Review: Law & Order: Organized Crime – Season 1, Episode 6 “I Got This Rat”

Once I finish this review I will be caught up with the show. Give me the strength!

I’m excited for this review because I can finally start dropping theories about things that haven’t happened yet. And I have a DOOZY of one to share with all of you a little later on.

We begin with the Stabler family – sans Dickey – at Mass. (There’s always at least one kid from a super Catholic family that stops going to church when they’re adults. Ask me how I know!)

And Angela Wheatley is setting up for a Romantic Evening – apparently she thinks she’s getting Elliot’s D as soon as he gets there. When Elliot comes to the door he stares at her for a few moments before saying “cuff her.” I literally cackled.

Fuck you, Angela.

Richard Wheatley is meeting with another one of the Mafia families – the pandemic means business is booming and instead of being at each other’s throats they’ve decided to go into business together. Wheatley has set them up with a bunch of computer equipment in a nice warehouse, and what they all need now is a buyer for some COVID vaccines. The buyer is a russian mobster with an impressive rap sheet. But the OC team doesn’t want that – they want something they can actually pin on Richard Wheatley, so they’re gonna swap him out with one of Stabler’s Italian CIs.

Back at OC headquarters, Angela Wheatley is in a holding cell and she wants to talk to Stabler, but he refuses. He’s going to have to explain what happened to Ayanna one of these days!

Because Stabler is being a stubborn ass, Ayanna has to go talk to Angela Wheatley. And Ayanna can’t help herself – she brings up an article she read on Angela. Ayanna is upset that this successful, intelligent woman of color who was working to give kids of color access to STEM fields is now in a holding cell. Angela says once Ayanna has children she’ll understand the lengths a mother – specifically a black mother – will go to in order to keep her son safe from the police. Considering Ayanna has a nephew who will probably never play guitar again due to brutality suffered at the hands of the police, I’d say Ayanna knows exactly where Angela is coming from.

Later, Stabler finally goes to talk to Angela because he wants to know why. Why did she order the hit on Kathy?

This brings me to a theory I had about this episode that I’d say ended up being about 80% correct. Everyone wondered why Angela would want to kill Kathy. I thought that the bust Stabler made in Puglia had blown back onto Rafiq, leading to his death. Angela told us that Rafiq was the love of her life the first time we met her. So, in a bit of Shakespearean fuckery, she decided that if Stabler took the love of her life, she was going to take the love of his (except the love of Stabler’s life is currently walking around NY with a Captain’s shield and a gun.)

Angela confesses that she was grieving the death of her son, who she believes was killed at the hands of police officers during a raid. A raid conducted by one Elliot Stabler. Or so she was told. Since he took Rafiq, she decided to take Kathy. (I was very close!) But what really happened was Rafiq was working for Richard Wheatley and selling knock off Purple Magic. Richard was the one who had Rafiq killed.

So, here’s a new theory. Whatever Stabler did in Puglia made things very difficult for Richard Wheatley. So when he had to kill Rafiq because he was ripping off Purple Magic, Richard told Angela that it was Stabler and asked if she wanted to kill him. But she didn’t want to kill Stabler, she wanted Stabler to suffer. This fucked up Richard’s plans, but he really doesn’t know how badly (yet.) As for the “romantic relationship” – she was fucking with Stabler’s head. There’s more than one way to “get” someone. If he had actually slept with Angela and then realized she was the one who ordered Kathy’s death, he’d probably go home and eat his gun.

(Please note that this theory only works if Angela is an innocent bystander who was being used by her ex. I don’t actually believe that she’s innocent…which I’ll talk about later.)

Let’s take a break from the theories and tears to just appreciate this man in all his glory:

Those shoulders are broad and that waist is snatched.

Again, Angela Wheatley is seriously fucked up, but I can see her thinking “I hate this man but also look at this man…maybe banging him wouldn’t be a terrible idea…” This is a thought process I understand.

The next day Ayanna’s wife comes to tell her about the lawsuit – this is the scene that I feel like should have been in the last episode.

Angela’s lawyer is also in OC headquarters and he wants her to be “queen for a day” – this is where she can give them info and, if the cops want, they can use it to make a deal with her. However, they can’t use anything she says against her. She gives them information on Richard – he’s ego is the key to brining him down. She also knows about the sting they’re planning because she “overheard.” I don’t buy that.

She tells them how much Richard loves a shape called an “oloid.”

Meanwhile, Dana Wheatley is having the house swept for bugs and you know they find the one in the wine cellar. However, on Richard’s previous orders, they leave it there because they don’t want to tip the cops off that they’re onto them.

Stabler gets a call – Wheatley’s real buyer is at a Russian bathhouse and he and Ayanna have to go arrest him. I will admit, I never had “Naked Man Fight” on my “Things That Will Happen on Organized Crime” bingo card, but here we are. Now that the naked guy has been arrested, the OC crew can use their CI, and they butter Wheatley up by having that guy send him an oloid.

So, here comes my DOOZY of a theory – The oloid is actually code. It’s a code from Angela to Richard telling him that something is wrong. The second he gets it from this new buyer, he knows that the operation is a set up, and he figures that the cops have Angela. And I say this because he goes into his “wine lair” to talk to Bekher about how amazing the oloid is – but he knows there’s a bug in there. Stabler & co. are walking right into a trap and they don’t even know it. (This is also why I think Angela is full of shit when she’s saying she wants to take Richard down. There’s no way she isn’t just as driven and power-hungry as he is.)

Then Stabler’s phone rings – it’s Wheatley. He wants to buy Stabler a cup of coffee because he knows that Stabler can’t drink American coffee. How? The Mole Washburn, obviously. Jesus, but Stabler is going to be SERIOUSLY fucked in the next episode.

Wheatley tells Stabler that he can’t trust anything Angela is telling him. I think of everything Wheatley says in this scene, this is the key. Especially if it turns out that the oliod really is a signal from Angela to Richard. I also 100% believe him when he says that Angela is still in love with him.

Stabler pulls out the picture of Kathy and shows it to Richard. He tells him that Kathy was not a vengeful person, and I’m struck by the thought that this is the most intimate character detail we’ve ever learned about her. She was always just Elliot’s wife. They married young and had kids. They had marital problems, some of them caused by the job, others caused by Kathy’s insecurity around Elliot & Olivia’s relationship. She didn’t like Dani Beck, either. But that’s all we’ve ever known about her. She was a sketch of a character, not a real character. Again, poor Kathy Stabler.

Back at the Wheatley compound, Style MVP Dana Wheatley has been hard at work trying to figure out where the bug came from. Finally, she’s deduced that it was planted by Gina, who is currently pretending not to know how to fire a gun with Richie. Richard and Dana immediately pull Richie aside and tell him that Gina is a rat and she needs to be eliminated post haste. But Richie isn’t the cold-blooded killer that Dana apparently is. Neither Richard or Dana think Richie can do it, but he promises he can do it. He wants to prove himself so badly to his father that he’s prepared to become a monster.

Richie drives Gina out to some rundown creepy place in the middle of the night. Gina knows something is wrong and when Richie pulls a gun on her she doesn’t lie to him. She disarms him and tries to get him to work with her, but Izak Bekher has been sent to make sure Richie can get the job done. I honestly thought Izak was going to shoot them both but no. Richie shoots Gina twice and she collapses, the ground running red beneath her.

And that’s the end of the episode! A new one drops tomorrow – how right or wrong will I be on my theories? Will Richard get Olivia involved? Will Ayanna kick Stabler square in the nuts when she finds out that he kissed Angela Wheatley? We’ll just have to watch and see!

Style Corner!