(Photo: Google.)
Lauren Duca of the Huffington Post is reporting that the latest episode of ‘Scandal’ was inspired by “institutionalized racism and police brutality in Ferguson.”
The author writes:
“Thursday night’s ‘Scandal’ focused on the shooting of an unarmed black teen named Brandon Parker in Washington, D.C., less than two miles from the White House.
In the episode, called “The Lawn Chair,” tensions run high as the boy’s father positions himself in front of his son’s body with a shotgun, refusing to move from the crime scene.
She [Olivia] works to avoid a riot, but soon finds herself disillusioned by the people she is defending. It doesn’t take long for Liv to be swayed by the injustice, and she joins forces with the activist leading the crowd surrounding Brandon and his father Clarence. ‘Stand up. Fight back. No more black men under attack,’ she chants.
She then does some classic Olivia Pope maneuvering to convince Attorney General David Rosen to grant a subpoena for footage of the altercation.
When they finally get the tape, the video shows Brandon reaching for something in his jacket. The police claim he had a knife, and, sure enough, a knife is found on his body. But his father is outraged. ‘He doesn’t carry a knife,’ he says, over and over.
Through her usual super-human powers, Liv is able to prove the knife did not belong to Brandon — it was evidence from an earlier arrest; Brandon was just reaching for a receipt — and puts the offending officer behind bars.”
The show’s producer, Shonda Rhimes, tweeted that there had been a great deal of debate concerning the episode’s ending. Rhimes tweeted:
“In the end, we went with showing what fulfilling the dream SHOULD mean. The idea of possibility. And the despair we feel now.”
http://youtu.be/zNSYn99ZBqo
Read more at the HuffingtonPost .
This post was written by Reginald Calhoun, editorial assistant for The Burton Wire. He is a junior Mass Media Arts major at Clark Atlanta University. Follow him on Twitter @IRMarsean.
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