From: The Scene Blog
“Law & Order: SVU” Recap: Ripped from the THREE headlines, Beyonce-style
JOHN RAGAL, FLICKR
Note: This post contains spoilers for Season 16, Episode 2 of “Law & Order: SVU,” entitled “American Disgrace.”
“SVU” takes its audience on wild rides with its “ripped from the headlines” style. Last year, “SVU,” always demonstrating its ability to mash two completely different socially provoking news events into one soulless episode. Last season, this was the Paula Deen and Trayvon Martin.
This season, the SVU does right with some sort of quasi Ray Rice and/or Solange elevator incident mixed with a twinge of Donald Sterling.
Shakir Wilkins (Henry Simmons, “NYPD”) plays a recently retired basketball player and “American Hero,” who’s still making bank after retirement from his sponsorship with Orion Bay, a clothing company run by Orion Bauer (Stacy Keach, “King Lear”). But Shakir isn’t as much of a hero as he seems. A website called “LMZ” releases a video clip of an Orion Bay PR employee attacking Shakir. The employee and two other women, seemingly unrelated, claim to have been drugged and raped by Shakir. As the SVU crew attempts to find the real story, the episode reveals rapid fire plot twists:
The girls were paid off by Orion Bauer.
No, wait, the girls were paid to say they were raped, but, no, wait!
Orion Bauer paid the black accuser less so he’s racist!
But wait, Bauer’s daughter, Cordelia (Teri Polo, “Meet the Parents”) is pregnant with Shakir’s baby, which is why Bauer framed Shakir in the first place.
But, alas, Shakir does admit to having consensual sex with all three other girls, so Cordelia has an abortion. The closing scene depicts Cordelia and Shakir pondering the end of their relationship, in what the viewer can assume is a sad attempt to make up for the complete lack of emotion in the rest of the episode.
The detectives don’t make much progress in their personal lives, which are the one thing that has kept “SVU” on the air for this long. Rollins has a brief conversation with her old Atlanta captain who still loves her, and Carisi gives a very misplaced speech on seeing dead women affected him in his homicide department days.
What mashup will NBC do next? I would personally love to see a Woody Allen molestation/Ferguson episode, but that might be pushing it just a little too far.
Stray Observations (Actually just one very obvious and endlessly irritating detail):
*Where was AMARO? Say goodbye to your female audience, NBC.
Tune in to “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit” on Wednesdays at 9 p.m on NBC.
