Critic’s Ranking: 4.9 / 5.0
4.9
I’ve been crucial of Regulation & Order: SVU Season 26, however when it will get it proper, it REALLY hits onerous.
Regulation & Order: SVU Season 26 Episode 18 (“The Accuser”) had every thing that I like about this present.
It didn’t maintain again, but it surely additionally didn’t hit the viewers over the pinnacle with its message — and that’s particularly essential when it explores points like the connection between trauma and crime.
Regulation & Order: SVU Season 26 Episode 18 Blurred The Line Between Sufferer And Perpetrator
“The Accuser” centered on the blurry line between sufferer and perpetrator, which allowed it to ask some troublesome, hard-hitting questions.
Because the episode started, Eddie Upshaw appeared just like the least seemingly individual to ever turn out to be the sufferer of a violent crime, which is TV converse for him having a horrible secret that wanted to return to gentle.
The case moved swiftly from a easy case of a person probably being attacked by his disgruntled teenage worker to a sexual abuser who had been grooming children for not less than 20 years.
As soon as Eddie grew to become each a sufferer and a perpetrator, the case obtained messy. The cops couldn’t ignore what had been achieved to him, however Benson was as disgusted and pissed off because the scenario deserved.
Benson: I can’t ignore the truth that if this trial had occurred immediately, Eddie Upshaw would get the jail sentence he deserved.
What occurred subsequent addressed a problem that’s near my coronary heart: the way in which the legal justice system treats trauma survivors.
Angela Jones grew from an abused eight-year-old to a youngster who acted out and used medicine to flee her ache, which landed her in jail.
Regulation & Order: SVU Season 26 Episode 18 Subtly Confirmed The Relationship Between Untreated Trauma and Legal Habits
My particular curiosity as a social employee was legal justice reform, and I met so many purchasers in my internships whose solely crime was utilizing medicine to flee the trauma they’d suffered.
This was particularly clear in Angela’s case. She was 13 when she began utilizing, and he or she wasn’t promoting — she was in jail (and now on parole) for easy possession.
The episode didn’t make a giant deal out of that. It talked about it, had Benson say a number of phrases about how trauma and crime had now intersected, and moved on.
Happily, Benson understood Angela’s trauma higher than most.
Angela was arrested after a foot chase, and her solely remark was, “Get your goddamn palms off of me!”
That was not precisely a refined reference to the trauma she suffered, but it surely supplied the chance to quietly critique the way in which cops typically deal (or don’t) with suspects’ trauma histories.
Though Curry mentioned that she hated having to make use of cuffs on Angela, it wasn’t clear till her dialog with Benson that Curry understood why Angela was performing the way in which that she did.
Angela’s resolution to run, her defiance and try and battle again by biting a uniformed officer, and her response upon being cuffed had been all associated to her childhood trauma, and the expertise of being thrown in opposition to a cop automobile and cuffed most likely retraumatized her.
After all, the cops needed to arrest her — there was possible trigger to imagine she had assaulted and sodomized her attacker, and no person was going to disregard that due to her trauma historical past.
Nevertheless, her trauma-based choices led to the cops feeling justified in utilizing violence, which retraumatized her additional.
That’s a part of the cycle of trauma that Benson talked about on the finish of the hour, simply as a lot because the violent crime she dedicated in response to the violence she’d suffered was.
Benson Responded To Angela’s Ache Completely, However That’s A Fantasy
Benson as soon as once more proved that she’s the sort of cop many real-life survivors want that they had crossed paths with.
She understood Angela’s ache implicitly.
She used her empathy and understanding to get Angela to speak about what had occurred to her and admit to what she’d achieved in response.
Benson: You throw your life away, you let guys like that win.
Angela: He already received, Captain. There isn’t a day that what he did isn’t on the highest of my thoughts. He didn’t simply scar me as soon as. He scarred me on a regular basis. So what occurs now? I am going again to jail? Trigger it was price it.
Benson: We get you a lawyer and determine this out.
Then she obtained a lawyer and made certain the justice system handled her extra pretty than it had ever achieved earlier than.
Generally, advocates for police reform get pissed off with situations just like the one on Regulation & Order: SVU Season 26 Episode 18 as a result of they counsel that almost all real-life cops have already got the kind of empathetic response that Benson exudes.
I get that, however I see it in another way.
Benson is, and all the time has been, the kind of cop that might exist in a super world, and Regulation & Order: SVU Season 26 is written from the attitude of that world being the one we must always attempt for.
“The Accuser” did this notably successfully.
Generally Benson’s model of going the additional mile for survivors aggravates me as a result of she will get far too concerned — that was a significant issue throughout Regulation & Order: SVU Season 25 — however this wasn’t a type of occasions.
As an alternative, she merely did one thing most cops wouldn’t do in actual life. She put Angela’s wants over the state’s want to attain a serious conviction, secured her a lawyer, and labored with Carisi to make sure she obtained a good deal.
Random Ideas About Regulation & Order: SVU Season 26 Episode 18
- Carisi was way more tolerable than he has been for some time. Hopefully, meaning his personal poor response to trauma is over in the intervening time.
- I preferred Sam turning to Bruno. It was foolish for Benson to be frightened about Bruno assembly with a traumatized suspect with out backup when everyone knows she would do the identical factor if she thought she might assist.
- After we first discovered that Eddie had sexually abused Sam, I assumed possibly Sam’s father already knew and was the one who attacked Eddie.
- Eddie’s ex-wife had only some scenes, however she was the actual villain right here (in addition to Eddie, in fact). She’s the one who was so deep in denial she refused to imagine a traumatized little woman 20 years in the past and was nonetheless insisting that Eddie did nothing incorrect after one other sufferer got here ahead.
Over to you, SVU fanatics.
What did you consider the case and the problems raised on Regulation & Order: SVU Season 26 Episode 18?
Vote in our ballot to rank the episode, then hit the feedback along with your ideas.
Regulation & Order: SVU airs on NBC on Thursdays at 9/8c and streams on Peacock on Fridays.
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