Law & Order: SVU (4/03/2007) Underage Drinking Is Fun Until Someone Gets Hurt (or arrested)

A couple is walking upstairs in their house when they realize that young Zoë is at the park. They get excited about the prospect of being home alone so that they can do a little dance...make a little love, etc., but the ultimate mood-killer is found: a dead girl in their bed. Dr. Melinda Warner updates Detective Elliot Stabler and Detective Olivia Benson. The girl suffocated and she plans on doing a rape kit because semen was found on the mattress of the bed where the body was found. At the lab, Dr. Warner explains that the girl suffocated to death. She drank too much and asphyxiated on her own vomit. She drank herself to death. She was not raped; the semen on the mattress belonged to the homeowner. Yikes, I hope they never find a dead body in my sock drawer or they will think that the world's largest gang-bang took place in my closet. Detectives Stabler and Benson interview the cleanliness-challenged homeowners about the identity of the girl. The homeowners state that they have never seen her before, but they are positive that she didn't get the booze from them. The husband admits to being a recovering alcoholic with three years of sobriety but, luckily for us viewers, Stabler interrupts him before he gets too preachy and self-congratulatory to find out who else may have had a house key. It turns out that this Zoe the homeowners were calling out to, is their pet dog. The only other person with a key to the house is the dog walker. Yep, these people can afford to pay someone to walk their dog but they can't be bothered to wash their cum-soaked sheets. Of course, people who live in glass houses... Detectives Stabler and Benson go to interview the dog walker. After Stabler (no shit) actually threatens “to get Peta on your ass," the dog walker admits to outsourcing the dog-walking duties to some high school kids. Damn, NAFTA. Turns out the lucky dog walker substitute is Becca Rice. Stabler and Benson go to the Rice residence to see if they can figure out who this dead teenager is. Becca Rice is in the middle of tutoring Rich White Kid #1. Rich White Kid # 1 identifies himself as Jordan and cops the attitude that you would expect from someone I have named Rich White Kid # 1. At first, both Becca and RWK#1 deny knowing the girl, but after a little pressure, Jordan admits to being at the party. He shows the detectives an online party invitation and they identify the deceased as Melanie, or Rich White Girl #1. Wait, that won't work, let's call her Dead Rich White Girl #1. The Detectives notify the deceased's parents and it only reveals that they are practically retarded. Miss Chugalug, Dead Rich White Girl # 1, Melanie, told them she was going to be at the Math Olympics for the weekend. This girl was didn't look anything like a Mathelete and, besides, everyone knows that the Math Olympics are never held on a year that is a prime number. Detectives Fin and Munch go to the high school to interview the kids who were on the invite list for the party. This reveals that the girls are all blonde and ditzy and the guys all play lacrosse and have Ambercrombie & Fitch aspirations. Wait, lacrosse? Someone better run that rape kit again. The kids all tell the same story of Melanie drinking too much and puking. Some kids threw her in a shower and then placed her in the bed. When she wouldn't wake up, they all left because no one wanted to get in trouble. The detectives cannot arrest anyone for the murder of Melanie (DRWG#1) because they can't prove anything malicious, but they can arrest the party planners for trespassing. Judge Elizabeth Donnelley sentences Jordan, Reagan (Rich White Girl # 1), Luke (Rich White Guy #2) and Mark (Rich White Guy #3). Detective Stabler, feeling a little fatherly after spending all this time with kids his daughter's age, takes his daughter to lunch to interrogate her about the alcohol habits of high school kids. She informs him that it's pretty easy to get the stuff and that technology makes it easy to order it online or to get a fake ID. Ha, this pampered generation...doesn't anyone just steal it anymore? Maybe there would be less of an obesity problem in this country if kids didn't spend all day in front of a computer and instead had to run a 15-meter sprint out of the 7-11, carrying two cases of Milwaukee's Best Beer like my generation did. Stabler jokingly threatens to read his daughter's diary and she tells him that no one uses diaries anymore and instead everyone writes a blog. Ugh, now I am really getting disgusted with this technology-obsessed generation. Imagine if Ann Frank used the sloppy, lazy blog style to record her memoirs. Nazis took my sister L8 last nite... : ( A quick gander at the Rich White Kid Clique blog shows that they are all meeting up for a little drinking. Benson and Stabler bust up the party and put the kiddies in jail for the night. The next morning Detective Stabler is upset because Judge Donnelley released them. Stabler shows the Judge the blog, which has streaming video of the kids drinking and making fun of Stabler, the judge, and the entire court proceedings. Judge Donnelley decides to show the kids who really is the boss and lets Stabler put out an arrest warrant for them. (This was my only bad pun this post, so just be happy.) Stabler and Benson go to Becca's house to find Jordan. Becca approaches the door at the same time and lets them in. All three of them walk in to find Jordan on top of Becca's hot-but-weathered mom. RWK#1 + MILF. I can almost see it carved into a tree. The detectives haul the two of them in for questioning. Olivia Benson gets nowhere trying to play the woman-card with Becca's mom, Lillian Rice. Lillian sees nothing wrong with Banging Jordan. Isn't that the name of another NBC detective show? Meanwhile, Stabler's interrogation of Jordan only reveals that he is also incredibly stupid. He actually tells Stabler that he is in love with Lillian Rice. Why would he claim to love her after he has already slept with her? I just don't understand kids today. Luckily, Jordan has priors for drunken misconduct, so Stabler is able to threaten him with some jail time if he won't admit that his middle-aged mistress is the one that bought the booze for the party the night Melanie died. RWK#1 won't squeal on his first piece of mature ass, so Olivia goes to work on her nerdy daughter, Becca. Becca blames the cops and refuses to believe her mom did anything wrong. Denial like this is praiseworthy because it is just so pure. Becca has the Fiji water of denial. The kids are back in front of Judge Donnelley and this time, she is pissed. She had the principal at their school put them on probation so that they were not allowed to participate in Prom, athletics, or any extra-curricular activities. That'll show them. Please, I had already put myself on probation from these things before high school even started and I still kept getting drunk. However, these young snobs are a different breed and so they actually take it hard. Jordan finally admits to Stalber that Lillian Rice bought the booze the night Melanie died. That night, Stabler is woken up by a late-night call. Jordan and Reagan were both killed in a car crash. Reagan finally graduates to her new moniker of “Dead Rich White Girl #2." Jordan was drunk and driving and the rest is an after-school special. They both died at the scene, but the really bad news is that Stabler cannot use Jordan's confession that Lillian bought the booze. He goes to the memorial service to try to get Becca to admit that her mom played bartender in addition to madame, but Becca's denial remains strong. Stabler addresses the funeral and tells them that they all shared a part in the death of Jordan and Reagan because they all knew Jordan had an alcohol problem and didn't do anything about it. Apparently, this speech had an impact because Luke (Rich White Guy # 2) tells Stabler that Becca is the biggest alcoholic of the bunch. This is very surprising, because Becca doesn't seem fun at all... Stabler uses the guise of escorting Child Services to gain entry to the Rice Party Palace. After confronting Becca on the alcohol content of her lemonade he jams a breathalyzer in her face and takes her and her mom into custody when it reveals that she is rocking a .06 blood alcohol level. Detective Stabler questions Becca Rice at the rehab center, where she is drying out and probably rubbing shoulders with politicians and celebrities. Becca immediately starts spouting off all that “Recovering Alcoholic" nonsense and finds time to blame her mother for buying the booze the night of Melanie's death, before she can lecture us about “expressing feelings" or “finding Jesus." I don't think she is going to be much of a good time sober either. Lillian Rice's trial for her role in the death of Melanie is tense. Becca testifies to her mom's open encouragement of underage drinking and Lillian's lawyer lists everything Becca has done wrong since she was ten years old. Finally, as Dr. Melinda Warner is testifying to the damage Becca has done to her body with alcohol, Lillian can no longer deal with her own guilt. She openly tells the court that, yes, she bought booze for her daughter, her daughter's friends, and even bought the booze that lead to Melanie's death. The show ends with Elliot Stabler having dinner with his daughter. He brings up the fact that she was caught drinking and driving a year ago and burns her driver's license in a display of fatherly power and delayed punishment. He then finishes his double Whiskey and Coke and drives them both home. Before the credits roll, the folks at Law & Order: SVU show us a black screen with a list of startling statistics about underage drinking. Funny how this is the crusade that the show adopts. I mean, I have never seen any statistics about “the number of teenage girls, who are sexually abused by their stepfathers with a bust of James Madison every year. If you or someone you know may have a problem with raping a teenage stepdaughter with statues of dead presidents, then please get help."