‘Law & Order: SVU’ Takes On Kavanaugh, MeToo, And Celebrity Chefs [Spoiler Alert]
Last night Law and Order: SVU took on a full plate in an episode called “Hells Kitchen,” delving into current events ranging from the culture in the restaurant industry to the Kavanaugh hearings and #MeToo. The show covered a lot of material for one episode — and alluded to even darker days for the folks at SVU.
Eater, which generally follows all things in the food and restaurant industry, wrote about this latest episode of Law and Order: SVU — an episode which started with a server at a high-end restaurant who was raped at work. This crime opens the door to a potential conspiracy that went back decades to a high school party, and a potential assault.
Eater said that someone at NBC has been paying attention to “what goes on in restaurant kitchens” because they got it right with the depiction of a celebrity chef as a potential predator, keeping trophies from conquests in the workplace.
Newsbusters reported that the accused rapist in the episode says that he won’t be “Judge Kavanaugh-ed,” and the chef in the case seems to be drawn from the Mario Batali accusations that virtually ended his career on television. Said accusation caused other partners in the restaurant industry to cut ties with him.
And now NBC's ripping Kavanaugh with fictional plots. Or now it's the NBC entertainment folks instead of the "news" folks.
'Law & Order: #SVU' Rapist Gets 'Judge Kavanaughed' via @lmkornick https://t.co/wKLLs88kMT— NewsBusters (@newsbusters) November 9, 2018
But taking the episode a step beyond the #MeToo assault — and the topic of sexual harassment on the job — is the idea that the accused predator has had someone covering for him in the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office. That fictional prosecutor has ironically made his chops as a “defender of women” amidst the #MeToo movement.
The Brooklyn D.A., Chris Hodges, passed on prosecuting several past accusations of rape against the chef, and the Manhattan SVU squad determine that the chef and the prosecutor are old high school buddies.
“Since Hodges is a prominent lawyer in the #MeToo movement, Olivia (Mariska Hargitay) finds it hard to believe he’d turn down a high-profile case like that. Sure enough, the investigation finds that Hodges and Liebowitz attended high school together. Even worse, when the case leaks, a woman soon comes forward with a high school allegation against Hodges. Suddenly, this story sounds remarkably similar to another case.”
The Law and Order: SVU episode seamlessly transitioned from a Mario Batali type case, sliding into similar accusations which dogged Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings. A woman comes forward to say that when she was 15, the chef and the D.A. sexually assaulted her at a teen drinking party.
Hodges agrees to wear a wire to trap the chef, but the taped conversation ends up capturing both men in the trap as Hodges, the prosecutor, references Brett Kavanaugh in a conversation with the chef.
“I don’t think you do. I don’t wanna get Judge Kavanaughed here. If that thing back in high school comes up—”
The episode of Law and Order: SVU covers a great deal of “ripped from the headlines” stories, and still manages to tease more to come.
