CBS's new procedural S.W.A.T. opens with some pretty evocative imagery: on a rough S.W.A.T. run in Los Angeles, one member of the squad shoots a black civilian kid who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The show, which comes from executive producers Shawn Levy and Aaron Rahsaan Thomas, seems to portray the situation as an accident, but as lead Shemar Moore's character Hondo says, "
or not, there's too much bad history for a lot of these folks."
That tension between the "Black Lives Matter" and "Blue Lives Matter" movements is exactly what the CBS drama is looking to tap into and explore. It's something the show creators aren't coy about, either; Thomas describes himself as growing up in a world where a neighborhood friend on one side of where he lived had been killed by police, and a neighbor on the other side was a cop. As a person of color and a S.W.A.T. officer, Hondo is a character who is supposed to walk that line between both movements and offer a route for discourse between both sides -- no small feat for a primetime broadcast series.
Continue reading…
Continue reading...
or not, there's too much bad history for a lot of these folks."
That tension between the "Black Lives Matter" and "Blue Lives Matter" movements is exactly what the CBS drama is looking to tap into and explore. It's something the show creators aren't coy about, either; Thomas describes himself as growing up in a world where a neighborhood friend on one side of where he lived had been killed by police, and a neighbor on the other side was a cop. As a person of color and a S.W.A.T. officer, Hondo is a character who is supposed to walk that line between both movements and offer a route for discourse between both sides -- no small feat for a primetime broadcast series.
Continue reading…
Continue reading...