In the new, emotionally affecting fourth season of The Bear that just dropped on Hulu, there is a conversation about your work family vs. your family family.  Are they separate?  Do they overlap? 

Or do people you love or are close to simply become a part of YOUR family in one big tent if you decide this is so?

It’s an interesting cultural question right now as Americans in towns across the country witness members of their families – some of them blood relatives and others friends, neighbors and co-workers – being grabbed, handcuffed and arrested outside their homes, at their jobs, or right off of the street.

The vast majority of these people (Note: The last estimate I heard is 90%) are, in reality, not “the worst of the worst violent criminals” despite how many times this lie gets repeated by the current administration or across the airwaves of Fox News. 

Saying something over and over again does not make it true.  Nor does wishing for it to stop make it go away on its own. 

Especially when you can’t help but see the horrific arrests and sometimes beatings as plain as day on social media websites everywhere.

Or anywhere else you might get your news. 

Even, like, a newspaper.

Diehard print journalism major that I am, even I must admit the most powerful of these stories come courtesy of ordinary citizens who simply whip out their cell phones and film videos of these purposely unidentified masked “enforcers”, often not in any discernible uniform, chasing people they know down the street or through vegetable gardens, cuff them and, if necessary, beat them into restraint before throwing them in an unmarked van and driving off to who knows where.

I can’t speak for anyone else but I can tell you I am 100% sure that if this happened to a member of my work family, family family or anyone else I cared about, filming it would be the least of what I’d do.

As one of Woody Allen’s characters commented in Manhattan on dealing with Nazis:

..A satirical piece in the Times is one thing, but bricks and baseball bats get right to the point.

Yes, I know whole swaths of my students (and perhaps you) don’t like it when I quote lines from Woody Allen movies, but I am who I am and Nazis are who they are.

Still, at the end of the day there is this one truth:

The vast majority of us will fight for our “families” in ferocious and unexpected ways when push comes to shove. 

They might work our last nerve or be a key element in a backstory of resentment.  But something happens when an outsider picks on them – or does worse. 

Suddenly you find yourself brandishing the nearest weapon available at those who want to do them in.  Or group thinking some ingenious scheme to keep them safe, or at least out of harm’s way, until you can come up with a better plan.

(Note: For me, it’s usually a sharp, snide, threatening flurry of cutting insults or pithy, bitchy phrases.  Unless it’s Nazis).

You might be totally pissed off at your family member, after the dust settles, for their behavior. Or for putting you in this position.  You might even wonder where the resolve came from.  But what you don’t do is regret it. 

Ever.   

In a way, that is what most of us will likely come away with after watching iconic Law and Order: SVU actress/director Mariska Hargitay’s raw, honest and highly original new HBO documentary, My Mom Jayne. 

For those who had no idea, Hargitay is the daughter of the late, one-time world-renowned 1950s blonde bombshell, B movie actress, Jayne Mansfield.   But at three years old, riding in a car with her mother and two of her siblings, she endured a fatal crash that killed Jayne, her lawyer boyfriend and the man who was driving them. 

Miraculously all three children survived.  But, as Hargitay admits, she has spent a lifetime running away not so much from the event, which she has no memory of, but the legacy of the high-pitched, made-up, girlie-voice and Hollywood blondeness her very famous mother left behind.

And, as it turns out, a lot more. (Note: No spoilers here.  Promise!).

Though what makes the film a must-see is not only what we learn about Jayne (Note: Among many other things, she was classically trained on the violin and piano, spoke five languages fluently and had an IQ of 163). It’s how after a lifetime of running away from everything she represented, and by putting her own antipathy at the center of the narrative, she manages to rescue the real Jayne from the neat little Tinseltown sarcophagus Hollywood so ably arrested and hermetically sealed her into all those decades ago.

Full Confession:  Mariska’s Olivia Benson on SVU is one of my all-time favorite television characters.  Tough, smart, brave and sensitive over 26 seasons and someone who could deal with Nazis and Nazi-like behavior far better than I could advise. 

In fact (Note: Full confession #2): On more than one occasion, while watching the news, I have actually asked myself:  #WWOBD? 

That is, if she actually existed and could save us from our world in 60 minutes with commercials. (Note: Oh, of course, I know she’s not REAL… Or, well, totally… I think).

In any event, watch My Mom Jayne and see if you don’t see the best parts of her in this documentary. 

And then look at all of those people standing up for members of their families, chosen or not, across the country.

And then consider that if, in creating that character all those years ago, the SVU writers and actress didn’t draw on the qualities exhibited by the best of Americans that were already out there. 

People who would go to great lengths to protect the innocent or unjustly categorized.  Especially if it was someone they cared about.

Jack Johnson – “Better Together”