Episode
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: Strain
Overview
The discovery of the bodies of two young gay men who were both meth addicts as well as victims of a new strain of AIDS that can kill its victims in less than a year leads to an investigation. Tutuola learns that his son, Ken, is gay, and has difficulty accepting it, even though he and Benson end up going to Ken for help with infiltrating an anti-meth group. The group's leader, Gabriel, soon becomes their top suspect when the squad realises that the two men died because they passed the disease on.
Details
- Series
- Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
- Season
- Season 7
- Episode
- Episode 5
- Air date
- 2005-10-18
- Runtime
- 43 min
Episode context
Strain is Episode 5 in Season 7 of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. It aired on 2005-10-18. The runtime is 43 min.
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Episode 4: Ripped
When the teenage son of Stabler's old partner comes under suspicion for attacking a classmate, Stabler's inability to treat this like any other case gets him suspended.
Episode 6: Raw
After a six-year-old boy dies in a school shooting, detectives trace the gun used back to a white supremacist's gun shop. Munch and Tutuola both face hatred and prejudice from the major suspects in the case, but their investigation soon takes them from the man who pulled the trigger back to the gun shop owner, who makes no bones about his hatred of anyone who isn't white.
More episodes from this season
Episode 3: 911
Benson is on her way out for the evening when a call comes in from a little girl who says she's all alone. While trying to draw the girl out, Benson is drawn deeper into the little girl's life, and although the other officers begin to suspect the whole thing may be some sick joke, Benson is convinced that the little girl is the real deal. By talking to Maria, Benson is able to ferret enough information from her so that they have a place to start, but Maria's captor has an affinity for electronics and has done everything he can to make sure that no one can find the little girl he bought and paid for.
Episode 7: Name
After the bones of a boy who disappeared in 1978 are found at a playground, Stabler, still visibly recovering from a recent gunshot wound, teams up with Vizcarrando to determine the boy's identity, which leads them to a cold case involving four missing Puerto Rican boys that were never found.
Episode 2: Design (I)
Benson saves April Troost from committing suicide, but feels responsible when Troost dies during the trial of the man she accuses of raping her and getting her pregnant. It isn't long before detectives learn that Barclay Pallister wasn't the only man April picked up in a bar who has no recollection of sleeping with her, and the squad realizes that Troost was no victim. Their search takes them from prospective parents looking to adopt her child to the men she drugged and accosted to the sperm center she used to work at, which ends up at the center of the case.
This crossover continues on Law & Order S16E02 Flaw (II).
Episode 8: Starved
After a dating service is linked to three rapes, Olivia goes undercover to ferret out the rapist and meets Mike Jergens, a surgeon who enjoys controlling the women in his life. The detectives are soon led to his girlfriend, Cora Kennison, but shortly after testifying in the grand jury hearing Cora marries Mike. After Cora attempts suicide, Mike fights her mother, Virginia, to unplug her feeding tube.
Episode 1: Demons
Twenty years after being convicted of the rape of a teenage girl, Ray Schenkel is released, much to the dismay of retired detective William Dorsey. When a teenage girl is raped on the route Schenkel would have taken home, Stabler goes undercover as a recently paroled sex offender so that he can get into the same therapy group as Schenkel, and the same halfway house. Cragen worries that Stabler may be getting in over his head.
Episode 9: Rockabye
After sixteen-year-old Lauren Westley loses her unborn child due to a severe abdominal beating, her father's insistence that Lauren was raped leads detectives to the baby's father, but it isn't long before the detectives realise that Lauren was an active party in her own beating, and the two teens had found it necessary to take the steps they did because the abortion clinic kept putting off Lauren's request for an appointment. Novak faces a tough opponent in her own office when she and Branch disagree over the appropriate action to be taken against Wayne Mortens, the young girl's boyfriend.
Episode 10: Storm
When a teenager and her younger sister end up in the hospital after a day at the park, detectives learn that both girls were abducted from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina along with a third sister who is still missing. Despite the interference of a local reporter, Jackson Zane, detectives are able to catch the kidnapper, a known pedophile, and recover the girl, but when Alvin Dutch dies and the autopsy determines it was Anthrax, Benson puts everything on the line so that she can get the truth out there.
Episode 11: Alien
After young Sean Hamill is stabbed in the back at the schoolyard, detectives are led to Charlie Monaghan, the older boy who had previously gotten into trouble over Hamill, but it isn't long before their attention turns to Monaghan's half-sister Emma Boyd. Hamill had been torturing the little girl for months because she had two mothers. After getting a nice deal for Emma's side, Benson and Stabler are thrown for a loop when Emma's biological grandparents accuse Zoe, who had never legally adopted Emma, of sexually molesting the little girl, and evidence seems to support their claims.
Episode 12: Infected
Monica Phelps is found dead in her apartment, her son Nathan hiding in the closet behind her body. Detectives soon link Monica's death to philanthropist Ted Carthage, who runs an organization dedicated to helping people get off the streets. Benson is certain that Carthage is the killer, but a shaky ID from Nathan puts him back on the street. After Nathan kills Carthage himself, Sophie Devere argues that Nathan committed the killing because he saw Carthage shoot his mother -- something the gun manufacturers don't like.
Episode 13: Blast
The team investigates when young Carly Hunter disappears while walking home from school one day. While processing evidence found at the scene, Warner realises that the little girl has leukemia, and they need to get her home as soon as possible to begin treatment. Despite the ransom drop going wrong, the detectives are able to find the little girl thanks to evidence O'Halloran finds at the scene, but as she tells her story to Stabler and her mother, it soon becomes clear that her kidnapper is someone very close to home. Stabler and Warner end up becoming hostages when the kidnapper approaches Jake Hunter directly.