The Law & Order franchise may be just as popular as ever with three ongoing shows currently on the air, but John Oliver is not a fan. On Sunday night’s edition of Last Week Tonight, Oliver took aim at Dick Wolf and the Law & Order franchise due to the way its shows depicts police officers. According to Oliver, the way the fictional characters behave, along with how certain police procedures are portrayed, have had a dangerous effect on reality by creating misconceptions about police work for viewers.
Oliver argues that Law & Order sells “a complete fantasy that too many people in this country are only too willing to buy.” He said it would be “dangerous” for a medical show like Grey’s Anatomy to depict inaccuracies about vaccines and says that what Law & Order is doing with police work is the equivalent. Oliver uses clips from the shows, including some of Elliot Stabler’s most brutal moments, to suggest that Law & Order promotes police brutality. He clarifies that this might make for good television, but the problem is that it’s not a reflection of reality, though many viewers take it that way.
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Additionally, Oliver slams the creative decision to present police officers in Law & Order as bona fide heroes whose arrests are mostly for middle-aged white men. Oliver showcases a quote from creator Dick Wolf that acknowledges how most of the culprits revealed in Law & Order shows skew that way because he doesn’t want to offend any specific focus groups, and there are none for rich white guys. For Oliver, he doesn’t like how this ignores the reality.
“You can see why he might not want to make a show in which his good guy cops are disproportionately targeting communities of color; he wants people to like them. But the result of all of these creative decisions is that instead of depicting a flawed system riddled with structural racism, the show presents exceptionally competent cops working within a largely fair framework that mostly convicts white people. While it is true that they have occasionally done episodes focusing on individual bad cops or referenced real world criticisms, especially recently with discussions of anti-police sentiment sometimes being shoehorned into conversations, in general, police reforms are often portrayed by the main characters as, at best, a nuisance to them, and at worst, a threat to public safety.”
Law & Order: SVU Does Not Accurately Represent the Conviction Rate for Sex Offenders
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John Oliver also spoke about how every episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit features Mariska Hargitay’s Olivia Benson securing a conviction for a sexual offender. Oliver agrees that it’s better for television show episodes to be structured this way, but says this is far off from how things are in reality. The Last Week Tonight host points to the NYPD’s figure that only 31% of all sexual assault cases end in convictions. He admits that Benson could serve as a positive role model for real-life police officers but still finds it troubling that SVU allowed her old partner to get physical with suspects while being treated as a hero.
You can watch the full segment about Law & Order in the YouTube video below, and you can find the full episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver streaming on HBO Max.
“Is it any wonder that some cops are watching SVU for tips? Which, honestly, may not be a bad thing when you get “Justice Crusader Olivia Benson,” but it gets a little hairy when “use of excessive force for Zaddy” [Elliot Stabler] here… I know it’s meant to be entertainment, and honestly, I’m not even telling you not to watch it. It’s completely fine to enjoy it. And it’s completely understandable to want Olivia Benson to exist. But, it is important to remember just how far it is from representing anything resembling reality.”
