Season six of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, gets off to a powerful (and timely) start with the episode "
Birthright," about a disreputable fertility doctor who plans to rob an embryo bank for his own purposes. Several subsequent episodes likewise showcase "respectable" authority figures who are anything but: "
Debt" finds the SVU unit exposing a crooked immigration attorney who is involved in a prostitution ring, and "
Obscene" features two teenagers whose lives are destroyed by publicity-hungry adults. This season also offers a number of personal shakeups for several familiar characters. For starters, Det. Elliot Stabler (
Christopher Meloni) is bluntly informed that his wife has left him and taken the children in "
Doubt." And former Assistant DA Alexandra Cabot (Stephanie March), presumed murdered by Colombian drug lords during the previous season, emerges from the Witness Protection Program to confront her enemies in "
Ghost" -- thereby forcing Stabler and Det. Olivia Benson (
Mariska Hargitay) to perjure themselves by claiming they were unaware that Cabot was still alive. In the season's most talked-about development, former Murder, She Wrote star
Angela Lansbury is cast as the stern, cold-blooded mother of a rape suspect in "
Night" -- the first episode of a two-part story which would be concluded on another branch of the Law & Order family tree, Law & Order: Trial by Jury. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide