‘Law & Order: Organized Crime’ Premiere Sneak Peek: Meet New Team Member — Who’s Not Happy? (VIDEO)
Oh, things are going to be rough for the newest member of the team in Law & Order: Organized Crime Season 4 (premiering January 18), and TV Insider has an exclusive first look at his entrance and introduction.
Tate Ellington comes in as Dr. Kyle Vargas, the newest member of the team as part of the NYPD testing out AI technology that could revolutionize their investigations. And he’s not exactly welcomed with open arms in our sneak peek, even though he does have bagels.
First of all, he’s several days early. “I thought it couldn’t hurt to get started,” Vargas explains. “I’m going to get you a new security system because that one, that one was way too easy.” Then, he goes to put his bag down on Jamie’s (Brent Antonello) desk; everyone immediately protests. (Jamie died in the Season 3 finale.)
It falls on Sergeant Ayanna Bell (Danielle Moné Truitt) to try to smooth things over after she was blindsided by his arrival. “His firm was contracted by the Mayor’s office,” she begins explaining. To “make your lives wondrously more simple,” Vargas says. Bell explains he’s part of a pilot program using AI analytics to aid in investigations and is integrating his system into ours as part of a trial run.
Jet’s (Ainsley Seiger) all for it. Watch the full clip above for a tease of her and Vargas’ history as well as how Detective Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni) and Detective Bobby Reyes’ (Rick Gonzalez) thoughts about the new team member.
These reactions aren’t too surprising. After all, Seiger told us on the red carpet for the celebration of SVU‘s 25th season, “She’s doing her best [this season], which sometimes is not enough, but I think she’s trying as hard as she can because we’ve been shaken up quite a bit and we’ve got a new addition to the task force in the AI department. But I think that’s exciting for Jet so I think that’s a little bit of the reprieve from the normal void that’s been left by Jamie.”
And Truitt already previewed for us that “for Stabler, it’s an age thing. He’s like, what do you mean, a computer can do my job better than me? Nobody wants to be told that, you know what I mean? And I think it threatens his idea of policing. And then for Reyes, I think it’s just too soon for him to have another person in our space while we’re still trying to deal with Jamie’s loss. It wouldn’t matter who it was.”
Will Vargas be able to win them over? Something tells us that’s not going to be easy.
Law & Order: Organized Crime, Season 25 Premiere, Thursday, January 18, 10/9c, NBC
