Law and Order: SVU Reviews OO

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.

“Prima Nocta” Season 25. See this for a plot summary.

Racism Towards Inter-Racial Couples

One of the rape survivors is in a interracial relationship. I include a note about that sort of thing when doing these reviews because I got the (flawed) impression about 30 years ago that hostility to such couples was sort of the more-widely-acceptable form, and/or pinnacle, of white supremacy (although White hostility towards mixed-race couples IS more common and more intense than the more basic facet of white supremacy (see the next paragraph), the more basic facet is still a massive problem). Another reason I mention it is that I think there is some much smaller degree of hostility towards such couples from some small minority of people of color. As I have explained here, although I understand that calling it racism is inaccurate and unhelpful and I understand that it’s a TINY problem which White people shouldn’t worry about, I believe it does exist. I would say something sort of similar about interracial relationships where both people are non-white- I imagine the frequency that such relationships are treated with hostility by people of color is incredibly low, but it's still noteworthy since they can be described as “multicultural” in a very positive way.

As far as the hate from white supremacist bigots in connection to the first kind of interracial relationship, I WAS open-minded about 1-3 years ago that maybe it’s declining and I should ignore it (part of that math is the fact that the show is set in NY City and there are plenty of minor characters and extras that are people of color, and I already had a policy about this show where I did not high-light everything anti-racist, because of course there are plenty of minor characters who are people of color). But racism has resurged in the last 10-17 years and I believe that white supremacists ARE much more hostile to mixed-race couples than they are to people of color in general (I’ve attached greater value than I used to to a letter the Southern Poverty Law Center published after they received it from a Jewish man in state prison in America and one thing he focused on was the Nazi skinhead-enforced rules about fraternization between different races in prison).

“Fractured” Season 26. See this for a plot summary.

First, there’s a fair amount of vague talk about widespread hostility towards the police in NYC, which is probably a continuation of the ramped-up anti-racism that the show started expressing (not necessarily vaguely) in Season 22 about a year after the 2020 Black Lives Matter-aligned protests. 

“Cornered” Season 26. See this for a plot summary.

Anti-Muslim Bigotry

In some ways it’s not political but in some ways it is. A minor character that the Assistant DA for SVU had become close to is killed by criminals robbing a bodega and this is I think fairly significant because the character has a first and last name (Ali Imran) that is Arabic and also Muslim. The ADA is so upset that in the next episode (“First Light”) he has a graphic flashback to when his friend is killed. As I have said elsewhere about something kind of similar involving a handful of episodes of Star Trek TV shows, I believe this kind of thing can (at least) chip away at anti-Muslim bigotry in this country.

“Deductible” Season 26. See this for a plot summary.

Capitalism and Women’s Sexuality

This episode is basically about something that I don’t think comes up very often in the show. I may have failed to comment on this sort of thing 1-2 times that I should have but didn’t because I thought it was what I have decided to call “pretty basic feminism” (I have no intention of mentioning everything feminist on the show, that content would clutter my posts and surprise no one, so it has to be a pretty significant and/or extraordinary manifestation of sexism). I know I commented on this episode’s topic very briefly with one episode that was a bit different but very similar (“Hell’s Kitchen” in Season 20).

At the risk of greatly exaggerating how intellectual I am, I think it is the kind of thing that can set off Marxist Women Studies scholars. It’s about an insurance business where the boss manipulates female employees into using their sexuality to confirm new clients. He uses his power as a capitalist to exploit not just the labor but also the sexuality of female employees in order to maximize profit. It’s not clear to what degree if at all his male employees are aware of this and/or to what degree if at all they cooperate (we learn that one of his earlier female victims is now COO and helps him- it’s not clear how many of his female employees are not being exploited sexually). The imminently-signing new client featured in this episode seems slightly decent. After being misled by the woman’s boss, he, without permission, tries to give her oral sex and it’s slightly possible he may have gone further without permission if she hadn’t gotten away from him and locked herself in the bathroom till he left. But there are some statements indicating he was far from fully okay with what the boss did. I say that because it seems like, if the show SVU has the pulse of the population, maybe a surprisingly large majority of the male population is against that sort of thing.

What is “that sort of thing?” It’s bad enough that you have exploitation of labor in general with capitalism and then what I believe is called “super-exploitation” of female workers in a non-sexual way. I am, to a large but not blind degree a pro-porn feminist and I believe that sex-work should largely be seen as just another kind of labor. If a woman FULLY consents to let her body be exploited, I’m not going to complain if I get to see pictures of her naked. But basically forcing a woman to put her sexuality to work for the company (a company that has nothing to do with sex and where her official job description says nothing about sex) as a whole and/or her male boss is sickening. Sexuality is something that is usually very personal, private and sacred (unless this protected status is waived BY THE PERSON INVOLVED in a fair and mutually beneficial and respectful agreement (I’ll be honest I can’t think of how to make a comprehensive and legalistic yet general and concise statement about this and I believe it is a little complicated, but what the defendant in this episode does is a GREAT example of what powerful men should NOT use their power for)). 

And it might not hurt if I say something here that I have wanted to say in recent years. At the risk of patting myself on the back too much for being a good feminist, when I think of non-trafficked pornography I am horrified by the possibility that some women do it with little or no enjoyment simply for desperate financial reasons and I think the possibility of that scenario is damning of the fact that women in our society get paid less, are often saddled with ALL the child-rearing expenses, etc. etc.

Law and Order: SVU Reviews NN

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.

“Debatable” Season 24. See this for a plot summary.
Racism/Homophobia

There are two minor items to mention.

1. A Black man (whose son is cleared of the crime SVU are investigating shortly after his Dad’s statement) says something brief but pretty powerful about how Blacks get treated by the police. He says: “give me one good reason why any black man should trust the cops.”
2. One of the detectives says a witness is a total homophobe, and although we already know that that detective is anti-homophobic, it’s good of the show to remind viewers how the people involved in making the show feel about homophobia.

“Truth Embargo” Season 25. See this for a plot summary.
Racism/Criminal Justice System

This is an interesting episode. Towards the end I thought I detected a significant political shift towards the center, but I think I was wrong.

First, the woman, Natalie, who gets raped is a white woman married to another white woman.

Natalie seems pretty uncomfortable with the whole process of helping the police find her attacker. Pretty early we know that the police suspect a black youth. When the charged individual is on trial Natalie testifies and after answering some questions about what happened,  she is asked to identify her attacker, with the defendant seated in the courtroom. She doesn’t answer and after several seconds there’s a recess in the trial. As we learn a few minutes later, she IS certain the defendant raped her and that kind of complicates one part of this that I found politically pleasing.

A few minutes before Natalie testifies Benson (the woman who is head of SVU) speaks briefly with Natalie’s wife, Brook. We learn from Brook that she and Natalie are “acutely“ aware of racist problems in the criminal justice system and worry that the defendant won’t get a fair trial (I could see how even though they were certain of his guilt, good White allies like them would still worry about that). During the recess Natalie tells Benson and the Assistant DA that when she was growing up she had an adopted brother who was Black. One day at a store when they were about 12yo she dared him to steal something. He got caught (apparently she was implicated by the police) and while she got to go home with a warning, her adopted brother spent the night in jail and got a criminal record, something which had a very negative effect on his life.

It emerges in all of this that the main thing which motivates Natalie’s failure to identify her rapist is her belief that once someone gets convicted, that can affect the rest of their life in many ways that are detrimental. There’s a brief discussion about rehabilitation. I am far from an expert on rehabilitation but I recently wrote that a lot of people in prison don’t need rehabilitation. Although in general it would be really nice if rehabilitation was an outcome of going to prison, I get the impression that it often or usually isn’t, and that having a record and experiencing the nightmare of prison must make it difficult to survive once released.

At one point, I thought this episode was going to be a hatchet job on progressives, suggesting that we believe that racial justice requires that all guilty people of color be acquitted and that there is something wrong with cooperating with the police when a white woman has been raped by a black man.

I have a little more to say about this episode’s place on the political spectrum, but first I want to say this. I imagine it’s difficult to be an anti-racist white person victimized by a crime committed by a person of color. More specifically I imagine that anti-racist tendencies in the feminist movement experience a lot of stress when a White woman accuses a Black man of rape.

My conclusion? There’s a fair amount of dialogue involving Benson agreeing (at least to some degree) with Natalie and Brook. Natalie not only identifies her rapist in court, she pushes back when the defense attorney suggests that she is lying about his client.

“Duty to Report” Season 25. See this for a plot summary.
Police Corruption

I am not sure I should be reviewing this one. There are two incidents where a VERY senior NYPD officer commits a very serious crime against a civilian and Benson (the head of SVU) enlists the Internal Affairs Bureau (which investigates corruption, etc. in the police) in her investigation of a crime that involves her superior’s daughter. Benson apparently gets along pretty well with at least one senior IAB officer- a Black woman who Benson was investigated by a few years earlier. At the end, that IAB leader and Benson agree that she will join SVU. Assuming it lasts at least the rest of this brief season, it’s significant in that it’s only the third time there’s been a woman of color in the squad (there was one in the first season, and then in season 24 there was a RECURRING character in the squad matching that description). 

In general it’s a pretty solid endorsement of IAB which I think is either probably a good thing or definitely a VERY good thing.

Benson does, while laughing, say that together they might even break some rules. At the risk of going too easy on them, I think it might either be an insignificant line that goes nowhere or maybe there are some rules they can break that are bad and that are not foci of IAB. In general I am very happy with this episode.

“Third Man Syndrome” Season 25. See this for a plot summary.
Homophobia

This is a very political episode, as I define that, but there’s nothing very special about it. It’s about a gay bashing that seemed like a possible sex crime (which is why SVU gets it). There’s some confusing dialogue about the gay bashers possibly also being anti-immigrant and I think the fact that one of them appears Latino doesn’t rule that out- weird stuff like that happens, at least in TV and movies and real life. The victim, who is straight but presumed gay by his attackers, is a visitor and future resident from Columbia. His cousin, who’s with him, is an undocumented resident- SVU doesn’t do anything in relation to that.

It’s overall a pretty good anti-homophobic episode.

Law and Order: SVU Reviews MM

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.

“A Better Person” Season 24. See this for a plot summary.

Once in a while I actually read the Wikipedia summaries I link to (or copy and paste, 2-4 years ago) (I almost never read ANYTHING in the summaries I link to on the “All Things Law and Order” blog because they are REALLY long, probably around 5-7,000 words). In this case the wikipedia summary is worthless.

It’s about a man whose “son” is killed and it turns out that she was transitioning towards being female and her dad didn’t know that or tried to bury it mentally. This results in him messing with the crime scene (he’s a cop and is the first one to find his daughter dead) to eliminate all the evidence that she was female. He doesn’t seem ridiculously transphobic and with some help from SVU he moves towards recognizing and valuing the change that his late daughter made.

“Jumped In” Season 24. See this for a plot summary.

The head of SVU expresses support for a federal investigation of a small part of the NYPD.

“Intersection” Season 24. See this for a plot summary.

The couple that gets engaged seems to be an inter-racial one, probably a black man and a white woman. Also, at one point a SVU detective makes an interesting statement. He says something about how humans are just “homicidal monkeys” who don’t respect the planet. I think it’s a non-bigoted environmental statement, but intertwined with it is another statement about how humans treat each other, and I am not sure the writers should have used the word “monkeys” because when NYPD cops refer to humans as “homicidal monkeys” I usually find that very offensive (in this case the detective I’m talking about gets along very well with the character played by Ice-T, so he probably isn’t a racist).

“Dutch Tears” Season 24. See this for a plot summary.

One of the two criminals is a Corrections Officer.

“Bubble Wrap” Season 24. See this for a plot summary.                     

They tell a rape survivor that they don’t care if she was using cocaine.

Britts Out! (Katie Britt, immigration, and sex-trafficking)

(a very similar version of this was published as a guest opinion in the MSM paper for Boulder here) 

 

(That’s what I say about Ireland and the US Senate!)

As you probably know, a month ago GOP Sen. Katie Britt was under a storm of criticism in response to her rebuttal speech after the State of the Union address by President Biden. She told the story of a Mexican woman sex-trafficked when she was a young teen in Mexico- well, for the most part Britt didn’t want you to know it was in Mexico. Britt’s been less than consistent about this, but the idea was to make you think it was in this country and on Biden’s watch (when in fact it was during the George W. Bush administration).

In addition to everything else that has been said about Britt’s rebuttal, I have some more to add. Crucially, read the two paragraphs towards the bottom that are in italics, they’re very important.
 
She was talking about the surge in migration from Mexico to the US, but she also talks about sex-trafficking and Mexican drug cartel activity and she is conflating all three of them (it should be noted that the Mexican woman who was trafficked was not a victim of the cartels contrary to what Britt implied). Has sex-trafficking surged? I’ll be honest- I don’t know, but I think Britt wants you to think it has and that it's coming here with Mexican migrants.

At one point in a March 10th The Guardian article, she is quoted as saying:
 
“We have to tell those stories, and the liberal media needs to pay attention to it because there are victims all the way coming to the border, there are victims at the border, and then there are victims all throughout the country.”
 
I believe that although this is in conflict with what she was saying the rest of the time, she was trying to say in that quote that this kind of sex-trafficking is common in Mexico and Mexicans want to come here and rape your wife or daughter, etc. and only Donald Trump can stop them. She was saying that the sex-trafficking inside Mexico, deaths of migrants at the border and deaths of Americans at the hands of immigrants inside America are one unbroken chain that can only be addressed comprehensively by Trump’s approach to immigration. This is nonsense.

Tough immigration policies will not affect the Mexican drug cartels (it certainly wouldn’t have stopped what happened in Britt’s anecdote because the cartels and the the border had nothing to do with it). Separating children from parents at the border will do absolutely nothing to the cartels. I’m not sure what WILL stop the cartels because I’m not as familiar with recent Mexican history as I should be, but tough immigration policies are not going to help.

As far as “there are victims at the border,” I am not sure what she’s talking about, but there are reports that migrants waiting to cross the border often find themselves in bad situations, which probably does include all kinds of sex crimes. I am not sure how much time is spent at the border by migrants who are not asylum seekers, but as far as the asylum seekers, you must remember that Britt’s party and her hero, Trump, strongly support the “Remain in Mexico” policy where asylum seekers must wait in Mexico until a decision is made about granting them asylum. So, the GOP believes that Mexico is just one big nightmare for teenage girls trying to get to America, but they want such survivors to either wait in Mexico for months or years, or to just stay in Mexico permanently.

As far as victims in this country, yes, it occasionally happens as it might have recently with Laken Riley (I said it- satisfied, MTG?) (I said “might have” because of the presumption of innocence). Those are tragedies but you need to consider a few things:
1) From what I have read non-immigrants here are more likely than immigrants here to commit crimes (yes, that statement probably is based on ignoring the “crime” committed when they enter this country without documents- but that’s a victimless crime).
2) That percentage of the immigrant population that commits violent crime must be incredibly small- why punish everyone in that population because of a very few bad apples?
3) I cannot remember a lot about how often this happens but what about the immigrants who die at the hands of racist and violent white people who listen to the anti-immigrant rantings of people like Britt? Fueling that racism as Trump does will only increase the number of immigrants who get viciously beaten to death by angry teenage males.

In her statement that I quoted above Britt implies that liberals ignore what she's talking about. There are probably better counter-examples than this, but I’m going to go with something that I think is important and probably doesn’t get mentioned very much. The TV show Law and Order: Special Victims Unit FREQUENTLY makes it clear that NYC is a "sanctuary city" where cops don't collaborate with Immigration authorities and not only do they oppose all kinds of sex crimes in general, there was one season 19 two-part episode (Remember Me and Remember Me, Too) about a "coyote" (someone who helps undocumented immigrants get across the southern border and to their destination in the US) who repeatedly raped women he was transporting. Another episode, “911” in season seven, is about a young girl who was brought over the Mexican border by someone who then sold her to child pornographers. In season 16 there is an episode “Girls Disappeared,” about sex-trafficked teenage girls crossing that border. There might be other episodes like that.

 

(UPDATE 7/19/24 The woman Britt talks about was sex-trafficked far from the border)

Liberals and progressives believe that migrant women and girls being sexually exploited and/or assaulted is a serious problem, but they don't support Trump's extreme approach to immigration.

Law and Order: SVU Reviews LL

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.

“Silent Night, Hateful Night” Season 23. See this for a plot summary.

Overall there’s some good stuff about violent bigotry towards religious minorities, although it’s a bit muddled since they had one batch of hate crimes committed by one group (Black teens) and one batch carried out by white fascists. I have mixed feelings about this episode. I’m not saying it’s just generally bad for the show to include stuff about Black-Jewish tension in NYC, but I’m hoping they’ve only addressed it 1-2 other times on the show (out of 500+ episodes), since it should be an incredibly minor theme. In that spirit, there is one very valuable part of this episode. When the team of detectives that includes SVU learn that some of the hate crime violence was carried out by anti-Semitic Blacks, they are reluctant to act publicly on that (by involving the media in their effort to arrest someone) because they worry that it will increase tension between those two groups. They eventually go with pursuing the Black teens for the anti-semitic hate crimes (or at least some of them), but only after a little more investigation.

“Tommy Baker’s Hardest Fight” Season 23. See this for a plot summary.

This is about a boxing champ coming out of the closet, coming out as a gay man.

“Video Killed the Radio Star” Season 23. See this for a plot summary.

The rape survivor is in an inter-racial relationship.

“Promising Young Gentlemen” Season 23. See this for a plot summary.

One of the SVU detectives says that if the suspects were people of color, the investigation would be a lot more aggressive.

“Once Upon a Time in El Barrio” Season 23. See this for a plot summary. 

This episode includes some statements and actions reflecting the fact that NYC does not help the federal immigration authorities. It’s also about a corrupt NYPD Captain.

Possibly the most valuable part of it politically is when the head of SVU (UPDATE 11/21/22 for a couple days that erroneously said NYPD, but it's correct now) points out that the corrupt cop was saved at one point in the past by something called “qualified immunity.” It basically means that government employees can often avoid lawsuits that are about how they do their job. It’s often cited by campaigners against police brutality as part of the problem.

Law and Order: SVU Reviews KK

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.

“Our Words Will Not Be Heard” Season 22. See this for a plot summary.

This is another anti-racist episode, with some stuff about homophobia added as well. Some of that is:

1. The head of SVU acknowledges that police don’t do as much about missing women of color as they do about missing white women (the media are also mentioned).
2. The head of SVU also gives a man suing the NYPD for racism some tips on what kind of demands to make in settlement negotiations (her suggestions are pretty good) (it’s emphasized that the people behind such lawsuits are looking for justice and change, not money). Part of what she says is that the courts need to mandate that the NYPD start a program of anti-bias training.
3. The bad guys in this episode are white supremacists who go after an inter-racial lesbian couple.

“In the Year we all fell down” Season 22. See this for a plot summary.

This is a little complicated, but I think there is an anti-racist element to this episode. At the center of the episode is a Manhattan restaurant with a BLACK LIVES MATTER poster at the front entrance. When her business is in serious financial trouble the owner DOES freak out and take the head of SVU hostage, but she’s willing to be a hostage to try and keep the situation from becoming critical (she is friends with the owner and loves the restaurant; she doesn’t want the owner to be killed). Also, at the end, after the owner surrenders without harming anyone, it’s revealed that the restaurant’s customers and/or the neighborhood in general raised money to help keep the restaurant from going under.

“Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing” Season 22. See this for a plot summary.   

In this episode, a small part of it is about the immediate superior of the head of SVU. He’s a black man and seems willing to cooperate with legal efforts at reforming the NYPD and the rest of the NYPD leadership become incredibly hostile to him.

“Nightmares in Drill City” Season 23. See this for a plot summary.

The ADA working for SVU expresses opposition to prosecuting people for having some marijuana.

“The People vs. Richard Wheatley” Season 22. For a plot summary see this.

One minor character is a female detective married to another woman.

That character is a main character on the Law and Order spin-off “Organized Crime” and we are reminded that her wife’s family (both women are black) is suing the NYPD for excessive force.

Law and Order: SVU Reviews JJ

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.

Law and Order: SVU Reviews II

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.

“Townhouse Incident” Season 17. See this for a plot summary.

Two minor characters are in an inter-racial relationship.

“Collateral Damages” Season 17. See this for a plot summary.

This is about a senior NYPD official who gets caught with child porn.

“Manhattan Transfer” and “Unholiest Alliance” Season 17. See this and this for a plot summary. 

Although it’s obscured by other suspects, part of this is about two corrupt cops moonlighting for a crime ring that traffics teenage minor girls.

“Assaulting Reality” Season 17. For a plot summary see this.

It’s about a reality TV show and at one point a member of the crew (she seems like she’s senior) basically says that using a non-union crew makes it difficult to successfully complete episodes of a reality TV show.

“Intersecting Lives” and “Heartfelt Passages” Season 17. For a plot summary see this and this.

This is about SVU investigating a jail guard who is raping inmates and ex-inmates. He’s white and all the women he targets are black and that’s part of his theory that no one will believe them. It also kind of makes it worse, as there is a history of white men using black women for non-consensual sex. Also, practically all of the other guards passionately support him and automatically believe him.

(We also learn that the ADA working for SVU has been getting threats on a frequent basis since he got a grand jury to indict three cops who killed an unarmed black man)

(The ADA is threatened by a street gang member in connection with his prosecution of a prison guard; it’s implied that the union for prison guards is behind it)

Law and Order: SVU Reviews HH

 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.

“Glasgowman’s Wrath” Season 16. See this for a plot summary.     

Two of the girls (sisters) have two gay moms.

“Forgiving Rollins” Season 16. See this for a plot summary.

This is about a senior police officer getting accused by SVU of rape.

“Agent Provocateur” Season 16. For a plot summary, see this. 

A minor character is gay. They show him in his bedroom with another man (who might be naked and is sleeping in the bed). I’m not sure this is as significant as I think it is. I’m also not sure it’s as unprecedented on this show as I think it is. But I think the average straight man is less comfortable with a scene like that than he is with a similar scene involving two women. I’m not sure how helpful that kind of thing is (occasionally, in non-porn contexts, emphasizing the SEXUAL aspect of same sex relationships (the first man I referred to said he met his friend in a “meat market” bar (where I assume they were both looking for sex))). But I think it’s helpful to do that occasionally. On a last note, the first man I referred to was white and his friend was black.

“Transgender Bridge” Season 17. For a plot summary see this. 

Transphobia is a big part of this episode.

“Patrimonial Burden” Season 17. For a plot summary see this.

I’m not sure how many times I have done a note for similar episodes, but I think this one deserves one. The rapist is a socially conservative clergyman.

Law and Order: SVU Reviews GG

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.

“Military Justice” Season 15. See this for a plot summary.          

Although it’s a pretty limited criticism of the Coast Guard, it does suggest that there are more than a few “bad apples” in the Coast Guard (and, significantly, one of them is a senior officer). It also illustrates how the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy of homophobia would have silenced any gay members of the military who were victims of hate crimes (a gay Coast Guard member who aided and abetted the rape was told to remain silent about it or he would be outed and expelled from the Coast Guard).

“Jersey Breakdown” Season 15. See this for a plot summary.         

There’s a lot about two aspects of private prisons. First, in this episode there’s a lot of corruption surrounding a private prison; there’s also a lot of stuff about how poorly in-mates at that private prison are treated.

“Betrayal’s Climax” Season 15. See this for a plot summary.  

The rape survivor is a white teenage girl in an inter-racial relationship with a Latino teenage boy.

“Girls Disappeared” Season 16. See this for a plot summary.   

There’s one bit that’s in conflict with anti-immigrant forces. Two detectives are talking about trafficked teenage minor girls and one says: “And these idiots in D.C. wanna send them back because they’re ‘terrorists bringing over Ebola’” (of the group that SVU freed in this episode at least one is an immigrant).

“American Disgrace” Season 16. See this for a plot summary.   

This is kind of about how a lot of white people react to black men hooking up with white women. Although the bad guy is identified as such only near the very end, he is a racist, so it is basically an anti-racist episode.

Law and Order: SVU Reviews FF

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)

“Criminal Hatred” Season 14. See this for a summary.

It’s about a gay man who attacks men who are married to women but also like men. They are closeted and reluctant to work with the police because they’ll be outed in front of their families. It’s just one more reason to fight homophobia.

“Secrets Exhumed” Season 14. See this for a summary.

This episode is about an FBI agent who murdered a romantic rival and blamed it on the suspect in a string of rape-murders.

“Funny Valentine” Season 14. See this for a plot summary.

In 2010 the Supreme Court of the United States decided in favor of the plaintiffs in Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission, saying that when it comes to political financing corporations are people. The ADA, a main character, says something implying that it was a ridiculous decision. Although I’m not real familiar with the issue, it is ridiculous to treat corporations as people. One of the best bumper-stickers I’ve seen says “I’ll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one.”

“American Tragedy” Season 15. See this for a plot summary.

About a black teenager who is racially profiled by a rich white woman who shoots him dead. Her lawyer tried to conflate that with the search that the police were conducting for a rapist who matched the description of the teenager. I’m not super positive about the (relatively acceptable) stop and frisking of Black men who match a certain description (in this case, hoodie and baseball hat, young, tall) in a certain area, but as the detective played by Ice-T (who has criticized white officers for being racist at least a few times) says, that stop and frisk operation was different than shooting someone- although stop and frisk could result in someone innocent being shot, the white woman was pretty quick to shoot the teen when he was still at least 5 feet away. She wasn’t on trial for suspecting him as SVU would have, she was on trial for shooting him when he was still at least 5 feet away. In multiple ways it emerges that the woman is a racist and the ADA for SVU prosecutes her for a homicide. It could be a lot more critical of stop and frisk (that is, that practice in general), but overall it’s an anti-racist episode.

“Internal Affairs” Season 15. See this for a plot summary.

This is about SVU helping Internal Affairs go after a cop who is raping women. Actually, the entire precinct is corrupt and that’s exposed by IA and SVU.

Law and Order: SVU reviews EE

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)

“Bully” Season 12. See this for a plot summary.

A minor character is a gay man.

“Reparations” Season 12. See this for a plot summary. 

First, two minor characters, a Black woman and a White man are in a relationship.

This is partly about the KKK using sexual assault as a political weapon and partly about the racist stereotype about black men raping white women.

And at one point one of the detectives says that in the present there are plenty of racist cops.

“Bang” Season 12. See this for a plot summary.

In a brief exchange between a detective and a suspect, the show kind of blames people at equity firms who do credit default swaps for the 2008 crash of the economy.

“Manhattan Vigil” Season 14. See this for a plot summary.

One of the detectives says that the NYPD allocates resources for searches of children based on the class identity of the child’s parents.

“Friending Emily” Season 14. See this for a plot summary.

There’s one small bit of opposition to homophobia.

Law and Order: SVU Reviews DD

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)

“Trophy” Season 12. See this for a summary.

At the beginning there are two very minor characters that are in an inter-racial relationship.

“Penetration” See this for a summary.

A small part of this is about the FBI investigating the far-right. More specifically there’s a smaller part about anti-muslim bigots. It focuses on a protest of what some called the “ground zero mosque.” There was an effort to build a mosque close to the World Trade Center in NYC. In a post at the time, I suggested that those behind it should compare their refusal to build it somewhere else to Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her seat on that bus.

“Pop” Season 12. See this for a plot summary.

A fairly innocent minor character says that his brother died after breathing in dust at Ground Zero (the World Trade Center on 9/11). The collapse of both towers released a huge amount of dust that included glass and other things you don’t want to breathe in. Some agency of the Bush administration, probably OSHA or the EPA, said it was safe but it wasn’t and a lot of people ended up very sick because of it.

“Mask” Season 12. See this for as plot summary.

The two victims are a gay female couple.

“Flight” Season 12. See this for a plot summary.

The rapist is a wealthy defense contractor and the SVU initially investigates cautiously because of the power and influence he has. At one point Detective Fin points out that they would approach it very differently if the suspect was blue collar.

Law and Order: SVU Reviews CC

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)

“Disabled” Season 11. Wikipedia summary is: “When she fails to show up at a bus stop, Cara Raleigh (Lisa Arrindell Anderson), a disabled former opera singer with multiple sclerosis who cannot speak, is found by her bus driver (Ralph Byers), beaten and raped in her home. Her nephew (Quinton Aaron) gives an alibi that does not check out and her sister (Jill Scott) is seen physically abusing her on video. As a result, both caregivers become suspects. Cara eventually reveals that the bus driver was the rapist but is put in a nursing home and becomes unwilling to cooperate. Benson manages to persuade her to stand trial with the unit's temporary ADA (Teddy Sears).”

There’s one thing fairly hostile to those who organize dog fights.

“Conned” Season 11. Wikipedia summary is: “A homosexual prostitute (Pressly Coker) is found dead in the storage room of a hotel during a wedding reception with the ID of a friend named Andrew Hingam (John Magaro). Fin Tutuola questions his son Ken (Ernest Waddell) about the two boys since they were all known to volunteer at the same place. Ken leads Fin to Hingam, who confesses to killing his friend in self-defense. Hingam's case deepens when detectives learn that his psychiatrist (Ally Walker) who prescribes a regimen of drugs and electro convulsive therapy may be performing other procedures on him as well.”

At one point, while questioning a hotel’s kitchen staff, they assure them they’re not concerned about anyone’s immigration status.

“Beef” Season 11. Wikipedia summary is: “Following the vicious rape-murder of a beautiful worker (Ioana Alfonso) at "Donna Rosa's" meat packing plant, the police initially suspect that a vegetarian (Aaron Tveit) who lives in her building is the killer. However, suspicion shifts elsewhere when they learn that the victim was an undercover animal activist attempting to document and expose unsanitary practices in the meat packing industry. Information from the company owner (Lynn Cohen) and foreman (John Petkoff) leads the detectives to arrest a plant worker (Juan Javier Cardenas) and match his DNA to that found at the crime scene. This turns out to be a dead end as well after an interview with his jealous wife (Nancy Rodriguez) reveals that he was framed. Detective Benson goes undercover herself to retrace the woman's steps.”

First, they assure immigrants that they’re not Immigration.

The story is about a business-owner and her manager killing an undercover journalist investigating their meat-packing plant.

“Ace” Season 11. Wikipedia summary is: “Detectives Benson and Stabler must track down a pregnant rape victim (Hanna-Liina Võsa) who disappears from the hospital. In the process, they uncover a vast baby-trafficking scam, led by a Bulgarian crime lord (Pasha D. Lychnikoff). When the woman (Gordana Rashovich) who housed the pregnant mothers is discovered murdered, Benson and Stabler go undercover as infertile parents, while ADA Marlowe clashes with Cragen over methods to protect the kidnapped woman and her newborn child. Matters become complicated in the trial when the gynecologist (David Paymer) involved is assigned the same lawyer as the mob that used him for his access to pregnant women. He realizes that if he testifies truthfully he will be killed so a shadow counsel is arranged.”

First, a rape survivor leaves the hospital before SVU can talk with her, because she’s undocumented and is worried Immigration will be called. Second, when a US government official makes some anti-immigrant comments, one of the detectives says: “spoken like a true racist.”

“Bullseye” Season 12. Summary is here.

There’s a brief appearance of a very minor character- a gay man raising a child with another gay man.

Law and Order: SVU Reviews BB

 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)

“Anchor” Season 11. Wikipedia summary: “When two young girls are similarly murdered a little over a month apart, Detective Tutuola decides to investigate the gruesome crimes. Benson puts him in touch with a reporter (Megalyn Echikunwoke) who may have enough connections to get them a lead. After a third killing, Fin discovers that all three children were "anchor babies" of immigrant families and reaches out to the Center of Immigrant Services. After sifting through the Center's hate mail, and witnessing a fight between an immigration lawyer (John Larroquette) and a fanatic (Thomas Sadoski) who follows a conservative talk show host (Bruce McGill), Fin begins to narrow in on the killer.”

The main issue here is immigration and it’s a pro-immigrant show 99% of the time. The immigration lawyer talks about how anti-immigrant politics is about scapegoating for problems like low wages and no health care insurance. The idea that undocumented immigrant labor lowers wages for everyone is sort of true, but only because of a failure by communities to stand in solidarity with immigrants. If more people would stand with immigrants demanding better wages, more employers would pay all their workers better and fewer employers would use the undocumented status of some employees to help break unionization efforts.

Although the detectives don’t go along with this in court, I think the show is trying to say that those who espouse anti-immigrant politics bear some of the responsibility for anti-immigrant violence committed by people who listen to them. Although it shouldn’t result in the violent ones being acquitted (the murderer’s lawyer was trying to get him acquitted with that argument), it’s true that the anti-immigrant intellectuals and politicians bear some responsibility for anti-immigrant violence.

Towards the beginning when detective Finn is looking at the murders of two young children who are people of color, he gets into an argument with his superior about how much effort NYPD is making to find the killer(s)- he thinks there’d be more effort if the kids were white.

“Quickie” Season 11. Wikipedia summary is: “When a seventeen-year-old is found strangled and beaten to death in an alley, her ex-boyfriend (Brady Corbet) leads the cops to a website that she used to meet up with random men. Detective Benson decides to create a user account for the site and finds a womanizer (Brian Geraghty) who met with the victim and had sex with her without a condom. The case is closed when a different suspect is proven guilty of the murder but a new one opens when the original suspect is found to have HIV. To help ADA Cabot prosecute the predator for knowingly spreading HIV, one of his previous partners (Mattie Hawkinson) is brought into court. When this fails to work, the defendant's grandfather (Jack Larson) blames himself for his grandson's misogyny and causes him to have an epiphany.”

There are two small notes:
1) At the beginning, people in an apartment building hear a woman being attacked and no one does anything. A couple of twenty-something guys are doing drugs and one almost does call the cops because of the woman being attacked, but his friend points out that they’re high. This is another reason to decriminalize or in some cases legalize drugs.
2) A woman who’s got AIDS says that her insurance won’t pay for the meds because it’s a pre-existing condition. That’s sick.

“Shadow” Season 11. Wikipedia summary is: “When a wealthy couple is found murdered in their bedroom, Benson and Stabler decide to speak to the deceased couple's daughter Anne (Sarah Paulson). After hearing her story of a strange man who has been following her, the detectives soon discover that the supposed stalker is Detective Ash Ramsey (Naveen Andrews) of the Special Frauds division. Convinced that Anne killed her parents for their money, Ramsey becomes suspicious of Anne's business manager (Dennis Boutsikaris) and is led to believe that he helped her steal money from the foundation she runs. With little evidence to go on, the detectives are able to buy some time by blackmailing the foundation's leader (Edward Hibbert) into pressing charges against Anne for embezzlement. Even though hitmen have been sent after them, Benson and Ramsey go out into the open as part of a dangerous sting operation.”

One of the detectives talks about Wall Street having a lot of psychopaths.

“Witness” Season 11. Wikipedia summary is: “A pretty woman (Diora Baird) is raped and cut in her apartment building's stairwell and claims a black woman saved her by punching the perpetrator (Eric Lange) in the eye. The lady is identified as Nardalee Ula (Saidah Arrika Ekulona), an illegal immigrant from Democratic Republic of the Congo, who came to America after escaping a life of sexual abuse against women used by the country as a "weapon of war". After the victim dies from MRSA, Nardalee is the only one who can testify against the rapist, but risks being deported. After her successful testimony she is awarded a U-Visa, but declines it, saying she will be going back to the Congo to help save other women from sexual abuse. Meanwhile, ADA Cabot makes a shocking decision of her own.”

Besides non-political rape, this is about asylum seekers and rape as a weapon of war. The detectives make it clear that they aren’t with ICE (immigration) and go so far as to get a special Visa for an undocumented witness that allows her to stay as a permanent resident for life. This is after the rapist tries to get her deported- one more reason to reform our immigration system.

The witness was raped multiple times in the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo. And after the NYC rapist is convicted she decides to go back there to help women being raped like she was. She inspires the SVU ADA to take a break from the DA’s office to join an international team prosecuting rape in conflict zones around the world.

We also learn that some people wait YEARS before they get an answer about being let into the country as an asylum seeker. We need more judges etc. created and assigned to that work.

Law and Order: SVU Reviews AA

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)

“Crush” Season 10. Wikipedia summary is: “A high school student (Carly Schroeder) falls down a flight of stairs sending her into a coma. The SVU is alerted when the doctor's examination reveals signs of physical abuse. Upon waking, the girl refuses to name her attacker, even though the detectives already have two suspects: the girl's boyfriend and a self-described 'drama-geek' (Ezra Miller) with a crush on her. Frustrated, a family court prosecutor (Melinda McGraw) convinces Benson to use sexting as a pretext for arresting her for distributing child pornography. Faced with this ultimatum and helped by Stabler's daughter Kathleen (Allison Siko), the victim admits to being abused by her boyfriend. Afterwards, the detectives plan a sting operation against a biased judge (Swoosie Kurtz) and her clerk (Geoffrey Cantor) after they are unable to make the child pornography charges disappear. “

This episode is partly about teenagers 13-17yo creating their own porn without any adult involvement (and without any little kids). In this episode a new ADA working with SVU charges a 15-year old girl with creating and distributing child porn (she took pictures of herself and sent them to her boyfriend) and detective Benson initially but reluctantly cooperates. Although in a season 16 episode SVU comes down pretty hard on some teenagers for creating and sharing similar porn (only teenage minors, no little kids or adults), in this episode Benson says a few things about how inappropriate the charges are.

Those two episodes are the only ones where I disagree with more than a tiny chunk of what the SVU does- scattered throughout the series there are some very minor story elements (i.e. some of the tricks they use to get a confession) that I don’t like, but I approve of them going after the perps they go after about 99.9% of the time. But I have a problem with them going after teenage minors for creating child porn when everyone involved is 13-17yo. A child porn charge is a very serious thing and a conviction can probably ruin your life.

I have already admitted twice on this blog that I like porn. Although I generally support our laws on child porn, in the season 16 episode I mentioned above, I feel like the detectives came down too hard on the teens. If minor teens want to create porn with their peers (no adults or little kids), they shouldn’t be criminalized. I have heard that in real life some under-18 teens have been charged with child porn crimes for making porn with their peers and that’s wrong. On the other hand, adults shouldn’t be looking at that stuff for the following reasons: 1) you can’t be certain that it ISN’T created by sick adults, 2) if it is porn that exclusively involves teen minors, the odds are they don’t want adults looking at it, and 3) even if they are pics and videos taken/made by (and of) teens 13-17yo, they’re at least a year from living on their own- they’re still KIDS living at home with their parents. And although I don’t think those teens should be charged with child porn crimes for the kind of porn I'm discussing here, discouraging them from putting that stuff on the web is a good idea- they might regret it later on in life and adults looking at it might get the idea of trying to have sex with a teenage minor when that’s almost always wrong or at least inappropriate.

UPDATE 4/21/21 At some point in the last several years Connecticut made this a less serious crime. And in 2016 New Mexico legalized it for teenage minors completely. I wouldn't be surprised if there are a few other states that have also done this. UPDATE 4/25/21 Colorado also made it a less serious crime in 2018; Washington made it a less serious crime in 2019; According to this, as of 2017, the following states have made it a less serious crime: AZ, FL, IL, LA, MO, NE, NV, NJ, TX, UT, VT.  (UPDATE 4/29/21 You should also look at some of the web-pages here (the ACLU more or less agrees with me about this)).

UPDATE 4/5/22 I just watched, for the first time in 3-4 years, the season 16 episode I have mentioned. I am reluctant to get into all the details of what happened in that episode  and what should happen in similar situations in real life. But I feel pretty much the same as before. Possession and creating and sharing this kind of child porn should be either a less serious crime for minors or no crime at all for minors. But I think that it should be a crime for minors to put it on the Web- much less serious than a felony, but some kind of misdemeanor. And I still feel that the police came down too hard on the teens in the season 16 episode.

At the very end there’s another thing that deserves a note. The judge is sentencing people to a private corrections institution in Ohio that is run by her cousin. SVU exposes her.

“Solitary” Season 11. Wikipedia summary is: “When a woman (Deborah Ann Woll) is reported missing, her boyfriend (Bobby Campo) points Detectives Benson and Stabler in the direction of her downstairs neighbor (Stephen Rea), a convicted bank robber who spent nineteen years in solitary confinement. A surprising twist to the case exposes more of the ex-con's dark past.”

There are two note-worthy things.
1) The ADA refers to water-boarding as torture.
2) The negative effects of solitary confinement in prison are illustrated when Stabler spends 3 days in solitary as an experiment and says that it felt like a week.

“Hammered” Season 11. Wikipedia summary is: “After a night of heavy drinking, an alcoholic (Scott Foley) wakes up to a bloody apartment, a terrible cut on his head and a dead woman in his bed. Unable to recall the night before, he immediately calls the police. Benson and Stabler suspect the crime is the result of a deadly love triangle while Munch and Tutuola discover that the victim was an abortion doctor. After talking to her ex-husband (Chris McKinney), the detectives learn about the numerous death threats that were sent to her. The squad arrests the man who originally called them when they find him beating up his business partner (Chris Bauer) for convincing him to drink again. This leads to a trial which exposes Sonya Paxton's drinking problem.”

There’s briefly some good pro-choice stuff. Not every detective in SVU is onboard with that but overall it’s a pro-choice show.

Although they say this to someone they think might be more of a suspect than a victim, they do say that they don’t care if he was using illegal drugs, they just want the truth.

“Users” Season 11. Wikipedia summary is: “After a crime scene photo of a murdered teenage girl (iJustine) rapidly becomes an Internet phenomenon, the police initiate an investigation with the victim's father (James Colby). When he points the detectives towards his daughter's suspicious therapist (James Frain), it turns out that the man's alibi is airtight. While Munch and Fin are busy tracking down the girl's stolen credit card, Warner and Stabler discover that one of the other therapy patients (Ryan Kelley) has broken into the morgue. The case takes an unexpected turn when the SVU realizes that their best potential witness is desperate for heroin. Huang puts his medical license on the line to get him an illegal drug with a high effectiveness for treating addiction.”

There’s talk at one point about how the pharmaceutical industry won’t produce an alternative to both heroin and methadone called Ibogaine or Ibogaine hydochloride. It’s apparently much better than methadone at helping heroin addicts but the patent expired and drug companies can’t make a lot of money off of it so no company is willing to pay for it to go through FDA trials  and it’s therefore illegal in America. If this episode is right, corporate greed among pharmaceutical companies is blocking something that can end heroin addiction better than methadone does.

Law and Order: SVU Reviews Z

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)

“PTSD” Season 10. Wikipedia summary is: “Benson and Tutuola get a first-hand look at how women in the military are treated when they respond to the murder of a pregnant marine who was raped by one of her fellow marines in Iraq. The two find a suspect (Ryan Kwanten) and become convinced of his guilt, but Greylek faces difficulties when the Navy Commander (Frank Whaley) threatens to shut down their investigation. Benson discovers new evidence and the real rapist (Dominic Fumusa) is identified along with his wife (Amy Spanger) who committed the murder. During the proceedings, Benson's prior sexual assault stirs up painful memories.”

First, there’s one brief anti-death penalty statement by the ADA.

It’s generally about sexual assault in the US military. About 5-15 years ago I read 1-2 articles about that and got the impression that the military doesn’t handle the issue very well. In this episode a military officer says that the national average rate of conviction for rape is 13% and it’s 10% in the military. This episode also highlights the fact that a service member who accuses a superior officer without evidence will be court-martialed. With that in mind I can only imagine how often a woman in the military is raped by a superior officer who gets away with it.

At one point a military officer asks detective Benson if she likes the military and she says she doesn’t because of the problem of rape in the military.  I’m going to keep this fairly brief but I have mixed and mostly negative thoughts about the military. I feel pretty good about what they did during the Civil War and during WWII and I used to be sort of positive about what they did in Somalia in the early 1990s. I imagine a small majority of people in the US military are good people. I believe it’s possible that they can do something good in the future. More of my thoughts about the US military are scattered throughout posts here.                               

“Hothouse” Season 10. Wikipedia summary is: “When the body of a fourteen-year-old girl (Juliet Brett) is found floating in the Hudson River, Benson and Stabler think she was smuggled into the country by sex traffickers. Tutuola discovers her exceptional academic success and suspects that this had something to do with her murder. The detectives find out that the girl's father (George Tasudis) uses violence to coerce their other daughter (Aya Cash) into non-stop studying, and their mother (Funda Duval) is afraid to stop him. The killer turns out to be a high school student (Sarah Hyland) who obsesses over impressing her mother (Enid Graham). Mitigating circumstances come into play when the SVU discovers that she suffered from sleep deprivation and overdosed on drugs used to treat ADD.”

The Medical Examiner, who is a main character in some seasons and recurring in other seasons, says that sleep deprivation is a form of torture.

“Transitions” Season 10. Wikipedia summary is: “When a man (Frank Grillo) is found badly beaten in a strip club parking lot, a fake fingernail leads the detectives to believe that the attacker is female. The victim awakes in the hospital with no memory of what happened, but brings the attention to his ex-wife (Wendy Makkena) and their thirteen-year-old transgender daughter (Bridger Zadina). She makes it no secret that she hated her father for not accepting her as a girl, causing the detectives to suspect her as well as her transgender boyfriend (Daniela Sea). The perpetrator is eventually revealed to be a guidance counsellor (Aisha Hinds) who has her own painful memories regarding gender identity.”

This is an episode about transphobia. It’s about a teenage transgendered girl named 
Hailey transitioning to being female. I get the impression that there are often state laws in this country that prevent minors from going through that transition. At one point the viewer thinks Hailey has tried to kill herself and that reminded me of something. In the Republic of Ireland, if a female is diagnosed as suicidal by two psychiatrists, she can have an abortion (abortion law sucks there). The LGBTQ+ community and their allies might demand something similar if there’s no way that a state will allow minors to transition- allow them to transition if the state’s refusal makes them suicidal. If it’s either that or nothing, I think what I’m suggesting as a compromise is better than nothing.

Two other notes:
1) The transgender teacher who supports Hailey is Black.
2) The bouncer at a strip bar seems to be a gay woman.

“Selfish” Season 10. Wikipedia summary is: “When a woman (Gail O'Grady) reports the disappearance of her 11-month-old granddaughter, the detectives suspect the girl's mother (Hilary Duff) of killing her daughter. The detectives however find out that the baby actually died of measles because another mother (Anastasia Barzee) refused to vaccinate her son. After Cabot puts the evangelical mother on trial, she is found not guilty of manslaughter, prompting the baby's grandfather (Mike Pniewski) to take the law into his own hands.”

 

About halfway through the issue in this episode switches from a murdered baby to the issue vaccinations. I want to say a few things about vaccines. I think that they should be optional in a lot of cases, maybe all of them. But I think there should be an effort to encourage people to get them. That’s basically how I feel about the COVID-19 vaccines. Although I’m worried that they were rushed because of Trump putting pressure on the medical science industry (because he thought his elections chances would go up with vaccines being ready for use) and there might be problems with them, Dr. Fauci has said that they’re good and I really want to see America return to normal as soon as possible, and I encourage people to get them and I’m going to get one as soon as I can.

Law and Order: SVU Reviews Y

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)

“Closet” Season 9. Wikipedia summary is: “When an investment banker is found murdered by an intern (Ian Alda), suspicion turns to his boyfriend (Bailey Chase), a professional football player who could lose everything if the truth about his sexuality comes to light. When information about his sexual orientation is leaked to the media, despite the best efforts of his publicity manager (Rick Hoffman), Benson comes under fire by Internal Affairs for her relationship with a reporter (Bill Pullman).”

This is partly about homophobia.

“Cold” Season 9. Wikipedia summary is: “The SVU is shaken when multiple members of the squad are determined to stop a conspiracy of dirty cops. Haunted by a ten-year-old rape-murder case, Detective Lake meets with a contact (Deirdre Lovejoy) to find out about new evidence. On his way back, he gets into a firefight with two police officers and kills one of them. In an injured state, Lake tracks down the surviving rape victim (Victoria Cartagena) and convinces her to testify. While this is happening, the SVU squad discovers that the second shooter (Jack Gwaltney) works for the Fugitive Apprehension Team. Benson and Stabler arrive just in time to stop him from killing Lake and Novak proceeds to put the shooter on trial. However, the case quickly goes downhill in the courtroom and Novak withholds evidence in a last-ditch effort to win a conviction. She is informed by Elizabeth Donnelly (Judith Light) that she faces censure and possible suspension, and that the District Attorney declined the opportunity to refile the charges. This leaves Chester with no choice but to gun down the corrupt cop himself, therefore resulting in his arrest.”

It’s about a rape/homicide of a teenage girl by two cops.

“Lunacy” Season 10. Wikipedia summary is: “A famous astronaut (Kristina Klebe) is found dead and Stabler's old mentor Dick Finley (James Brolin), after whom Stabler's son is named, helps investigate the case. They first believe the victim is linked to a string of serial rapes, but other suspects closer to the space program present themselves. An obsessed fan (Chris Elliott) is questioned, but is released and soon gets into a gun battle with Dick. Stabler becomes suspicious of Dick after he keeps diverting attention away from himself and finding out about Dick's own aspirations of going into space.”

Two notes:
1) The victim was a gay woman.
2) Close to the beginning the detectives stumble onto three people making an amateur porn film about a muslim woman being raped, and the film-makers are criticized, as they should be.

“Retro” Season 10. Wikipedia summary is: “When a baby is found with advanced AIDS, Benson and Stabler are called in to investigate why someone would let a baby go untreated for HIV. They are led to a highly unethical doctor (Martin Mull), an AIDS denialist, who believes and teaches that HIV does not cause AIDS and offers alternative treatments to cure HIV. They search for more families that have been influenced by him and are led to a particular family whose younger daughter died of AIDS, which calls the mother (Paula Malcomson) and son (Aidan Mitchell) into question.”

The AIDS denialist believes that Black people who disagree with him are biased because they’re (allegedly) related to a lot of people who died of AIDS in America or Africa. The ADA questioning him in court criticizes him for that.

“Babes” Season 10. Wikipedia summary is: “The investigation into the burning death of a homeless teenager leads Stabler and Munch to a Catholic high school where a senior (Philip Ettinger) admits to the crime. He confesses because he thought his sister was raped by the man, when in truth, his sister (Brittany Robertson) and her friends made a pregnancy pact and willingly had sex to become pregnant. One of those friends (Jessica Varley) is later found dead in an apparent suicide after being harassed online by an angry mother (Debi Mazar). Greylek files a case against her which comes dangerously close to violating the first amendment, but it is eventually discovered that the girl was murdered by her boyfriend (Jesse McCartney) out of jealousy.”

A small part of this is about violence towards homeless people. Such violence is sickening. Homeless people are vulnerable and many are sort of defenseless. Even though a minority of homeless people are sex offenders, I think the main reason they (homeless people) get physically attacked is that the perpetrators think they’ll get away with it because a lot of people just don’t care about homeless people. A lot of young people who engage in that violence have been influenced by people who blame the victims of capitalism- people who believe that the homeless are lazy and responsible for being in that horrible situation. But these same people don’t want full employment because if everyone had a job where would they find strike-breakers? These people are also insensitive to the role that mental illness plays in people becoming homeless (and after that happens, the stress and anxiety and depression of being homeless just makes those disabilities worse).

Law and Order: SVU Reviews X

 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)

“Sinn” Season 8. Wikipedia summary is: “A successful preacher (Tim Daly) is the prime suspect in the murder of a clandestine sexual partner (Kyle Bares), until his wife (Kathy Baker) provides detectives with a taped conversation.”

This is about homophobic Christians who are either gay or who change their mind about homosexuality.

“Impulsive” Season 9. Wikipedia summary is: “A statutory rape case against a high school teacher (Melissa Joan Hart) is filed after gonorrhea is discovered in one of her students (Kyle Gallner). The teacher tries to secretly have an abortion which angers her husband (Quincy Dunn-Baker) and gets her accused of destroying evidence. However, after observing the student more closely, the SVU realizes that he is a sex addict who hires prostitutes, photoshops scantily-clad women and masturbates with high frequency. He confesses to raping his teacher and is sent to a rehabilitation clinic. The situation changes gears when the student is raped by a much older sex offender (David Conley) exposing an ongoing problem at the clinic.”

At the end a privately run treatment center for sex criminals loses its contract with the state because of a rape by a staff person. The company, which also ran private prisons for the state, paid minimum wage, allowed guards to sleep during the night shift, and didn’t do any background checks for staff. The lack of background checks and the minimum wage pay checks are the result of greed. The minimum wage pay would likely have an effect on how seriously the night shift guards take their jobs (which is to keep everyone in the center safe).

“Savant” Season 9. Wikipedia summary is: “A government agent (Aidan Quinn) discovers that his daughter (Paulina Gerzon), who has Williams syndrome, is the only witness to the savage beating of his wife (Judy Kuhn). Even though the investigation is impeded by the man's superiors (Jayne Atkinson), Detectives Benson and Stabler and ADA Novak work with his daughter to reconstruct the night the beating took place. Her testimony is able to clear one suspect (Robert Clohessy), who also has a mentally challenged son and implicate his older son (Josh Barclay Caras).”

A very minor character not in conflict with the detectives criticizes people who oppose gay couples adopting children.

“Harm” Season 9. Wikipedia summary is: “The detectives investigate the fatal stabbing of a private school teacher (Elizabeth Morton), who had volunteered at a victim's rehabilitation center. The teacher had been working with an Iraqi man (Jarreth J. Merz) whose story helped uncover some military secrets. The investigation leads to a doctor (Elizabeth McGovern) who works for private military contractors focusing on interrogation techniques. Melinda Warner tries to have her medical license revoked for violating the Hippocratic Oath.”

First, there’s a minor thing at the beginning that’s sort of separate from the rest. Some rock band does a video where the band members are wearing the head part of a burqa, with only the eyes visible. I’m not sure what the lyrics are trying to say, but I felt like it was fairly offensive. I doubt they were expressing solidarity with both the muslim population and the female part of that population at the same time. Progressives should express solidarity with Muslim women, but should simultaneously be opposed to anti-Muslim bigotry and imperialism (my thoughts about the War on Terror in general are here, and my thoughts about invading Iraq are here).

The episode is largely about torture and medical ethics. The doctor at the heart of the scandal believes in using interrogation techniques that don’t cause any lasting physical or psychological damage and that includes ice baths and stress positions and psychological torture. The show is also criticizing the privatization of national security because the torture under examination was carried out not by employees of the US government but by private military contractors. I have more to say about the US use of torture in another post here. 

“Undercover” Season 9. Wikipedia summary is: “After a teenage girl (Shareeka Epps) is found raped in a community garden, Benson and Stabler find out that her mother (Daria Hardeman) is in a female correction facility. After the rape kit on the girl goes missing, the detectives realize that one of the corrections officers (Johnny Messner) at the facility is raping and brutalizing women. In order to find out who it is, Detective Benson goes undercover as a prisoner and is almost raped herself in the basement of the facility.”

The bad guy is a corrections officer.

Law and Order: SVU Reviews W

  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)

(These are the four reviews I had postponed earlier)

“Grief” Season 4. Wikipedia summary is: “A waitress is found dead outside of a bar. Her death is ruled a suicide because the victim's boss (Paul Leyden) continually raped her and drove her into depression. When the victim's father (Joe Morton) becomes too close to Stabler, the victim's father snaps and vows revenge against his daughter's rapist.”

At one point a suspect (who is later cleared as innocent) refers to the 1997 NYPD rape of Abner Louima with the handle of a broom or toilet plunger. Even though it came from a suspect, it’s still worth mentioning as an example of what’s liberal or progressive on the show because about 5-10 episodes earlier there was another episode that was clearly inspired by what happened to Louima. I’m sure the reference to Louima in this episode was meant to remind people what the NYPD did In reality.

“Debt” Season 6. Wikipedia summary is: “A child abandonment incident prompts Benson and Stabler to investigate the disappearance of a mother. They learn from her sister (Ming-Na Wen) that she made a deal with human traffickers to have her teenage daughter (Jenny Wong) smuggled to New York from China. It is revealed that the teenage immigrant has been forced into prostitution and her life is subsequently used as a bargaining chip by the gangsters to avoid prosecution. When the squad captures the gang's leader (Jack Yang), Detective Stabler is able to get help from one of his junior members (Aaron Yoo) by convincing him that the bright future he was promised is a lie. After arresting a corrupt immigration attorney (Loren Dean), the NYPD finally learns where the captive women are being held. Detective Stabler arrives just in time to keep the promise he made.”

There are five things I want to comment on:
1) I was reminded recently by CNN that there is a stereotype of Asian women of being both hyper-sexual and also submissive. There is something about how non-Asian men see Asian women in this episode.
2) At one point the detectives assure immigrants that they come into contact with during the investigation that they aren’t Immigration officers.
3) I recently learned from a good source something that a more recent episode of SVU implied- that the “coyotes” who help people cross the US-Mexico border illegally are often bad and dangerous people. This episode said the same sort of thing about Chinese criminal organizations that help Chinese enter America illegally. I’m pretty sure that it’s a fair and accurate illustration of such criminals and it’s good for pro-immigrant forces (like Law and Order: SVU) to occasionally criticize them- I imagine that anti-immigrant forces would love to accuse us of liking coyotes because we’d look pretty stupid if we did like them.
4) For the second time recently a law enforcement officer on the show says that Chinatown doesn’t like cops, although it’s not clear why- do they fear gangs in Chinatown, or do they not like the police for roughly the same reason police are usually unwelcome in the Black community?
5) At one point one of the detectives offers the “we’re a nation of immigrants” argument in support of the pro-immigrant position. It’s not the worst thing I’ve heard, but when you think of American Indians and almost all black Americans, it’s a bad argument in favor of a good position.

“Ghost” Season 6. Wikipedia summary is: “A series of drug-related hits leads the detectives back to the notorious drug lord Cesar Velez. The detectives are left with one survivor (Reymond Wittman), a scared child whom the drug lords are trying to finish off. The gun used in the murders is linked to Liam Connors (Brían F. O'Byrne), one of Velez's top agents. Connors has a strong defense which almost gets him acquitted until Benson and Stabler arrest him for trying to kill ADA Alexandra Cabot a year earlier. Alex returns from witness protection to assist with the case.”

The drug cartel’s asassin is a former IRA member who drifted away from the cause because of the cease-fire and started working for the drug cartel. Through a character the writers say that a lot of former Volunteers did that. This is more or less total nonsense. It’s probably inspired by the case of the “Columbia Three,” three men who were members of Sinn Fein and/or the IRA that were arrested in Aug. of 2001 leaving that part of the Columbian jungle controlled at the time by the FARC, the largest left-wing insurgent army in Columbia’s civil war. They were accused of helping the FARC. I don’t know for sure what they were doing, but for a lot of reasons I doubt they were helping the FARC. There was a lot of concern in Ireland about the conditions they were living in in a Columbian prison- so much that there were multiple delegations of politicians and human rights activists with no connection to the IRA traveling to Columbia to investigate those conditions. My theory is that they were there to learn from the FARC about the military aspect of a peace process- there was such a process going on in Columbia and the FARC were participating in it.

There’s a scene with an Irish-American supporter of SF who is accused of raising money for the IRA- it’s not clear that he wasn’t doing both- supporting SF and the IRA, although it seems like the detectives were just being lazy and conflating SF and the IRA. Anyway, this guy said that SF are “fighting for peace in Ireland.” The thing is, SF and the IRA bent over backwards to make the peace process work. They compromised when they would have been justified in refusing to do so. The Good Friday Agreement is alright but should have been much better. The IRA also would have been justified in refusing to decommission until after Ireland was united. The ANC’s military wing didn’t decommission their weapons until there was major progress on ending Apartheid- I think it was after the 1994 election that was won by the ANC.

“Night” and “Day”, Season 6 SVU, and Season 1 Law and Order: Trial by Jury. Wikipedia summaries are, respectively,

“Benson and Stabler investigate the rape and murder of a woman found with a wad of money stuffed in her mouth. They trace the money to a lawyer (Bradley Cooper) handling the finances of a wealthy family. The woman (Angela Lansbury) demands that the detectives stay away from her son (Alfred Molina) even though they suspect that he preys on illegal immigrants who do not report the crimes out of fear of getting deported. The people are short on evidence until a Bosnian immigrant has the courage to come forward. Angry about exposing the fact that she was raped, her brother (Stelio Savante), an Islamic fundamentalist, brutally assaults ADA Casey Novak.”

And

“ADA Kibre works to prosecute a serial rapist (Alfred Molina), whose trail of victims through the years has been whitewashed by his wealthy and protective mother (Angela Lansbury). Kibre must also overcome witness intimidation, and even sees her crucial DNA evidence tossed out, but the slippery suspect's lawyer has yet another surprise up his sleeve.”

Although they end up focusing on only one rape, they believe that their suspect is guilty of a string of rapes of working-poor undocumented immigrants. At one point SVU detectives make it clear that they aren’t concerned about the immigration status of witnesses and victims. A community activist who tells them about the string of rapes accuses the NYPD of not caring about them, but the rape survivors aren’t going to the police because of their immigration status, and it’s believed that’s why the rapist is targeting them. It's just one more reason to oppose anti-immigrant politics.

The one rape survivor whose case is prosecuted is a white muslim from Bosnia who sometimes wears a scarf over her hair but usually doesn’t. I’m not the sort of progressive who believes that every Muslim woman who dresses conservatively is a victim of patriarchy, but it’s nice to see a muslim character who appears to be religious but is flexible about it.

The brother of that woman says he was tortured by Bosnian Serbs in the Bosnian War. And one of the rape survivors is a Catholic from Belfast who refers to The Troubles as an “uprising.” I haven’t typed much stuff about N. Ireland in the last year but you can find the posts largely or totally about that topic here.