Ashley Spurgeon is a lifelong TV fan — nay, expert — and with her recurring television and pop-culture column "And Another Thing," she'll tell you what to watch, what to skip, and what's worth thinking more about.
Message the group chat and block off a long afternoon: There’s a new Law & Order in town. Some 30-some-odd years and hundreds of ripped headlines in, we can all sleep soundly knowing that Law & Order: Stabler is on the case. OK, the show is technically called Law & Order: Organized Crime, but my title is obviously better and far more accurate. Former NYPD sex crimes detective straight outta the Special Victims Unit and habitual 4th Amendment violator Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni) is back on the beat, and if you were wondering if this time it’s personal, the answer is, “Oh hell yes it is.”
Stabler’s wife Kathy? Guess what, she’s fuckin’ DEAD at the explosive hands of, you guessed it, organized crime. Can Stabler guide his grieving kids, help bring Kathy’s killers to justice and take down one of the most notorious syndicates in the city? (Run by, oh, let’s say, Dylan McDermott. No really, he’s playing antagonist Richard Wheatley, and you know he’s evil because his legitimate day job is getting rich from pharmaceuticals.) Considering this series is a single arc and not really doing the standalone episodic Law & Order thing, I think the answer is “probably.” The original Law & Order (RIP) sometimes went into mob bosses and crime families, but there was a gritty-esque veritas-ish quality to the George H.W. Bush administration-era L&Os, whereas this spin-off has episodes titled things like “Say Hello to My Little Friends.”
So we’re dealing with a certain level of, dare I suggest, intentional stupidity here. But one of the true pleasures of all versions of Law & Order is just how wrong they get subcultures. Rock stars, hackers, sports fans, gamers, political movements, pretty much anything that would confound Hank Hill — there’s always been a level of “explain as broadly as possible for the squares at home.” But that’s just in cop shows’ blood. (Watch Dragnet and tell me I’m wrong.) L&O:OC, though? It’s like a USA original plus a CBS-style grandpa-beloved crime-solver show divided by expert portrayal of some of police work’s brand-new character types.
Stabler’s new partner, Sgt. Ayanna Bell (Danielle Moné Truitt), is comin’ in hot straight out of the Kima Greggs School of Strong Lesbian Policing, we’ve even got a weird bleep-blorp Computer Girl who, in her professional high-tech open-plan office environment, works with her knee pulled up to her chest. Her name? God help me, Jet Slootmaekers. (“Ainsley Seiger is Jet Slootmaekers in Law & Order: Hacker Squad.”) Is there an undercover lady cop posing a stripper? Friends — yes!! And how au courant is Organized Crime? Well, you can’t get any more “now” than “stolen COVID vaccines that go to rich line-jumpers” and a Ferris-wheel-set conversation that includes an approximation of the line, “So you’re ‘woke’ now? That means you’re not racist anymore.” Wheatley’s ex and mother of his kids Professor (teaching at L&O’s own Hudson University) Angela Wheatley (Tamara Taylor) is Black, and racism and race relations inside and outside of blood and/or crime families are going to play an ongoing, very contemporary role within Organized Crime.
Stabler was written out in 2011, and needless to say a lot has changed in the culture as far as how a lot of the public views cops over the past decade, and rightfully so. The Stabler character more or less “worked” as a sex crimes detective, because when he went around beating people up with impunity or waltzing around with warrants, it was inflicted on child sex abusers, rapists and sex traffickers. But violence plus police work is an increasingly distasteful combination. Will it be handled with grace and aplomb? Ha, I mean, we’ll see! But I’m not watching this for nuance — I’m watching this because I know people are going to die on that Ferris wheel.
Elsewhere in questionable heroism and, “Wow, this is still on, and I’m enjoying it!” we find Archer. (The spy/crime animated series once used the name ISIS for its organization, and it both predated the popular knowledge of and outlived the peak prominence of the terrorist group of the same name, and not even The Simpsons can say that.) The recent death of Jessica Walter sent me back to the series approximately right where I left off: Season 7, which came out in 2016. Is Archer any “good"? Debatable, depending on how much you like sex jokes, which is a good 30 percent of any given episode. I, for one, and pretty dumb and like the occasional “phrasing,” but the joy of this show is the line readings from the crackerjack cavalcade of voice actors. Walter, of course, but also H. Jon Benjamin, Aisha Tyler, Judy Greer, Chris Parnell and Amber Nash give something absurd and phenomenal at least once per episode. Because Archer is a cartoon and you can do whatever you want, it’s slightly more outré and stupid than L&O: Stabler — but not by much.
