r>by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2022 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved
The Law and Order: Organized Crime episode that followed was about the Silas family, notably father Robert Silas (John Dornan) and his son Teddy (Gus Halper) – I suspect writer Bryan Goluboff was thinking of Donald Trump Sr. and Jr. here – who are building “The Majestic,” which will be the first full-service gambling casino in Manhattan. Only a Black tenant named Harry Cole (Jorge Bennett Watson) who owns a building on the lot where the Silases want to build The Majestic” and refuses to sell, has so far delayed construction on the monstrosity. Silas, Sr. orders Silas, Jr. to deal with the “problem” of Cole’;s obstinacy, which Silas, Jr. does by plotting with a thug-for-hire named Kenny Kyle (Michael Dreyer)/ The two buy black African rats – which supposedly are the only rats that make their own venom, like poisonous snakes, instead of just transmitting toxins they’ve acquired elsewhere – from a crooned animal dealer and introduce them into Harry’s apartment, which causes him to fall off his balcony in an apparent “drunken accident.” Then Teddy tries to eliminate Kenny as well.
The cops on this one include Detective Elliott Stabler (Christopher Meloni, older and somewhat the worse for wear than he was on Law and Order: Special Victims Unit but still incredibly sexy in a world-weary sort of way) and his supervisor, Sgt. Ayanna Bell (Danielle Moné Truitt), a Black Lesbian who as the show opens is in the process of getting a rather bitter divorce from her wife, Denise (Keren Dukes). The battle includes a fight for custody of their child, though we haven’t seen this person before and don’t know whether they’re a boy or girl, whether she was adopted or was the biological child of one of the couple (though it’s unlikely that either member of the couple gave birth given that we’ve seen them regularly and neither looked pregnant), or how old she is, questions that would loom large in any real-life custody hearing. Like previous Organized Crime episodes, this one has an open-ended finish instead of the clean, resolute endings of previous Dick Wolf shows – unfortunately Dick Wolf has become a charter member of the church of the Great God SERIAL with this show, and writer Goluboff was clearly given the mission to create a multi-episode plot line rather than create a script that actually ends. My favorite part of this episode was the scene in which Stabler and Bell commiserate about the difficulties of being married and having to deal with the anxieties of each of their wives over being in a relationship with a police officer and having to deal with their long work hours, unpredictable schedules and the dangers of the job.
