law & order: svu
mean (17/25)

The ‘Law & Order’ spin-off following New York’s elite special victims unit continues its fifth season. Tonight, the detectives expose a cruel highschool clique after the body of a teenage girl is found in the boot of a car.

Detectives Benson and Stabler are called in to investigate when the body of an unidentified teenage girl is found in the boot of a car, covered in stab wounds and cigarette burns. The girl had been tied with duct tape and many of her injuries look as if they were sustained before her death. After a match to a missing person’s report she is identified as high school student Emily Sullivan. The car in which she was found belonged to her father, who had thought his daughter was staying over at her friend Andrea’s house until she failed to arrive home the following day. It seems Emily had lied to her dad and had snuck into the city that night.

The detectives visit the upmarket school that Emily attended, Tanner Day School, where the cooperative headmaster sings the praises of his late student. “She was one of those kids who was friends with everybody,” he says. “She was a real shining star.” Benson and Stabler interview Emily’s shellshocked friends Brittany, Paige and Andrea, who claim they did not know what Emily was doing that night. However, Stabler realises that Emily had given her father Brittany’s mobile number, pretending it was that of Andrea’s parents. Caught out, Brittany admits that Emily had a date in the city that night with “an older guy”.

Benson and Stabler track down Emily’s socalled date, a semi-pro actor called Lukas, who says he was on a movie set the night Emily was murdered. Another suspect is overweight student Agnes Linsky, who claims to have endured years of abuse from Emily and her friends because of her weight. “She made my daughter’s life miserable,” says Agnes’s father. “And God help me –I’m not sorry she’s dead.” Despite their motives, it appears that Agnes and her father are innocent –as is Agnes’s brother Troy (Robert Iler, AJ from ‘The Sopranos’), despite his recent attack on Brittany for taunting his sister so cruelly.

It seems that Emily and her three friends were the most popular kids in school but also a spiteful clique who tormented those they perceived as weak or uncool. However, it emerges that there was a rift within the group itself. Emily and Brittany were dating the same man –Lukas. Under questioning, Lukas admits he was seeing Brittany, but claims that she had asked him to “hit on” Emily to see how she would react. Lukas explains that Emily failed Brittany’s “friendship test” and adds that after his encounter with Emily, he did not hear from Brittany for some time.

It was on the night of Emily’s murder that Lukas next heard from Brittany. She was out driving Emily’s car with Paige and Andrea, but there was no sign of Emily. When he joined them and attempted to place some beer in the boot of the car, Lukas claims, the girls stopped him. “I don’t want to cross that girl,” says Lukas of Brittany. “She’s crazy.” The detectives can only think of one reason why Brittany would have been so reluctant to allow Lukas to open the boot, but can his testimony be trusted?

All three girls are hauled into custody where the detectives try and get them to rat each other out. The tactic soon bears fruit –Andrea and Paige claim that Brittany wanted to punish Emily for stealing her boyfriend and that they only went along with the plan for fear of Brittany’s wrath. It looks as though the evil Brittany is indeed the ringleader, but ADA Novak thinks Paige and Andrea could have stopped her. “They are mean, vicious little girls who think they can do whatever they want and up until now they’ve gotten away with it,” she says. “But not any more.”