Save this story for later. âWho do you go to if you canât go to the cops?â Jewel Machado, a high-achieving Latinx teen-ager, wonders, unbelievably, in the pilot of the CBS action procedural âThe Equalizer.â Even considering the relative conservatism of prime-time drama, the line struck me as glaringly unhip. Wouldnât this character, coded as she is, get it? And yet the series is full of Jewel Machados: people who are marginalized but still stunningly naïve about the forces of marginalization. Their cluelessness allows âThe Equalizerâ to showcase the bad-bitch proficiency of its hero, Robyn McCall, played by the congenitally warm Queen Latifah. In each episode, an unequal system plunges a character, who is poor or Black or both, to the darkest of depths, and McCall, a former C.I.A. agent, is invariably there to rescue them. Though she is styled a lot like Olivia Benson of âLaw and Order: S.V.U.,â in domme leather outfits, often astride a motorcycle, McCall is a soothing, maternal figure. The show is a gimme for an audience whoâd die to have this therapeutic queen dismantle racial capitalism in one fell girl-boss swoop.