SVU takes on a famous case of a mother who for many years made her daughter sick (with drugs) so she could take care of her and make her dependent. The story reeks of the sort of over-the-top material featured in many an exploitation movie made in the '60s, but here it's fodder for Dick Wolf's hugely successful series.
But the treatment is as gee whiz as a soft porn movie but minus the cheap thrills. I don't see how that can work, but script here tries by having the star of the show (Kelli Giddish) a female cop/single mother, identifying heavily with both the mom and kid -sort of how an audience might feel. But that gimmick was a contrivance -unconvincing.
So we're asked to wallow in sleaze that isn't sleazy because it's a squeaky clean network tv show. The SVU team couldn't solve this Catch-22, damned if you do and damned if you don't situation, but in the spirit of Wolf's gimmicky "torn from the headlines" overall concept it's full speed ahead for a crappy episode, replete with a convenient sugar-coated utterly phony sort of happy ending.
As the misfortunate kid, Erin Wilhelmi, looks like a teen version of the late Sondra Locke, but is hampered with this unplayable material.
