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.
“Guardians and Gladiators” Season 22. See this for a plot summary.
I read somewhere in late 2020 that after the anti-police protests in response partly to the death of George Floyd, the creative people behind SVU were going to shift things closer to the anti-racist end of the spectrum. This is the first episode they made after that shift and it’s very obvious. I might not remember every anti-racist thing, but here’s a few items that I remember:
1) When SVU arrests a black man at the scene of an assault, the head of SVU has to be interviewed by Internal Affairs. The IA interviewer is a black woman who has some good thoughts about how even the relatively anti-racist white officers have a lot of room for improvement.
2) An attempt at getting an indictment of a white man for sexually assaulting an Asian-American man fails because of hostility among the grand jury towards NYPD.
3) A Black member of SVU who saw what happened to their ADA (see item 2) gets into a confrontation with the (white) ADA and says at one point that when NYPD was carrying out “stop and frisk” operations Black officers would try to avoid participating.
4) When the black man is arrested (item 1) it’s partly in connection with a white woman claiming that he was acting threateningly towards her son. At the end the head of SVU tells him that the woman is being investigated for false reporting.
Item 3 makes me think of something else. About 1-2 years after Ice-T’s heavy metal band Body Count recorded the song “Cop Killer,” there was a backlash from police and conservative organizations, but the then-35,000-strong National Black Police Association didn’t join the boycott of the label BC was on and kind of sided with Ice-T- not just on first amendment grounds, but because they realized that the song was about the need to do something about police brutality.
“Ballad of Dwight and Irene” Season 22. See this for a plot summary.
A black member of SVU talks about how when he was growing up he didn’t trust cops.
“The Long Arm of the Witness” Season 22. Wikipedia summary is: “When a powerful judge (Josh Stamberg) dismisses a rape case and announces a run for New York Attorney General, Carisi investigates the judge's own history of sexual assault. However, he and the rest of the Special Victims Unit have difficulty getting some victims to come forward after their careers are threatened.”
First, a recurring character (another ADA) is identified as gay and bi-racial. Second, the defendant is incredibly classist. That doesn’t mean the episode is anti-capitalist, but it’s still pretty cool.
“Hunt, Trap, Rape and Release” Season 22. Wikipedia summary: “The Special Victims Unit team up with former Major Case Squad detective Carolyn Barek (Annabella Sciorra) who is now a lieutenant with the Bronx SVU on a serial rape case that crosses city lines. Their fraught collaboration is hampered by police malpractice and inconsistent modus operandi.”
This is about a cop that is a serial rapist.
“Welcome to the Pedo Motel” Season 22. For a plot summary see this.
Although this is less anti-racist than it could be because the people most directly responsible for the lynching of a black man are also people of color, it’s a fairly anti-racist episode overall. A young black man (18 yo) was arrested for sleeping with his 15-yo white girlfriend because her father is a racist, and then when he’s on parole and a suspect for another sex crime involving a white girl younger than him, he’s essentially lynched- something carried out by Latinos but inspired by a white gang in the same NYC neighborhood. It turns out that he was framed by his GF’s racist father.
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