Law & Order: SVU will take on the Charlottesville attack

Law & Order: SVU constantly takes stories straight from the headlines. Now they’ll tackle the volatile politics in America and the Charlottesville attacks.

Law & Order: SVU often bases its stories on real life. And with so much going on in the world lately, season 19 won’t lack for material.

“We are ripping things from the headlines,” new showrunner Michael Chernuchin told The Hollywood Reporter. “Some of them are big, famous headlines and some of them are smaller headlines.”

For example, Chernuchin said that next season of Law & Order: SVU will take on the terror attacks in Charlottesville.

“Conflict,” Chernuchin explained when asked why he was basing episodes on politics and on the protests. “It’s just the state of the world today with everybody. Everybody’s political now and everything is political now and we want to deal with that.”

The attacks in Charlottesville began under the guise of the “Unite the Right” rally, where people were protesting the removal of the Robert E. Lee statue. Violence soon broke out as Nazis, White Supremacists, and KKK members clashed with counter-protestors. Ultimately, a man drove his car into a group of counter-protesters, killing Heather Heyer. Things got even worse when President Trump said there was “violence on many sides” instead of condemning the White Supremacists. He made a better statement later, but then backtracked and repeatedly defended his first statement.

Chernuchin explained that he’s “not going to choose a side” when he does a political episode of Law & Order: SVU. “I won’t choose a side. I’m going to present both political views and let the audience decide which one is right. My goal, and I told the writers on this on the first day of our writers’ room, is at the end of every episode, I want half the audience to throw their shoes at the television and the other half to stand up and cheer,” he said.

Season 19 of Law & Order: SVU will also take on the Charlie Gard case, cat-fishing, cyber bullying, and the United Airlines scandal.

I love Law & Order: SVU and they do often take stories straight from the headlines. And I’ve liked those episodes. It makes the show feel real and relevant, and it hopefully has something to say about it.

Part of me thinks that this is too soon and too sensitive to be a Law & Order episode, though. Someone just died. Nazis were chanting, “You will not replace us,” and carrying torches in the streets. We all watched it happen already.

However, it will be interesting to see what they do and how they present both sides of this conflict. While we do live in complex political times, I only really see one side to this. Hopefully they’ll treat what happened with sensitivity.

Next: Riz Ahmed addresses the Charlottesville attacks in 'Sour Times'

Law & Order: SVU returns on Sept. 27 at 10 on NBC. Will you watch the Charlottesville episode?