LAW & ORDER : SVU S03E22 "Competence"
Just to give you the context. We’re currently watching Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. It’s a long, very long running TV series, starting all the way back in 1999. In case you don’t know, SVU showcases stories of detectives in the Special Victims Unit who investigate sex crimes.
I’m not sure if the content I’ll be talking about here will always be suitable or appropriate for Steemit or this community. But I’ll write it anyway. I’m going to share my thoughts about the episodes we watch. It may not be consistent, but I’ll try to keep up this time.
Today we watched episodes 21 and 22 from season 3. This series has been blowing my mind so far with how much diversity they manage to bring into these stories. Such variety. And this 22nd episode is a great example of that.
This one revolves around the rape case of a girl with Down syndrome. This is a special case, an underrated point of view. The problem is that, unlike normal cases, this one becomes difficult to handle as reality because the statement of someone with Down syndrome is not taken into account the same way as a normal person’s, because of their disability. And here, it becomes even more complicated because the girl didn’t even know she had been raped. She didn’t know what sex is, so she didn’t know whether it happened or not. That’s why this case was especially challenging for the detectives.
The girl with Down syndrome is very beautiful. She has a very beautiful smile, which really connects with the viewers on an emotional level. In many Facebook groups I’m in, I’ve seen real-life stories of people with autism living normal family lives now. So here too, she falls in love with a boy, and they try to get married. It was great to see that they were excited to have a baby and live a life together. But I’m pretty sure the boy with Down syndrome in the episode was not actually a person with a disability. Both me and my wife felt it was obvious he was a normal actor pretending to have Down syndrome.
Anyway, the reveal of the person who did it was shocking as always. Someone we would never suspect — the very people who were supposed to be standing for the well-being of the children with Down syndrome.
The main leads here are Olivia Benson and Elliot Stabler as usual. But we also have major involvement from Alex Cabot and George Huang as well. I hadn’t seen Huang in the recent episodes, so it was good to see him here.
This episode was great because of the subject it explored — people with Down syndrome, their competence, and their protection.