Law and Order: SVU Reviews U

 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)

(I’m temporarily skipping the publication of 4 reviews from Seasons 4 and 6 that I’ll come back to in about a week)

“Raw” Season 7. Wikipedia summary is: “A six-year-old boy who was adopted by parents (Myk Watford and Marin Hinkle) of a different race is killed in a school shooting. When detectives trace the rifle used back to a gun shop, Munch and Tutuola face hatred from a neo-Nazi group using the shop as its headquarters. The group consists of a white supremacist (J.C. MacKenzie), his son (Cody Kasch) and a woman (Marcia Gay Harden) who is not what she appears to be. When detectives arrest the shooter (Joel Marsh Garland) and put him on the witness stand, the group retaliates by starting a shootout in the courtroom that claims the life of a judge (John Rubinstein).”

In this episode the bad guys are neo-Nazis.

“Name” Season 7. Wikipedia summary is: “After the bones of a boy who disappeared in 1978 are found at a playground, Stabler, still visibly recovering from a recent gunshot wound, teams up with a CSU technician (Paula Garcés) who is taking the case personally. When a woman (Lisa Emery) comes forward, claiming that the boy was her brother, they reopen a cold case involving three murdered Puerto Rican boys in which the prime suspect (Richard Bright) worked with an accomplice (Ruben Santiago-Hudson).”

A crime scene tech believes that the disappearance of 4 Puerto Rican boys in 1978 wasn’t thoroughly investigated because they were Puerto Rican. It’s also stated that a lot of undocumented immigrants don’t report crime because they’re afraid of being deported. That’s one more reason to reform immigration policy in this country and until that happens it’s another reason for local governments to instruct local law enforcement to ignore the immigration status of people they interact with.

“Rockabye” Season 7. Wikipedia summary is: “A sixteen-year-old (Keri Lynn Pratt) loses her unborn child due to a severe abdominal beating. Her father (Skipp Sudduth) insists that she must have been raped and this leads detectives to the baby's father (John Patrick Amedori). The squad later learns that the girl was an active party in her own beating and that the teens found it necessary to do this after an abortion clinic deliberately stalled for time.”

This episode is about something I have never heard of before but which might exist- fake abortion providers. Clinics that stall for time with patients until the fetus is so old that an abortion is illegal. When two teens (boyfriend and girlfriend) get that treatment they decide to try to abort the fetus by hitting (with fists and a lamp) the girl’s belly. I think the point is that those who deny women an abortion force a lot of such women into doing something that must be even more difficult than having an abortion.

A few other notes:
1. The teens travel to NY from VA because in VA minors have to get parental approval to have an abortion, something I oppose.
2. The girl says that she was suicidal. In Ireland in recent decades if two psychiatrists agree that the female is suicidal, she is allowed to get an abortion. It’d be nice if something like that were done here if (or when) access to abortion is restricted.
3. One of the detectives implies that an OH high school that saw a lot of teenage pregnancies taught abstinence-only sex ed, which doesn’t include encouraging teens to practice safe sex.

“Alien” Season 7. Wikipedia summary is: “A school boy (Daniel Manche) becomes paralyzed after being stabbed in the back and detectives learn that the alleged perpetrator (Sasha Neulinger) was trying to protect his half-sister (Raquel Castro). While attending a Catholic school, the girl had been tormented continuously for having two mothers. One of her guardians (Amy Pietz) who never legally adopted her, is accused of sexual molestation by the girl's biological grandparents (Edmund Genest and Mary Beth Peil). While trying to decide if the claims are real or frivolous, Novak begins to suspect that their lawyer (Stephen Bogardus) is committing perjury.”

This is largely about homophobia and sort of about the Catholic Church. The detective Stabler says that being a Catholic means agreeing with the homophobia of the Church. First of all, the priest in this episode seems anti-homophobic. But more generally, the Church hasn’t in recent decades gone after anti-homophobic or LGB Catholics. It’s even more tolerant of such Catholics than it is of pro-choice Catholics, and as far as I can tell, the Church rarely THREATENS to go after pro-choice Catholics, and even then it’s just aimed at those who are elected politicians (and they don’t go through with the threats to ex-communicate).  

“Manipulated” Season 7. Wikipedia summary is: “The body of a young woman is found and when Benson and Stabler delve into her private life, they learn that in addition to being a respected lawyer, she was also a stripper. Her co-worker at the club (Faina Vitebsky) is later found murdered as well. Surveillance footage and DNA evidence implicate the lawyer's boss (Chris Potter) who appears to live with a disabled wife (Rebecca De Mornay). Further investigation reveals that the wife is living a lie and that she exacts revenge on her husband by hiring a hitman (Holt McCallany) to kill his sexual partners.”

Two notes.
1) There’s a fairly positive reference to efforts to unionize the dancers at strip clubs. That’s been tried in real life in at least one case- there’s a documentary about it called “Live, Nude Women Unite.”
2) There’s a less-than flattering reference to private military contractors (mercenaries of the sort used by the US government).

Law and Order: SVU Reviews R

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)

“Denial” Season 3. Wikipedia summary is: “A drug addict (Martha Plimpton) is sexually assaulted. In her purse, detectives Benson and Stabler find a decomposing baby's finger. When looking for both her attacker and the baby, they suspect she might be withholding information to protect her mother (Mary Steenburgen) or grandmother (Estelle Parsons). Tutuola tries to help by getting her clean.”

The detectives don’t pursue her for doing drugs.

“Competence” Season 3. Wikipedia summary is: “A woman (Lois Smith) reports her twenty-two-year-old daughter with Down Syndrome (Andrea Fay Friedman) is pregnant because a rapist (Matt DeCaro) took advantage of her innocence about sex. Detectives Benson and Stabler have to make sure that it is not just her mother being overprotective and in denial of her daughter's sex life. The girl's boyfriend (James Badge Dale) who also has Down Syndrome offer to help raise her baby. ADA Cabot then has to interfere and take on her superior, to settle the mother–daughter dispute on whether the daughter should have an abortion or not.”

In another season 3 episode there’s something that makes me think some of the people calling shots behind the camera are pro-union. With that in mind, when the character who got the woman pregnant brags that he pays union wages in his business, it’s a pro-union statement even though he’s sort of the “bad guy” in the episode.

“Silence” Season 3. Wikipedia summary is: “A murder takes place in a church. Detectives Benson and Stabler learn that the murderer (Sean Dugan) had been paid off by the church to stop him from reporting how he was sexually abused by a priest as a child. He blames the church for taking away his innocence and accuses a priest from his youth, Father Michael (Eric Stoltz) of molesting him.”

First, there’s one little bit about a nun (I assume a Catholic nun) who supports prostitutes by, for example, giving them free condoms. Catholic nuns tend to be a little bit to the left of the church.

This episode is mostly about the sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church. As I explain in some sections of a post here, I believe there is anti-Catholic bigotry in this country and sometimes I think that’s a small part of some peoples’ reaction to that scandal. But it’s a horrible scandal and it often really pisses me off and probably 99% of all Catholics. I haven’t heard of a mass exodus of victims and their families and I assume most of them are still Catholics. On the other hand, if I do leave the Church at any point it will be partly because of the scandal (but mostly other things (the second to last section of that post has more information)). Between the fact that lots of reasonable people criticize the Church about the scandal and the fact that one of the main characters is very Catholic, I don’t think it’s an anti-Catholic show. I just think that some people take a reasonable criticism of the Church too far and think that the Church was okay with what those priests were doing. They weren’t okay with it but their solution (transferring pedophile priests) was horrible.

“Chameleon” Season 4. Wikipedia summary is: “The detectives go on the trail of a recently paroled rapist responsible for the murder of a sex worker during a raid at a men's club and are called to the scene where he was shot in self defense by his own gun. However, the murder weapon was also used in another crime while he was still in prison, leading the detectives to investigate the victim (Sharon Lawrence) through a trail of previously unsolved cases, a spending spree and another victim.”

I’m not sure if this is liberal-progressive the way that opposing racism or homophobia is, but I should mention at least once that the detectives make it clear that they’re not Vice. I don’t know what Vice does except going after prostitutes but I believe that prostitution should be legal, safe and unionized, so I don’t think I like Vice very much.

There is also some opposition to the death penalty. Two ADAs support it, but the DA (a main character on Law and Order who gets along with the two ADAs in that show) and the FBI agent helping SVU oppose it.

“Juvenile” Season 4. Wikipedia summary is: “A cancer patient who was growing marijuana in her apartment is found raped and murdered, sending the detectives on a hunt for two junior-high students (Shane Lyons and Connor Paolo), each blaming the other. The prosecution team is faced with the dilemma of trying the older boy as an adult, despite evidence that he was not mentally capable of being able to carry out the crimes.”

The average reaction of the main characters to the fact that she was growing and selling (or distributing) marijuana is slightly positive. It’s very pro-medical marijuana.