User Reviews

In this episodes call back to an earlier episode, Benson arrives early to a deposition in a case of department overreach and discusses the case with the man who is suing the department. She tells him that the 2 of them want the same thing, sweeping change in the department and that he can get it by reaching out to allies like her and others in IAB on the force tired of the current climate.

Cut to later in the episode, where some not so savory tactics are used by the SVU team in an attempt to locate a woman who was kidnapped and her status is being auctioned online, up to and including murder. They track down the spouse of one of the kidnappers (she is also the sister of the 2nd kidnapper). She sends her brother an SOS message at the behest of SVU and her husband shoots him as a traitor. SVU finds the brother bleeding out and Liv calls a "bus" and then tells the perp to give up the other kidnapper or he'll bleed out in the basement. When he calls her bluff, she calls off the ambulance, all while the chief looks on in seeming approval.

So much for wanting sweeping change in the NYPD when this is how you treat suspects. Yes he was a vile sub-human piece of trash, but he is also due due process. Olivia Benson isn't judge, jure, and executioner.

There's only slight connection to SVU -- involving assault -- that seems tacked on from an episode that's really about hate groups, and even that angle is undeveloped. SVU has tackled the subject of hate groups before but far, far more effectively, such as the horrible episode where two racists adopt a minority baby, raise him to childhood, and then enact a monstrous scheme that shows the evil of racism. That episode also featured a terrific character played by Marcia Gay Harden, who would get a dopey send off in later, awfully written seasons. (It's amazing how much fully and richer those older episodes are compared the minimalist, scene-chewing ones now.) This episode has none of the meat of that one. The hate group members get very little screen time. Instead, there are lots of talky moments in interrogation rooms and while watching TV broadcasts, all while over-the-top music keeps trying to remind us something dramatic is supposedly going on. There's some lip service to bigotry -- one victim is Black while another uses a wheelchair -- but while SVU lately almost always has a scene where the principal characters give some speech about this or that "woke" issue, this one doesn't bother. The victims are just there to give the plot the appearance of relevance to an important issue.