Let's be honest. A family so slavishly devoted to a priest that they would marry their thirteen-year-old daughter to him would not sever all ties just because the cops tell them some things about him, no matter how horrible those things are. Overall, though, it was a decent episode. The squad is forced to investigate all the dark, juicy secrets of a picture-perfect tv family in order to find the man who molested their young daughter. The supposedly flawless Bakers (clearly based on the equally scandalous Duggars from 19 Kids and Counting) have naively surrounded themselves with all sorts of unpleasant characters, ranging from a peeping-tom cameraman to the aforementioned priest. But even the Duggars, while not pedophiles themselves--unless you count their eldest son, who has trouble keeping his hands off of his sisters--are still very creepy. Mrs. Baker can't conceive of a world where the heavily pregnant Rollins isn't married, while the Baker children are raised with a bizarre system of Virtue Balls and strictly regulated courtship (also, what is so sinful about soda that the kids can't drink it?) The show takes some pains to not cast the Bakers in an absolutely ghastly light, so as not to offend their real-life counterparts, but I don't know why they bother. From what I've read about the Duggar family, they would probably consider a show like SVU far too "inappropriate" to watch in the first place. Still, it would be interesting to know how they would react if they saw this episode. Would they be horrified by the rape of a child or just upset that Lane wasn't married when she conceived?
Review of Patrimonial Burden
