With Reggie Bogdani in custody, Detective Stabler and the rest of our friends from Law & Order: Organized Crime looked ready to wrap up their latest operation. But that didn’t mean the series didn’t have some more twists in store for us, courtesy of the Kosta Organization. When you think about a good TV drama, you want it to always keep you on your toes. So far, this one has yet to let us down.
Thanks to some kind of iffy promotion, a lot of viewers probably knew ahead of time the last days of Stabler’s time undercover as Eddie Wagner weren’t going to go smoothly. The promotional trailer for Law & Order: Organized Crime 2×07 featured an explosion and even asked the question of whether or not Elliot would be double crossed. But what the writing team did really well, all along, was simultaneously plant the seeds for where that betrayal might come from and keep from foreshadowing so much that it give the plot away.
There was always a chance that Agnes Bogdani’s ability to read coffee grounds might tip her, and by extension someone else, off. She always seemed to be watching, listening, and thinking. But if she was going to be part of making life more difficult for Elliot, we thought it might all unfold in a traditional, familiar sort of way. Maybe she’d expose El for saving too many of the girls during the trafficking bust. Perhaps whatever she saw when she read the grounds for Flutura got them both thinking, and maybe “Eddie’s” true identity would be revealed, causing someone to need to come and save his ass.
Flutura seemed like the obvious choice for someone to stab Stabler in the back. If a woman was going to be his demise, surely it would be her and not the “helpless” old woman. Well. We should’ve known better. Because we don’t underestimate women in this house, even—and maybe especially—when they’re little, old ladies.
Things did not go down in “High Planes Grifter” in the way we’ve been conditioned—by stale, repetitive storytelling on other series—to expect they would. That’s not the story Law & Order: Organized Crime told at all.
We knew, from the first time we saw Reggie with his mom, that they had a very special relationship. It’s even been pretty obvious, from the way Christopher Meloni played the character, that El saw something ideal there. With the fraught relationship many longtime fans know him to have once had with his own mother, the Bogdanis’ mother/son dynamic was clearly something our hero was going to zero in on. He was going to ache for it a little bit—and he was maybe going to view it with the type of rose-colored glasses that one only ever manages to find when they think the grass is always greener.
And so, when Elliot thought all he needed was for Agnes Bogdani to come meet with her son in order for him to flip Reggie, he put the entire operation in a bad position. No, he wasn’t wrong that Reggie would do the right thing when faced with the mother he adored and took care of…But he over-estimated Agnes’ love for her son and underestimated just how much she valued this idea of “besa” and protecting the Kosta Organization at all costs.
Apparently, someone also hired an incredibly vain and incredibly stupid court reporter in the process. Goodbye to her. She got the shot in the back she deserved.
After all was said and done with Law & Order: Organized Crime 2×07, all that was left was a sense of just how badly a few miscalculations could ruin everything. Between the money-hungry court reporter and Louis Chinasky (there’s no way that guy survived the explosion, right?), the body count is higher. And while the Organized Crime task force was able to catch many, many members of the Kosta Organization, the biggest players managed to evade them.
Or, well, at least they did for now. There’s no telling what’s next, and we’re not even going to try to come up with a theory because this series really does kill it in terms of giving us these stories we could never actually come up with on our own.
The only thing we can say for certain is there’s a very broken Reggie Bogdani out there now.
“You’re here because you’re an insignificant piece of crap, and we’re going to give you a chance to lock up a way more significant piece of crap. Think about that.”
He struggled so much with the choice to turn on his family and only, in the end, did it for his mom—but look how that turned out. And we already knew Reggie didn’t see himself as anything other than a failure, a loser who would never get to move up in the organization.
“Even you knew you couldn’t do it…This was your time to die, Reg. You were supposed to finish the job. But you were supposed to get killed. Suicide by cop—that’s what they wanted. They wanted you to get arrested. Because you might be part of the family, but if you’re a problem to the family, you get shot in the head…You’ll get disappeared.”
Now, he also knows that his own uncle wanted him dead, and when he did the only thing possible to save his own life and guarantee his mom would get to keep him as her caregiver, the mother he loved more than anything in the world…also turned on him. And because of all of this, throughout “High Planes Grifter,” we really saw Reggie fall apart. It was the destruction of the man’s foundations, brick by broken brick.
Dash Mihok really stole the show in Law & Order: Organized Crime 2×07. He’s done a great job as Reggie all season, and he’s just built on that week after week. But “High Planes Grifter” was really truly something to behold as the character went on this journey of accepting what he had to do, even as he agonized over it. And the pure rage in confronting Elliot, which we all knew was just him masking the pain and self-loathing in learning that he’d been duped by a fake…All we can really say about that is just…Wow. That’s good stuff.
But what about the fake in question? Elliot gained a soft spot for Reggie during all of this, and now, he’s going to have to live with the guilt of not only failing to see past his own blind spots enough to realize Agnes would choose the family over her son, but also taking this weak link and making his entire world fall apart.
Then, of course, there was what happened with the explosion. He wanted to do right by Eddie’s son, probably to handle his own feelings of inadequacy over missing so much with his own children…and look where that got him. Look where that got everyone.
Maybe if Stabler hadn’t been so distracted by wanting to fix everything for everyone, by the mess he left behind at home, and his own continued grieving process, he would’ve been able to see clearly. But he’s human. So, he wasn’t. And now, we can’t wait to see how he gets himself out of this mess as Law & Order: Organized Crime wraps up this arc.
Scattered thoughts on Law & Order: Organized Crime 2×07
- Elliot had to watch Teddy Garcia witnessing his wife’s murder, then see this kid he sort of adopted explode like his own wife did. Liv voice: “There goes months of counseling down the drain.”
- “Obviously, genius doesn’t run in your family…” Y’all need not ever underestimate a woman ever again.
- Zaddy Stabler’s entrance and stance when he first revealed his true identity to Reggie, though…Like, can I get pregnant from that?
- “I want to talk to the guy who betrayed me!” The EO fandom for the past 10 years, to be honest.
- “I’m your boy. I got your back, Reg. You’re my ride or die…You’re a liar.“
- Olivia Benson flipping a table and threatening to kill this man for his betrayal when.
- While we’re at it: Liv embracing her El, then smacking the shit out of him a la Agnes when she first saw Reggie in this episode, when.
- “I’d do the same thing for my own son.” We know, Daddy Stabler. We. Know.
- Shield number 6313. Cry.
- The tension when that idiot court reporter was waiting for her money (and her death). Such good TV.
- Can’t say as anyone should miss Edmund Ross. Sucks that we lost a key witness, though.
- “Great leadership, Sarge.” “Great work, Detective.” Painful feelings, you stupid show.
- No, but really. We knew something was going to blow up because of whoever cut the promo thinking it was good to include that…But I was still like “omgwtf.” How does Law & Order: Organized Crime do it?
- Hilarious to me that Elliot was sent, as Elliot himself, to raid the Briscu house. Boy, you’ve seen enough of Flutura. Go cleanse yourself.
- It’s so nice seeing him with his fancy suits and badge again, though. He’s coming home (to you), Liv. Soon.
- “It was something so vile, I would not have believed it had I not seen it with my own eyes.” Me, watching this dumb man with Flutura and Angela.
- “They live by a code, known as besa. It means, literally, to keep a promise. It means the unquestioning loyalty to a criminal enterprise and a willingness to commit extreme acts of violence to protect and enrich that enterprise.” You should’ve thought about that before thinking that using Agnes was going to be easy, Zaddy.
Law & Order: Organized Crime airs Thursdays at 10/9c on NBC.
