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.

Roseanne Reviews T

This is a set of reviews of Roseanne episodes. My general thoughts about that show are here. I will focus only on the political aspects and will mention what percent of lines spoken by non-family members are spoken by people of color.

“Promises, Promises” Episode 22, Season 5. Wikipedia summary is here.

First, I occasionally have to criticize this show and this is one such episode. Although the show really is, overall, very anti-homophobic, in an earlier episode there was a counter-example to that and it shows up in this episode, too. In this episode, some of the adults try hiding from David (a teenage boy) the fact that a friend of the family is a lesbian. It’s simply because he’s a minor (well, I’m pretty sure they have no reason to think he’s homophobic, so I think it’s because of his age).

There are 35-40 lines in this episode spoken by non-family members, and about 20% are by people of color.

“Glengary, Glen Rosey” Episode 23, Season 5. For a plot summary see this.

Out of about 50 lines by non-family members, about 1/4 were by people of color.

“Tooth or Consequences” Episode 24, Season 5. See this for a plot summary.

Out of about 15 lines spoken by non-family members, all were spoken by white people (but almost all were spoken by two gay or bi-sexual characters).

“The Mommy’s Curse” Episode 2, season 6. For a plot summary see this.

Out of 20-25 lines by non-family members, none are by people of color.

“Party Politics” Episode 3, Season 6. See this for a plot summary.

Out of about 10-15 lines spoken by non-family members, none are spoken by people of color.

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.

Letter-to-the-editor on Trump and the Confederacy

This was published in the Boulder Weekly Jan. 26th 2023, here. The column I'm responding to is here.

Editor,

As much as I usually love Dave Anderson’s columns, his latest, about the Civil War, could have been better. I’d like to offer some facts that Dave at least kind of left out. In recent years I have frequently gotten the impression that a LOT of Americans are confused about the Civil War. People think it was about states’ rights and not slavery and racism. In recent decades many people in the Republican Party who were either closet racists (or had been fooled by them) thought it was fine to have the Confederate flag displayed wherever people wanted to display it, including as part of state flags.

The Confederacy and it’s symbols were and are about slavery and racism. The Confederacy was NOT about state’s rights as some have claimed. Those who pushed for it’s creation complained that northern States had anti-slavery laws. At one point, the Confederacy’s leaders briefly considered ending slavery to get military support from Europe- support that probably would have resulted in victory against the Union. They decided to keep slavery, meaning that slavery was more important to them than independence from Washington D.C. And there was at least one incident where Black Union soldiers captured by the South were executed instead of being taken to POW camps as were the White Union soldiers.

When Donald Trump needed a new Secretary of Veterans Affairs in 2018, the position was filled by Robert Wilkie, a man with a history of involvement with the Neo-Confederate movement. In 2020 Trump passionately opposed re-naming military bases named after Confederate military leaders, including one responsible for the incident where Black POWs were executed. In 2017 Trump talked about the Civil War and said that the former President Andrew Jackson would have handled the slavery issue better than Lincoln did and the Civil War would have been avoided. Jackson was a passionate opponent of abolitionists and would have compromised with the South and slavery would have continued with (at most) minor changes to it's geographic scope and/or life time and/or there may have been minor changes in how slaves were treated. Or he may have done absolutely nothing about slavery- if it were up to Donald Trump, slavery might still exist today.

As Dave said, the Neo-Confederate view is part of the MAGA movement.

Tom Shelley
Boulder

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.

Roseanne Reviews S

This is a set of reviews of Roseanne episodes. My general thoughts about that show are here. I will focus only on the political aspects and will mention what percent of lines spoken by non-family members are spoken by people of color.

“Wait ’Til Your Father Gets Home” Episode 16, Season 5. Wikipedia summary is here.

There are about 25 lines by non-family members and all of them are spoken by white people.

“First Cousin, Twice Removed” Episode 17, Season 5. Wikipedia summary is here.

There are about 15 lines by non-family members and about 1/3 of them are by people of color.

“Lose a Job, Winnebago” Episode 18, Season 5. Wikipedia summary is here.

Out of about 50 lines by non-family members, none are by people of color.

“It’s a Boy!” Episode 19, Season 5. See this for a plot summary.

There were 15-20 lines by non-family members and none were by people of color.

“Playing with Matches” Episode 21, Season 5. See this for a plot summary.

There are about 30 lines by non-family members and none of them are by people of color.

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.