List of some of the cringiest moments in the first episode of the newest season of SVU that range from mildly tone-deaf to outright deliberate copaganda:
-the entire episode is spent demonizing protestors and BLM
-no im serious. they even literally explicitly imply that "oh we can't find who murdered this promising bright young foreign exchange student because our missing persons unit was dispatched to deal with protests" which literally is not even how it works, there are always officers who are non-combatant desk workers, but whatever, keep up your blatant lies, Dick Wolf
- most of the episode is spent whining and I mean WHINING about how people are losing faith in the police
-they recreate that incident where that white lady called the cops on a jogger in the park. The jogger, a black male, is arrested because they find a body in the vicinity and automatically suspect him and take him into questioning. The police become unnecessarily rough during his arrest, basically putting him in a chokehold and shaking him, and it gets filmed. The cops desperately try to find evidence that this man committed the murder so they can justify the outrageous way he was immediately blamed for the crime and subsequently assaulted. There's dialogue like "if we're gonna charge this guy we need an airtight case" "he better be good for this or i swear" it's like insanely uncomfortable that they're essentially HOPING this man is a murderer to save their own asses
-the only black woman on the main cast, the medical examiner/coroner, showed up for five minutes to show she had bruises from her surgical masks to make empty-handed half-hearted "healthcare workers are overworked" commentary and nothing else
-actors will enter the room wearing a facemask and take it off to speak. This happens the entire episode
-Olivia has a framed photo of Ruth Bader Ginsburg in her office, for some reason. It's put behind her desk so literally every time the camera pans to Olivia at her desk, the photograph is displayed behind her in a very awkward and jarring way. There are multiple unnecessary camera angles explicitly to show the photograph in-frame
-there's a constant emphasis put on how the police are having to work so much harder on this case because the public doesn't trust them, as if this is a massive inconvenince
-the show writers realized there are next to no recurring black characters in the main cast and have introduced a black police chief who is apparently going to be a prominent enough character that he is in the opening credits. He has an incredibly tone deaf conversation with Fin (the only other black man on cast) where he says there's going to be "a purge" of police officers regardless of them being good or bad because of the public losing faith. It's framed as the public being out for blood instead of the police system needing legitimate reform
-i had to rewatch the episode to even remember what happened with the actual case because honestly the dead woman is just used as a podium for these bad pro cop takes
-one of the people who filmed the unlawful arrest earlier in the episode started chanting "defund the police". He is revealed to be An Evil Protestor who is actually a racist and the real murderer. Literally the only believable part of this episode is that he's a white male who became dangerously entitled because of his wealth and privilege
- the episode ends with Olivia crying to the victim's father over a zoom call that "all life is precious, that's why the police are here". This is said with a completely straight face while beautiful orchestral music in the background designates to us that this is an incredibly profound and touching moment that *flips through pages in book* a career cop is literally just doing what she's being paid to do