Law & Order: Organized Crime's Squad Remains Rocked By Whelan's Death In Season 4 Premiere — Read Recap
Det. Jamie Whelan is gone from Law & Order: Organized Crime, but he's certainly not forgotten. Read on for the highlights of the Season 4 premiere, "Memory Lane."
After a few months undercover, Stabler swings back into the office hell-bent on finding the hidden lab run by Los Santos, the Eastern Seaboard's biggest purveyors of fentanyl. He's definitely thinking about Jamie Whelan's death, but he's playing it off like he's OK. Bell knows better, telling him that they're all hurting and "there's a lot more healing you need to do yourself, in more ways than one." He's irked to learn that, while he's been undercover, Bell has agreed to take part in a pilot program that will use artificial intelligence to help police with their investigations.
It doesn't help that the chipper guy who created the program, Dr. Kyle Vargas (Quantico's Tate Ellington) shows up with bagels (trying too hard) and inadvertently tries to set up shop at Whelan's old desk (how could he know?). Jet is the only person happy to see him; Reyes is only slightly behind Elliot on the Folded-Arms-Furrowed-Brow scale. So Bell pulls her senior detective aside and makes sure that he knows that he doesn't get to have a strong opinion on the matter, especially because it could really help them avoid tragedies like Whelan's shooting and subsequent death.
When he gets home, Elliot is not pleased to find his mother wandering around outside while her home health aide snoozes on the couch. He gets her inside and settled; she's confused, but she wonders when she's going to leave. He thinks she's referring to his undercover stint, which he assures her is over. But she's talking about a potential move to an assisted living community, which they've apparently discussed in the past. He says it's no longer anything she has to worry about, but she is adamant that she not become a huge burden on her family. Once she's in bed, he checks his messages and then calls Olivia. One of the messages was about one of their old cases, he tells her voicemail, but also "Maybe I just wanted to hear your voice. Call me." (Side note: Contented sigh.)
Reyes does some legwork and tracks an elusive member of Los Santos to a cheap motel. Elliot joins the raid and brings the guy in; he leads them to the company that's helping move the fentanyl by wrapping 18-wheelers to make them look like grocery store trucks. Jet and Reyes then go undercover to visit the wrapping facility, where Jet slips away to download data from one of the fentanyl trucks. After she returns to the bullpen, she nearly passes out; as Reyes rushes her to the ER for possible fentanyl poisoning (from being in the truck), Bell and Stabler hypothesize that the trucks aren't being used for transportation to/from the lab: "The truck is the lab." Bell and Stabler head back to the skins shop and find all six employees dead.
A recovered Jet gets out of the hospital just in time to pose as a DEA agent and grab some data from the skins shop printer that helps Vargas' program figure out where the truck they're looking for is. When they get there, Stabler, Bell and Reyes join up with the DEA stakeout of the mobile lab, and Stabler shimmies into a hazmat suit and just moseys into the action, trusting that the mask will stop anyone from noticing he's someone who shouldn't be there. (Side note: The exasperated look Bell gives him just before he leaves is perfection. God, what this woman has to PUT UP WITH.)
Things go sideways fast. Someone recognizes Stabler from when he was undercover. A fight ensues, with fentanyl flying. Stabler's suit gets slashed in the process. Reyes runs in and shoots someone who's about to kill Stabler, but they barely get outside before they both succumb to fentanyl poisoning. Bell gets naloxone and runs to administer it to Stabler; he stops her, making sure Reyes receives the lifesaving treatment first. (But don't worry, guys; this show isn't killing off Elliot Stabler with five minutes left in the episode.)
Days later, Stabler attends the funeral of the informant he'd been working with undercover who'd been killed at the start of the episode. And later on, Jet is drinking wine at home when Reyes shows up at her door. "I just needed to make sure you were OK," he says. He comes in; it's clear this is not the first time. "I thought we agreed we were not going to do this again," she says. "We did," he says. Then they start kissing, and he kicks the door shut.
Back at his place after the service, El watches McGrath's press conference and smiles huge when he hears Olivia's name. But he's distracted when Bernie starts calling for Randall. She thinks she's missing some tickets, and she's agitated. "I don't need you. I need Randall. Where is your brother?" she wonders.
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