SVU - "Undercover"

“Undercover” starts off with typical fare, but quickly shifts gears and make some surprising and welcome choices with race, casting and character.

The episode “Undercover” (original air date 4/15 – hope you got your taxes in!) starts with another typical minority casting issue. To try and meet quotas, these kinds of shows are full of incidental characters who can often be cast as minorities. It’s a great chance for any actor to work, but a tricky situation for black actors, as tonight’s episode shows.

During the cold open, a black cop haughtily tells Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni) that the guy who committed the crime they’re investigating is standing over there and here’s the murder weapon. The cop is young and brash…and as Stabler kindly points out, doesn’t have a clue as to what he’s talking about. We can tell from the first seconds of the episode (and the pattern of every Law and Order episode) that the guy in question didn’t commit this crime and the young cop prematurely calls a weapon a murder weapon when there is no murder to speak of.

A moment later, cooler headed (and white) Stabler simply questions the “perp.” I guess this young (black) cop couldn’t think that far ahead. Do we blame his youth or his race? You decide. Ostensibly, someone did. We’re just not sure what that decision was.

Is this a huge transgression? No. But it continues a pattern. And as I’ve said before: it’s not that this kind of casting happens, it’s just, why so often?

And it begs questions. What was casting notice? Did the execs know that they were going to give this role to a minority? If so, then why? If they didn’t, what was it about this black actor that made them decide to use him? His acting ability or their limited scope of what kind of cop makes this kind of dumb mistake.

A bit of a Catch 22? Perhaps. But these patterns continue. And it’s only fair to the character, the actors and the public to figure out why.

And back and forth it goes as the episode goes on. The victim (who isn’t dead, but who has been raped) is black. Something to note: rape is by and large and intra-racial crime. Typically, a white rape victim will have been raped by a white rapist. A black rape victim will have been attacked by a black perp. And so on and so forth. We will see in this episode if a) the crime in the show follows this pattern and b) if the crime turns out to be an empathy-inducing crime of passion or if it was a senseless act like a gang initiation.

I will give the show points for giving the black victim nice black (foster) parents. They are well spoken, kind and love their daughter. In fact, the other members of her family are nice characters. They have their flaws and foibles, but they are pretty well layered and the acting is strong.

Ooh, a twist. At 14 minutes in, we learn that the alleged attacker is white. This is out of the norm and based on some other exposition, he sounds like a real piece of work. He sells drugs, the victim’s mother was his supplier and the victim was his go-between. The guy raped her to teach her mom a lesson when she tried to get clean.

Another fun surprise is that the prison warden where the victim’s mother is incarcerated is a woman. This is nice touch because it allows the warden to be very hard on the mother without it being as abusive as it would be if the warden were a man. A man being as tough on the mother as the warden is would make it more difficult for an audience to sympathize with the position the warden is it. And sympathy for more than one party is what makes this franchise work.

Now all we have to do is get the directors and producers to extend some sympathy themselves.