Law & Order: Organized Crime is on the verge of diving into another intense case with the return in the 2023 TV schedule. While the Organized Crime Control Bureau got a win when Bell refused to dismantle the team at the end of 2022, the stakes are about to get sky-high again with Detective Jamie Whelan going undercover, and actor Brent Antonello opened up about whether his character is ready for it… and that tattoo reveal from the fall finale.
The winter premiere will see the team shift their focus to a new case involving a dangerous gang after Stabler gets word from an informant. The promo reveals that the gang is into street racing, and Jamie will be recruited to go undercover as somebody who knows cars. Organized Crime has sent seasoned detectives under in the past, and both Nova and Stabler survived their ordeals. But is Jamie ready?
When Brent Antonello spoke with CinemaBlend about his character and Organized Crime’s return from hiatus, he weighed in on whether or not Jamie is prepared to go undercover after what he went through in the fall:
Jamie, to me, is the wild card of the group. I remember talking to producers and we said that he was the golden boy. I'm a sports guy, and I grew up with sports, especially baseball, and my whole thing when I was reading it was, ‘Okay, this guy is the freshman high school baseball player, and he's thrown into the big leagues.’
Even as a “wild card,” Jamie wouldn’t have lasted this long alongside Bell and Stabler if he didn’t have the skills as a detective to go after some of the most dangerous criminals in New York, but he was also spotted by a target in a club when trying to be inconspicuous. Is he ready to go in as deep as Stabler did with the Albanian mob in Season 2? Jamie is one of the newcomers to the team in Season 3, so he may feel he has a lot to prove. Antonello continued:
Now, he has the skill for it, but is he up to the pressure that comes with it? And I think that's what we're gonna see in these episodes. Is he a little in over his head? Can he do it? Yeah, but when he's put into that position, how does his mind work? Is he able to take the pressures with it? What's Jamie like under pressure? We haven't really seen that. We've seen in a group setting, maybe when he's with Chris [Meloni], [Rick Gonzalez as] Reyes, Danielle [Moné Truitt], and Ainsley [Seiger as] Jet, but we haven't really seen him by himself under pressure situations. So I think that's going to be really intriguing for people to see.
Jamie is capable of doing what the job requires of him while undercover, but he also hasn’t had to deliver under an immense amount of pressure while also going solo to preserve an undercover identity. In fact, he has formed (or tried to form) different bonds with each of the rest of the team, although Jet hasn’t exactly embraced him with open arms despite his best efforts.
How he handles going undercover without them will clearly be a big part of the new arc for Season 3, and it comes not too long after he was shot in the line of duty. Jamie was still on the mend from his gunshot wound as of the end of the fall finale. Brent Antonello previewed what kind of time jump is in store for the unit when the winter premiere picks up on January 5:
They're processing a little bit, but I would say it would be about a few weeks after the fact. We're going out, so I would say a few weeks. I'm officially healed.
In the grand scheme of the Law & Order franchise in the 2022-2023 TV season, Jamie’s gunshot wound wasn’t too ugly compared to what Law & Order: SVU’s Rollins went through back in September. The injury did come with one casualty, however: SpongeBob SquarePants.
Or, more specifically, the SpongeBob tattoo that Jamie evidently had on his shoulder but never made an appearance on screen. The detective doesn’t necessarily seem like the type to get SpongeBob tattooed permanently on his skin, and didn’t detail the story behind it. Brent Antonello shared his reaction to first Jamie being shot in the fall finale, and then the reveal of what his tattoo had been:
Reading that, you're like, 'Oh, my God, no.' I thought I would get word that I would be let go from the show, but fortunately, it just hit my SpongeBob tattoo… I have a feeling that's going to come back to me somehow. I was asking Sean [Jablonski], the showrunner. I think that's going to come back. It wasn't just placed in there for no reason. So we'll see what happens with that. I'm very interested to know the backstory as well.
It’s hard to guess what Sean Jablonski might have in mind for a SpongeBob tattoo backstory as the latest showrunner to take over Law & Order: Organized Crime, but I for one am hoping that Season 3 has time to drop some details behind it! Organized Crime can be a heavy show, and a SpongeBob discussion would bring some lightness. At the very least, Stabler’s expression would surely be a thing to behold!
Check out the winter premiere of Law & Order: Organized Crime Season 3 on Thursday, January 5 at 10 p.m. ET on NBC, following Law & Order: SVU (which just addressed Benson’s feelings for Stabler in its fall finale) at 9 p.m. and Law & Order (which shed more light on Mehcad Brooks’ Jalen Shaw at the end of 2022) at 8 p.m. You can also revisit past episodes streaming with a Peacock Premium subscription.
