Law & Order: Organized Crime is on the verge of returning to NBC after a brief break, but undoubtedly not brief enough for fans who have been dying to know Jet’s fate after she was kidnapped by Seamus and stuffed in a trunk when her undercover operation went sideways. The last episode ended on a cliffhanger with Jet captured by a man without much to lose and the rest of her unit in the dark about her situation. Now, after revealing her reaction to Jet’s fate, actress Ainsley Seiger has opened up about Jet’s double standard compared to Stabler and how the original plan for Jet’s kidnapping actually changed.
Jet was determined to pull off her undercover operation once she earned Seamus’ trust, even after Bell and Stabler began to suspect that she was in too deep. After surveillance photos caught her kissing Seamus, Bell was ready to pull Jet off the case, leading Jet to rightfully point out that Stabler has “done so much worse than this.” (Flutura from Season 2 would probably agree.) Bell reminded the young detective that they weren’t talking about Stabler. Speaking with CinemaBlend, Ainsley Seiger weighed in on whether she sees a double standard for Jet and Stabler:
I do, and it's complicated. I know people are talking about how there's not a double standard because he's been doing this for how many years and Jet is 20-blank years old – unconfirmed – and hasn't been at it as long as he has, so he has more room to break the rules because he's a very seasoned detective and all that. But I think part of what is so frustrating for Jet is that she clearly has gone into this with a real desperation to prove that she is capable of doing more than just sitting behind a computer and making phone calls. There's a lot of nuance, right?
As anybody who has been watching Stabler going back to his Law & Order: SVU days knows, he definitely had a lot of experience with investigating crime in New York City before Organized Crime. That said, he has gotten away with a lot of crossing lines on OC, to the point that even Bell hit a breaking point with him in the first half of the season. As AInsley Seiger said, there’s a lot of nuance, and the situation only got more complicated the longer that Jet stayed under. The actress continued:
On the one hand, I know that Jet is feeling like, 'Oh, well, just because I did this, all you see is this lovesick little girl, and I'm so much more than that.' But at the same time, right after Jet has brought up this double standard, Bell points out that she's still wearing the necklace, and she realizes why she's still wearing the necklace for the first time, and it's because this is actually deeper than I think she ever meant for it to be, or realized that it was. It's tough, because on the one hand, I agree there is a bit of a double standard. And at the same time, I'm not sure how true of a statement it is that it was a tactical mistake and not an emotional mistake.
While there is a double standard when it comes to Stabler’s undercover actions compared to Jet’s, he does have the experience to usually get himself out of harrowing problems… even when those problems are of his own making. Jet doesn’t seem to have any advantages after being kidnapped, and it may come down to whether or not she can appeal to Seamus’ better angels despite her deception. Will her emotional ties to Seamus actually pay off? The grave in the promo suggests that things will get worse!
Of course, her current situation is the result of a lot going wrong very quickly. When trying to flee the club before Murphy could kill both her and Seamus, Seamus accidentally knocked her wig off and discovered that she’d been hiding something. Jet made the decision to reveal that she’s really an Organized Crime cop and not a woman named Juliet. That decision more or less backfired, so did Jet make the right call in identifying herself after the wig came off? Ainsley Seiger shared her perspective:
I do. I think she made the right call, despite how things went awry. I've seen a lot of people saying, you know, 'Why couldn't she have just said she was wearing a wig? It's not that weird. It's normal. She could have just said she got a bad haircut or she wanted to see what she looks like with bangs.' I had the same exact thought, and actually the first script that I got of the episode before the [script] that I read at home that ended the way that this episode aired was totally different. There was wig stuff, but it was that I took it off myself and there was more agency in the decision. But it's so much more compelling to me, not only as an actor but also as a viewer, to see someone having to make decisions on the fly.
If you thought that Jet could have just continued playing Juliet and said that she wears a wig for a completely normal, non-undercover cop reason, Ainsley Seiger originally thought the same! According to the actress, Jet actually deliberately took off her wig in an earlier draft of the script. That version would have been Jet taking control rather than reacting, but Seiger explained why she sees the final version as more compelling:
Not knowing if they'll pay off the way that they intend them to pay off. I don't watch TV to watch people make the right decisions. [laughs] That doesn't really interest me that much, but I think something that I would say about the scene is interpreting it through the lens of, alright, the wig is off. Now he looks like he's clocking something and whether that's 'This is weird,' or 'Something is off about you,' [and] Jet is also aware of what has just happened in the club. She witnessed the moment between Seamus and Murphy, of Murphy knows that he did not do what he was supposed to do and his life is effectively over because of Jet's interference.
Seamus (played by The Vampire Diaries alum Michael Malarkey) immediately looked a lot more suspicious once he realized "Juliet" was wearing a wig, so much so that it seemed like she’d have a hard time selling him that she just wanted bangs. Jet had to make a call, and it might have gone off without a hitch… if she hadn’t been distracted at just the wrong moment and gave him the chance to attack. Seiger went on:
She knows that the one thing that she still has in her arsenal is the fact that she's a cop and she can use this to save him. I don't feel as though Jet blew her cover because she thought there was no other way or because she was backed into a corner. I think it was a real moment of 'I can fix this. I can make this right.'
Is it too late for Jet to fix the situation and make it right? She wasn’t exactly in a position of power at the end of the cliffhanger, and it seems unlikely that she can overpower him. Still, if she can keep her head, she might have the emotional advantage over him. It may all depend on how volatile he is, and whether his sense of betrayal is stronger than any feelings for her. Based on an early clip for the episode that airs on February 16, she has a long way to go if she wants the upper hand. Check out Seamus taking Jet to a grave:
See if Jet gets out of her situation with Seamus (and how quickly the Organized Crime team can get all hands on deck to help her) with the next new episode of Law & Order: OC on Thursday, February 16 at 10 p.m. ET on NBC, following an episode of Law & Order: SVU that will shine the spotlight on Ice-T’s Fin. If you want to revisit Jet’s kidnapping cliffhanger, you can find that Organized Crime episode streaming with a Peacock Premium subscription.
