Simply days earlier than NBC’s trio of Regulation & Order collection returns with new episodes, John Oliver had some alternative phrases for the franchise, and its overlord Dick Wolf, on Sunday’s Final Week Tonight.
Within the episode’s major section (embedded above), Oliver took a deep dive into how cop exhibits “considerably distort the large image of policing,” whether or not meaning giving real-life police departments behind-the-scenes enter on how they’re offered, or crafting a “false narrative of legislation enforcement” during which “exceptionally competent cops [are] working inside a largely honest framework that largely convicts white individuals.”
“It’s presenting a world the place the cops can all the time work out who did it, protection attorneys are irritating obstacles to be overcome, and even when a cop roughs up a suspect, it’s all in pursuit of a simply final result,” Oliver famous of Regulation & Order particularly. “And it blasts that fantasy at you in countless reruns and marathons within the guise of very well-produced, extraordinarily entertaining TV. However beneath all of it, it is a industrial — a industrial produced by a person who’s, in his personal phrases, unabashedly pro-law enforcement.”
All through the piece, Oliver emphasised how instrumental Wolf is to the Regulation & Order franchise’s typically optimistic depiction of police, even cuing up a 2003 interview during which Wolf referred to as the Regulation & Order exhibits “the very best recruiting poster that you possibly can have for being a New York Metropolis cop.” (In a separate interview, former SVU showrunner Warren Leight additionally admitted that it’s merely “not a part of Dick’s model” to point out “cops behaving illegally” on any of his collection.)
“It’s fully advantageous to take pleasure in [Law & Order shows], and it’s fully comprehensible to need Olivia Benson to exist,” Oliver continued. “But it surely’s necessary to recollect simply how far it’s from representing something resembling actuality… [Wolf] is promoting an entire fantasy that many individuals on this nation are solely too blissful to purchase — which is advantageous, so long as we don’t lose sight of the truth that it’s an advert for a faulty product.”
Reps for NBC and Wolf declined remark. Watch Oliver’s full Regulation & Order section above.
