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brendalaI have a bunch of seasons of Law&Order: Special Victims Unit in my Netflix instant stream. And I recently saw an episode from season 7 that I had never seen before. And now I wish I was still ignorant of it because it was one of the most horrible things I had ever seen on television.
For those of you who don’t know, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (“SVU” for short) is a show about a bunch of detectives who specialize in sex crimes and child/elder abuse cases. And anyone who is a fan of SVU knows that the show has taken a turn for the weird in its later seasons. It used to be a fairly straight forward crime drama about a team of badass detectives who solve sex crimes and put perverts in jail. But the latest seasons have employed wacky, twisty-turney plots and have an annoying tendency to throw realism out the window. One recent stinker had the sex crime detectives retrieve smuggled exotic monkeys from hallowed out basketballs at the airport. No, seriously! And the monkeys weren’t rape victims or anything; the detectives just felt like rescuing them!
But fans of this show accept that kind of madness because, at the end of the day, the main appeal of this show is watching two smoking hot detectives (Elliot Stabler and Olivia Benson) track down rapists and child molesters and, occasionally, beat the living snot out of them. And a good, cathartic time is had by all. But this season 7 episode (delicately entitled “Fat”) was so appallingly bad I just had to rant about it. Stabler acts horribly out of character. The writing is shit. And, worst of all, the plot resolution actually excuses the actions of a pair of sadistic rapists with the most stupid and insulting reasoning I have EVER seen! I still can’t believe something this horrible and insulting to rape survivors made it to air!
Needless to say, this review has spoilers galore and a huge TRIGGER WARNING.
Our episode begins with Elliot being all mopey because of his marital troubles and the fact that his partner, Olivia Benson, has taken some time off. He quickly gets paired with one of his many temp partners: Det. Lucius Blaine. Det. Blaine is a fat, Black man. This fact, sadly, becomes relevant later on. After being introduced, Stabler and Blaine set off to investigate the case of a teenage girl who was raped with a baseball bat, beaten so badly one of her fingers was severed, and left in an alley to die. When the time comes to question the victim, Elliot becomes suspicious of the girl’s truthfulness because he discovers that she flirted with a middle aged convenience store owner to get him to sell her beer a few days before her rape. Because, obviously, any teenage girl who who doesn't clutch her pearls and faint whenever alcohol and penises come near her is obviously a kinky whore who consents to rough, limb-severing sex.
Elliot gets even more suspicious when she acts skittish and dances around his questions. And he’s so insensitive toward her that Blaine calls him out on it later. This kind of cruel behavior toward a victim is TOTALLY out of character for Elliot! The teenage victim in this case was brutally beaten, one of her fingers was cut off, and she was raped with a damn baseball bat. Elliot - who is normally sympathetic to rape victims and has always preached that ALL rapists are scum and NO woman deserves to be violated like that - instantly distrusts the victim in the case and says “I’m not buying her little miss innocent routine” when Blaine asks why he’s being such an asshole.
…..WHAT THE HELL!?!?!? This is an experienced sex crimes detective. He KNOWS that many rape victims (especially younger ones) aren’t always instantly happy to join hands with the police and tell them all the gory details about how their attacker(s) violated them. ESPECIALLY when the attack is extremely humiliating and brutal and the detectives questioning them are male. And it’s not like this girl is involved in a gray, “he said, she said” rape complaint! She was mutilated and raped with a baseball bat! That combined with her young age warrants more tact and sympathy and, normally, Elliot Stabler knows that! He’s been much kinder to far less sympathetic victims in the past; so it was bizarre and appalling to see him treat a teenager who had been put through hell like a perp simply because she wasn’t happy to cooperate with him right away.
Speaking of Det. Blaine, he’s a cool character for the first half of this episode. He’s angered by the crime and determined to catch the perps. He calls Elliot out on his bullshit. And, when Elliot’s douchebaggery reaches critical mass, he nails him with an epic zinger (“now I know why your partner left you”). And, because Elliot is an immature, out of character asshole in this episode, he responds by punching Blaine and telling his boss that he’ll quit if Blaine isn’t immediately fired from SVU. His boss tells him to man up, act like an adult, and continue working with Blaine.
Anyway, the main suspects turn out to be a pair of poor, overweight, black teenage siblings (a brother and a sister). They eventually find the offending bat and a pair of shoes that match footprints in the alley in the siblings’ apartment and bring the kids in for questioning. Fat-Sister and Fat-Brother tell the detectives that the rape victim stole their older brother’s favorite baseball cap and taunted him while a male buddy of hers beat him up. And that's why they felt compelled to violently rape her and slice her up.
Stabler and Blaine immediately accept the statements of two sadistic rapists as truth and bring in the rape victim so they can browbeat her in the interrogation room. They ask if she has the cap and relentlessly question her about whether or not she teased the Fat Siblings’ big brother. Because, y’know, the fact that she might have been a bitch at some point means that she deserves no sympathy after being violated with a bat and having an extremity chopped off. At this point, Blaine stops being reasonable and awesome and happily joins Elliot in treating Rape Victim like a criminal based on the statements of the two sickos who raped her. ‘Cause, y’know, two violent rapists couldn’t possibly have an ulterior motive for wanting to discredit the woman they assaulted.
Anyhoo, eventually a Jesse Jackson stand-in goes on TV to rail about unequal justice for poor Black people and this prompts the chief to send Stabler and Blaine to interview the older brother about his alleged attack. Despite the fact that he never reported his attack to the cops and he’s not a “special victim” (he’s a legal adult and his attack wasn’t sexual in any way) and therefore out of their jurisdiction. Because, apparently, mobs of race hustlers on TV now dictate how the cops do their jobs.
So at this point the entire squad is now against Rape-Victim and going out of their way to find evidence to prove that she assaulted the older brother simply because her rapists said that she’s a bitch (and if you can’t trust the word of two sadists who mutilated and raped a helpless teenage girl with a baseball bat, then who can you trust?). They investigate Rape-Victim’s internet and cell phone records (we never see them get a warrant to do this, by the way!) and their investigation leads them to a ludicrous website/forum that the rape victim and her boyfriend frequented called “scratchyouritch.com”. The forum is a place for people to vent their hate against –and I swear I’m quoting the episode EXACTLY here- “fags”, “spics”, “dykes”, “coons”, and ”fatsos”.
…..really? REALLY, SVU? Bigots are now adding fat people to their list of groups to irrationally hate!? I know discrimination against overweight people is a real and serious problem. But it’s messed up to put it in the same category as the sometimes deadly discrimination that still gets doled out to homosexuals and people of color!
/gets off soapbox
***deep breath***
Anyway, they find a picture of Rape-Victim’s boyfriend beating up the Fat Siblings’ older brother (presumably taken by Rape-Victim’s cell phone before she was a rape victim). They immediately run to the rich, white kid school to gleefully arrest Rape-Victim and her boyfriend. Rich-White-Boyfriend has a smart lawyer who tells Stabler and Blaine that they have nothing to hold the two EEEVIL rich white kids on and that Fat-Older-Brother’s lineup ID won’t hold up in court because Rape-Victim and Rich-White-Boyfriend’s faces had been plastered all over the news all day (so much for rape shield laws! I guess they don’t apply if the cops believe that the “bitch had it coming”). Fat-Older-Brother rolls into the squadroom via wheelchair (his diabetes and oreo habit have made him unable to walk) and asks if his tormentors are going to prison. Blaine and Stabler tell him that they’re not and Fat-Older-Brother then proceeds to roll right up to Rich-White-Boyfriend and shoot him in the gut; instantly killing him! Yeah, security isn’t so hot at the SVU office it seems.
After the murder, District Attorney Casey Novak rightfully chews the squad out for their incompetence while Blaine continues to rage against Rape-Victim and her now dead boyfriend and how it’s all their fault all this horrible stuff happened and they MUST BE PUNISHED! Novak points out the glaringly obvious point that both of them have already been severely punished since Rich-White-Boyfriend is now dead and Rape-Victim was beaten, mutilated, and -oh yeah- viciously f&%*ing raped with a goddamn baseball bat by two of the three psycho kids that Stabler and Blaine are shedding crocodile tears for!!!! Novak tries to knock some sense into Blaine by saying “If that family hadn’t kept taking the law into their own hands, this wouldn’t have happened” (thank goodness at least one SVU character made it though this episode with their morals intact!)
Blaine’s response to her point: “Those kids had no reason to trust the law”
….so, distrusting the law apparently makes it OK to rape and kill? Does it also make it OK to rob a bank? Because I have some issues with cops and I could really use the extra cash! And I was bullied as a kid. So, that makes it double kosher for me to break the law. Thanks Detective Blaine!
Anyhoo, a lawyer marches into the squad room and announces that he’s representing the entire Fat-Psycho Family and that Fat-Older-Brother will get off because of extreme emotional distress and asks for a deal. Novak tells him to get bent and that she intends to charge the fat bastard with murder (GO CASEY!) and the lawyer hits back with –and I swear this is an almost direct quote from the episode- "My client is a victim of the obesity epidemic and type 2 diabetes". He claims that his client was destined to get fat because of his race, class, and environment. And that those factors caused him to get targeted by bullies, forced his siblings to retaliate against one of said bullies via violent rape, and then forced him to shoot the head bully. The lawyer continues to babble on about obesity statistics like a damn after school special before confidently telling Novak that no jury would convict him after hearing his sob story because lots of people in the jury are likely to be obese, too.
WHAT!? Being obese doesn’t rot a person’s brain or destroy their objectivity! Most obese people tend to hold on to their morals against things like murder and rape no matter how much the person on trial resembles them. But, of course, no one in the squadroom points this out because they all took stupid pills for the duration of this episode.
CUT TO THE COURTROOM:
Fat-Older-Brother is on the stand and a sympathetic lawyer gets the first shot at him. She asks him how much he weighs (320 pounds) and if he’s always been big. He says his whole family has always been big and that his favorite food growing up was some sugary cereal based on his favorite cartoon. The lawyer then asks how often his family ate together and if his Mommy ever cooked him dinner before Novak says what we’re all thinking and shouts “This is a MURDER trial! What the heck is the point of these fluff questions?”. The bleeding heart lawyer proceeds to proselytize about how this poor widdle boy was raised by TV and fed crappy food and how we should let him get away with murder because his Mom was too overworked to cook healthy family meals. Bleeding Heart Lawyer eventually asks him why he murdered Rich-White-Boyfriend and he whines about being “blind with rage over what he did to him and his family”. What he did to his FAMILY!? So now this lunatic is blaming the dead boyfriend for his siblings violently raping somebody. Because blaming rapists for rape apparently doesn’t fly anymore!
We eventually get to see Novak dig her claws into Fat-Older-Brother. And it’s a glorious sight to see! She calls him on his “blind with rage boo hoo” bullshit and gets him to admit he planned to shoot Rich-White-Boyfriend way ahead of time and that he’s glad he did it. The “gentle giant” façade finally melts.
BACK TO THE SQUAD ROOM:
Sadly, Novak’s awesomeness is followed by Detective Olivia Benson’s character getting dragged through the dirt. Benson comes back to the SVU office and goes out of her way to find footage of Rape Victim wearing the stolen baseball cap mentioned earlier so they can finally nail her on charges. Benson also tells the gang that she looked into the girls background and found more torrid info that could be used to break her in the interrogation room.
That’s right. Olivia Benson, the biggest sympathetic defender of rape survivors in this show and the only female detective there, is going out of her way to make sure the victim of a horrifically violent rape gets nailed to the wall by the very people who raped her. This episode has officially betrayed everything that makes Benson an inspiring character in this show with just one action. I honestly can’t believe Marishka Hargutay participated in this episode considering all the work she does with rape survivor charities and support groups. Was the money really THAT good, Hargutay? I hope it was.
CUT TO THE INTERROGATION ROOM:
The chief puts Rape-Victim in the room with Blaine and Stabler and, at this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if those two pulled out baseball bats, unzipped their pants, and started taking turns with her (‘cause she’s a bitch and she deserves it, remember?). Instead, they opt to do something that’s just slightly less cruel. Blaine confronts her and asks if she hates fat people like him. She says “no” and he proceeds to scream in her face and call her a liar and a bigot. Stabler then joins in and proceeds to pull out some photos and reveal this episode’s “shocking twist”. Get ready for it….
Rape-Victim was fat when she was young! *cue dramatic music *
Not only was she fat; her parents shipped her off to fat camps until she got skinny and hot and learned to hate anyone bigger than a size 5! Rape-Victim starts sobbing (I'm surprised it took her this long) and admits that, yes, she was fat and she was mercilessly teased for it whenever she left the confines of her fat camps. She also admits that she joined in when her boyfriend teased Fat-Older-Brother because he reminded her of herself and how “disgusting” she was when she was chubby. And the entire squad is happy because they think this confession, pulled out of a traumatized rape victim, will help Fat-Older-Brother get off with a light sentence. I’m no law expert, but if I were a juror in that case and I saw video of that interrogation, my first reaction would be to jump out of the jury box and kick Stabler and Blaine in the balls. It certainly wouldn’t make me feel that Fat-Older-Brother deserves leniency or that the girl and her boyfriend deserved all the violent things that happened to them.
CUT TO SENTENCING DAY:
Fat-Older-Brother is found guilty of second degree murder. But he’s not there for his own sentencing. Turns out one of his kidneys failed and one of his feet was amputated. So he’ll serve out his sentence in a prison hospital. Naturally, Blaine is all torn up, decides that SVU is too much for him, and quits. Good riddance!
By the way, you may be wondering why I never mentioned if the Brother-Sister rape duo ever got around to being punished for mutilating and violently raping that girl. Well, I didn’t mention it because it didn’t happen. Those two disappear after they deliver their sob story to Stabler and Blaine and, presumably, they get off the hook because the SVU team decided that the “bitch had it coming”.
So, I suppose the moral of this episode is that rape and violence isn’t wrong if the person you attacked made you really really mad. And that rape survivors (even underage rape survivors) deserve no pity or justice if they acted bitchy and/or slutty at any point before they were raped. Even if the rape left them permanently deformed, traumatized, and almost dead.
FUCK! THIS! EPISODE!
It’s not like this girl was a monster who killed and tortured people (though raping her would still be wrong if she was!). She took pictures while her boyfriend beat up some other kid. Granted, that is messed up and deserving of punishment. But the fact that she didn’t rat out her dirtbag boyfriend doesn’t mean she doesn’t deserve tact and sympathy after being raped. The SVU squad has been kinder to adult rape victims who were WAY less sympathetic (like junkie women who abused and neglected their kids). So it doesn’t make sense that they would go so far out of their way to not only punish a teenage rape victim for a minor crime; but to add insult to injury by siding with her rapists in court.
Not only that; it goes against Benson and Stabler’s characters to side with rapists over an excuse as ridiculous as “we raped her because she teased our brother”. Those two have shown no pity to child rapists who grew up being raped and abused because they always rightfully say that having a shitty lot in life doesn’t give one the right to ruin someone else’s life. They’ve also always said that anyone who commits rape is an irredeemable scumbag who deserves to be buried under the jailhouse (and they’ve been harsh on underage perps in the past). They’ve also always repeated the mantra that rape is NEVER the victims fault and NOBODY “has it coming”. What the hell possessed the writer and producers to throw all that good stuff away just so this show about sex crimes could crank out a “very special episode” about childhood obesity!?
Speaking of the writer, I pray that I never meet the writer of this episode (Patrick Harbinson). Methinks this guy was using this episode as a fantasy outlet to vent his rage at the Mean Girls who teased his fat ass back in high school and wouldn't go to the prom with him.
Also, speaking as someone who was cruelly teased in middle school (mainly for being poor), this episode’s message that being teased should excuse barbaric behavior is bullshit. I think every bullied kid harbored fantasies about punching out their tormentors (I know I did). But it takes a special kind of evil to inflict the terror and pain of rape and mutilation on another human being. I couldn’t bring myself to do it no matter how much I hate someone. And, IMO, anyone who could is a monstrous sociopath who should be locked away from civilized society forever. Too bad this episode didn’t agree with me.
For those of you who don’t know, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (“SVU” for short) is a show about a bunch of detectives who specialize in sex crimes and child/elder abuse cases. And anyone who is a fan of SVU knows that the show has taken a turn for the weird in its later seasons. It used to be a fairly straight forward crime drama about a team of badass detectives who solve sex crimes and put perverts in jail. But the latest seasons have employed wacky, twisty-turney plots and have an annoying tendency to throw realism out the window. One recent stinker had the sex crime detectives retrieve smuggled exotic monkeys from hallowed out basketballs at the airport. No, seriously! And the monkeys weren’t rape victims or anything; the detectives just felt like rescuing them!
But fans of this show accept that kind of madness because, at the end of the day, the main appeal of this show is watching two smoking hot detectives (Elliot Stabler and Olivia Benson) track down rapists and child molesters and, occasionally, beat the living snot out of them. And a good, cathartic time is had by all. But this season 7 episode (delicately entitled “Fat”) was so appallingly bad I just had to rant about it. Stabler acts horribly out of character. The writing is shit. And, worst of all, the plot resolution actually excuses the actions of a pair of sadistic rapists with the most stupid and insulting reasoning I have EVER seen! I still can’t believe something this horrible and insulting to rape survivors made it to air!
Needless to say, this review has spoilers galore and a huge TRIGGER WARNING.
Our episode begins with Elliot being all mopey because of his marital troubles and the fact that his partner, Olivia Benson, has taken some time off. He quickly gets paired with one of his many temp partners: Det. Lucius Blaine. Det. Blaine is a fat, Black man. This fact, sadly, becomes relevant later on. After being introduced, Stabler and Blaine set off to investigate the case of a teenage girl who was raped with a baseball bat, beaten so badly one of her fingers was severed, and left in an alley to die. When the time comes to question the victim, Elliot becomes suspicious of the girl’s truthfulness because he discovers that she flirted with a middle aged convenience store owner to get him to sell her beer a few days before her rape. Because, obviously, any teenage girl who who doesn't clutch her pearls and faint whenever alcohol and penises come near her is obviously a kinky whore who consents to rough, limb-severing sex.
Elliot gets even more suspicious when she acts skittish and dances around his questions. And he’s so insensitive toward her that Blaine calls him out on it later. This kind of cruel behavior toward a victim is TOTALLY out of character for Elliot! The teenage victim in this case was brutally beaten, one of her fingers was cut off, and she was raped with a damn baseball bat. Elliot - who is normally sympathetic to rape victims and has always preached that ALL rapists are scum and NO woman deserves to be violated like that - instantly distrusts the victim in the case and says “I’m not buying her little miss innocent routine” when Blaine asks why he’s being such an asshole.
…..WHAT THE HELL!?!?!? This is an experienced sex crimes detective. He KNOWS that many rape victims (especially younger ones) aren’t always instantly happy to join hands with the police and tell them all the gory details about how their attacker(s) violated them. ESPECIALLY when the attack is extremely humiliating and brutal and the detectives questioning them are male. And it’s not like this girl is involved in a gray, “he said, she said” rape complaint! She was mutilated and raped with a baseball bat! That combined with her young age warrants more tact and sympathy and, normally, Elliot Stabler knows that! He’s been much kinder to far less sympathetic victims in the past; so it was bizarre and appalling to see him treat a teenager who had been put through hell like a perp simply because she wasn’t happy to cooperate with him right away.
Speaking of Det. Blaine, he’s a cool character for the first half of this episode. He’s angered by the crime and determined to catch the perps. He calls Elliot out on his bullshit. And, when Elliot’s douchebaggery reaches critical mass, he nails him with an epic zinger (“now I know why your partner left you”). And, because Elliot is an immature, out of character asshole in this episode, he responds by punching Blaine and telling his boss that he’ll quit if Blaine isn’t immediately fired from SVU. His boss tells him to man up, act like an adult, and continue working with Blaine.
Anyway, the main suspects turn out to be a pair of poor, overweight, black teenage siblings (a brother and a sister). They eventually find the offending bat and a pair of shoes that match footprints in the alley in the siblings’ apartment and bring the kids in for questioning. Fat-Sister and Fat-Brother tell the detectives that the rape victim stole their older brother’s favorite baseball cap and taunted him while a male buddy of hers beat him up. And that's why they felt compelled to violently rape her and slice her up.
Stabler and Blaine immediately accept the statements of two sadistic rapists as truth and bring in the rape victim so they can browbeat her in the interrogation room. They ask if she has the cap and relentlessly question her about whether or not she teased the Fat Siblings’ big brother. Because, y’know, the fact that she might have been a bitch at some point means that she deserves no sympathy after being violated with a bat and having an extremity chopped off. At this point, Blaine stops being reasonable and awesome and happily joins Elliot in treating Rape Victim like a criminal based on the statements of the two sickos who raped her. ‘Cause, y’know, two violent rapists couldn’t possibly have an ulterior motive for wanting to discredit the woman they assaulted.
Anyhoo, eventually a Jesse Jackson stand-in goes on TV to rail about unequal justice for poor Black people and this prompts the chief to send Stabler and Blaine to interview the older brother about his alleged attack. Despite the fact that he never reported his attack to the cops and he’s not a “special victim” (he’s a legal adult and his attack wasn’t sexual in any way) and therefore out of their jurisdiction. Because, apparently, mobs of race hustlers on TV now dictate how the cops do their jobs.
So at this point the entire squad is now against Rape-Victim and going out of their way to find evidence to prove that she assaulted the older brother simply because her rapists said that she’s a bitch (and if you can’t trust the word of two sadists who mutilated and raped a helpless teenage girl with a baseball bat, then who can you trust?). They investigate Rape-Victim’s internet and cell phone records (we never see them get a warrant to do this, by the way!) and their investigation leads them to a ludicrous website/forum that the rape victim and her boyfriend frequented called “scratchyouritch.com”. The forum is a place for people to vent their hate against –and I swear I’m quoting the episode EXACTLY here- “fags”, “spics”, “dykes”, “coons”, and ”fatsos”.
…..really? REALLY, SVU? Bigots are now adding fat people to their list of groups to irrationally hate!? I know discrimination against overweight people is a real and serious problem. But it’s messed up to put it in the same category as the sometimes deadly discrimination that still gets doled out to homosexuals and people of color!
/gets off soapbox
***deep breath***
Anyway, they find a picture of Rape-Victim’s boyfriend beating up the Fat Siblings’ older brother (presumably taken by Rape-Victim’s cell phone before she was a rape victim). They immediately run to the rich, white kid school to gleefully arrest Rape-Victim and her boyfriend. Rich-White-Boyfriend has a smart lawyer who tells Stabler and Blaine that they have nothing to hold the two EEEVIL rich white kids on and that Fat-Older-Brother’s lineup ID won’t hold up in court because Rape-Victim and Rich-White-Boyfriend’s faces had been plastered all over the news all day (so much for rape shield laws! I guess they don’t apply if the cops believe that the “bitch had it coming”). Fat-Older-Brother rolls into the squadroom via wheelchair (his diabetes and oreo habit have made him unable to walk) and asks if his tormentors are going to prison. Blaine and Stabler tell him that they’re not and Fat-Older-Brother then proceeds to roll right up to Rich-White-Boyfriend and shoot him in the gut; instantly killing him! Yeah, security isn’t so hot at the SVU office it seems.
After the murder, District Attorney Casey Novak rightfully chews the squad out for their incompetence while Blaine continues to rage against Rape-Victim and her now dead boyfriend and how it’s all their fault all this horrible stuff happened and they MUST BE PUNISHED! Novak points out the glaringly obvious point that both of them have already been severely punished since Rich-White-Boyfriend is now dead and Rape-Victim was beaten, mutilated, and -oh yeah- viciously f&%*ing raped with a goddamn baseball bat by two of the three psycho kids that Stabler and Blaine are shedding crocodile tears for!!!! Novak tries to knock some sense into Blaine by saying “If that family hadn’t kept taking the law into their own hands, this wouldn’t have happened” (thank goodness at least one SVU character made it though this episode with their morals intact!)
Blaine’s response to her point: “Those kids had no reason to trust the law”
….so, distrusting the law apparently makes it OK to rape and kill? Does it also make it OK to rob a bank? Because I have some issues with cops and I could really use the extra cash! And I was bullied as a kid. So, that makes it double kosher for me to break the law. Thanks Detective Blaine!
Anyhoo, a lawyer marches into the squad room and announces that he’s representing the entire Fat-Psycho Family and that Fat-Older-Brother will get off because of extreme emotional distress and asks for a deal. Novak tells him to get bent and that she intends to charge the fat bastard with murder (GO CASEY!) and the lawyer hits back with –and I swear this is an almost direct quote from the episode- "My client is a victim of the obesity epidemic and type 2 diabetes". He claims that his client was destined to get fat because of his race, class, and environment. And that those factors caused him to get targeted by bullies, forced his siblings to retaliate against one of said bullies via violent rape, and then forced him to shoot the head bully. The lawyer continues to babble on about obesity statistics like a damn after school special before confidently telling Novak that no jury would convict him after hearing his sob story because lots of people in the jury are likely to be obese, too.
WHAT!? Being obese doesn’t rot a person’s brain or destroy their objectivity! Most obese people tend to hold on to their morals against things like murder and rape no matter how much the person on trial resembles them. But, of course, no one in the squadroom points this out because they all took stupid pills for the duration of this episode.
CUT TO THE COURTROOM:
Fat-Older-Brother is on the stand and a sympathetic lawyer gets the first shot at him. She asks him how much he weighs (320 pounds) and if he’s always been big. He says his whole family has always been big and that his favorite food growing up was some sugary cereal based on his favorite cartoon. The lawyer then asks how often his family ate together and if his Mommy ever cooked him dinner before Novak says what we’re all thinking and shouts “This is a MURDER trial! What the heck is the point of these fluff questions?”. The bleeding heart lawyer proceeds to proselytize about how this poor widdle boy was raised by TV and fed crappy food and how we should let him get away with murder because his Mom was too overworked to cook healthy family meals. Bleeding Heart Lawyer eventually asks him why he murdered Rich-White-Boyfriend and he whines about being “blind with rage over what he did to him and his family”. What he did to his FAMILY!? So now this lunatic is blaming the dead boyfriend for his siblings violently raping somebody. Because blaming rapists for rape apparently doesn’t fly anymore!
We eventually get to see Novak dig her claws into Fat-Older-Brother. And it’s a glorious sight to see! She calls him on his “blind with rage boo hoo” bullshit and gets him to admit he planned to shoot Rich-White-Boyfriend way ahead of time and that he’s glad he did it. The “gentle giant” façade finally melts.
BACK TO THE SQUAD ROOM:
Sadly, Novak’s awesomeness is followed by Detective Olivia Benson’s character getting dragged through the dirt. Benson comes back to the SVU office and goes out of her way to find footage of Rape Victim wearing the stolen baseball cap mentioned earlier so they can finally nail her on charges. Benson also tells the gang that she looked into the girls background and found more torrid info that could be used to break her in the interrogation room.
That’s right. Olivia Benson, the biggest sympathetic defender of rape survivors in this show and the only female detective there, is going out of her way to make sure the victim of a horrifically violent rape gets nailed to the wall by the very people who raped her. This episode has officially betrayed everything that makes Benson an inspiring character in this show with just one action. I honestly can’t believe Marishka Hargutay participated in this episode considering all the work she does with rape survivor charities and support groups. Was the money really THAT good, Hargutay? I hope it was.
CUT TO THE INTERROGATION ROOM:
The chief puts Rape-Victim in the room with Blaine and Stabler and, at this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if those two pulled out baseball bats, unzipped their pants, and started taking turns with her (‘cause she’s a bitch and she deserves it, remember?). Instead, they opt to do something that’s just slightly less cruel. Blaine confronts her and asks if she hates fat people like him. She says “no” and he proceeds to scream in her face and call her a liar and a bigot. Stabler then joins in and proceeds to pull out some photos and reveal this episode’s “shocking twist”. Get ready for it….
Rape-Victim was fat when she was young! *cue dramatic music *
Not only was she fat; her parents shipped her off to fat camps until she got skinny and hot and learned to hate anyone bigger than a size 5! Rape-Victim starts sobbing (I'm surprised it took her this long) and admits that, yes, she was fat and she was mercilessly teased for it whenever she left the confines of her fat camps. She also admits that she joined in when her boyfriend teased Fat-Older-Brother because he reminded her of herself and how “disgusting” she was when she was chubby. And the entire squad is happy because they think this confession, pulled out of a traumatized rape victim, will help Fat-Older-Brother get off with a light sentence. I’m no law expert, but if I were a juror in that case and I saw video of that interrogation, my first reaction would be to jump out of the jury box and kick Stabler and Blaine in the balls. It certainly wouldn’t make me feel that Fat-Older-Brother deserves leniency or that the girl and her boyfriend deserved all the violent things that happened to them.
CUT TO SENTENCING DAY:
Fat-Older-Brother is found guilty of second degree murder. But he’s not there for his own sentencing. Turns out one of his kidneys failed and one of his feet was amputated. So he’ll serve out his sentence in a prison hospital. Naturally, Blaine is all torn up, decides that SVU is too much for him, and quits. Good riddance!
By the way, you may be wondering why I never mentioned if the Brother-Sister rape duo ever got around to being punished for mutilating and violently raping that girl. Well, I didn’t mention it because it didn’t happen. Those two disappear after they deliver their sob story to Stabler and Blaine and, presumably, they get off the hook because the SVU team decided that the “bitch had it coming”.
So, I suppose the moral of this episode is that rape and violence isn’t wrong if the person you attacked made you really really mad. And that rape survivors (even underage rape survivors) deserve no pity or justice if they acted bitchy and/or slutty at any point before they were raped. Even if the rape left them permanently deformed, traumatized, and almost dead.
FUCK! THIS! EPISODE!
It’s not like this girl was a monster who killed and tortured people (though raping her would still be wrong if she was!). She took pictures while her boyfriend beat up some other kid. Granted, that is messed up and deserving of punishment. But the fact that she didn’t rat out her dirtbag boyfriend doesn’t mean she doesn’t deserve tact and sympathy after being raped. The SVU squad has been kinder to adult rape victims who were WAY less sympathetic (like junkie women who abused and neglected their kids). So it doesn’t make sense that they would go so far out of their way to not only punish a teenage rape victim for a minor crime; but to add insult to injury by siding with her rapists in court.
Not only that; it goes against Benson and Stabler’s characters to side with rapists over an excuse as ridiculous as “we raped her because she teased our brother”. Those two have shown no pity to child rapists who grew up being raped and abused because they always rightfully say that having a shitty lot in life doesn’t give one the right to ruin someone else’s life. They’ve also always said that anyone who commits rape is an irredeemable scumbag who deserves to be buried under the jailhouse (and they’ve been harsh on underage perps in the past). They’ve also always repeated the mantra that rape is NEVER the victims fault and NOBODY “has it coming”. What the hell possessed the writer and producers to throw all that good stuff away just so this show about sex crimes could crank out a “very special episode” about childhood obesity!?
Speaking of the writer, I pray that I never meet the writer of this episode (Patrick Harbinson). Methinks this guy was using this episode as a fantasy outlet to vent his rage at the Mean Girls who teased his fat ass back in high school and wouldn't go to the prom with him.
Also, speaking as someone who was cruelly teased in middle school (mainly for being poor), this episode’s message that being teased should excuse barbaric behavior is bullshit. I think every bullied kid harbored fantasies about punching out their tormentors (I know I did). But it takes a special kind of evil to inflict the terror and pain of rape and mutilation on another human being. I couldn’t bring myself to do it no matter how much I hate someone. And, IMO, anyone who could is a monstrous sociopath who should be locked away from civilized society forever. Too bad this episode didn’t agree with me.
