L&O: episode 7

[sabotabby]

This one has to do with sexual assault so, trigger warning.



Most or all of these episodes have been based on real Toronto crimes, some of which I know a fair bit about, so I'd assume that most people would, as I'm not a particular Crime Knower or anything like that. Only this one so far has had a disclaimer that it's a work of fiction at the beginning, which should have given me a tip as to who it was about. After the usual confusing open where we meet our entire cast without context, it started with a dead woman in a luggage case on a bus. And like. We're not a particularly crime city, I swear, but this could be several real cases and gave me my first jolt of "Oh no they might make an episode about someone I know one of these days."

It turns out that yes, this episode is about someone I have met. Fortunately, I didn't know him well enough to be one of his victims, but we've met and had conversations and such. He didn't murder anyone, by the way, either in real life or in this story.

Yeah folks this one is about Jian Ghomeshi. I first met him through activism and he seemed like one of those rare media guys who actually had a genuine political stance, and he was kind and down to earth and very, very pretty. I enjoyed listening to his radio show. I didn't find out until years later what a bullet I'd dodged. I started hearing rumours that he was a sex pest years before women started coming forward with allegations. I don't remember who I first heard it from—I live in Toronto, after all, so I know people who work in entertainment—but by the time it hit the news, I knew enough to not be surprised, and I'd been warned never to be alone with the guy.

Ghomeshi is very litigious, hence the disclaimer at the beginning of a story which is about a radio personality having nonconsensual BDSM sex with literally every young woman he works with. When one winds up dead, he's the prime suspect, except his alibi is basically that he was raping another woman at the time. That just about checks out. Anyway, turns out it was the production assistant, who did it under orders from the executive producer. His pattern of abuse was kept quiet for years because so many people's careers depended on his career.

In the end, all three assholes get arrested. Because we don't see the Law part, only the Order part, it's unclear whether the expy here hires Marie Henein to defend him and Navigator to contest the story in the media, so it has a much happier ending than it went IRL. Still, I guess it's a little cathartic.

The whole thing is in poor taste. I mean, the whole show—presumably the whole franchise—is in poor taste but. Yeah. I don't feel especially great about this one in particular. It uses the format to paint a version of the story where there wasn't actually a catastrophic failure in the criminal justice system that allowed a sexual predator to get off scot-free. That said, if I didn't know about the real story, it was one of the better-written ones.

Plot: *** (not a bad plot actually, by the low bar that this show has set so far)
Character: * (seven episodes in, we have a name for Bateman—Frankie)
Toronto: *** (this case is probably top 5 in terms of Toronto crimes and pretty specific to our media ecosystem. Plus the victim lives in Kensington Market, and her roommate, the first suspect, has a plausible motive in that she wasn't paying her share of the rent and it's hard to find an affordable place. The other locations are plausible places for the characters to live. We don't get any particularly cool locations, though, and it loses a point for an address that I was pretty sure couldn't exist and I Google Mapped it and nope, it doesn't exist.)

Murder count: 12 (16% of all murders in the city)

Comments

[altamira16]

Hot take:
Law & Order SVU was rape-of-the-week because people like to see bondage, but they feel guilty about it.

[sabotabby]

Eww.

Why not have a BDSM show that people can watch to get their rocks off and the rest of us don't have to see?

[springheel_jack]

And SVU was too vanilla so they had to make Criminal Minds. That show has an extended heavy BDSM snuff scene in almost every episode. Mandy Patinkin quit the show because it was so messed up. They’ve made like 350 episodes.

[sabotabby]

Holyshit.

[radiantfracture]

Kink (the show) was pretty good, IIRC? So there's precedent. Oh and didn't Billions have decent consensual BDSM? (I never watched it.)

[sabotabby]

I have no idea. I'm not the audience. I did appreciate in this that they made a point of mentioning multiple times that BDSM was not the same as rape, but it also felt like they felt they had to and it was pretty much assumed that neither of the victims were "that kind of girl."

[minoanmiss]

I can see it. (ugh.)

[radiantfracture]

I don't feel especially great about this one in particular.

Yeah, I see what you mean -- you frame that well.

Even if the omission here were simply an artefact of the law-free format and not a deliberate gap, that's a pretty severe failure of the format. You're absolutely right that the better story would be the catharsis in the middle and then the horror of the failure of the law.

I guess it's kind of wish-fulfillment?

Do we know why there's order and no law in the show?

[sabotabby]

I am not a deep L&O Lore Knower, but I googled it and apparently it's the same with the original Criminal Intent.

It's wish fulfilment but it's like. I knew the offender—not well, but still someone I interacted with. There's a non-zero chance that I knew some of his victims, since we'll never know how many there were or who they all were. So I feel if the real victims, who are still alive, don't get any resolution or justice, there shouldn't be a fix-it on the show.

[lynnenne]

I do know one of the victims, and the lack of justice is… pretty gross, to put it mildly.

[sabotabby]

I hope they'll one day get justice and closure. Or revenge.

[greylock]

That legal disclaimer is something. I'm neither lawyer, nor Canadian, but I doubt he'd have standing to sue.

But what do I know?

[sabotabby]

The fact that he doesn't have standing to sue isn't the point. He has an extremely expensive lawyer the funding to make everyone's lives hell trying.

[greylock]

Here's my thinking, based on the premise this disclaimer isn't in each episode:
Putting it on this one episode says "HEY, YOU KNOW THAT GUY? THIS IS (probably) ABOUT HIM!".

I am now wondering if rumours are that he did kill and suitcase a person.


(I do recognise his name, not sure if it's via your previous writings OR somewhere else)

[sabotabby]

No, he was never accused of murder.

[greylock]

Not being accused isn't the same as not being linked with a missing person, credibly or otherwise.
I am Just Asking Questions.

But seriously, in the bigger cities I could see this being a realistic rumour. In smaller cities like yours and mine... notsomuch.

I will say, his Wiki page has big lawyer energy.

[sabotabby]

...do you genuinely think that my city is small?

[greylock]

I did think it was on par with mine. Turns out it's a whisker bigger.
But 3M and under... I assume there has been massive growth over a similar time, so, yeah, small.

We are often called a large small town though, so I may have my scale distorted.

[sabotabby]

I wouldn't call that a small city—it's the largest one in Canada.

[greylock]

My sense of scale is waaaaay off for cities. I am used to megacities beiung talked about, and larger cities. We're so used to calling here small... I am re-evaluating.

[ioplokon]

So one funny/cool thing in the Dominique Fortier book (the Melville one) was the afterward saying, "resemblance to persons living or dead is obviously NOT coincidental".

[sabotabby]

HAHAHAH love that.