Law and Order: Organized Crime: “For a Few Leke More” (Dick Wolf Productions, Universal, NBC-TV, aired October 7, 2021)

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2021 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

Alas, Law and Order: Organized Crime is continuing to be a disappointment, a show that isn’t really living up to its potential. The decision Wolf’s people made for the direction of this year’s shows was to have Elliott Stabler (Christopher Meloni, older and more grizzled but still incredibly hot) infiltrate a gang of expatriate Albanians fighting with Blacks for control of New York’s illegal drug trade. The hot-headed Stabler beats up the son-in-law of Kosta, one of the leaders of the Albanian gang he’s supposed to be infiltrating, and he also gets the come-on from Flutura Briscu (Lolita Davidovich), wife of Gay Albanian gangster Albi Briscu (Vinnie Jones), who became Stabler’s chief ally in the Albanian gang because Stabler stumbled on him in a Gay club and Albi is relying on Stabler to protect his secret. Stabler has also befriended a waitress named Rita who works at a restaurant frequented by the Albanians, and when she disappears from work he realizes that she’s a victim of human trafficking, one of a number of girls being brought in from Albania and turned into hookers. In the middle of the episode Stabler goes to Flutura’s apartment but gives her a drugged drink of wine and, while she’s under, photographs Albanian passports made out to the girls as documentation that they’re being trafficked.

At the end of the episode, though, Flutura shows up at Stabler’s RV (where he’s living in his character as American arsonist “Eddie Wagner,” his handle in the gang) and it looks like the two of them are going to get it on for real – and while it’s nice to see Christopher Meloni take off his shirt and show off all those delicious muscles (he’s certainly getting to play sexier than he did in his SVU days, when for the most part his physical attributes were concealed under Armani suits!), it also seems out of character for him to join the parade of tricks that have gone in and out of Flutura’s life and risked the wrath of her jealous husband who, even though he doesn’t want her (because he’s Gay), can’t afford to make it look like he’s O.K. with his wife sleeping around for fear that will undermine his macho “cred” with the gang. Unlike previous Law and Orders, this show is worshiping at the shrine of the Great God SERIAL, and this episode ends with Stabler and Flutura making out in front of his RV, obviously preparing to go inside and screw like bunny rabbits … though I suspect the writers have a trick up their sleeves, probably an appearance from another member of the gang that will break up this unwelcome twosome.

The other main intrigue in this episode had to do with a bookie who bet heavily on an Albanian prizefighter to lose and then tried to intimidate him into throwing the fight, sort of like On the Waterfront, only the Albanian gang decided to target the money the bookie had collected on the fight and rob the place, in the course of which Stabler shot and killed (in self-defense) one of the bookie’s security people. And there’s yet another plot line in which the police have arrested Adam Mintock (Wesam Keesh) for creating an unbreakable cell phone for criminal use, and they force him to reveal all the dealers who sold his phones so the cops can arrest them all and Malachi can sell them new phones which the police have permanently bugged. Dick Wolf’s people were never that good at organized-crime stories in the first place, and this one suffers from the usual problems of modern-day TV series: too many plot lines and too few actual endings – these maddening serial stories just go on, and on, and on …