidence that points to Santeria are found. They begin by checking out local practitioners but the man in charge claims that who did was not a true practitioner. They learn that the boy is Nigerian and that he was brought over as part of the slave trade.
Episode 15
Families
Tue, Feb 10, 200441 mins
After arresting an on the run rapist, a police dog discovers the body of a murdered girl, apparently raped. Upon discovering that she had indeed been sexually active, the police suspect her music teacher of having an affair with his student, the raped and killed girl. Benson and Stabler find that the raped girl's friend is having sex with their music teacher. The only reason Shannon, the raped girl, had been in her music teacher's apartment was to have sex with her boyfriend. They had to sneak around because their families had forbidden them to date. Then it is discovered that Shannon was pregnant, and the baby's genes were more than 50% Shannon's, therefore there had been incest.
Episode 16
Home
Tue, Feb 17, 200441 mins
A young boy is found outside an NYC apartment eating from the family's garbage. When SVU is called in, they find out the boy, Jacob, isn't homeless, but is actually from a nearby home and lives with his mother and older brother, Adam. Troubled by the fact that a child eating garbage has a home in a decent neighborhood, Elliot and Olivia investigate further only to find the mother's ideals on raising her children radical and abusive. Unable to legally remove the children, SVU is forced to send Jacob back home, but Elliot is uneasy the whole time. Later that night Elliot gets a call and suspects it's Jacob calling for help. He goes to check on the little boy only to find him dead. Now SVU has to figure out what led to the tragedy.
Episode 17
Mean
Tue, Feb 24, 200443 mins
When a schoolgirl's body is found in the trunk of a car, Stabler and Benson find themselves investigating allegations of bullying among her classmates.
Episode 18
Careless
Tue, Mar 2, 200442 mins
After a young boy dies during a church vigil, Tutuola and Munch investigate the boy's foster parents and social worker for neglect.
Episode 19
Sick
Tue, Mar 30, 200441 mins
A boy makes a threat so the team investigates. He reveals that he was molested by the man his father worked for. But the parents won't let the boy testify because the man paid them as part of a confidentiality agreement. And if he does they have to return the money. So Casey tries to find a way around the agreement. But they take the boy out of the country. And later a woman claims the man did the same thing to her grand daughter. And they learn the woman is doing things to her grand daughter.
Episode 20
Lowdown
Tue, Apr 6, 200441 mins
When the death of a prosecutor is staged using information gleaned from a coworker's caseload, Novak endangers her career to obtain a confession.
Episode 21
Criminal
Tue, Apr 20, 200442 mins
When it is suspected that an expert in forensics is responsible for the rape and murder a local student, the focus of the investigation hones in on a criminology professor that Cragen arrested decades earlier for similar crimes. It's then up to Cragen and his team to discover if the professor is the perpetrator or being set up by a bitter rival.
Episode 22
Painless
Tue, Apr 27, 200442 mins
Housekeepers discover a woman, Christina Nerrit, hand-cuffed to a bed, with a plastic bag over her head, near death. Detectives investigate the crime, believing it to be a rape/attempted murder, but evidence soon lead them to a more bizarre scenario involving the terminally ill, and a suicide-support website. When Christina dies mysteriously while recovering in the hospital, and it is determined that she died from a self-inflicted overdose of insulin that had to have been brought to her from outside the hospital, it changes the focus of the investigation again. The right to ends ones own life, and the culpability of someone assisting a suicide, becomes a hot topic when trying to decide who gets punished for what. Amy Solway, a terminally ill doctor, and owner of the Suicide Train website, is found to be the person who brought Christina the insulin, and is charged in her death, leaving it up to a jury to decide her fate.
Episode 23
Bound
Tue, May 4, 200440 mins
The investigation into the murder of a senior citizen leads the squad to suspect that the killer is actually a serial killer who preys on elderly women.
Episode 24
Poison
Tue, May 11, 200455 mins
The team is investigating the death of baby which was adopted by a couple with children already. Autopsy reveals that the baby was poisoned. They learn that the mother was not interested in adopting. So they arrest her. At her arraignment the judge appears to be ruling in her favor which Casey finds odd. He later cites Elliot for contempt. They learn that he favors certain people and is hard on others. They learn that in another case he wouldn't allow evidence that would have exonerated a woman who was also charged with poisoning her child. So Casey decides to look into and also tries to have the judge removed.
Episode 25
Head
Tue, May 18, 200445 mins
A urophile, cyber-Peeping Tom catches a child abuse case on video.