Law and Order: Organized Crime: " … Wheatley Is to Stabler" (Dick Wolf Productions, Universal, NBC-TV, aired March 3, 2022)

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2022 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

Despite the sheer power and presence of Christopher Meloni in the lead role of Detective Elliot Stabler, the Law and Order: Organized Crime series seems to me to be the worst of the three. Not only does it have an ongoing “through-line,” worshipping all too faithfully at the altar of the Great God SERIAL, but Meloni’s character has been deprived of all the noble aspects he had when he was still on SVU and turned into a simple-minded revenge figure. I was amused at my husband Charles comparing him to Batman – who after all got into the superhero business when his parents were killed by a criminal, the way Stabler’s revenge motive was the murder of his wife in the opening episode of Organized Crime – and he also compared the show’s principal villain, Richard Wheatley (Dylan McDermott), to The Joker.

This episode was billed as “The Final Confrontation” between Stabler and Wheatley, and it featured some bizarre scenes. Wheatley, having figured out a way to plunge virtually all of New York City into a power blackout, demands three things: the release of his son, Richard Wheatley, Jr. (Nick Creegan), from prison; an escape aircraft ready for him from Teterboro Airport (described on Wikipedia as “a general aviation relief airport in the boroughs of Teterboro, Moonachie, and Hasbrouck Heights in Bergen County, New Jersey”), and a sort of perp walk for Stabler through the streets of New York in which he will confess his “crimes,” including the 10 people he shot in the line of duty – though when Wheatley tries to get Stabler to “confess” to having formed an irrational prejudice against Wheatley out of revenge and bitterness for the death of his wife, which Wheatley insists he had nothing to do with (it was actually his estranged wife Amanda who ordered the hit on Mrs. Stabler, and she’s gone through several conflicted loyalties before ending up with him at the end – more on that later).

Only when Wheatley, Jr. shows up at Wheatley, Sr.’s redoubt, Wheatley, Sr. arbitrarily and for reasons even the writer (Kimberley Ann Harrison) doesn’t bother to explain just shoots the kid dead. (Remember that he’s a man who shot and killed his own father in a previous episode, so it’s not like he’s that big on filial affection in either direction.) Meanwhile, the head of the police Organized Crime Task Force, Sgt. Ayanna Bell (Danielle Moné Truitt), learns from incarcerated hacker Sebastian McClane (Robin Lord Taylor) that there is a possible way to override Wheatley’s control over the power grid by sneaking in through a disused substation in Staten Island. She sends her hackers, Adam “Malachi” Mintock (Wesam Keesh) and a woman detective she’s assigned to work with him – for the whole time they’ve been working together he’s been hitting on her and she’s been putting him off, but now that they’re out of the office she gives him a big kiss – to the Staten Island substation, whose technology is so old they have to go in and access it through an old-fashioned 3 ½-inch floppy disc.

They do it, the city regains power and then they have to figure out the final task Wheatley left them: where he’s holding Stabler’s mother Bernadette (Ellen Burstyn), at a venue the woman Malachi has the hots for recognizes as a BDSM club. The fact that Malachi’s would-be girlfriend knows about BDSM clubs paradoxically makes him turned on even more. It all ends in an escape scene in which Wheatley and Amanda are fleeing together – only they get into an argument over his killing their son and she grabs the steering wheel of the car, thereby causing it to go out of control and plunge off a cliff into a river or sea on the side of the road. The police fish Amanda’s body out of the water but, curses, don’t find Wheatley’s – which means the creators of Law and Order: Organized Crime, Matt Olmstead and Ilene Chaikin, are obviously keeping the option open to revive him as a character again – though, as I joked to Charles afterward, given the strong parallels between the Wheatley/Stabler relationship and the one Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created between Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty, they almost had no choice but to have him fall to his (presumed) death off a cliff!