Law and Order: "In Harm's Way" (Dick Wolf Entertainment, Universal Television, NBC-TV, aired May 16, 2024)

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2024 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

Yesterday (Thursday, May 16) I watched the season finales of the remaining shows in the Dick Wolf Law and Order franchise: the flagship Law and Order itself, Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and Law and Order: Organized Crime. The Law and Order episode was called “In Harm’s Way” and opened at an outdoor charity gala held in front of the New York Public Library at which a prominent baseball player who’s dating a world-famous singer (obviously writers Pamela J. Wechsler and Jennifer Vanderbes were thinking of Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift here!) is shot and killed. Only the police, in the persons of detectives Vincent Riley (Reid Scott) and Jalen Shaw (Mehcad Brooks), deduce that the real intended target was New York District Attorney Nicholas Baxter (Tony Goldwyn, classic-era Hollywood producer Sam Goldwyn’s grandson), who before he got appointed D.A. after the previous holder of that office, Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston, the last remaining holdover from the old Law and Order cast), left under a political cloud and a disagreement with Mayor Robert Payne (Bruce Altman). It seems that before Baxter became New York D.A. he was a federal prosecutor who brought a successful case against a Black street gang called “Cobra-10” and put its leader behind bars. Needless to say, the Cobra-10 leader is anxious for revenge and gets a message to one of the gang’s hit men, Hector Canseco (Ralphy Lopez), to eliminate Baxter – only by pure happenstance, Baxter manages to turn away from the potentially fatal shot in time and the ballplayer is killed instead. Through ballistic tests, the cops learn that the gun used in the shooting was the same one that another crook, Eddie Aguilar (Sylvestre Rasuk), used in a liquor-store robbery two months previously, though it turns out to be a “community gun” passed around from hand to hand to be used in various crimes.

Since Hector Canseco tossed the gun into the river as the cops were chasing him, the only witness who can link him to the gun is Aguilar – and the gang is able to eliminate him the night before he’s scheduled to testify at Canseco’s trial. They even write “SNITCH” on the wall of his apartment in Eddie’s own blood. Prosecutors Nolan Price (Hugh Dancy) and Samantha Maroun (Odelya Halevi) call Nicholas Baxter as a witness to explain Cobra-10’s vendetta against him, but without Eddie the cops also have to call Baxter’s daughter Carrie (played by Tony Goldwyn’s real-life daughter Tess), who saw Canseco staking out their home a week before the fatal shooting. Canseco even asked her who lived there, information the prosecutors need to establish Canseco’s motive and criminal intent. But this means that on cross-examination, Canseco’s aggressive attorney Alan Wallace (Kelly AuCoin) can bring out an incident a few years earlier in which Carrie was driving under the influence and hit a pedestrian whose injuries cost him the use of his left arm. Baxter’s wife Julia (Tara Westwood, who is not Tony Goldwyn’s real-life wife or Tess Goldwyn’s mother) is so appalled that she walks out of the courtroom in mid-trial. The jury returns a guilty verdict against Canseco for both the murder of the ballplayer and the attempted murder of Nicholas Baxter, but there’s a tag scene in which Baxter is behind in the election for district attorney – he was a mid-term mayoral opponent but the race for a full elected term is too close to call (and I suspect the ambiguity of the result is a deliberate tactic on the part of Dick Wolf and his writers and show runners to see whether Tony Goldwyn is or isn’t willing to renew his contract at a price they’re willing to pay). Overall this is a good Law and Order, but I was a bit surprised that Canseco didn’t make a you’re-a-dead-man threat at Nicholas Baxter as he was being led off to prison post-conviction.