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Warning: This post contains spoilers from Law & Order: Organized Crime Season 4, Episode 10.
Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be young, male Organized Crime Control Bureau detectives.
As much as I wanted that body in the back of the pickup truck in last week’s Law & Order: Organized Crime to be a fakeout, this week’s episode confirmed the grim truth: Det. Samir “Sam” Bashir (played by Abubakr Ali) is most certainly dead, killed by those in charge of the heroin operation in which Joe Jr. also is involved.
Sam’s murder is brutal. It’s a huge loss. It’s also the third time in the show’s short history that this has happened: Someone joins Sgt. Ayanna Bell’s team at the start of a season and is deceased before the finale’s credits roll. And people keep showing up for the job! Isn’t word getting around the New York Police Department by now?
To be fair, Season 1’s casualty, Det. Diego Morales (played by Michael Rivera), had a heavy hand in his own demise. In the Season 1 finale, we learned that the cop took a $2 million bribe from Richard Wheatley in exchange for killing Wheatley’s ex-wife, Angela, so she couldn’t testify against him. But Diego was kinda bad at it; his first attempt (poisoning) failed, and when he posed as a medical professional to finish the job, Bell, Stabler and Olivia Benson caught him at the hospital. (Read a full recap.) He didn’t have to die, but he knew that he also would never go free. So he didn’t let up in the shootout; when Bell eventually shot him in self-defense, it was a clear case of suicide-by-cop.
Maybe Sam’s death hits so hard because it follows so closely on the heels of Det. Jamie Whelan’s death in the Season 3 finale. (Read a full recap.) You remember Jamie (played by Brent Antonello), right? Tall, Stabler fan, had a flirty, budding romance going with Jet? It felt like we — and Jet — were just getting to know him when he took a bullet as the team closed in on Shadowërk creator Kyle. (After that monologue about the Canadian rail trip he’d planned, though, you just knew that young Whelan’s minutes were numbered.) Though Jamie didn’t die in the field, his spinal injury left him severely paralyzed and staring down a lifetime of never being able to move his body again.
In the hospital, a despondent Whelan was unwilling to hear Jet’s pleas for him to keep up hope (as well as to return her declaration of love). He asked his friend and colleague Bobby Reyes to disconnect the equipment that was keeping him alive, but a horrified Bobby refused. Eventually, though, Whelan’s father arrived at the facility. Jamie flatlined and died soon after; viewers were led to believe that his dad turned off his life-support machines, granting the wish that Reyes wouldn’t.
All we’re saying is that this is A LOT OF LOSS of characters that we were just starting to get to know/care about when they were killed off. Danielle Moné Truitt, who plays Bell, herself acknowledged the deep grief that the OCCB has gone through recently when we talked to her at the beginning of the season.
“I can’t believe that Bell would not, in her own mind — she might never ever say it out loud — but I can’t believe that she would never have to question, like, ‘Is it me?'” Truitt said at the time. “Like, ‘Is there just something in me where people I’m connected to just keep dying?’ Every time there’s a new team member, somebody is killed! You know what I mean?”
And if two is a coincidence but three makes a trend? For her next hire, the sergeant might want to think about a good publicist.
You forgot Gina the undercover cop whom Wheatley’s son killed. I think the fatalities adding credibility to the show. This unit isn’t dealing with normal crimes of passions or opportunities but dealing with organizations with highly training, money, smart people not average people so losing cops showing the danger of these and reality too. They don’t work away unscratched every time.
How about next time someone leaving. it is because they can’t handle the demand and pressure of this unit.
Was Gina a UC? It’s been a while since I saw S1 and I missed it in some spots, but I was under the impression she was a CI. I thought they drew a parallel to her death in S3 when Vince died.
I agree that the nature of the crimes this unit deals with makes the higher death count more realistic. These types of organizations have self-preservation built into their DNA.
Yes Gina was a cop.
I really liked Sam and was hoping he would be elevated to series regular after he stuck around past that first case. Alas, we’re not allowed to have nice things.
I was so hoping for the same and he also brought much needed representation to TV. I hate that they did this on so many levels, especially so close after Jamie. And I also was hoping for a fake-out but this headline ruined it for me before I got a chance to watch as storm coverage meant I couldn’t watch last night. At least it is in the beginning of the episode so didn’t ruin too much, but this is beginning to feel like torture porn. I have been rooting for it to be renewed but now I’m not sure I want to keep watching. Let’s not forget that young woman he saved, only for her to lose her life elsewhere! It’s become too much.
I get why it serves the show to kill off Sam. The heightened potential of losses in their work is logical. But I don’t have to like it. Sam would have had a lot of long-term potential as a member of the team.
The show has been very good this season. Hoping for renewal.
Jamie’s death was heartbreaking. He was my favorite new character last season. and now Sam. So sad, and what’s worse he left a wife and two little children behind. I guess there are no happy families in this show. I should know better and not to get attached to any new hires in future episodes
Guess it’s more realistic just like the young police officers who have lost their lives in real life. I really liked the character too, though, and was hoping he would be sticking around. Think this season has been the best so far for this show.
I am blaming this on the show’s producer, Dick Wolf, here. You are fighting to keep this show alive past this season, that’s fine. You want people to recognize this show and get ratings, that’s great. But how can you keep this show on this air past this season, when you keep killing everyone off!!!???
I mean you want OC to keep going for another season, stop killing off the characters. You are trying to sell that the OCCB is a dangerous unit to work in, we get it, we understand it. Still, with the officers you keep killing off, it is hard to establish a chemistry and connection with them when you keep arranging the cast list every year. What’s next, Reyes killed in a car-bomb explosion?
I am not saying that the characters should say on for 12 years like Stabler or Rollins, but they got to stay on past a year for us to get to know them. Same thing with SVU.
Dick Wolf is trimming the cast aka reducing expenses in hopes of a pickup. Bottom line, this show has always underperformed and it loses a huge chunk of its lead in week after week. Something tells me, if Stabler wasn’t the main character, this show wouldn’t have gone into production after the strike.
I liked the addition of “Sam” and it represented a non represented element of characters on TV. What a shame.
The problem is if the show keeps killing off characters then deaths become less shocking and unrealistic as well as hard to care about characters if they are just going to kill them off.
I hate that every cop who joins the team is a super fan of Elliott’s. His reputation precedes him – why aren’t there any good cops who are against crooked ones like stabler! And why do all the good ones have to die?! I’d really like to see stabler get his comeuppance soon.