McCall helps investigate a hate crime in Chinatown…

A banner at the end of the episode reads, ‘Stop Asian Hate’, much as the show has previously carried the Black Lives Matter banner, which should be a message impossible for the audience to have missed by then.

This week, a popular pillar of the Chinatown community, Li Wong, is killed in a bakery fire which is officially dismissed as a tragic electrical accident. There are those of course in the community who are convinced otherwise and will not let this be written off so simply. As a result, the Equalizer is hired to investigate the suspected race hate crime.

The main message is prevalent throughout the episode, tackling each segment with a teachable moment of dialogue. The first visit McCall pays puts her in contact with a mystery attacker, yet the person she interviews is revealed to be aware that Li Wong had been experiencing racial harassment long before she finally died. Her neighbour, a white male, felt he had no stake in events and as such took no involvement. He knew what was happening, yet did nothing, and the price of his inaction is made clear to all. suspect who knows Li Wong was experiencing racial harassment and did took no action to help.

The episode escalates viewer witnessing of the hate crimes, as online racial harassment is discovered through a rival bakery not long after, and this eventually manifests as threat of physical violence, then direct contact, by the assailants. They are not the only villains of the show, which stresses just how many microaggressions cause the damage which led to this final situation.

Dante becomes an important voice for the failings of his own organization and informs us of the difficulty behind dealing with hate crimes. From the perspective of the affected civilian, nothing comes of reporting and so it proves pointless for them to do so, which is relayed to us a number of times through various voices. None of these voices are more prevalent than an ex-cop who steps in as a vigilante determined to find Miss Li’s killer, expecting the case to officially go nowhere. Ray Lai, a Chinese-American ex-cop disillusioned with the ineffectiveness of his organization seeks justice, and turns out to be the masked individual McCall fends off in her first investigation. It becomes rapidly clear that he too is seeking answers, and when he is revealed, observant viewers will note that he was in fact the first person on screen in the episode outside Li Wong, evidently a regular customer.

Ray Lai plays a memorable guest role in that he provides a character who seems to complement each member of Team McCall in some way. His vigilante presence proves a smart foil for McCall, frequently identified as a vigilante herself by authorities. After an initially hostile introduction, he and McCall join forces and his local knowledge provides real heart to the case. Miss Li’s role as the soul of the Chinatown community finds grief personified in him. Likewise, viewers following Dante’s arc are rewarded as he once more finds his balance between being a good cop and a good person challenged in fresh ways. It happens that Ray knew his father ‘Big Ben’, and provides some more insight that Ben was fundamentally a good man who made a fatal error of judgment. It gives Dante pause for reconsideration on his issues with his father, but also shows Dante a reflection of his past as well as foreshadowing a possible future if he ever fully loses faith himself. Lai acts as a warning as to what the job could do to him if he allowed it to; the difference being that he has access to McCall and her ability to handle matters in a manner he cannot.

Finally Melody also finds herself easily able to relate to Ray Lai, sharing a common bond in his motivations to do good in the world and never be a bystander when she can be a helper. They share the anger of a legacy of microaggressions and harrowing memories in the name of racial intolerance. She offers an unpleasant memory of her childhood, her mother choosing to protect her by not rising to violence inflicted upon her and it remains a vivid memory to her.

This episode also sees Delilah initially find herself neglecting an important tradition of Aunt Vi’s, which McCall does enough to correct the course of that in the response yields better results than planned. There is another side plot happening with a different character previously seen in the show, Kisha Griffin, however. McCall takes her on in mentorship, seeing something of her younger self and ensuring that an opportunity ahead of her is taken despite her understandable self-doubt. McCall maintains that trust, integrity and faith she showed when they first met without which would see Kisha almost certainly fall through the cracks. By the end of the episode, McCall takes Kisha even more fully under her wing, another element of the family and community theme running deep through the episode.

Verdict: Those strong themes and bonds afford the episode a great deal of coherency, making the time relatively fly by whilst neatly knitting together previous story strands and doing what the show does best: loudly broadcasting a message that needs to be heard by more. 8/10

Russell A Smith