East West 101: The Price of Salvation by Michelle Offen

JUDGES COMMENTS

From its opening scene of gang members pressing an impressionable, fifteen-year-old, Islander boy into carrying out an assault, Michelle Offen’s episode of the ground-breaking and critically acclaimed series East West 101 explodes off the page. It drags the reader, and ultimately the viewer, into the seamy underworld of gang violence in the racially diverse suburbs of western Sydney, where loyalties to one’s community are pitted against the laws of the land and the police officers sworn to uphold them and vice versa. Indeed, when Islander detective, Sonny Kao, discovers it was his young cousin who was responsible for assault and a subsequent string of armed robberies, he risks his hard-fought-for career by turning a blind eye to the evidence. His hope that his cousin will lead him to the gang mastermind has tragic consequences.

Hard-hitting and richly complex, Offen weaves this episode-specific storyline with ongoing, season-long storylines – which similarly deal with the fine line between doing the right thing and getting results – into a unique and complex tapestry, unseen in Australian television. Her storylines cleverly resonate with one another, giving a multi-faceted perspective on the episode’s theme of the price of salvation. With troubled characters struggling with their own demons, she has brought vividly to life a world most of us only read about in the papers. More importantly, Offen has given her characters – and us, by proxy – the way out of the violence and personal degradation. As Detective Kao points out when the innocent mother of his young cousin is killed by a bullet meant for the boy: ‘Be an example to your people, show them it’s never too late to act. That’s how you make sense of this. It’s the price you pay. For salvation.’