Just saw Joe Biden's cameo on Law & Order! He's there to help bring attention to

[pnwmom]

the national rape kit backlog.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/28/joe-biden-law-order-svu-cameo-rape-kit-backlog

Vice-president Joe Biden will make a cameo Wednesday on Law & Order: Special Victim’s Unit, the well-known police procedural, highlighting a very real partnership between the politician and the show’s leading actor, Mariska Hargitay.

Hargitay leads the show’s upcoming season, the 18th, playing detective Olivia Benson. Biden will appear in the second episode of the season on 28 September to commend the fictional detectives on their work to end the rape kit backlog, shorthand for thousands of uncounted and untested sexual assault kits that police collected but never processed.

“There’s a growing awareness of the problem at all levels, from citizens to elected officials,” said Ilse Knecht, a senior policy adviser for the not-for-profit Joyful Heart Foundation, founded by Hargitay with the express purpose of ending the backlog.

“It definitely is something that people are becoming more aware of, and more angered by honestly, and inspired to action – but there’s still a long way to go.”

SNIP

[SaschaHM]

1. I think he had good intentions, but I think the writers overstuffed the episode.

I think an episode about the detectives catching a serial rapist, who had went undetected due to the backlog, would have sent a stronger message about the need to end the backlog.
Instead, we got an episode about a wrongfully convicted man being hardened to the point of becoming a rapist and a murderer after getting out of prison, which is a rather problematic message in itself.
This was probably the darkest political cameo episode that I've ever seen.