Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (season 8)
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This article contains a list of episodes for season 8 of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
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[edit] Informed (9/19/06)
Season premiere. A young woman, Haley Kerns, shows up at a hospital emergency room beaten and with her head shaved. Despite signs of sexual assault, she demands only a morning-after pill and refuses a rape kit. Kerns is accosted on the street by Benson, who pleads with her to submit to the rape kit. Benson follows Kerns back to her apartment but is asked to leave when Kerns locks herself in the bathroom. Benson does so, but not before taking Kerns' soiled underwear from her assault for a DNA analysis. When she returns to Kerns' apartment, she finds the woman missing and encounters FBI undercover agent Dana Lewis (from season 7's "Raw," played by Marcia Gay Harden), who reveals that Kerns is her confidential informant on an ecoterrorism investigation. After Stabler is wounded while following a lead on Kerns' whereabouts, Benson and Lewis must find Kerns and get her to cooperate in preventing a terrorist bombing.
Mariska Hargitay's maternity leave from the show is explained away at the end of the episode, when Benson is pressed into undercover service with the FBI to continue Agent Lewis' investigation.
[edit] Clock (9/26/06)
Connie Nielsen is introduced at the end of this episode as Det. Dani Beck, who replaces Benson as Stabler's partner. The squad investigates the case of two missing teens, including a girl with Turner's syndrome. However, neither teen is found to be actually missing. The "missing" boy turns out to have faked his own abduction in order to extort money from his father in order to settle a gambling debt. The case of the girl, Janey, is far more complicated. Because she has Turner's syndrome, she looks 13 even though she is a 17-year-old high school senior. Her over-protective father and grandfather are locked in a custody battle with her mother, a recovering alcoholic who abandoned Janey when she was 5, but who now wants back into her life. Janey herself wants nothing to do with either parent, preferring to live with her 30-year-old boyfriend.
According to TV Guide, Nielsen will guest star as Beck for a total of six episodes. Robert Vaughn also guest starred in this episode.
[edit] Recall (10/3/06)
Stabler and Cragen have concerns about Beck's reputation as an overzealous investigator. She works with Stabler on a vexing rape case in which they are unable to make the charges stick until a surprise witness (played by Leslie Caron) comes forward.
[edit] Uncle (10/10/06)
When a mother and daughter are found raped and murdered in their home, the squad suspects a homeless man of crimes. However, it turns out that the man is actually Andrew Munch (guest star Jerry Lewis), John Munch's uncle who has become nearly catatonic due to severe depression. Uncle Andrew had somehow made his way from an assisted living home in Florida to New York to find Munch, but wound up on the streets because of his illness.
The detectives believe they've found the real culprit when they match a bite mark on one of the victims to a suspect in a prior rape. Unfortunately, the bite mark evidence is thrown out of court, and Stabler and Beck decide to follow the suspect in a last ditch scramble to catch him in the act of committing his next rape.
[edit] Confrontation (10/17/06)
Stabler receives a late night phone call from a rape victim, informing him that she had just been raped again by the same man. When the woman is found dead, the squad concludes that the suspect must have raped other women, repeatedly, before. They turn up three other victims, including a pregnant woman, and find out that all the victims are connected through the property management company that maintains their apartment buildings. They also discover another disturbing facet of the rapist's pattern: he repeats his attacks based on the victims' menstrual cycles, meaning he is intentionally trying to impregnate them. Stabler and Beck therefore naturally focus on the pregnant victim, convinced that a paternity test will reveal the suspect's DNA. When she refuses, Novak has no choice but to take the highly unorthodox step of charging her with obstruction of justice.
Throughout the episode, Beck continues to butt heads with Stabler over the proper way to treat rape victims. More of Beck's back-story is revealed, including her obsession with the criminal files of the two men jailed for murdering her husband.
[edit] Infiltrated (10/31/06)
ADA Casey Novak is forced to get Benson, still undercover with the FBI, to come back to New York to testify in a rape case. While undercover with an Oregon environmental group, Benson is injured by an overzealous deputy sheriff and charged with assault (even though it was the deputy who initiated the fight). She is eventually released but is questioned about her group's involvement with a murder. She then sets out to clear her group's name and finds that the murdered man was a pedophile. She finds a room under his garage and discovers the murder scene. The local sheriff finds two sets of prints at the scene, the murdered man's and those of a girl who went missing ten years ago. Benson is then released from the FBI (it turns out that the group she had infiltrated had nothing to do with terrorism; the actual terrorist leader had been arrested two days ago) to go back to New York. As she is still unaware of the urgency of Novak's case, she decides to stay and help the FBI find the missing girl. In the end Benson finds the girl whom had developed Stockholm Syndrome. Benson just makes it back to New York in time to testify.
[edit] Underbelly (11/14/06)
Three teenaged homicide victims with matching tattoos lead Detectives Stabler and Beck to an underage prostitution ring. With the victims' pimp, Victor Bodine (guest star Michael Kenneth Williams), as the prime suspect, detectives must rely on one of his young girls Belinda "Passion" Holt (guest star Charlie Ray), to testify against him. Also, Benson's jealousy flares when she quietly returns to the squad room and witnesses an intimate moment between Stabler and Beck. She does not, however, witness a kiss between Beck and Stabler after a round of drinks with ADA Novak. Mariska Hargitay, Dann Florek, Richard Belzer, Diane Neal, B.D. Wong, and Tamara Tunie also star.
[edit] Cage (11/21/06)
Detectives Stabler and Beck investigate a car accident involving two foster children. The accident leads the detectives to the foster parents and some questionable medical practices involving a controversial "re-birthing" therapy. As the detectives dig deeper into the case, they discover other gruesome secrets involving the children, which lead Beck to make some surprising choices about her life -- and a profound decision about her career. Mariska Hargitay, Ice-T, Dann Florek, Richard Belzer, Diane Neal, B.D. Wong, and Tamara Tunie also star.
[edit] Choreographed (11/28/06)
A woman, is found dead in Central Park, and when medical examiner Warner can find no apparent reason for her death, Detective Stabler begins the investigation by talking to the victim's husband, Wesley (guest star Chris Sarandon), who owns a dance troupe, as his friends Glenn (Bob Saget) and Naomi Cheales (Catherine Bell) pay a condolence visit. Stabler's investigation unravels a case of drugs, infidelity and an elaborate plot that impacts everyone involved in the troupe. Attorney Stella Danquiss (Bernadette Peters), who defends Glenn. In this star-studded episode, Stabler also discovers Detective Benson is back in town, so he pays her a visit.
