This is one of the better Law and Order episodes -- keep in mind, this was 2009, before America started to pay more attention to racial crimes against people based on their race.
Hispanic men are being targeted for random, race-based attacks until inevitably, one is left beaten and brain dead. The case leads to a group of White teens who for kicks and in the shadow of their parents' venal racism decide to take out their kicks on "illegals" -- including one victim born and raised in Michigan.
It's a scenario that plays out over and over again, more recently with the uptick in violence against Asian Americans.
In particular, the actress playing the mother of the victim is incredible. She conveys the pain and horror of a poor woman who raised her son right and loves him with all her heart, only to have him taken away by evildoers raised by animals with money.
But there are two offensive parts. 1) At the end, after the mother of one of the innocent victims who is only being kept alive by life support signs a DNR, Sam the Eagle observes coldly, "Everyone games the system." Really? Sometimes, Sam the Eagle is presented as a smarmy Hawkeye-Pierce-like liberal, but then others, he's just cold, especially to minorities, as though he's got some serious bigotry issues of his own. 2) They had to include a Hispanic person among those who attacked the Hispanic victims. Seriously, that just chickens out of dealing with the cold reality of who frequently and routinely commits race-based hate crimes.
Hispanic men are being targeted for random, race-based attacks until inevitably, one is left beaten and brain dead. The case leads to a group of White teens who for kicks and in the shadow of their parents' venal racism decide to take out their kicks on "illegals" -- including one victim born and raised in Michigan.
It's a scenario that plays out over and over again, more recently with the uptick in violence against Asian Americans.
In particular, the actress playing the mother of the victim is incredible. She conveys the pain and horror of a poor woman who raised her son right and loves him with all her heart, only to have him taken away by evildoers raised by animals with money.
But there are two offensive parts. 1) At the end, after the mother of one of the innocent victims who is only being kept alive by life support signs a DNR, Sam the Eagle observes coldly, "Everyone games the system." Really? Sometimes, Sam the Eagle is presented as a smarmy Hawkeye-Pierce-like liberal, but then others, he's just cold, especially to minorities, as though he's got some serious bigotry issues of his own. 2) They had to include a Hispanic person among those who attacked the Hispanic victims. Seriously, that just chickens out of dealing with the cold reality of who frequently and routinely commits race-based hate crimes.