TV Review - Law & Order: Organized Crime

Everybody knows the Law & Order television franchise. This series is now the seventh show to bear the Law & Order name. It's a direct spin-off of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999). That series focused on Mariska Hargitay as Olivia Benson and Christopher Meloni as Elliot Stabler. Both were NYPD detectives. They worked together for 12 years. Meloni left in 2011, so he and his character have been off the show for a decade. Stabler's exit was sudden and abrupt. The series had developed an intense and almost intimate relationship between Benson and Stabler, so addressing their relationship was something this show couldn't avoid, but, in various ways, the show does avoid it.

Obviously, the show has to explain why Stabler left and where he's been. Meloni has an Italian heritage in his real life, so the writers made Stabler go off to Rome, Italy. Supposedly, he retired from the police force, but it's revealed in Episode 9 of Season 22 of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit that he was actually a liaison for the NYPD in Rome, helping to track down terrorists and mobsters with overseas connections. When he returns to New York with his family, his wife is killed in a car bombing, which is starting off on the wrong foot. This series utilizes the trope of "fridging," which is a criticism of comic books but can now be applied to other dramatic stories where a male protagonist's motivation comes from the death or severe injury of a woman. Unless the show is angling toward hooking Stabler and Benson together romantically, I don't see the point of killing Stabler's wife.

Reigniting that chemistry between Stabler and Benson doesn't seem to be a goal in this series. Teasing the potential love affair might be something that the show dangles every now and then, but it really feels like the show wants to have them part ways with maybe a crossover or cameo here and there. It also does feel like this show is trying to distinguish itself from Special Victims Unit and dividing Stabler from Benson is one way to do that. Another way this series distinguishes itself is in its format. Normally, Law & Order shows are crime-of-the-week and ripped-from-the-headline cases where each episode is a stand-alone, police procedural program. Law & Order: True Crime (2017) was the first in the franchise to be a serialized story where multiples episodes, in fact all of the episodes, focused on one case. Law & Order: Special Victims Unit has leaned a little into serialized storytelling with continuous B or C-story lines. This series though has its A-story be a serialized or continuous one.

Danielle Moné Truitt (Deputy and Rebel) co-stars as Ayanna Bell, a NYPD Sergeant who has been made the head of the Organized Crime Task Force. She's Black. She's a woman, and she's gay. She has a Black lesbian wife who is pregnant. She has to work with Stabler who she has profiled as a problematic cop who is probably 20 years her senior. Technically, she's his boss, but, given Stabler's status and history, they're more like partners. However, she has to reign him in regarding his maverick way of doing things, which includes blurring the lines and police brutality. She isn't afraid of the deadly mobsters who she's investigating and trying to stop.

The series follows Ayanna's efforts to bust one particularly mobster who has links to the Italian mafia. It starts with Stabler's wife getting killed. It continues with the robbery of a shipment of coronavirus vaccines. It also continues with more murders linked to tech companies. A lot of the crimes point back to one particular crime boss, but Ayanna is having trouble actually busting this crime boss. Associates or underlings get arrested, but none of it can be tied to the crime boss, so Ayanna and her team have to keep building their case against the crime boss. It will be interesting to see if the crime boss will be caught by the end of this first season. Normally, a crime boss would be arrested and convicted in court by the end of a typical Law & Order episode. Here, however, the writers are stretching out the villain's arc.

Dylan McDermott (American Horror Story and The Practice) also co-stars as Richard Wheatley, the aforementioned crime boss who is this powerful businessman in New York City. His business seems to be connected to the medical or pharmaceutical industry, but it's not exactly clear. He seems to be linked to the Italian mafia, but he seems to be very smart and is always two steps ahead of the police. He's very sinister and slimy. The one interesting thing about him is that he's part of a mixed race family. He married a Black woman and had two biracial children. In one pivotal scene on the Wonder Wheel at Coney Island, he repudiates the racism from his father and the Italian mafia. It was simply clever to see a criminal fighting bigotry within the crime world.

In terms of TV shows that are serialized that follow the same cops chasing the same criminals over the course of multiple episodes and indeed multiple seasons, this one has potential. It doesn't rise to the level of The Wire (2002), Breaking Bad (2008) or Power (2014). Yet, it might be a good show to check out.

Rated TV-14-LV.
Running Time: 1 hr.
Thursdays at 10 PM on NBC.