Van Buren kills an intellectually disabled, unarmed teenager at an ATM. She claims it was a robbery attempt, and that there's a second, armed suspect on the loose. But not everyone believes ... Read allVan Buren kills an intellectually disabled, unarmed teenager at an ATM. She claims it was a robbery attempt, and that there's a second, armed suspect on the loose. But not everyone believes her.Van Buren kills an intellectually disabled, unarmed teenager at an ATM. She claims it was a robbery attempt, and that there's a second, armed suspect on the loose. But not everyone believes her.
- Zack Rowland
- (as Omar Sharif Scroggins)
- Director
- Writers
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaOmar Scroggins, who played the 14 year old "Zack Rowland" was actually 21 at the time.
- GoofsClaire asks the teacher to quantify the dead kid's incompetence, and the teacher says his I.Q. was around 40. Claire then asks how that translates to intellectual age, and the teacher says "It doesn't. We don't make those kinds of judgments." But the definition of Intelligence Quotient is intellectual age divided by physical age. So before an I.Q. can be calculated, intellectual age must be assessed.
- Quotes
Lt. Anita Van Buren: Were you born a smart-ass, or did it just come with the job?
Jack McCoy: I'm a pussycat. You should've met my old man.
Lt. Anita Van Buren: Lawyer?
Jack McCoy: Cop.
- SoundtracksJump
Written and produced by Jermaine Dupri
Performed by Kris Kross
Contains samples of "I Want You Back" performed by The Jacksons (as The Jackson 5)
Written by Berry Gordy, Freddie Perren, Fonce Mizell and Deke Richards,
"Funky Worm" by Ohio Players
Written by Leroy 'Sugarfoot' Bonner, Marshall E. Jones, Ralph Middlebrooks, Walter Morrison, Norman Napier, Andrew Noland, Marvin Pierce, Gregory A. Webster
"Impeach The President" by The Honey Drippers
Written by Roy C.
"Midnight Theme" by Manzel
"Escape-ism"
Written and performed by James Brown
"Saturday Night"
Written and performed by Schoolly D
"OPP" (uncredited)
Written by Vincent Brown, Anthony 'Treach' Criss, DJ Kay Gee, Fonce Mizell, Deke Richards, Freddie Perren, Liam Kantwill and Berry Gordy
Performed by Naughty By Nature
And that's just the first half of the episode.
The second half involves the DA's office attempting to prosecute the OTHER kid robber - the one who didn't get shot and who, it seems, may have been manipulating the mentally disabled victim. I cringed a few times at the characters' flippant uses of the word "retard," which is today typically used as a cruel insult; there's also an undercurrent of condescension in the way it rolls off the detectives' lips. Even the victim's mother, played by Lisa Louise Langford, uses the term kind of contemptuously... maybe it was just her performance, but when she speaks about her dead son she definitely sounds irritated with him.
The episode tries to assuage some of its political incorrectness by having another intellectually disabled character, played here by Jacklin Brooke Sanford in her only acting credit. She's convincing as the victim's friend who attended the same school he did, and she ends up being extremely important to the case. A later scene has the camera slowly panning across the victim's room, lingering on movie and baseball posters as well as other memorabilia - the passions and hobbies of a boy just like any other, snuffed out by tragedy, and a message from the show that it really *does* want you to feel bad about the kid's death, despite how dismissively everyone in the episode speaks about him.
Whether that takes it out of the realm of "problematic" territory is up to you, and "Competence" is otherwise a neat little yarn that squeezes some unique character beats out of the main cast in what is usually almost exclusively a plot-driven show.
- Better_TV
- May 8, 2018