The Ledger

8.7 Blood

In this episode (8.7), a white woman married to a pharmaceuticals executive is found dead on the pavement outside her apartment building. Did she fall or was she pushed? She was pushed. At first it seems that her husband, named Joshua Burdett, killed her, because three weeks earlier, she gave birth to a black baby, whom the couple gave up for adoption. Briscoe and Curtis try to figure out with whom she had an affair, but when they learn that the baby had a rare inherited medical condition that Burdett also has, they come to a more surprising conclusion: Burdett is a black man, "passsing" as a white one. This supposition is all but confirmed when Van Buren confronts him in the the interrogation room and greets him as "my brother" and talks to him about what it must have been like back in the day as a black man passing as a white one. She even uses the n-word to try to provoke a response out of him.

The detectives reason that Burdett killed his wife to preserve his secret, figuring he feared he would lose his job and friends if they learned he was actually black. It might seem unreasonable to assume that he'd be fired, but since he answered that he was white on his original job application for the company back in the 1960s, he might be worried that he could be fired for lying 30 years earlier. (This suspicion is confirmed by McCoy and Cheekbones later when Cheekbones talks to Burdett's lawyer, an expert in civil rights, who implies, without breaking privilege, that this is exactly what was going on.)

But when the baby's adoptive parents disappear with the baby, out of fear of having her taken away, the investigators stumble on to a new motive: Burdett's ex-wife, who is white, doesn't want the racial identity of the baby known, either. She is worried that the information about the baby will become public because she learned that Burdett and his wife were pushing to cancel the adoption proceedings and reclaim the baby from the adoptive parents. She was worried about the ramifications of the black baby being parented by the Burdetts because all her friends would think ill of her if they knew she was previously married to a black man, and she claims that she doesn't want her son to be labeled black. But, more to the point, it becomes clear that the woman herself is racist, and she sought a divorce as soon as she learned her husband was black. (She learned this when his sister showed up one day.)

Next thing you know, the ex-wife is on trial for Murder 2, and she's chosen a black female attorney to defend her, and her attorney does a pretty good job, despite the difficulty of the case. Her defense hinges on the idea that the ex-wife was motivated out of fear for her son's well-being and that the murder was unintentional. However, Cheekbones and McCoy uncover some evidence deep in the ex-wife's divorce proceedings that shoot that defense to pieces [spoiler alert]: the defendant actually fought not to have custody of her child, apparently because he was half-black, and she didn't want anything to do with him. She asked for 3 times the original alimony proposal before she agreed to take him on. Confronted with this evidence, she agrees to a plea bargain.

This is one of many L&O episodes to deal extensively with the theme of race, and as I've said before, the show tends to deal with race in a fairly nuanced and intelligent way. This episode doesn't do as well in that area as some others, but it's still fairly good. I had a little bit of a problem with Van Buren's conversation with Burnett, since the writing seemed a little easy and and it assumed to much. Also, the ex-wife's character is a bit one-dimensional: she's the evil uppity racist high-class white lady, using words like "monkey" to describe black people. Nonetheless, the essential issues the episode deals with, namely how race intersects with love and family, is important, and for the most part, the show handles them well.

Some good backstory gets introduced in the episode, too: While talking to the detectives, Van Buren receives a call that Briscoe and Curtis theorize is from the department, calling about Van Buren's performance on the captain's exam. In later episodes, we learn that Lt. Van Buren does not get the promotion to captain, and she sues the department as a result, alleging bias based on her gender (and possibly her race). It was clever of the writers to start this story arc in this episode about prejudice. Also, Cheekbones and McCoy have a conversation about a woman named Madeline (sp?) whom Cheekbones has set up with McCoy. They talk about a date McCoy had with her, during which McCoy brought up Claire Kincaid. "She brought up [something something] drunk driving. I wasn't obsessing," he says. It only lasted 30 seconds, but it was maybe the longest conversation I've ever seen on the show about a character's love life.

Posted by adm at February 6, 2004 09:54 PM

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