'You're a #feminist icon, Rafael.' - #MyFriendAlexa #MondayBlogs

I started watching Law & Order: Special Victims Unit after reading Piu’s post about her favourite TV shows. And once I started watching, I was hooked!

SVU, as the name suggests, is about special victims and mostly known as the sex crimes unit. In the first season we find out that it is a unit made up of agents who join it voluntarily. Once you know that, and watch a few of the episodes, you have a certain amount of respect for the agents who work there. It is not easy to handle the cases that they handle and then go back to normal life. It is no wonder that most of the agents who work there are single. After the kind of crimes, they deal with every day – the fact that some of them still believe in decent humans is nothing but a wonder to me.

As the seasons’ progressed, I collected quite a few favourite characters. Olivia Benson, the face of the series, is an amazing character. The amount of compassion she has for each victim, the way she turns up at her job day after day with all heart is really amazing! There’s Odafin ‘Fin’ Tutuola who his just there, every day, doing his job and a background that he doesn’t talk much about. Then there is Dominick Carisi who enters the scenes with an attitude that has Olivia Benson asking, ‘Carisi, remind me why you're SVU, again?’

Carisi’s response was:

I worked Homicide, couple years. It's the women who get you. I mean, they're dead, but their hair's clean, they're nicely dressed, they're made up. And that means their husbands, or their boyfriends did it. It's like they knew. They knew it was coming. They don't even look surprised.

And the way he says it – it surprises you and he grows as the show progresses.

But the one character that will stay with me even after the show is over is Rafael Barba, Assistant District Attorney. Barba is introduced to the audience in Season 14 as a recurring character and then becomes a part of the main cast till Season 19.

When Barba first shows up, he is almost ruthless – with the reputation as someone who will take on the toughest cases, even the ones that no one else will touch. He slowly warms up to the SVU and develops a good friendship with Olivia Benson. He is ruthless – he pushes the members of the SVU, the suspects and sometimes even the victims to get the results that we want. At the same time, he can also be calm and composed in the courtroom. Some of my favourite scenes involves him being extremely quiet and calm when the defence attorneys are ripping the witnesses apart and using the dirtiest tricks in the book. 

I liked him from almost the beginning, but as the show progressed his character arc grew by leaps and bounds. Everyone on SVU do their best to make the world a better place by placing their faith in the victims and then fighting to put the perpetrators behind the bars. But then Barba doesn’t just do his own job but goes one step further!

In Flight Risk (Season 19, Episode 11), a flight attendant is raped by the pilot, and the company not only covers it up but forces the flight attendant to continue working with him in close quarters despite promising her otherwise. Once SVU manages to put the pilot away for rape – this is a (slightly paraphrased – as much as I can remember) discussion that Olivia Benson and Barba has shortly after:

Benson: Putting away a single pilot rapist isn’t enough?
Barba: No, it's not. The whole culture has to change. All the people who enabled Captain Carter should be in that cell with him.
Benson: Yes, they should. But unfortunately, being sexist, misogynistic pigs isn't a crime.
Barba: It should be.

Barba goes on to hold a grand jury  to charge the airline company with grand larceny. It is his way of trying to make a difference - by trying to change the law that lets people look away and pretend that nothing is wrong. He knows that it is a long shot; that he can only try and probably not be able to make such a huge change in his lifetime, yet he fights for it anyway.

So, when Olivia Benson says,'You're a feminist icon, Rafael', I could only agree enthusiastically and applaud 'Rafa' in front of the screen.

Knowing that someone like him is a part of the judicial system would bring hope to everyone and I’d love to have someone like him in my life.

But Alas! He is just a fictional character!!

I am taking my blog to the next level with Blogchatter’s #MyFriendAlexa.