WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Law & Order: Organized Crime Season 2, Episode 6, “Unforgivable,” which premiered Thursday, October 21st on NBC.
Law & Order: Organized Crime continues Detective Elliot Stabler’s undercover journey in the Albanian KO gang using the borrowed identity of criminal Eddie Wagner. In a bar alone with a madam named Deidra, Stabler dances, drinks and converses, casually referring to the women he saw the other night as prostitutes. As part of his undercover mission crossing over with the SVU team, Stabler is investigating multiple Albanian girls being trafficked into America and forced into sex work. Deidra, however, finds the term “prostitutes” offensive and slaps Stabler. She tells him she herself was badly mistreated on a boat from Albania to America and that one of her johns saved her by marrying her.
Problems are about to get a lot more personal for Stabler, though, as a young man is then seen staring through the window. When Stabler goes to talk to him, he says he is his son — Eddie Wagner’s that is. Shocked, Stabler pauses before chasing him off. His undercover identity now has a loose end beyond his control, compromising his entire cover.
Back at Stabler’s real home, he talks with his actual son, Eli, and mother, Bernadette, who is still staying with the Stabler family in light of her recent memory problems. Elliot shares a tender moment with his mom and they briefly recount their worries for Eli, who was seen stealing pills from his grandmother just last episode. Stabler then heads to the precinct to talk with his team about the latest Eddie Wagner development. His boss, Sgt. Ayanna Bell, is concerned. Elliot’s already toed the line a little too chaotically during this mission and the last thing he needs is another opportunity to put himself in danger.
Stabler then assists Bell in interrogating a number of men associated with the Kosta Organization (in which he himself is posing as honorary member Eddie Wagner.) Following that, he deftly slips back into his Eddie Wagner persona and heads to Edie’s boss, Albi Briscu’s gym. However, when he shows up, he sees the same young man from the previous night who claims to be Eddie’s son. Stabler insists the young man leave the gym.
Following last week’s bust of a KO gang party featuring the services of Flutura’s (Albi’s wife) trafficked girls, the whole organization is on alert. Flutura reasoned that the only way the cops could have known about them must have been due to a leak and Jon Kosta, the organization leader, is on the hunt for the unknown rat. Stabler joins up with Jon Kosta, who has a man captive. To send a message to the infiltrator, Kosta graphically cuts out the man’s tongue in front of everyone. Following this horrendous act, Kosta officially, and ironically, puts Stabler in charge of finding out the rat.
Back once more as Stabler’s, he meets up with Bell. She informs him that Kosta has threatened a city official, Teddy Garcia, who is running for New York governor. He has not only taken a hardline stance against organized crime, but specifically called out the Albanian mob as a major focus of his crack down, putting himself as a definite enemy of the Kosta Organization and leading Jon Kosta himself to place a personal hit out on Garcia.
Meanwhile, on a personal note for Bell, there is a development in her case against the city, where she and her wife took the NYPD to task for racially profiling and injuring their nephew. The city has settled the case, but she is still reluctant to trust. Stabler goes back undercover and tries his best to shake Eddie’s kid while deflecting the questions that are starting to arise. Stabler’s undercover life is about to get a lot more complicated, though, particularly when it comes to Reggie, his friend in the organization. Reggie is the one who hired Eddie and has vouched for him numerous times. Reggie’s been an important ally for Stabler, as Reggie values his friendship with Eddie. He also isn’t the smartest member of the KO gang, which has worked to Stabler’s advantage, and he’s highly loyal.
But Reggie is about to be involved in a very dangerous hit, as Kosta personally orders him to take out Teddy Garcia. Bell tries to get Garcia to accept enhanced police protection, but he insists his own security detail will be more than enough. Stabler, though, knows better, and does his best to intervene to save both Garcia and protect his strongest ally, Reggie.
Though the police ultimately save Teddy Garcia’s life, it comes at a cost. Reggie, who has never been one to go about things calmly, gets himself highly anxious about the job, stressing himself out more and more as he continually circles Garcia’s home. Stabler calls Reggie and does his best to talk him out of following through, appealing to Reggie as a friend who’s just looking out for him. But he can’t dissuade him and Reggie goes in for the kill. However, Teddy isn’t home and when Teddy’s wife answers the door, he accidentally shoots and kills her instead.
Rattled, Reggie leaves the scene and is arrested shortly thereafter at a bar, thus removing Stabler’s strongest friend inside an increasingly dangerous organization.
The murder of his wife has, predictably, only strengthened Garcia’s determination to take down organized crime and the Albanians in particular. Reggie’s mistake has not only cost him his freedom, but escalated tensions between the adversaries far more. Jon Kosta moves on quickly from Reggie’s failure and assigns the second attempt to kill Garcia to a far more competent member of the organization: Albi himself.
In custody, things don’t look good for Reggie, as he’s facing serious prison time — and prison for him is likely to mean murder by rival gang members. They offer him a chance to flip, which Reggie will have to mull over. Either way, having Reggie out of the gang puts more danger on Stabler, just when things are escalating worryingly: Kosta knows there’s a rat, and the real Eddie’s son is on the scene. The episode ends on a note of high tension as Elliot goes back to his (Eddie’s) RV to meet with Eddie’s kid, who says he knows the man before him isn’t the real Eddie Wagner.
New episodes of Law & Order: Organized Crime air Thursdays at 10 p.m. on NBC.
About The Author
