NOTE: If you like this show, thank a World War II veteran. The Germans would have no patience for Christopher Meloni.
Richard Belzer and Ice-T are essentially the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of the SVU Universe (SVUniverse if you want to be an idiot, and Rosenmunch and Guilden-T if you want to be what’s wrong with America). In earlier seasons they have more of a role, but as time goes on they’re marginalized in order to focus on such shitty storylines as Stabler’s rage issues, his daughter’s crazy affliction, Benson’s angst about being a rape baby of a drunk and her nonsensical connection with a half-brother whom she met while he was under suspicion of rape. They’re in the space outside the panels and it makes their appearances all the more appealing. Watching SVU is a war of attrition and you have to take all the little victories you can get. “Anchor” is one of the few spotlights on Ice-T’s character, Odafin Tutuola and it, obviously, deals with the murders of minority children. You want nuance? Fuck you. Black guy gets black guy stories, just like Munch is on hand whenever the Jewish community is involved in something. That’s the only reason to have minority characters. “Anchor”, a Season 11 joint, is stupid as shit, but it’s a welcome change of pace from the Aryan Glower Hour.
What do you do if you have a black supporting character and want to devote an hour to him? If you’re Dick Wolf and his merry band of spider monkeys, you make it race-based hate crime case. Sure, Stabler and Benson would be mad about these murders. But Ice-T cares even more, expressed through anger. Who a particular case focuses on has to do with who’d get the most righteous indignation out of it. So Stabler usually takes the lead in child cases (he’s a father and can reflect on the case via his shitty kids), Benson’s got vanilla flavored rape (dead alcoholic mother, plus she’s a rapebaby), and Munch has assisted suicide and Jewsploitation ripped from the headlines. Cragen gets nothing because he’s devolving into a tortoise and those winter months get him pretty slow and sleepy. This choice also allows for some soft social commentary without having to actually make a point. A prostitute attacked by her pimp (whoo gratuitous violence towards women!) stumbles upon a little girl dead body. That her shirt says “Jesus loves me” allows for a perfect disaffected cop one-liner to close out the cold open (“Somebody else sure didn’t”). Give ‘em a joke before the credits, and if the joke doesn’t work it’s still a grim reminder that Ice-T sees horrors every day, except for when he just hangs around the precinct house to offer color commentary on the main detectives’ investigation.
I want to see an episode about this panda. Pandaemics are serious matters.
So some dude is going around and killing anchor babies with a chain in an ill-conceived effort to speed up the deportation process. It’s a hot button topic SVU covers, whether or not being born in the United States should guarantee you citizenship. I like to think that whether you’re on the compassionate, emphatic side or the stupid, racist side, we can all agree that Law & Order: Special Victims Unit is not the place for a thoughtful examination of the issue or even a vaguely competent understanding of the issue. But I won’t get ahead of myself, because much of “Anchor” focuses not on the sociopolitics of immigration but Ice-T’s mounting frustration that no one gives a fuck about these murdered kids. But since the show doesn’t want to intentionally make any of the principal characters look bad, the apathy about the case comes from “the brass”, “the suits”, “the authority who treats us cops like we treat citizens suspected of a crime”. It feels less like a comment on how minority victims aren’t as publicized as white victims and more playing to Ice-T’s two modes of acting: anger and confusion. Sit him in front of a roomba and he’ll demonstrate both at the same time.
A squirrel in the first week and now a raccoon in the third? What is with SVU’s obsession with mischievous small mammals?
Through a couple montages of policework rarely shown on the program, like canvassing the neighborhood with fliers and looking through paperwork and pushing paperwork off a desk in frustration, Fin finds a name that matches the name of a guy he busted earlier but let go because that hippie liberal lawyer John Larroquette (Night Court, alcoholism) didn’t want to press charges. The cops find his apartment riddled with Carrie Matheson crazy walls and prevent him from killing a Muslim kid, truly the Unicron of immigrants to Mexicans’ Galvatron. The way Joe Thagard tries to explain his actions is pretty great. First he says he had some beers and went into the wrong apartment, then he says the Muslim parents might’ve been tied up due to their “terrorist pals”. From there it’s a hop and a jump to “I only got one word for you: coon”. Alexandra Cabot of Conviction infamy thinks Ice-T’s gonna Stabler the guy, but Cragen is certain he won’t do anything. I like that this presupposes that Fin is routinely hurled racial slurs and behaves like one of the Queen’s Guard.
I’m certain at Dick Wolf Writing Summer Camp, writers for any Law & Order branded show are taught “sensationalism before sense”. That’s the only explanation between John Larroquette deciding to use a racist serial child killer as a means to show the corrosive effects of objectionable political speech on cable. It’s like a lawyer wanting to get Son of Sam off just to prove the existence of talking dogs. It’s completely asinine. John Larroquette is a great actor and the first season of his eponymous show is a gem of a sitcom, but he does not do himself any favors by cranking up the Southern accent from “mild” to “Foghorn Leghorn”. So he argues Thagard was not responsible for his own actions, and Gordon Garrison, a thinly veiled version of everyone on FOX News played by Bruce McGill (Animal House, the fat Kremling in Donkey Kong Country), is the real responsible party. Look, TV can make you hate things, buy things and write fanfiction about things, but a premeditated plan to become a racist Cenobite who chains small children in bondage until they’re dead enough to put in rainwater barrels would require some Manchurian Candidate-esque level subliminal brainwashing. The thing is “Anchor” doesn’t explicitly say Larroquette’s defense is “not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect”, which would still confine him to a mental hospital after trial if the brainwashing gambit worked.
Cragen’s just happy he’s finally got a case of non-Stabler police brutality coming out of his precinct.
“Anchor” uses the courtroom much more extensively than the first two episodes I’ve covered, and this episode goes a long way towards explaining why SVU eschews the second half of the Law & Order formula with every passing season. This ‘law’ we speak of is more difficult to write than police detectin’, so they have two options: eliminate it altogether or make it as cartoonish and stupid as the cop side of shit. While becoming a cartoon, a caricature of reality, makes for some good fun, something to watch while drunk or stoned, it doesn’t mean good television. Gordon Garrison, who’s basically J. Jonah Jameson without subtlety, becomes subject of an extended Cabot rant that calls him an insignificant loser incapable of doing anything to incite violent action, which is not so much asking a witness questions but… I don’t even know what! Cabot destroys a rock solid case with forensic evidence, circumstantial evidence and a confession by stumbling into proving Larroquette’s point. She baits Garrison enough that a street brawl breaks out in the courtroom between his supporters and his detractors. More evidence that having glasses doesn’t make you smart. Other evidence: me.
I want that Bruce McGill background in my apartment immediately. LOOK AT THAT SHIT.
John Larroquette’s character is all over the place. I’m not sure what they were going for, but giving him a backstory about a Klansman for a father doesn’t help much. He says the contradiction between his father and his KKK beliefs is what made him believe good men could be taken over by evil through no fault of their own. A guy who regales his kid with lynching stories isn’t some fucking adrift sheep, he’s an asshole who cared for his son because his wife didn’t step out on him with a Negro. I think Larroquette showed up to set with his “I say I say” routine and the dimbulb writers wrote around it. The guy may not be beefcake, but he’s burly. He could get some punkass Ivy League dweebs in a headlock if he wanted. The jury gives a not guilty verdict on all counts because they’re idiots, but since this is SVU anyone guilty who receives the “not guilty” verdict is apt to be murdered on the courthouse steps or not long after. Tis Larroquette slays the Cenobites, telling Fin that after the verdict Thagard said to him “thanks, now I can kill more of those kids”. So, you know, vigilante justice steps up with SVU fucks up. I wonder what form of media John Larroquette’s lawyer will claim enticed him to commit murder. Oh man, I hope he doesn’t have two or more Marilyn Manson albums. One you can explain away, but once you get to Antichrist Superstar that’s fantastic brainwashing material.
Ice-T is no one’s idea of a great actor, but him taking the lead is still a breath of fresh air. In some ways he’s better than Mariska Hargitay, as his schtick is less tiresome and he starred in the superior horror film, Leprechaun in the Hood to Hargitay’s Ghoulies. I never saw Hargitay having the guts to portray a kangaroo mutant monster person! It says a lot that by Season 11 an episode can earn praise solely by not doing another fucking week of Stabler’s shitty kids and Benson’s inability to find a man or a baby or a man to put a baby in her. Yet “Anchor” could’ve gone in more interesting directions had the writers not decided the Ice-T focus was a trojan horse for incoherent, nonsensical political commentary about the immigration issue. Establishing FOX News personalities as bombastic shitheads isn’t exactly H.L. Mencken. For example, they could delve into why all the authority figures in the NYPD are all tortoise-men. Have the police determined turtles make the best administrators? Do all captains and higher eventually become turtles, due to a Gypsy curse? This shit isn’t the least bit realistic anyway, might as well become an X-Files for gluestick collectors.
“Thank Christ psychopaths refuse to give up on print!”
In general column news, my copy of Love is the Law: Book One (how presumptuous!), wrapped in the classiest of bags (a Target bag), arrived a few days ago. It’ll take me a while to read through its 105 pages and countless spelling errors and even longer for my mind to recover from reading it, so don’t expect it anytime soon, though it is inevitable. Somehow more distressingly, NetFlix is yanking all Law & Order shows from Watch Instantly, starting on the first of October. I do not know if they will return. Those who wish to join me in a ritual mass suicide protesting this offense are welcome to join. Oh wait, Sons of Anarchy won’t be over by then. Well, do the ritual mass suicide anyway and I’ll write about it, maybe.
Law & Ordocki #3: Law & Order: SVU and the Case of the Racist Cenobite
NOTE: If you like this show, thank a World War II veteran. The Germans would have no patience for Christopher Meloni.
Richard Belzer and Ice-T are essentially the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of the SVU Universe (SVUniverse if you want to be an idiot, and Rosenmunch and Guilden-T if you want to be what’s wrong with America). In earlier seasons they have more of a role, but as time goes on they’re marginalized in order to focus on such shitty storylines as Stabler’s rage issues, his daughter’s crazy affliction, Benson’s angst about being a rape baby of a drunk and her nonsensical connection with a half-brother whom she met while he was under suspicion of rape. They’re in the space outside the panels and it makes their appearances all the more appealing. Watching SVU is a war of attrition and you have to take all the little victories you can get. “Anchor” is one of the few spotlights on Ice-T’s character, Odafin Tutuola and it, obviously, deals with the murders of minority children. You want nuance? Fuck you. Black guy gets black guy stories, just like Munch is on hand whenever the Jewish community is involved in something. That’s the only reason to have minority characters. “Anchor”, a Season 11 joint, is stupid as shit, but it’s a welcome change of pace from the Aryan Glower Hour.
What do you do if you have a black supporting character and want to devote an hour to him? If you’re Dick Wolf and his merry band of spider monkeys, you make it race-based hate crime case. Sure, Stabler and Benson would be mad about these murders. But Ice-T cares even more, expressed through anger. Who a particular case focuses on has to do with who’d get the most righteous indignation out of it. So Stabler usually takes the lead in child cases (he’s a father and can reflect on the case via his shitty kids), Benson’s got vanilla flavored rape (dead alcoholic mother, plus she’s a rapebaby), and Munch has assisted suicide and Jewsploitation ripped from the headlines. Cragen gets nothing because he’s devolving into a tortoise and those winter months get him pretty slow and sleepy. This choice also allows for some soft social commentary without having to actually make a point. A prostitute attacked by her pimp (whoo gratuitous violence towards women!) stumbles upon a little girl dead body. That her shirt says “Jesus loves me” allows for a perfect disaffected cop one-liner to close out the cold open (“Somebody else sure didn’t”). Give ‘em a joke before the credits, and if the joke doesn’t work it’s still a grim reminder that Ice-T sees horrors every day, except for when he just hangs around the precinct house to offer color commentary on the main detectives’ investigation.
I want to see an episode about this panda. Pandaemics are serious matters.
So some dude is going around and killing anchor babies with a chain in an ill-conceived effort to speed up the deportation process. It’s a hot button topic SVU covers, whether or not being born in the United States should guarantee you citizenship. I like to think that whether you’re on the compassionate, emphatic side or the stupid, racist side, we can all agree that Law & Order: Special Victims Unit is not the place for a thoughtful examination of the issue or even a vaguely competent understanding of the issue. But I won’t get ahead of myself, because much of “Anchor” focuses not on the sociopolitics of immigration but Ice-T’s mounting frustration that no one gives a fuck about these murdered kids. But since the show doesn’t want to intentionally make any of the principal characters look bad, the apathy about the case comes from “the brass”, “the suits”, “the authority who treats us cops like we treat citizens suspected of a crime”. It feels less like a comment on how minority victims aren’t as publicized as white victims and more playing to Ice-T’s two modes of acting: anger and confusion. Sit him in front of a roomba and he’ll demonstrate both at the same time.
A squirrel in the first week and now a raccoon in the third? What is with SVU’s obsession with mischievous small mammals?
Through a couple montages of policework rarely shown on the program, like canvassing the neighborhood with fliers and looking through paperwork and pushing paperwork off a desk in frustration, Fin finds a name that matches the name of a guy he busted earlier but let go because that hippie liberal lawyer John Larroquette (Night Court, alcoholism) didn’t want to press charges. The cops find his apartment riddled with Carrie Matheson crazy walls and prevent him from killing a Muslim kid, truly the Unicron of immigrants to Mexicans’ Galvatron. The way Joe Thagard tries to explain his actions is pretty great. First he says he had some beers and went into the wrong apartment, then he says the Muslim parents might’ve been tied up due to their “terrorist pals”. From there it’s a hop and a jump to “I only got one word for you: coon”. Alexandra Cabot of Conviction infamy thinks Ice-T’s gonna Stabler the guy, but Cragen is certain he won’t do anything. I like that this presupposes that Fin is routinely hurled racial slurs and behaves like one of the Queen’s Guard.
I’m certain at Dick Wolf Writing Summer Camp, writers for any Law & Order branded show are taught “sensationalism before sense”. That’s the only explanation between John Larroquette deciding to use a racist serial child killer as a means to show the corrosive effects of objectionable political speech on cable. It’s like a lawyer wanting to get Son of Sam off just to prove the existence of talking dogs. It’s completely asinine. John Larroquette is a great actor and the first season of his eponymous show is a gem of a sitcom, but he does not do himself any favors by cranking up the Southern accent from “mild” to “Foghorn Leghorn”. So he argues Thagard was not responsible for his own actions, and Gordon Garrison, a thinly veiled version of everyone on FOX News played by Bruce McGill (Animal House, the fat Kremling in Donkey Kong Country), is the real responsible party. Look, TV can make you hate things, buy things and write fanfiction about things, but a premeditated plan to become a racist Cenobite who chains small children in bondage until they’re dead enough to put in rainwater barrels would require some Manchurian Candidate-esque level subliminal brainwashing. The thing is “Anchor” doesn’t explicitly say Larroquette’s defense is “not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect”, which would still confine him to a mental hospital after trial if the brainwashing gambit worked.
Cragen’s just happy he’s finally got a case of non-Stabler police brutality coming out of his precinct.
“Anchor” uses the courtroom much more extensively than the first two episodes I’ve covered, and this episode goes a long way towards explaining why SVU eschews the second half of the Law & Order formula with every passing season. This ‘law’ we speak of is more difficult to write than police detectin’, so they have two options: eliminate it altogether or make it as cartoonish and stupid as the cop side of shit. While becoming a cartoon, a caricature of reality, makes for some good fun, something to watch while drunk or stoned, it doesn’t mean good television. Gordon Garrison, who’s basically J. Jonah Jameson without subtlety, becomes subject of an extended Cabot rant that calls him an insignificant loser incapable of doing anything to incite violent action, which is not so much asking a witness questions but… I don’t even know what! Cabot destroys a rock solid case with forensic evidence, circumstantial evidence and a confession by stumbling into proving Larroquette’s point. She baits Garrison enough that a street brawl breaks out in the courtroom between his supporters and his detractors. More evidence that having glasses doesn’t make you smart. Other evidence: me.
I want that Bruce McGill background in my apartment immediately. LOOK AT THAT SHIT.
John Larroquette’s character is all over the place. I’m not sure what they were going for, but giving him a backstory about a Klansman for a father doesn’t help much. He says the contradiction between his father and his KKK beliefs is what made him believe good men could be taken over by evil through no fault of their own. A guy who regales his kid with lynching stories isn’t some fucking adrift sheep, he’s an asshole who cared for his son because his wife didn’t step out on him with a Negro. I think Larroquette showed up to set with his “I say I say” routine and the dimbulb writers wrote around it. The guy may not be beefcake, but he’s burly. He could get some punkass Ivy League dweebs in a headlock if he wanted. The jury gives a not guilty verdict on all counts because they’re idiots, but since this is SVU anyone guilty who receives the “not guilty” verdict is apt to be murdered on the courthouse steps or not long after. Tis Larroquette slays the Cenobites, telling Fin that after the verdict Thagard said to him “thanks, now I can kill more of those kids”. So, you know, vigilante justice steps up with SVU fucks up. I wonder what form of media John Larroquette’s lawyer will claim enticed him to commit murder. Oh man, I hope he doesn’t have two or more Marilyn Manson albums. One you can explain away, but once you get to Antichrist Superstar that’s fantastic brainwashing material.
Ice-T is no one’s idea of a great actor, but him taking the lead is still a breath of fresh air. In some ways he’s better than Mariska Hargitay, as his schtick is less tiresome and he starred in the superior horror film, Leprechaun in the Hood to Hargitay’s Ghoulies. I never saw Hargitay having the guts to portray a kangaroo mutant monster person! It says a lot that by Season 11 an episode can earn praise solely by not doing another fucking week of Stabler’s shitty kids and Benson’s inability to find a man or a baby or a man to put a baby in her. Yet “Anchor” could’ve gone in more interesting directions had the writers not decided the Ice-T focus was a trojan horse for incoherent, nonsensical political commentary about the immigration issue. Establishing FOX News personalities as bombastic shitheads isn’t exactly H.L. Mencken. For example, they could delve into why all the authority figures in the NYPD are all tortoise-men. Have the police determined turtles make the best administrators? Do all captains and higher eventually become turtles, due to a Gypsy curse? This shit isn’t the least bit realistic anyway, might as well become an X-Files for gluestick collectors.
“Thank Christ psychopaths refuse to give up on print!”
In general column news, my copy of Love is the Law: Book One (how presumptuous!), wrapped in the classiest of bags (a Target bag), arrived a few days ago. It’ll take me a while to read through its 105 pages and countless spelling errors and even longer for my mind to recover from reading it, so don’t expect it anytime soon, though it is inevitable. Somehow more distressingly, NetFlix is yanking all Law & Order shows from Watch Instantly, starting on the first of October. I do not know if they will return. Those who wish to join me in a ritual mass suicide protesting this offense are welcome to join. Oh wait, Sons of Anarchy won’t be over by then. Well, do the ritual mass suicide anyway and I’ll write about it, maybe.
I’ve not found any stuck together pages yet.
Ronnie Gardocki
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