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I enjoyed the episode.
Law & Order: SVU is a particularly graphic program, so I viewed this episode knowing that it would not portray members of the Greek system in the most positive light. But hey, it is a television show, after all. Anyone the SVU goes up against will be "the enemy."
I appreciated the fact that Medical Examiner Warner mentioned that her husband is an Alpha Phi Alpha. (A heary A Phi resounded through the house as soon as that was said.)
I was surprised to see the pledges on social probation and standing at attention in front of the house. If they had all been dressed alike, I might have found the scene reminiscent of the traditional BGLO pledge program of days gone by.
To the credit of the writers and/or producers, the program could have been the typical gang rape or date rape drug case that many of us expected this episode to be concerned with. But, it was focused on two people, the President and the Pledge Master. The president was absolutely morally corrupt, and the Pledge Master (the murder victim) was abusive, but not as sadistic as the President, by comparison.
The reason I bring up those two members of the Fraternity is because I think the writers were careful not to universally vilify the fraternity. True, they did not show the one fraternity member who snitched and brought the whole operation down, and yeah, you can assume that all the members were complicit in the activities that transpired.
However, I feel that in focusing on those two people, the writers showed that it could be more of a "bad apples" situation. The victims were not gang raped or otherwise victimized by the entire chapter at once. It was one person who took an already less than ideal situation and made it worse.
Anyway....no, it wasn't my favorite episode, and there were some inconsistencies in the language, as it pertained to Greek life. But on the whole, given the nature of the program, they could have done a whole lot worse.
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