Law and Order: Organized Crime, Lawand Order: Special Victims Unit, Law and Order: "Gimme Shelter" (3-part crossover event) (Dick Wolf Prudictions, Universal, NBC-TV, aired September 22, 2022)

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

Last night Dick Wolf’s three Law and Order franchise shows returned to the air after their summer hiatus for a three-part story, “Gimme Shelter,” that crossed over all three shows and did so in reverse order: Law and Order: Organized Crime, Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and the original Law and Order. “Gimme Shelter” begins with a prologue in Ukraine during an attack on a civilian home as part of Russia’s war – oops, I mean “special military operation” – there. A teenage girl miraculously escapes the murder of the rest of her family by Russian “special military operators,” only to get herself killed when she’s taken in by the U.S. four months later. Her name was Ava Marchenko (Alexandra Azezova) and within her first two months in the U.S. was abducted by human traffickers and turned out into “the life” of a prostitute. She ended up on a mega-yacht owned by a Russian bigwig named Rublev who is supposedly a friend of Vladimir Putin and has immense power to do just about anything he wants anywhere he wants. The 15-year-old Ava was working the yacht with her 14-year-old friend Nicole Merrick (Jaci Calderon), who ended up in “the life” after her mother died suddenly, she was placed with an aunt with whom she feuded, and then she was put in a foster home where she was abused until she ran away again and ended up in the clutches of a human trafficker, Sam Ellis (Stephanie Gunn), who like most female traffickers started out as a victim herself.

Ava and Nicole were assigned to service Rublev and his second-in-command, Mark Sirenko (Beau Knapp), and when Rublev caught Ava video-recording them on her phone, he sent Sirenko to track her down and kill her. The New York Police Department became aware of this when detective Frank Cosgrove (Jeffrey Donovan) was having lunch with his daughter when he saw Ava running and getting hit by a passing car. He tried to render first aid and signal a passing ambulance to pick her up, but before he could do this Sirenko came up and quickly and efficiently put two bullets in her back. Cosgrove is determined to work the case even though it happened in a different precinct and he has to contend with rival detective Jalen Shaw (Mehcad Brooks), who just transferred from narcotics and is working his first homicide. They are able to trace the killing to Sirenko, only then they run afoul of the Organized Crime unit in general and Detective Elliott Stabler (Christopher Meloni) in particular. Stabler is concerned because Sirenko is running a drug ring that has just got into making and selling fentanyl, and he’s recruited a confidential informant named Vince (Andrew Yackel, an actor and artist from Pittsburgh who’s had an interesting career in both fields despite his youth) to infiltrate Sirenko’s gang.

The police are able to track down Nicole, who first refuses to give them any information until Special Victims Unit Captain Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay, who’s been doing this sort of thing lionger than the characters she’s dealing with have been alive) shows her pimp Sam being interrogated and disclaiming all knowledge of Nicole. With Sam’s supposed “love” for her shown to be so much B.S., Nicole agrees to provide the information the cops want as long as she won’t have to testify in court. Benson puts her in a safe house but the Russian gangsters are able to trace her because she smuggled in a cell phone despite Benson’s attempt to confiscate all her devices, and by sending her a message on Snapchat (the infamous app that erases everything sent on it in a day or two) and getting a reply from her, the Russians are able to send a hit squad and try to kill her. Nicole escapes at least physically unscathed, but Detective Amanda Rollinis (Kelli Giddish) is shot and sustains a life-threatening injury. The cops arrest both Rublev and Sirenko and also recover Ava’s phone on which the incriminating message is contained. They were also able to stop a terrorist attack on a NATO conference in New York which Sirenko staged on Rublev’s orders – apparently Sirenko was an apolitical crook but Rublev wanted to blow up a NATO meeting to show Russia’s power and the futility of the West trying to resist it.

The bad guys got the security codes to get in by blackmailing a guard at the venue – they set him up with a 15-year-old girl and she told him she was 18, only they videotaped him having sex with her and threatened to report him to the authorities for child molestation unless he cooperated. Stabler’s confidential informant Vince is killed midway through when Sirenko gets tired of the way Vince is pushing him for information about where they’re going to explode the bomb. (That’s a real pity because I was hoping Dick Wolf and his writers and show runners were preparing this very interesting character for a spinoff show of his own.) Eventually the cops are able to evacuate the hotel in time to save the lives of all the NATO delegates and most of the hotel’s staff and other guests, though they later find the bodies of three people who didn’t get out in time. In part three, district attorney Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston) and his prosecutors, Nolan Price (Hugh Dancy) and Samantha Maroun (Odelya Halevi), are faced with the task of prosecuting both Rublev and Sirenko. They’ve recovered Ava’s phone on which Rublev was recorded boasting about the bomb attack, but without Ava around to authenticate it, a judge in the case rules the recording inadmissible. The prosecutors try to get Nicole to testify, but much to their irritation Benson has shipped her off to her last living relative in Ontario, Canada and refuses to bring her back to New York.

So with no alternative, the prosecutors cut a deal with Sirenko and allow him to plead guilty to second-degree murder, while Rublev tries to cut his own deal with the U.S. State Department to give them evidence against high-ranking Russian oligarchs in exchange for complete immunity. Eventually Rublev is himself gunned down by yet another Russian hit squad, while Sirenko gets a relatively light sentence because of the deal the D.A.’s office cut with him while Rublev was still alive. This composite story is essentially a compendium of Law and Order’s Greatest Hits, with themes they’ve gone to again and again – including the impunity of privileged people and the barriers to testimony often posed by the U.S. Constitution and its due-process requirements. The director is old Law and Order “hand” Jean de Segonzac (and he’s credited with all three episodes – on previous occasions Dick Wolf and his producers have assigned different directors to shoot each episode, but this time they went with de Segonzac for all three) and the writers are Rick Eid, also an old Law and Order “hand,” and Gwen Sigan, a name new to me. It was a well-done re-entry to the world of Law and Order, though it also got a bit oppressive stretched out over three hours and the finale was especially despairing> one of the bad guys is silenced forever by his cronies and the other gets what amounts to a slap on the wrist for the enormity of his crimes. Not what we want to hear right now when, despite the smackdowns he just got from the New York Attorney General’s office and the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, it’s still hard to believe that Donald Trump will ever face accountability for his crimes!