Though this episode was produced in early 1988, the death squad killings that had occurred in El Salvador in the early 80s had hardly been forgotten. In fact, killings were still going on and even continue into the present day by a group known as Sombra Negra (Black Shadow). The script was written by Richard Okie and was the seventh of ten episodes he penned for the series and its tone is very somber, especially the ending.
While I applaud Okie and the show's producers for tackling this particular topic, I think it fails in a few key areas. First, the main guest character, Elena Montero (Gina Gallego), is presented as the most noble sufferer who ever graced American TV screens. Everything bad that could happen to one woman happens to her in this story. She gets more than one scene where she launches into a soliloquy for Rick & A.J.'s benefit (and the benefit of the viewing audience) about what she has lost because of the guerrilla warfare back in her home country. She tells us why another woman wearing her jacket was attacked and raped because the perpetrators thought it was actually her; and she tells us how she has lost more than one brother who've been killed by the death squads. It was a bit much. I was half expecting her to end up telling us her dog had hit by a car and she had recently been diagnosed with cancer.
I am not saying this to sound mean or downplay the real-life suffering of victims and their families in El Salvador and other Latin American countries, but I think this would have played better if her tragedies had been spread out on to several other guest characters who were in the same situation. My feeling is that Okie, when researching the issue, had taken stories from multiple victims and combined them into this one character's suffering. And again, it was somewhat extreme.
The other issue I have with this well-meaning episode is that it doesn't go far enough visually. Having her describe the torture that occurs was not as good as showing some of it. Obviously, a network TV series in the late 80s probably couldn't show someone getting their tongue cut out or a gang rape occurring, but I do think scenes of this nature could have been attempted in shadows, where it's happening but we do not exactly see it all. And they could have had a viewer discretion warning at the beginning. If a story of this type is covered, then it almost has to be graphic to indicate the very realness of the violence affecting these people.
While I applaud Okie and the show's producers for tackling this particular topic, I think it fails in a few key areas. First, the main guest character, Elena Montero (Gina Gallego), is presented as the most noble sufferer who ever graced American TV screens. Everything bad that could happen to one woman happens to her in this story. She gets more than one scene where she launches into a soliloquy for Rick & A.J.'s benefit (and the benefit of the viewing audience) about what she has lost because of the guerrilla warfare back in her home country. She tells us why another woman wearing her jacket was attacked and raped because the perpetrators thought it was actually her; and she tells us how she has lost more than one brother who've been killed by the death squads. It was a bit much. I was half expecting her to end up telling us her dog had hit by a car and she had recently been diagnosed with cancer.
I am not saying this to sound mean or downplay the real-life suffering of victims and their families in El Salvador and other Latin American countries, but I think this would have played better if her tragedies had been spread out on to several other guest characters who were in the same situation. My feeling is that Okie, when researching the issue, had taken stories from multiple victims and combined them into this one character's suffering. And again, it was somewhat extreme.
The other issue I have with this well-meaning episode is that it doesn't go far enough visually. Having her describe the torture that occurs was not as good as showing some of it. Obviously, a network TV series in the late 80s probably couldn't show someone getting their tongue cut out or a gang rape occurring, but I do think scenes of this nature could have been attempted in shadows, where it's happening but we do not exactly see it all. And they could have had a viewer discretion warning at the beginning. If a story of this type is covered, then it almost has to be graphic to indicate the very realness of the violence affecting these people.
