[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the Law & Order: Organized Crime Season 4 premiere “Memory Lane.”]
Listen, navigating grief can be a tricky thing, and everyone won’t necessarily make the best decisions.
The Organized Crime Control Bureau lost one of their own (Brent Antonello‘s Detective Jamie Whelan) in the last finale. We already knew heading into the Law & Order: Organized Crime Season 4 premiere that Sergeant Ayanna Bell has been in therapy, as Danielle Moné Truitt told us. But it’s in the episode that we find out how Detectives Jet Slootmaekers (Ainsley Seiger) and Bobby Reyes (Rick Gonzalez) have been dealing with their loss: They’ve been having an affair.
“A lot of what Rick and I have talked about — because we’ve had so many really extensive conversations about it — is that grief is a funny thing and it makes you do really weird, crazy stuff. And I think to go from this trio of friends to suddenly a very lonely duo is jarring and odd and really uncomfortable,” Seiger tells TV Insider. “And I think there’s a lot to be said for the way that a relationship can deepen and develop when the context changes and especially when you’re seeking out someone who knows what you’ve been through, who you don’t have to talk to about it because they already get it. There’s less of a need for over-explaining or trauma dumping. There’s just an instant connection, and I think that is helping for sure.”
That being said, “that’s equally what’s hurting her, is that this connection comes with so much stress and so much moral ambiguity,” she continues. “And I don’t think it’s as healing as either of them think that it may be.”
Truitt agrees. “They’re definitely not dealing with it in the best way, but they’re dealing with it in the only way that they know how. And that’s the thing about grief. You just don’t know how it’s going to play out in your life and everybody grieves differently. You can’t say, ‘Oh, you’re grieving the wrong way. It is just this way of grieving is probably not going to lead you to a place that’s most beneficial for your life. Those are the conversations she has to have with them,” she says. Yes, Bell, of course, knows — but they don’t know that she knows, at first.
“She doesn’t speak unless she’s ready to speak about something,” Truitt points out. “In the first two episodes, she’s just kind of watching. I don’t think they know that she knows, but she’s a 40-year-old woman. Of course it doesn’t take a lot to see, oh, there’s something going on here.”
Jet will be shocked when Bell brings it to her attention, which the sergeant will do in a very Bell way. “She tells her she knows without coming out and saying, ‘You’re sleeping with Reyes,’” Truitt shares. “She lets her know she knows without letting her know she knows. Bell does that all the time. Season 1, one of my favorite scenes with me and Chris [Meloni] was when we were at a soul food restaurant, and he’s about to confess something to me, and I’m like, ‘Shut up. Do not confess that. We don’t have to talk about what it is to know what it is.’ I think that’s the beauty of Bell and the thing that makes her awesome at being a leader. She’s able to protect and let you know you’re still loved, you’re still a part of what we’re doing, but I will check you at the same time.”
Elsewhere, upon returning home from being undercover, Detective Elliot Stabler (Meloni) calls and leaves a message for his former partner, Captain Olivia Benson (SVU‘s Mariska Hargitay). “Maybe I just wanted to hear your voice,” he admits. And he smiles upon seeing the press conference about one victory for her during the SVU premiere investigation.
Law & Order: Organized Crime, Thursdays, 10/9c, NBC
