on a serious note, your show is not only not immune to propaganda but it's actively being propaganda. i think a lot of people were hoping that jack would be anti-cop (me included) because of the scene with cassie and the cops who came to enforce her ankle monitor last season, but that's out the window. he is an active arm of the state. i can find no evidence that an independent medical doctor would be allowed to stand outside of a building in which a swat operation is taking place, let alone gear up and go in with them. this being off the record (re: voluntary) is even worse. have your opinions of jack abbot, but this is not a man who regrets his military service, is anti-military, or is anti-cop; he is in fact actively pro-cop. is a cop, for all intents and purposes. which is disappointing but this is part of a larger problem of s2 throwing away good characterization from s1.
moving on to his conversation with baran. this scene implies that she is a survivor of the may 2020 dasht-e-barchi massacre in which islamic state forces massacred 24 patients and one msf (doctors without borders) worker in an attack on the hazara shia ethnic group in a neighborhood of kabul, afghanistan. this would explain her freeze up with the baby jane doe. this is tragic, but the islamic state would not be in power in afghanistan if it wasn't for the u.s. military destabilizing the country from 2001 to 2021. two decades of foreign occupation and millions of afghani, irani, iraqi, pakistani, and syrian citizens dead.
the united states has bombed doctors without borders at least twice, in 2015 and 2016 in afghanistan and yemen, killing at least 100 people, workers and patients alike. both incidents, while claimed to be accidents by u.s. armed forces, are war crimes and no one has ever been prosecuted in international criminal courts. very convenient for baran to be in dasht-e-barchi and not kunduz when the u.s. repeatedly striked a msf hospital by gunship. sure. an accident.
please ask yourself why all this is necessary. why does jack need to be a cop? why does baran need to relate to him? why do their services need to be equated? why does it need to be enforced that cops are good (naming a japanese cop hiro for cognate points? seriously?) why do we need to see cops being saved (with the same exact injury both seasons! shot in the neck! when the majority of active duty cop deaths every year are not in the line of duty or are accidents)? why does this show need you to believe that the u.s. military and cops are good and we should support them? why? why why why?
i love this show. i think it's important and that it means a lot to the medical field and community at a time where they are being demonized by the u.s. government and having resources stripped away to the tune of billions of dollars. doctors and nurses deserve to be protected. researchers deserve their grants and low-income students deserve to get medical school scholarships so they can serve their communities, who are losing hospitals and healthcare coverage left and right. and it's my understanding that a lot of healthcare workers hate cops, and rightly so. so do a lot of veterans, who do not have the option to be treated outside of underfunded, understaffed, and overcrowded v.a. hospitals. so why write jack abott to uphold such violent systems?
who does it protect and who does it serve for the pitt to ally the medical field with imperialist practices both abroad and at home? who benefits from you thinking they are on the same team?
this is why i hate mohabbot. this is why i want abott to stay the hell away from baran. using two women of color whose cultural groups have historically faced imperialist military violence as character rehab and development for an imperialist, violence-supporting white man when they are so rich and beautiful on their own is insidious as fuck. fuck cops and fuck the u.s. military. and fuck jack abott.
