Queen Latifah’s newest series on CBS, The Equalizer, tackles a wide array of social, political, and economic disparities in communities of color. The reboot to the 2014 and 2018 film (both directed by Antoine Fuqua and starring Denzel Washington, not to mention the original 1980s series, created by Michael Sloan and originally airing on the CBS network) are all based around a retired intelligence agent who utilizes their set of skills from their prior careers to bring closure and justice to innocent people who find themselves in menacing circumstances.
The CBS series follows Robyn McCall (Queen Latifah), a divorced, single mom raising her teen daughter, Delilah (Laya DeLeon Hayes), along with her aunt Viola “Aunt Vi” Marsette (Lorraine Toussaint) by her side. The former CIA agent secretly incorporates her skills (to the unawareness of her family) in order to defend those who are unable to legally defend themselves as a result of not receiving proper guidance from their designated police departments.
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How the Police Department Handles Cases
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In all the previous adaptations, the main characters are plagued by former associates who either want to take them down because of their off-the-book job practices or ultimately aim to swindle them back into the national intelligence fold due to their tremendous amount of skill. In McCall’s case, District Attorney Grafton (Jennifer Ferrin) has her eyes set on stopping the progress McCall is successfully achieving due to her claim of it being illegal vigilante work. Could this be accurate reasoning, or could it be tied to her fears that McCall is directly helping the same community in areas where her department continues to fail?
From the initial first season, it seems as if the police department is attempting to deflect in their navigation of treating cases related to minorities within their district. Detective Marcus Dante (Tory Kittles) is seemingly one of the positives, in contrast to the portrayal of his colleagues throughout the series. As viewers, we can sense that he’s torn because he deeply understands the flaws in his department and wants to help McCall. At the same time, he has a job where he must adhere to his assigned orders by management.
Although his dad is known by many in the force as being a corrupt officer, Dante makes it a mission to prove to his colleagues that he is in no way connected to underhandedness or corruption. The problem for Dante lies in his understanding of how unjust the world is today. Most of the time, he sneaks around his department’s commands and assists in McCall’s quest to find justice for her clients.
The Clients
Working actively as an anonymous guardian angel and defender of the forgotten, Robyn McCall strives to bring justice to her never-ending cliental that directly reaches out for help. With some clients ranging from innocent murder suspects, concerned friends or family members of missing people, and targets of hate crimes, she strives to solve all their cases, bringing closure to their impending situations. So why are these “forgotten people” reaching out to McCall for help? The answer is mostly because they have no one else on their side who can go to the lengths that McCall does in order to enact swift change.
In season two, episode ten titled “Improv,” a woman whose grandmother had survived the 1921 Tulsa Massacre wanted to retrieve a valuable painting of her great-grandmother, placed in their then home, where a group of racist thieves had broken into and stolen the item. In the present day, a descendant of the gang refused to return the painting to its rightful owner. With him being an enormous contributor to the police fund, officers of the law willingly turned a blind eye to the situation. Down on finding justice for her grandmother, more than a century old and now on her deathbed, her granddaughter reaches out for help in order to fulfill her grandmother’s dying wish of being able to see the painting of her great-grandmother’s eyes before she passes on.
With the help of her former colleague, Jessie (Jada Pinkett Smith), Robyn can successfully locate the painting and hand it back to the family, bringing closure to their years of pain and trauma.
Not in all situations, but in a vast amount, people are unable to receive the help they so desperately need from officers who have sworn to protect them. With their backs turned to these citizens’, Robyn McCall swoops in to effectively aid those who truly have no other options. This is exactly how The Equalizer directly addresses the long-standing imbalance of people of color and oppressed communities in America. By identifying these inequalities and ultimately bringing resolve to them.
