Law and Order Reviews J

I have done reviews of many episodes of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and published some more general thoughts about it here. In that post I offer a smaller number of general thoughts about the original Law and Order show (the one that went from 1990-2010). Although I do not like L&O as much as I like the SVU version, I do like it. There’s some liberal or even progressive stuff here and there and they’re good detective stories, and they’re homicide detectives- if they were narcotics, I’d probably be a lot less fond of the show.

Although I’m not sure I have done and will do this consistently, with the original Law and Order show I will make a note and maybe offer some comments when the issues that are at the core of Law and Order: SVU appear on this show.

“Pride” Season 5. See this for a plot summary.

This is basically about homophobia and I think it’s a fairly good reply to the homophobes.

“Savages” Season 6. See this for a plot summary.

The Death Penalty 

This episode is about the death penalty, but the main characters, collectively, have mixed opinions about it. I won’t bother describing or analyzing those statements with two exceptions. First, it’s stated that (possibly looking just at NY state and it’s death-penalty situation) there was some kind of trend where the suspension of the death penalty saw a decrease in capital crimes or something like that.

One of the main characters (the senior detective) in a practical but not principled way opposes bringing the death penalty back to NY and says that it will create more desperation among criminals who might become more willing to shoot cops when police try to arrest them if they’re already facing charges that could involve the death penalty.

I am generally against the death penalty. To some small degree you could say this is partly inspired by or reinforced by the fact that my Church opposes it (until very recently I was a Catholic and I am now converting to the Episcopalian church that also opposes the death penalty). I know that the statistics indicate that independent of the thoughts of judges, prosecutors, and jurors, it’s application really is racist and classist. I believe there’s no reason to say that it deters serious crime.

I am open-minded about it being used in one situation. If someone is already serving a life sentence in prison with no chance of parole, where life means life, and they are convicted of a serious crime (murder (and maybe rape should also be included)) and there is no other way to significantly upgrade their sentence to reflect the new conviction, maybe they should get the death penalty. I am not sure how often murder and rape happen in prison, but it might possibly happen less often if what I just proposed was an option for judges and/or juries.

“Jeopardy” Season 6. See this for a plot summary.             

First, the Wikipedia summary is REALLY bad. The dead brother’s business had created a financial vulnerability for his family’s business. There were no rival businesses and there was no stealing of clients.

This is a type of episode that I have only inconsistently high-lighted until recently, but my plan for 1-3 years now has been that I’ll make a brief note about this when it comes up. First, the defendant is a wealthy businessperson who doesn’t seem political at all (i.e. he’s not made to look bad because he’s liberal or progressive, since he’s neither as far as we know- he’s made to look bad because he’s the kind of powerful person who thinks the rules don’t apply to him). Second, his even wealthier Mom uses her wealth-created power to subtly BRIBE the judge who gets the case and then rules in favor of the defendant a few times.

“Angel” Season 6. See this for a plot summary.

There’s 2-3 parts where racism towards Puerto Ricans in NYC is illustrated. The first time, I have to admit, the police don’t seem too offended. That doesn’t necessarily exclude the thing I want to highlight as anti-racist. After a well-attended Coleman-organized press conference is basically told that at that point the police are looking for a Puerto Rican man, the police get flooded with tips. One of the two detectives, while answering calls to the tip line, says to his supervisor: “Since the Colemans’ town meeting every nut job in the city who ever got a bad taco is pointing the finger.” It could be a better objection to what is happening to their investigation- it’s sinking into the muck of popular racism- but the detective is basically caricaturing that racism, saying that any White person who had a negative experience with a “hispanic” person is making false allegations about Puerto Ricans and the disappearance of the baby and are doing so in a way that doesn’t distinguish between different “hispanic” racial and ethnic groups. It turns out that the baby's White mother killed the baby.

Law and Order Reviews I

 I have done reviews of many episodes of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and published some more general thoughts about it here. In that post I offer a smaller number of general thoughts about the original Law and Order show (the one that went from 1990-2010). Although I do not like L&O as much as I like the SVU version, I do like it. There’s some liberal or even progressive stuff here and there and they’re good detective stories, and they’re homicide detectives- if they were narcotics, I’d probably be a lot less fond of the show.

Although I’m not sure I have done and will do this consistently, with the original Law and Order show I will make a note and maybe offer some comments when the issues that are at the core of Law and Order: SVU appear on this show.

“Scoundrels” Season 5. See this for a plot summary.

To a large degree this is about a convicted white-collar swindler (who headed a mainstream “Savings and Loan” financial institution) who arranges for a threat to him to be eliminated (killed). The Assistant DAs prioritize prosecuting the swindler over the man who actually pulled the trigger. Earlier, when we first hear about the swindler, one of the detectives says that instead of being sentenced to a short stay at “Club Fed” (a very minimum-security prison) he should have gotten life.

“Progeny” Season 5. See this for a plot summary.

This episode is about abortion and is generally pro-choice. The commanding officer of the two detectives speaks briefly about how massive chunks (probably less than 100% but still a large majority) of the pro-life community don’t care about what happens to babies after they are born. SO MANY of these pro-lifers consistently support centrist or center-right economic policies which make it very difficult for children born to poor people (and to a large degree you could say something very similar about the children of working-class people).

“Seed” Season 5. See this for a plot summary.

There was a gay couple.

“Wannabe” Season 5. See this for a plot summary.

This is generally about classism. I don’t talk a lot about classism on my blog because A) it’s not the same thing as Capitalism, and B) I don’t believe it’s quite as dehumanizing as racism or homophobia or sexism, etc. But I think it’s usually a good thing to expose it once in a while.

There is one minor aspect of this episode that I want to talk about. Towards the very beginning there’s a brief reference to unions by someone who is a corporate opponent of unions and the senior detective cautions him to watch what he says because the cops are in a union. I get the impression that occasionally it’s a good thing that cops are unionized (i.e. when there’s some kind of attack on public sector workers below the federal level, they MIGHT, to a SMALL degree stand in solidarity with the other public sector workers in that area). But I also get the impression that a big part of the contracts negotiated by cop unions make it easier for cops to get away with murder, etc. And cops are FREQUENTLY mobilized in support of management during strikes, organizing drives, and lock-outs.

Sometime around 2004 “The Labor Exchange” (the pro-labor bi-weekly show on Boulder’s progressive KGNU radio station) interviewed a representative of the cop union in a nearby city (Longmont). It was very non-confrontational and I’m open-minded that maybe it was okay. As I said, I am not in favor of constant hostility towards cop unions. But I also remember reading, at some point between about 2002 and about 2008, that when a strike in Longmont was broken, management had the local SWAT team present when the workers first came back to work. On one hand, the strike was already broken, so in all fairness this probably wasn’t as offensive as it would be if they had tried to intimidate pickets with the police DURING the strike. But it still pisses me off (and it’s possible they DID try to intimidate pickets but the article I read left that out for some reason).

“Bad Faith” Season 5. See this for a plot summary.

This is about the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal.

Law and Order Reviews H

 I have done reviews of many episodes of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and published some more general thoughts about it here. In that post I offer a smaller number of general thoughts about the original Law and Order show (the one that went from 1990-2010). Although I do not like L&O as much as I like the SVU version, I do like it. There’s some liberal or even progressive stuff here and there and they’re good detective stories, and they’re homicide detectives- if they were narcotics, I’d probably be a lot less fond of the show.

Although I’m not sure I have done and will do this consistently, with the original Law and Order show I will make a note and maybe offer some comments when the issues that are at the core of Law and Order: SVU appear on this show.

“Kids” Season 4. See this for a plot summary.

Although it’s a minor aspect of the story, the main characters are concerned that police friends of the defendant’s father (an ex-cop) may have conspired to get a key witness killed, without whose testimony the defendant would probably be acquitted.

“Old Friends” Season 4. See this for a plot summary.

This episode is about a whistle-blower being killed by someone trying to protect a small (or at most medium) sized business from lethal exposure about moldy baby food that could easily sicken or even kill babies. On the other hand, I am not absolutely sure I should be doing this review because it’s a mobbed-up business and the mob is responsible for the murder, so it’s less damning of capitalism than it would be if there was no mob involvement.


“Blue Bamboo” Season 5. See this for a plot summary.

There is one small part of this episode I want to highlight. It sounds like one of the detectives is saying there should be more funding for education. I realize that’s hardly something the Left has a monopoly on, but it is also an important part of our agenda.

In general there’s something that’s a bigger part of the episode but which I am unsure I should comment on. It basically says that there is some massive problem with anti-Japanese bigotry in America. It says nothing about bigotry towards Japanese-AMERICANS. I think it might be exaggerating how much anti-Japanese bigotry there was in the mid-1990s in America. I do have one little anecdote about this. When I was about 6-7 years old in the early 1980s I saw that in a men’s room stall someone had written “Remember Pearl Harbor, stone a Toyota” (or something very similar to that). To be honest, at the time I thought it was clever and/or neat. I had no idea that shortly before or after that day a Chinese-American (Vincent Chin), mistaken for a Japanese-American by two white Michigan auto-workers, was killed in a hate crime in 1982.

“White Rabbit” Season 5. See this for a plot summary.

To some degree this episode could be considered in conflict with the New Left of the 1960s, but the DA and the senior ADA, to one degree or another express some degree of sympathy with those who passionately opposed the Vietnam War. Although I’m not that familiar with him, William Kunstler was for decades an important civil rights and civil liberties lawyer, and in this episode he played himself.

Overall, politically it’s one of the best episodes.

Law and Order Reviews G

I have done reviews of many episodes of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and published some more general thoughts about it here. In that post I offer a smaller number of general thoughts about the original Law and Order show (the one that went from 1990-2010). Although I do not like L&O as much as I like the SVU version, I do like it. There’s some liberal or even progressive stuff here and there and they’re good detective stories, and they’re homicide detectives- if they were narcotics, I’d probably be a lot less fond of the show.

Although I’m not sure I have done and will do this consistently, with the original Law and Order show I will make a note and maybe offer some comments when the issues that are at the core of Law and Order: SVU appear on this show.

“Manhood” Season 3. See this for a plot summary.

This episode is about homophobia in the police. Four cops conspire to fail at backing up a fifth one (a gay man) who is in need of assistance, because they’re homophobes and either want him dead or at least wounded.  It seems like the head of their precinct (a geographical division of the NYPD that probably includes something like 100-300 cops) was at least opposed to the Assistant DA’s effort to prosecute the four cops and may have encouraged the homophobia of his men.

At one point one of the four cops talks about gay people and political influence the same way that anti-Semites talk about Jews and political influence.

The prosecution loses when the jury acquits 3 defendants (one testified against them as part of a deal). In some ways it’s a sad ending, but probably more realistic than convictions would have been and sort of more likely to inspire anti-homophobic action (in general, not necessarily in relation to homophobia in the police).

“Volunteers” Season 4. See this for a plot summary.

This is about a homeless man being  beaten (almost to death) by a middle-class resident of the NYC neighborhood he (the homeless man) lives in. To a large degree the residents and business-people of that area are jerks, but this specific homeless character is possibly worse (until you factor in the attempt at murdering him by the residents of the neighborhood, that is). That kind of undermines the liberal-progressive message the show is trying to give about being sensitive to the problem of homelessness but the writers probably needed the homeless character to provoke the people he lived near. The jury’s vote to convict on one count related to the attempted homicide is practically over-turned when the judge sentences the defendant to time served (a couple days) and a short period of probation. I think that highlights that a lot of this country’s elite is hostile to the homeless.

“Profile” Season 4. See this for a plot summary.

Although not especially noteworthy or inspirational, this is a pretty good anti-racist episode. At one point there’s a brief statement about racial scapegoating. I think that racial scapegoating is a major problem. There’s a lot of white capitalists out there who, to one degree or another like the idea of convincing white workers that their economic misery is the fault of people of color and/or white anti-racists, and/or policies like Affirmative Action.

“Black Tie” Season 4. See this for a plot summary.

In general I was thinking that maybe I should make a brief note when the defendant is a rich person. Especially with episodes like this when they use their influence to obstruct the investigation and/or get away with it because of their wealth.

Law and Order Reviews F

I have done reviews of many episodes of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and published some more general thoughts about it here. In that post I offer a smaller number of general thoughts about the original Law and Order show (the one that went from 1990-2010). Although I do not like L&O as much as I like the SVU version, I do like it. There’s some liberal or even progressive stuff here and there and they’re good detective stories, and they’re homicide detectives- if they were narcotics, I’d probably be a lot less fond of the show.

Although I’m not sure I have done and will do this consistently, with the original Law and Order show I will make a note and maybe offer some comments when the issues that are at the core of Law and Order: SVU appear on this show.

“The Corporate Veil” Season 3. See this for a plot summary.

This is a good one where a corporation is the criminal. There’s also a brief positive reference to Ralph Nader.

“Wedded Bliss” Season 3. See this for a plot summary.

This is about sweatshop labor. It’s pretty damning.

“Mother Love” Season 3. See this for a plot summary.

One of the detectives says that crack cocaine should be legalized, and his partner doesn’t seem to strongly disagree. I support ending the war on drugs, at least in relation to some and maybe all drugs. I think marijuana legalization is great. To one degree or another, I believe other drugs should be either legalized or decriminalized- that is decriminalization of possession of a small amount (this approach would probably not change the law as far as people who sell drugs). Decriminalization would involve treating addiction as a medical problem instead of a criminal one. I think that this would be an appropriate way to deal with crack.

“Jurisdiction” Season 3. See this for a plot summary.

Although he’s alone and pretty junior, a corrupt cop is stopped.

“Conduct Unbecoming” Season 3. For a plot summary see this.

In general, it’s almost critical of the US military. The plot includes the Navy trying to bury the scandal by sacrificing a low-ranking officer in a court-martial but on the other hand the Navy apparently had come down slightly hard on the senior officer who had engaged in “conduct unbecoming.”
Then there's the time that one detective mentions that the tax-payers paid for the massive party the Navy crew had at an NYC hotel. The other detective says: “nice to know my tax dollars aren’t being wasted on school books.”

Law and Order Reviews E

I have done reviews of many episodes of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and published some more general thoughts about it here. In that post I offer a smaller number of general thoughts about the original Law and Order show (the one that went from 1990-2010). Although I do not like L&O as much as I like the SVU version, I do like it. There’s some liberal or even progressive stuff here and there and they’re good detective stories, and they’re homicide detectives- if they were narcotics, I’d probably be a lot less fond of the show.

Although I’m not sure I have done and will do this consistently, with the original Law and Order show I will make a note and maybe offer some comments when the issues that are at the core of Law and Order: SVU appear on this show.

“Cradle to Grave” Season 2. See this for a plot summary.

At the beginning there’s one very progressive statement. The cops are looking for the parent(s) of a dead baby and are asking at child care places. A woman working at one says that they used to watch babies, but because of a cut in the federal funding they got, they had to stop. She says something about how the federal government was able to buy a couple more military aircraft because of those nation-wide cuts to child care subsidies, and implies that it was a bad set of priorities.

After about 10 minutes it became clear to me that it was about a lazy, greedy slum-lord property owner. In order to transform her decaying, low-rent buildings into something more profitable, she encourages tenants to move out- a corrupt building superintendent and a thug posing as a tenant make life very difficult for the tenants. The owner and her two helpers are charged in connection with the baby dying because the heat was turned off and there was a broken window in the apartment the baby died in.

“The Fertile Fields” Season 2.  See this for a plot summary.

Initially there’s some chance that the murder was an anti-semitic hate crime carried out by Black teens. The senior police officer is reluctant to rush to that assumption, worried that it will greatly aggravate relations between NYC Jews and NYC Blacks. The way that the murder turns out to have been committed by a white, non-Jewish criminal I think says a lot about a tendency to blame black teens when they’re innocent.

“Intolerance” Season 2. See this for a plot summary.

There’s a little bit of anti-racism. The white suspects (their conviction was overturned when a mistrial was declared) brought a bit of racism to the academic competition between their loved one and his Chinese-American peer, who they probably killed.

“Silence” Season 2. See this for a plot summary.

This is basically about homophobia. It’s a little flawed but overall it’s anti-homophobic. It’s about a black-mail scam by straight prison inmates against closeted gay men outside prison (I think it might happen in reality because I first read about it in a John Grisham novel two decades ago, and now this (this episode was done about 10 years before that book, so people were thinking about it at two different times in our recent history)). If it IS real, that’s just one more reason to fight homophobia.

“The Working Stiff Season 2. See this for a plot summary.

Although it could be more pro-union and I wouldn’t call it socialist, it is in a fairly good way about conflict between the working-class and the upper-class. The union activist with an attitude toward the bosses gets along well with the cops and the Assistant DAs, so I think the viewer is sort of supposed to like him.

Law and Order Reviews D

I have done reviews of many episodes of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and published some more general thoughts about it here.  In that post I offer a smaller number of general thoughts about the original Law and Order show (the one that went from 1990-2010). Although I do not like L&O as much as I like the SVU version, I do like it. There’s some liberal or even progressive stuff here and there and they’re good detective stories, and they’re homicide detectives- if they were narcotics, I’d probably be a lot less fond of the show.

Although I’m not sure I have done and will do this consistently, with the original Law and Order show I will make a note and maybe offer some comments when the issues that are at the core of Law and Order: SVU appear on this show.

“Heaven” Season 2. See this for a plot summary.

There are two things worth mentioning. First, the senior police officer says that in the absence of a tragedy like the lethal fire they’re investigating, most New Yorkers don’t care about brown-skinned immigrants.

Also, the junior ADA says (approvingly) that constitutional protections like the 4th and 5th Amendments are for everyone including undocumented immigrants.

“Severance” Season 2. See this for a plot summary.

The killer was hired for the job by a crooked defense contractor.

“Blood is Thicker” Season 2. See this for a plot summary.

There’s one brief mention of how GOP politician Dan Quayle (VP of the US 1989-1993) avoided Vietnam by joining the National Guard, at a time when getting in the Guard meant you wouldn’t be sent to Vietnam. Although the Washington Post article I just read wasn’t explicit about Quayle’s position on the war at the time he avoided it, in general he was a hawk during his political career. There were millions of people who supported the war and tried to avoid fighting in it because they didn’t want to be killed.

“Vengeance” Season 2. See this for a plot summary.

There’s a tiny bit of dialogue between minor characters that might be considered pro-union.

“Sisters of Mercy” Season 2.  See this for a plot summary.

To one degree or another this is about a man, probably around 30 years old, coercing girls in their mid-teens into having sex with him.

Law and Order Reviews C

I have done reviews of many episodes of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and published some more general thoughts about it here. In that post I offer a smaller number of general thoughts about the original Law and Order show (the one that went from 1990-2010). Although I do not like L&O as much as I like the SVU version, I do like it. There’s some liberal or even progressive stuff here and there and they’re good detective stories, and they’re homicide detectives- if they were narcotics, I’d probably be a lot less fond of the show.

Although I’m not sure I have done and will do this consistently, with the original Law and Order show I will make a note and maybe offer some comments when the issues that are at the core of Law and Order: SVU appear on this show.

“Sonata for Solo Organ” Season 1. See this for a plot summary.

This episode is about an INCREDIBLY wealthy man spending 1-2 million dollars on a plot to extract a kidney from an unwilling donor (who almost dies) so that his (the wealthy man’s) daughter can get a new kidney. The head of the national agency handling organ transplants demands that the prosecutors go after the wealthy man who demanded special treatment because of his wealth- instead of just the MD and nurse who did the dirty work. He says that his organization “is the one true democracy. One of the few instances where money doesn’t talk- at all.”

“The Blue Wall” Season 1. See this for a plot summary.

There are three aspects of this episode which are good politically.

1. It’s indirectly about an effort to go after white-collar crime.
2. It’s also partly about corrupt cops, including a very senior one.
3. There’s a corrupt  congressman involved. He’s an ex-cop, which makes me think he’s Republican- I have gotten the impression that some massive majority of cops are Republican.

“Asylum” Season 2. See this for a plot summary.

There are two things about the senior Assistant DA. First, although he is sort of in conflict with supporters of the homeless in this episode, he DOES say that “homelessness may be the greatest tragedy of our time.” Also, it sounds like he was a member or at least an active supporter of the ACLU, and his opinion of them changed when they defended the Nazis in Skokie, Illinois. I’m not saying he’s a progressive, but I think he might be more or less a liberal (although I don’t have a philosophical definition of liberal, A) I’d say they’re to the left of former President Bill Clinton (what he was like in office) and to the right of Sen. Elizabeth Warren and B) I go into more detail here).

“In Memory Of” Season 2. See this for a plot summary.

This episode is sort of about homophobia. The original NYPD investigators (about 30 years before the events in this episode) suspected  a gay couple in the disappearance of a young boy. Although at the very beginning of their investigation two of the main characters spend a little time pursuing that lead, after about 10 minutes of the 45 min. episode that assumption is illustrated  as nonsense. One of the detectives says that cops know that a majority of child molesters are straight. It’s a good statement (not the first part (I imagine that back then there was a ton of homophobia among cops)), although I assume it could have been better without sacrificing accuracy- it should have been said that gays are no more likely to molest kids than straight people are (i.e. if 10% of the population is gay, 10% of child molesters are gay). They identify and prosecute another suspect who’s straight and he pleads guilty at the end.

Law and Order Reviews B

I have done reviews of many episodes of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and published some more general thoughts about it here. In that post I offer a smaller number of general thoughts about the original Law and Order show (the one that went from 1990-2010). Although I do not like L&O as much as I like the SVU version, I do like it. There’s some liberal or even progressive stuff here and there and they’re good detective stories, and they’re homicide detectives- if they were narcotics, I’d probably be a lot less fond of the show.

Although I’m not sure I have done and will do this consistently, with the original Law and Order show I will make a note and maybe offer some comments when the issues that are at the core of Law and Order: SVU appear on this show.

“Life Choice” Season 1. See this for a plot summary.

Although it’s a little mixed, this episode leans heavily towards being pro-choice.

“A Death in the Family” Season 1. See this for a plot summary.

In this episode the detectives and the ADAs see things differently. The ADAs ask if the life of a cop is worth more than the life of a civilian. They find themselves investigating the death of a corrupt cop. Most damning of all, the senior ADA says that a lot of cops carry an untraceable gun that they can plant on someone if they shoot a suspect and it turns out the suspect was not armed.

“Mushrooms” Season 1. For a summary see this. 

The Black woman whose sons are killed or wounded doesn’t get along perfectly with the police. But that’s just realistic (MANY people of color don’t get along with cops) and I don’t think it dilutes what I’m about to say- she’s not seen as a suspect or an enemy of the police or something (you’re supposed to sympathize with her). She says at one point that her supervisor (she’s a janitor) wouldn’t allow her to go to the morgue and the hospital about her two sons. First, that’s just messed up in general. But people of color are more likely than white people to be in a financial situation where they cannot afford to lose their job in a crisis like that. Poverty is a more common problem among people of color than it is among white people. Part of this means that they are less likely than white people to know someone who can loan them some money until they get a new job after they lose their job (for leaving work during a family emergency). And, even more damning of some supervisors and employers, in some cases like this it’s a job that probably can be skipped for a day.

“The Troubles” Season 1. See this for a plot summary.

This is largely about N. Ireland. There are so many statements that are demanding I comment on them that this review would be about 3,000 words if I commented on all of them. The short version is that there’s a lot of nonsense.

There is one thing I’m going to comment on, something that, for some weird reason I haven’t really commented on before. One of the two cops buys the IRA member’s PR effort for America, and is sympathetic to him, basically because he (the cop) is Irish-American. Does law enforcement and the intelligence community in America go easy on the IRA because the vast majority of IRA supporters here are white Irish-Americans? First, as I explain here and here, the IRA was not a terrorist organization, and that has nothing to do with their skin color or their political goals. Second, the US government was largely on the side of the British, as I explain in note #17 of the poem here.                              

Are there or were there racist NYPD cops who supported the IRA but not the armed wing of the African National Congress? Yes, and there may have been a few FBI agents like that (although probably just a few- I imagine the FBI was less tolerant of IRA supporters than the NYPD were). Was there something racist about the fact that the IRA was never on any US list of terrorist organizations? Although I’m not real familiar with those lists, as I explaIn above, the IRA were, objectively, not terrorists.

If you look beyond the white privilege of most IRA supporters in America, globally their supporters were mostly what we would call in America “progressive.”

Law and Order Reviews A

I have done reviews of many episodes of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and published some more general thoughts about it here. In that post I offer a smaller number of general thoughts about the original Law and Order show (the one that went from 1990-2010). Although I do not like L&O as much as I like the SVU version, I do like it. There’s some liberal or even progressive stuff here and there and they’re good detective stories, and they’re homicide detectives- if they were narcotics, I’d probably be a lot less fond of the show.

Although I’m not sure I have done and will do this consistently, with the original Law and Order show I will make a note and maybe offer some comments when the issues that are at the core of Law and Order: SVU appear on this show.

"Subterranean Homeboy Blues” Season 1. Wikipedia summary is here.

I am not sure I should be reviewing this episode since it’s not real clear exactly where the main characters and the writers are politically. But there is some anti-racism involved and some feminism involved (unfortunately, they’re sort of at odds with each other, but it’s still an okay episode politically (the white woman who killed a black man on the subway was either a feminist warrior who had earlier been attacked by a man, or she’s a racist who shot the man partly because he was black)).

“The Reaper’s Helper” Season 1. Wikipedia summary is here.

I’m not sure I want to review this one, but it does involve the gay population and AIDS. Is it about homophobia and/or AIDS-phopbia? Not really. It’s about a gay man who euthanizes gay men with AIDS, AT THEIR REQUEST (the jury says the guy is only guilty of promoting a suicide attempt). One of the two detectives seems a little homophobic and the other seems a little better than that. The prosecutors have mixed feelings about prosecuting the killer and at the end the senior of the two ADAs sabotages their effort at prosecution and the killer is acquitted of 4/5 of the charges. It’s pretty complicated, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of HIV+ people would like it (it was made in 1990, when there were few effective drugs for AIDS and people with it faced a short life and a horrible death). I think it’s good that the killer wasn’t convicted of anything serious.


“Everybody’s Favorite Bagman” Season 1. Wikipedia summary is here.

A small part of this is about a successful effort to bring down a corrupt senior officer in the NYPD.

“Poison Ivy” Season 1. Wikipedia summary is here.

They go after a white cop who killed an unarmed Black man and planted a gun in his hand.

“Indifference” Season 1. Wikipedia summary is here.

Although I’m not sure I have done and will do this consistently, with the original Law and Order show I will make a note and maybe offer some comments when the issues that are at the core of Law and Order: SVU appear on this show. With that in mind, in this episodes there is a fair amount of stuff about not just domestic violence and child sexual abuse, but EXTRAORDINARY domestic violence and child sexual abuse.

At the beginning of this episode a Puerto Rican elementary school teacher calls the police when she strongly suspects that a child is being abused at home. When the detectives show up, the white principal says at first that the teacher is “trigger happy,” and then later says that she is “prone to excitability” (that time he says it’s a “cultural thing”). The principal says the teacher should have followed the school district's process for suspicions of child abuse and then explains it. One of the detectives responds by saying: “When someone, anyone- even a high-strung Puerto Rican lady, COMPRENDE? -thinks a child is being beaten, that person is supposed to report it to the authorities.” To a large degree I think it’s an anti-racist statement by both the character and the writers who wrote the episode.

Motherfuckin' Detective Odafin "Fin" Tutuola (My Thoughts on Law and Order: Special Victims Unit)

("Fin" is played by Ice-T)

I love TV shows, although only about 40% of what I watch is from the last two decades. My top six favorite shows are Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, The Big Bang Theory, Supergirl, Roseanne, and Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. There’s a more complete list of shows I like under the “Movies” part of my profile. This is going to be about Law and Order: SVU.

I’m going to assume you are at least sort of familiar with the show, and if you’re not, you can read that wikipedia page.

I have seen every episode (with one exception where I couldn’t fix the disc and Netflix sent another disc that also had the same problem) up to season 18 and in about a month I’ll be done with season 19. I have 6 seasons on DVD in my collection, most of which I got at thrift stores.

Besides the obvious (it’s opposition to sex crimes and child abuse/kidnapping and sexism and misogyny) which is pretty awesome, there’s a lot of other things I like about L&W: SVU.

1) It’s incredibly anti-racist. Not 100% because it is, of course, a little soft on cops. But in general there's a lot of anti-racism. On average, in any episode, something like 25% of the main and recurring characters have been people of color. Of course the population of NYC is much more diverse, but we are talking about the NYPD and I think that 25% is probably a reflection of how diverse the NYPD is, or an appropriately mild exaggeration of how diverse it is. My memory of specific examples is a little fuzzy, but there are a lot of times when the anti-racism gets a little sharper than that.

There is one episode involving a hispanic SVU detective who might qualify as a person of color in a bad fatal  shooting that I think the show could have dealt with more critically- I remember thinking that it was too pro-cop. But there is another episode on almost the same topic that is, overall, much better. Some white non-SVU cops, while helping SVU, fire about 15-30 bullets into an unarmed black man. The (main character) Assistant DA who works with SVU insists on prosecuting the cops and I think the last we hear about that is that he gets an indictment from the Grand Jury. The head of SVU disagrees with him but they don’t have a heated argument and there is no falling out and for about 2 seasons after that episode that character is still the Assistant DA for SVU, and I think it would be totally unrealistic if all the SVU members agreed with the Assistant DA. Unfortunately it DOES end on a fairly racist note. There’s a notice about the fatal shooting of a cop, which is kind of a lame ending for what otherwise is a very good episode. I mean, it’s even worse than saying “All Lives Matter” in response to the statement “Black Lives Matter.” It’s responding with “Police Lives Matter.”

As I mention below, Ice-T has played a main character since season 2 and there are now 21 seasons.

I think that the % of defendants that are people of color is probably a lot less than the % of NYC’s population that is people of color, and I’m almost certain it’s not more.

2) It’s incredibly anti-homophobic. Other than the idea that the Assistant DA in seasons 15-19 is gay (there is a lot of speculation but it’s apparently all wrong and he's actually straight (but played by a bi-sexual man)), I can only think of two examples. First, when an off-duty cop witnesses a sex-related crime (while on a date with another man) and notifies SVU, SVU offers to keep his name out of it to avoid outing him to the “brass” of NYPD. Also, the son of the character played by Ice-T is gay.

3) It’s incredibly anti-transphobic. In one episode, for example, a woman transitioning from being male kills her boyfriend when he sees a penis. I can’t remember exactly what SVU does, but I don’t think they prosecute her or they go easy on her or something. I DO remember the Assistant DA saying that in that situation, when a man learns his girlfriend has a penis or used to be male, he simply kills her. In general it highlights violence against transgender people.

4) It’s pro-immigrant. For example, there’s a two-parter about a witness who is gay and an undocumented immigrant from Syria who will be killed if he is deported. SVU tries to keep ICE from deporting him but fail. It’s as damning of our immigration policy as an innocent person being executed would be damning of the death penalty.

5) There are miscellaneous other liberal-progressive elements like OCCASIONAL negative portrayals of the military or corporations.

6) Since the second season there’s been a character, detective Odafin "Fin" Tutuola, played by Ice-T. In the near future I’ll do a post about why I greatly admire Ice-T, but his long-time presence on this show is one reason I like him and his presence on the show is one reason I like the show so much.

7) They infrequently go after other cops.


One thing that I would largely put in the very small negative column is the five or so cross-over episodes with the TV show “Chicago PD.” The main thing is that the senior officer on that show is comfortable with things that at least come close to torture. But it’s not as damning of the creative people behind the show L&O: SVU as you might think because in one of those episodes, the head of SVU criticizes that officer for that, although she focuses exclusively on the impact it’ll have on getting a conviction. It’d be better if she was more principled about it, but A) I think she figured the pragmatic appeal would work better, and B) if I’m wrong about that and she’s not principled about it, that’s disappointing but realistic, and C) it’s better than nothing.

I’ll soon start going through these episodes for the second time and doing “reviews” on this blog of the ones that have something that politically goes beyond the liberal feminism and basic anti-racist stuff that’s dominates the political dimension of the show (when I say “dominates” I mean there are minority tendencies, some progressive and some moderate). (You could say that I'll focus exclusively on highlighting the issues raised that are NOT sex crimes, because of course they have material about that, but they also have stuff about, for example, homophobia or marijuana or homelessness or abortion)

(Mariska Hargitay, who has been on the show since day one (and whose character has been head of SVU for about 6 seasons) and has been a director and producer on L&O: SVU since 2014, founded the Joyful Heart Foundation)

Law and Order

I also watch the original, homicide-focused show. It is overall less liberal-progressive (I think the cops and Assistant DAs are a little more flexible ethically than their SVU counterparts are as far as how they figure out who to arrest and/or get convictions). In an average episode I think that about 25% of the main or recurring characters are women, which isn’t too good considering that of the six main characters, only three are cops. But in an average episode, about 25% are people of color, which isn’t too bad considering that it should be either a reflection of reality or a little more diverse than reality, in my opinion (it’s about the NYPD and the Manhattan DA’s office) (I think that the % of defendants that are people of color is probably a lot less than the % of NYC’s population that is people of color, and I’m almost certain it’s not more). There are some progressive elements here and there, some anti-racism, some anti-homophobia, some stuff where a corporation is the bad guy, etc. (they infrequently go after other cops). At some point in about 2-10 years at the rate I’m going I’ll do the same sort of reviews I mentioned above.


Corporations on both shows

From what I remember, the last thing these shows do is criticize capitalism or express more than infrequent support for labor, but the episodes about corporate people are better than the old TV show Cops which focused exclusively on poor people. And I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s more likely to feature rich criminals than other cop shows, although I wouldn’t know for sure because outside the L&O franchise, I’ve probably watched a total of 30 episodes of cop shows since I became an adult and a socialist (at 18) (I’m 44).

(I should offer my very brief, non-philosophical definition of “liberal.” It’s someone to the left of Bill Clinton and to the right of Senator Elizabeth Warren. More details are here) 

 

(UPDATE 3/18/21 About 1-3 times each episode the detectives and/or prosecutors engage in behavior aimed at determining guilt and/or getting a conviction that I think is somewhere between questionable and bad (but that's only about 10-20% of what they do to charge a suspect and convict them in court; the rest of what they do I am fine with). There’s something else, maybe once a season on average, where they do something else bad (i.e. in one Law and Order episode of the last season to involve the character Assistant DA Ben Stone, Stone says something uncharacteristically racist). Going back to the first sentence, I have mixed feelings about a lot of the tactics I’m referring to and I am almost certain that explaining why I sort of support them or why I almost totally oppose them, etc. would just clutter those posts and people would be less likely to read them. If you’re thinking that I don’t expose this aspect of the two shows because of some kind of white/middle-class/cis-gendered-male/straight/Christian privilege, you’re wrong and I have a bit of evidence. In one episode of SVU when a suspect is brought to the station for questioning he requests not a lawyer, but that his therapist be present and SVU says no. In recent decades I have gotten tons of therapy and have occasionally asked my therapist for a little more help than they usually give and if I were being questioned at a police station I would probably want my therapist present, although I doubt I would actually request it. With these two shows I have a policy I almost never break- I don’t criticize them)

 

ALL THE POSTS WITH THESE REVIEWS CAN BE FOUND BY CLICKING ON THE "L&OSVU" LABEL AND THE "LAW & ORDER" LABEL