“Law & Order” returned with a jolt, thrusting viewers into a subway nightmare. The death of Raymond James Clark, a former police cadet turned men’s rights activist, initially seemed like a tragic accident. But as Detectives Shaw and Riley dug deeper, the narrative swerved from a simple whodunnit into a twisted exploration of online radicalization and government overreach.
The detectives quickly zeroed in on Luke Bragg, the charismatic yet unsettling leader of the men’s rights group Clark had recently abandoned. Was this a hate crime? A revenge killing? The plot thickened when Clark’s best friend, Noah Turan, emerged as a suspect. Turan, seemingly an all-American kid, harbored a dark secret: a planned terrorist attack using a fake bomb.
The real bomb, however, was the revelation of FBI agent Joshua Haddad’s involvement. Haddad, it turned out, had radicalized Turan as part of a controversial “lure and trap” operation greenlit by none other than District Attorney Jack McCoy. The courtroom showdown between McCoy and ADA Price was inevitable, crackling with tension as McCoy defended his program while Price argued its ethical pitfalls.
While the main plot tackled weighty issues of terrorism and civil liberties, a secondary storyline offered a lighter, albeit still complex, counterpoint. Katharine Vernon, a woman caught on video having an affair, claimed amnesia while her potentially present husband lurked in the background. This thread, involving a private investigator and a web of infidelity, felt somewhat shoehorned in but served as a reminder of the show’s classic formula: two distinct cases intersecting, however tenuously.
“Enemy of the State” was a solid return for “Law & Order.” The episode managed to blend ripped-from-the-headlines relevance with the procedural elements fans have come to expect. The exploration of online radicalization felt timely, and the ethical questions surrounding the FBI’s tactics resonated, even if the resolution felt a bit too neat. While some might find the secondary plot a distraction, it offered a welcome breather from the intensity of the main storyline.
“Law & Order” airs Thursdays at 8/7c on NBC.