'The Fosters' took a break from flying the flag of radical gay activism this week in order to fly the flag of racism, and racist cops. Enter Mike Foster (Danny Nucci) who is a cop, and foster father to AJ (Tom Williamson), who has the unfortunate habit of not listening to his foster father when he tells him to remain in the squad car when going on emergency calls and dealing with armed robbers.
On last night’s episode, "Going South," AJ, who is black, was instructed to stay in his foster dad’s police cruiser while he and other officers went into a house to deal with a burglar. After hearing shouting and commotion coming from inside the house, AJ did precisely what his foster dad told him not to do, and left the vehicle. Not only did he leave the vehicle, he started a slow, creepy, stalking kind of walk and started heading into the house where the cops were fighting with the burglar.
Naturally, the cops outside, tasked with making sure that no creepy, stalky guys try to get in the house, immediately reacted and tackled the idiot kid to the ground. At which point, “Mike” comes out of the house to find a white cop on top of his black foster son. We have all the makings of a complete misunderstanding that would normally be resolved by rational, intelligent people. But this is 'The Fosters' we’re talking about here. Instead, Mike comes charging out of the house yelling at the cop for doing his job.
The evil, white racist cop in question even apologizes for doing his job, but gets no farther than saying, “I thought…” in trying to explain himself, before Mike comes back with the really rude, super-judgy, “I know what you thought!” At which point, the “racist” cop has no more to say. So of course, Mike doesn’t direct his anger at his foster son who deliberately disobeyed his clear directive to stay in the car thus endangering himself and everyone else on the scene. Oh no, instead his venom is aimed at the cop who was only doing his job.
Moreover, you’ve got to love how shows like 'The Fosters' ignore any semblance of reality when trying to make a political point. What cop --scratch that-- what human would sit there, dumbstruck and silent, after another cop essentially called him a racist when he was only trying to protect him?! None. Any normal person in that situation would have returned rhetorical fire with fire. But of course, when the entire point of the show is to portray cops as quasi-brown shirts who attack black males on sight, I guess words would just get in the way.
