November 28, 2006
RFID In Hollywood: Law and Order
Or New York, to be precise, where the TV show Law + Order: Special Victims Unit (SVU blog) is filmed. Tonight's episode, Choreographed, starred a bunch of well-known TV actors, including Bob Saget. Saget's character explained to Detectives Elliott Stabler and Olivia Benson (who is back from a special assignment with the FBI) about how he uses RFID, radio frequency identification to get access into the building the lives in.
If you've followed the L+O franchise for more than a year, you know that their scriptwriters usually do due diligence and at least seem to make an attempt to research the science and technology that gets mentioned in the series. They didn't go into it in great detail, but the fact that it got mentioned typically means it has some importance in the episode. It's the old smoking gun method of fiction writing: don't introduce any prop that does not have some significance.
Of course, you don't find out RFID's relevance until there's about 15 minutes left. It appears that someone has implanted an RFID chip into one of the characters without her knowing, as the lab finds out when the woman collapses. Guess who? It's Bob Saget's character who did it, and he says "in 15 years, everyone will be implanted with a chip," in response to the question about why he did it. But the gist of it is that he implanted his wife because she was cheating on him.
The problem is, Saget's character didn't sterilize the chip, and because his wife is septic, she had an allergic reaction. How did he do it? He drugged her tea. Now, I didn't see where the implant was made, but this is a bit of bunk. If she's that sensitive, she would likely have felt some discomfort after the implant. Even if it was implanted in the back of her neck, where she couldn't get at it, the average human being would have used to mirrors to detect some skin disturbance at the site of the implant.
Still, kudos to the writing team of Law + Order for at least trying to bring to light some of the negatives. As I mentioned before, Hollywood will be affected by RFID in that scriptwriters will need to educate themselves to plausible uses of radio frequency technology.
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