User Reviews

Average, but good, episode that advanced the plot of OCCB's pursuit of Quan and his criminal organization. Stabler makes a connection with a father, Wen Shao, from China looking for his kidnapped son who was smuggled to NYC to be auctioned off as an indentured servant. It shows Stabler having a rare moment of true empathy with a victim, as Stabler himself knows what its like to be a father with a child in danger. There's even a funny moment when Stabler chastises Wen for loosing control when questioning a suspect about his son's whereabouts, which is a tad hypocritical since if it were Stabler's son (or anyone close to him) that was being held captive he would have torn that room to pieces and worked the suspect over good to get what he wanted, wouldn't be the first time he's done something like that. Would like to respond to the other review that accuses the series of being biases against Asian Americans by showing them as a stereotype of gangsters and smuggled immigrants. Well the simple fact is that NYC has several large Asian gangs, the Triads being one of the largest and wealthiest criminal organizations in the world and one of their main rackets besides smuggling drugs is smuggling illegal immigrants. But there have been plenty of Asian characters in the L&O franchise that are shown in a wide variety of vocations and stations. Plus both this series and the franchise have shown gangs of every race and practically every ethnicity, because there is no one race or ethnicity that has a monopoly on gangs and I think they have all been represented fairly. There's been African, African American, American, Chinese, Cuban, Hispanic, Irish, Italian, Jamaican, Japanese, Korean, Latino, Mexican, South American and many other ethnic gangs shown. In fact the other reviewer mentions that Irish Americans have not had similar portrayals, yet most of this season dealt with the OCCB going after an Irish gang, plus the same Italian gang from the previous season, and they included all the typical Irish and Italian stereotypes, every race and culture has them and I think L&O has always been fair about showing them all equally.

Law and Order: Organized Crime is really the only halfway decent Law and Order show on now. SVU is such an inept soap opera and sickening Benson lovefest. The Law and Order reboot is so stiff and dumbed down from the original, it should be ashamed.

But Organized Crime has both a great cast -- except the weird pale computer genius with no affect -- and a sense of drama and momentum the others lack, and you'll notice the acting is more realistic. None of the overly theatrical amateur acting on either SVU or the Law and Order reboot.

But something the Law and Order franchise in general has a poor track record of is in Asian American representation, not just in the lack of regular main cast members but in representating Asian Americans beyond the grotesque stereotypes. (Yes, yes, B. D. Wong, B. D. Wong, but he hasn't been a regular in 15 years.) There are more than a million Asian Americans in NYC alone, but if you watch Law and Order, they're either fresh off the boat, broken English speaking types or gangsters with some sort of insidious, Fu Manchu plot to spring on unsuspecting roundeyes and other Asian Americans. Oh, and 90 percent of the time, they're of Chinese descent, as though no other Asian ethnicities really exist.

To put that in perspective, the Asian American population in NYC is MORE THAN DOUBLE that of Irish Americans, yet we don't see the same limited portrayals.

Really? That's the best you can do?

This is all germane to the most recent arc in Organized Crime, which deals with -- yep, you guessed it -- Asian immigrants fresh off the boat and gangsters with an insidious plot.

Look, this has been done enough. I mean, it plays here like Year of the Dragon and that was 40 years ago. This first episode features more Asian American characters than an entire season of either SVU or the Law and Order reboot, so at least some Asian American actors are working, if temporarily. But the story so far just does the same old same old, using the same tired cliches and the same tired stereotypes.