Law and Order: SVU Reviews P

This is a set of reviews of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episodes. My general thoughts about that show are here. I’ll often do no more than make brief notes about an episode, although occasionally I’ll go deeper. Also, often there are dissenting main characters on almost any political issue, but you can usually tell what the general position of the show is. All the rest of the reviews are available by clicking on the l&osvu label at the bottom.

(Now that I’m watching the episodes that involve the character John Munch, I’m going to ignore most of his political statements)

“Pixies” Season 2. Wikipedia summary is: “The investigation of a gymnast's murder involves her strict trainer (Philip Casnoff), a wealthy benefactor (Armand Schultz) and a competitor (Kate Mara).”

There’s one point where one of the detectives talks about how little labor is paid in the tennis shoe industry compared to how much the shoes cost. I don’t know what’s been happening with that in the last 20 years but around 1999 I did some political activism on the sweatshop issue, including some small contributions to the effort by WAAKE-UP  at CU-Boulder.

“Consent” Season 2. Wikipedia summary is: “College girl Kelly D'Leah (Tammy Blanchard) is raped during a frat party, but can't remember anything that happened. The detectives find that she had a date rape drug in her system, leaving the squad with many suspects and accomplices. They ultimately discover that the boy who had sex with Kelly (Zak Orth) was unaware that she had been drugged.”

I think this may be the only episode that mentions in a significant way the oral contraceptive that is part of a rape kit (the exam done to establish that rape took place and to gather evidence used to identify the rapist). In 2008 John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate for the White House. There were a lot of horrible things about her but perhaps the most damning allegation failed to stick in the eyes of most of the voters. And that is the fact that when she was mayor of Wasilla, the Police Dept. there charged for the rape kit to be done, and either the survivor or her insurance company had to pay.

At some point I read somewhere that the inclusion of an oral “morning after” contraceptive might be why Palin didn’t want to pay for the rape kits. I read some more about that in a blog post here. It seems that Palin only supports abortion when the life of the woman is in danger, not when she’s been raped.

“Paranoia” Season 2. Wikipedia summary is: “The rape of a veteran police officer (Khandi Alexander), who trained Benson, is first linked to her ex-husband's gambling debts and then to her fellow officers.”

This story is about a rape committed by a cop.

“Scourge” Season 2. Wikipedia summary is: “The team searches for a serial killer (Richard Thomas) who justifies his crimes with paranoid religious motivation set on by a rapidly deteriorating medical condition. Even though she knows that he has been driven to kill, his wife (Karen Allen) begs the prosecutors to show leniency because of his condition (Neurosyphilis).”

I’m not sure I do this every time it comes up, but in this episode a corporation (or its CEO) is targeted by the cops at the end for the indirect role it played in four murders and it’s action was sort of motivated by greed.

“Rooftop” Season 3. Wikipedia summary is: “A series of rapes, each more violent than the previous, takes place in a community of African-Americans. Detectives Benson and Stabler promptly suspect a known HIV-positive sex offender (Dorian Missick) who was recently released from jail, however he dies of an overdose and is found on a rooftop. The attacks continue and Detective Tutuola's childhood friends' daughter is killed. As they find nothing, her brother Rodney Thompson (Todd Williams) accuses the police of limiting the budget put on the case. Only when a fifth victim is killed, do her final moments alongside Thompson's persistence give them what they need to find the killer.”

There are two things worth mentioning.

1) There’s a reference to how serial killers often start with harming animals.

2) The detective played by Ice-T agrees with some angry young black men that the media are less concerned about black females being raped and killed than they are concerned about white females being raped and killed and criticizes the police for responding to the series of rapes and murders with an insufficient number of officers when there would be more officers if the victims were white. He even takes a pretty hard-line on the issue in a conversation with his captain.