Law and Order: Organized Cr4ime: “High Planes Grifter,” “Ashes to Ashes” (Dick Wolf Productions, Universal, NBC-TV, aired November 4 and 11, 2021)

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

The most recent two episodes of Law and Order: Organized Crime blessedly finished off the main story arc the show had been pursuing this season – the infiltration of Detective Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni) into an Albanian mob he described as “the most dangerous criminal organization in the history of New York City” (more than the legendary “Five Families” of the Mafia?). To get in he took the name “Eddie Wagner” (after a minor criminal from, I think, Miami who had died) and grew a goatee beard that gave him a striking resemblance to San Diego Leather community leader “Papa” Tony Lindsey. The November 4 episode was given the title “High Planes Grifter” (continuing the writers’ and show runners’ odd streak of naming the episodes with puns on the titles of Clint Eastwood movies) and was there pretty much just to set up the final show in the sequence, though it did feature Meloni’s character coming out of the darkness long enough to testify before the grand jury investigating the Armenian mob. It also featured Michael Ross (Gregg Henry), the super-pedophile and super-pimp who essentially bought teenage girls wholesale from the Armenian mob to hand out as expensive “auction items” to his similarly sick 0.1-percenter friends. Like his obvious real-life counterpart, Jeffrey Epstein (who’d previously been the subject of a Law and Order: Special Victims Unit two-part episode – or was it three? – that stretched from the end of one season to the beginning of the next) Ross is found hanged in his cell, and we’re presumably supposed to think he committed suicide – either that or the Albamian mob was cleaning house, knocking off all the witnesses who could testify against them. By the way, I’m convinced the real Jeffrey Epstein didn’t commit suicide, either: he was undoubtedly either actively murdered by fellow criminals richly rewarded for the deed, or he was passively murdered by prison authorities who ignored all the pemological rules for dealing with potentially suicidal prisoners, including rule number one: you don’t keep a potential suicide in a cell by himself. The moment I heard Epstein had died in prison custody, I was convinced he was murdered so he woudln’t be able to testify against the rich, famous and powerful people who had traveled on his so-called “Lolita Express,” essentially a flying brothel filled with teenage girls Epstein was holding in sexual slavery and forcing them to do whatever he wanted with whomever he wanted. Among the ultra-powerful people who often flew on the “Lolita Express” were Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, and while I have no definitive evidence that they actually had sex with underage girls on Epstein’s plane, evertything we know about both men says they were sexual scumbags willing to stick their dicks into just about anything as long as it was alive, human and female.

“High Planes Grifter” ends with an explosion at the Armenian boxing gym where the gang appears to have their headquarters (and where they sought to make a dishonest buck by betting on one of their own fighters to lose and then getting him to throw his bout, but he refused and Meloni’s character engineered things to cost the gang a lot of money when the fighter won), which takes out the young man who had shown up claiming to be Eddie Wagner’s son – and then nonplussing Stabler by saying he could tell he was too good a man to be the scumbag crook he’d been told had fathered him. Stabler had arranged to give the kid $10,000 and safe passage out of the city anywhere in the U.S. he wanted to go, but the kid showed up again at the last moment just to get himself killed in the explosion, which as I remarked to Charles is certainly one convenient way to get rid of an inconvenient character and his story arc! We weren’t exactly sure he was dead at the end of “High Planes Grifter,” but at the beginning of the next episode, “Ashes to Ashes” (blessedly not saddled with a title ripped off of a Clint Eastwood film) he’s lying in the street, prone, while a gunfight goes in in front of him and everyone, crooks, cops and bystanders alike, simply ignores him. The gunfight that kicks off “Ashes to Ashes” ends up killing seven members of the Armenian mob, but not the top two guys, Jon Kosta (Michael Raymond-James) and Albi Briscu (Vinnie Jones).

They both escape through a tunnel under the gym (did they import “Chapo” Gizman’s architects?) and Albi leads the cops on a merry chase to the marina, where he tries to hijack a boat to make his escape and, when the cops catch up to him, holds his latest Gay boy-toy hostage and demands a helicopter so he can be flown away. Eventually Albi is arrested, though just before that happens his biggest concern is to make sure Stabler keeps secret the information that he’s Gay (from whom? His wife Flutura, played by Lolita Davidovich – the only other actor besides Meloni in this cast I’d actually heard of before – had been throwing herself at virtually every other even slightly attractive male in the cast because she’s so sexually frustrated since her husband only likes guys, and a lot of other people have probably found out, including the guys Albi has tricked with before).

There are also intimations of corruption in the character of Black Congressmember Kilbride, who wasn’t seen in either of these two shows but who helped Stabler’s commanding officer, Ayanna Bell (Danielle Moné Truitt), win a settlement for her wife (she’s a Lesbian and both she and her wife are Black – are today’s TV writers O.K. with showing interracial straight couples b ut draw the line at interracial Queer ones?) and her wife’s brother, whose left hand was stomped on by a police officer essentially investigating and torturing him for being Black, thereby presumably cutting off his promising career as a Django Reinhardt-inspired jazz guitarist (though the writers may be warming up for him to play again after all, especially since the real Django survived an accident that cost him the use of two left-hand fingers and became one of the most spectacularly accomplished guitarists of all time anyway), and the writers drop a big hint that Kilbride is going to want a “favor” back from Sgt. Bell on behalf of one or more of his scumbag associates.

The show did a nice job of wrapping up the whole Armenian-gangster story line – though along the way one of the people who got killed was a Black woman court reporter who was leaking the prosecution’s information because she had a relative in the Black drug gang the Armenians were fighing a gang war with to take over the illicit drug trade. Law and Order: Organized Crime is getting better as a show, though the concept is too black-and-white and lacks the moral complexity Dick Wolf and his writers and show runners have brought to their previous programs. Still, it’s a nice program and at the end of this episode Meloni makes a big show of shaving his beard, returning him to his old SVU appearance even though he’s older, more grizzled and – fortunately – no longer wearing those damned Armani suits that played against his sheer sex appeal. (In case you were wondering, as far as I’m concerned Christopher Meloni is still the sexiest man alive, no matter what People magazine says.)