Photo: Ali Goldstein / NBC
Deen Splicing
This SVU episode about a racist celebrity chef who shoots a kid in 'self-defense' seems vaguely familiar...?
Bethenny (Allison Mackie) and Aubrey (Alice Barrett Mitchell) give statements to, respectively, Benson (Mariska Hargitay) and Rollins (Kelli Giddish): both were attacked, on the Upper West Side, by an African-American man in a baseball cap and hoodie, who pressed a gun against their backs, forced his way into their apartments, and violently assaulted and raped them, telling them, "You know you want it."
A celebrity chef shoots a man matching the rapist's description when (according to her) he lunged at her at the gate of her Upper West Side brownstone.
The shooter turns out to have had a history of discriminatory attitudes and practices toward black employees at her restaurants; the forensics also suggest that she shot her alleged attacker when he was much further away from her than she claims.
40% Paula Deen; 40% George Zimmerman; 10% New York City stop-and-frisk abuses (SVU detectives stop and frisk men matching the rapist's general description, which yields nothing, and eventually catch the right guy only when he's caught in the act of raping his fourth victim).
As of this writing, Paula Deen never actually killed anyone; unlike Zimmerman, the vigilante in this episode doesn't actively pursue her victim; instead of Skittles, the shooting victim was carrying cherry bubble gum.
God bless Cybill Shepherd, who commits 100% as cooking channel celebrity and restaurateur Jolene Castille.
The actual rapist, Willie (Joshua Boone): "I didn't rape nobody! They wanted it! Yeah, you do too, don't you, bitch." Jolene, to fellow southerner Rollins: "We both know if we were down home, I'd be getting a medal"; and in a deposition from a nine-year-old discrimination case brought against five of her black former employees, whom she fired on accusations of theft: "You know these field hands. You can't let them into the kitchen, they'll rob you blind."
When Willie makes lewd comments to her, Benson roughs him up.
Called upon to show us how Tutuola is affected by this racially motivated shooting (and how gross he feels about participating in a stop-and-frisk campaign targeting black men), Ice-T does his best to emote.
Amazingly, producers deny themselves the pleasure of rewriting history, and the jury finds Jolene not guilty.
Benson overreacts to a catcall from some random dude on the street, getting him down to the ground and punching him in the face, but her shrink (Bill Irwin) tells her that her heightened emotions are normal, and that she'll learn to recognize triggers when more time has passed since her own assault; Amaro (Danny Pino) witnesses Benson's attack on Willie, but later covers for her.