On last night’s “very special” episode of Law & Order: SVU, the on-going saga between Chris Brown and Rihanna was dramatized for television audiences, replete with Dave Navarro as a record producer named “Ferrari.” Neat? First of all, this is about as “ripped from the headlines” as the time that Quantum Leap had to stop the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. Sure, Chris Brown and Rihanna are still, disgustingly ever-present in the pop-cultural eye, but they’ve long since shifted from an unfortunate but powerful example of the dangers of domestic violence into some kind of epic Greek tragedy about the disasters of being rich, famous, and surrounded by people too scared of losing their meal-ticket to HELP YOU. (Every time that Rihanna says in an interview that she doesn’t want to be a role-model, an angel barf so hard its wings fall off. Come the fuck ON. For one thing, you kind of are a role-model by virtue of being a public figure whose primary audience is 12-25 year-old girls, SO SORRY ABOUT THAT. And second of all, there is a huge gap between simply not being a role model and whatever the hell Rihanna is even doing these days with her incessant Instagramming of mega-Blunts and Chris Brown’s horrible fucking face. Live your life, sure, but leave us out of it please.) One could try to make the argument that Law & Order: SVU is using this well-known and unfortunate situation to dramatically explore the procedural, legal, and uncomfortable dynamics of domestic violence, but that is like saying that Intervention is really about getting people help. Uh, no. Look, the Law & Order family of television is a fun family. We all love to be part of that family from time to time. But surely the Chris Brown and Rihanna thing is too disgusting even for them to simply use it as a launchpad for a Liz & Dick-style audience grab with a completely vacuous take on something that is all too real and outside the bounds of the make-believe court system at this point. (Obviously, of course, it is NOT AT ALL too disgusting, since the episode aired last night. This happened. We were too late!) At a certain point it would be cool if the world took full stock of its inventory and didn’t trivialize every single nightmare into an advertisement-filled brain nap, you know? But maybe that is just me. It is almost certainly just me. Party on, Garths.