LAW & ORDER Season 22 Finale Recap: ‘Open Wounds’

[Warning: This post contains spoilers for the Thursday, May 18 season finale of LAW & ORDER, “Open Wounds.”]

Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston) quasi-faced off against an unlikely opponent on the LAW & ORDER season finale on Thursday, May 18.

In “Open Wounds”—which marked Waterston’s 400th episode—a senator was gunned down at his daughter’s wedding.

“Gun violence is a national plague,” McCoy said during a press conference when the suspect was caught. “The only way to affect real change is to move past all the political acrimony and pass strong and effective common sense gun control legislation. The question for all of us is, ‘Had enough?’”

McCoy spotted a woman standing at the back of the press conference and was visibly thrown, but continued on. “We can’t become a place where people settle their political differences at the point of a gun. Or where talented, compassionate men and women avoid public service out of fear for their lives.”

After, Jack greeted the woman—his daughter, Rebecca (Elisabeth Waterston, Sam’s real-life daughter). “So much for keeping your politics a secret,” she joked. Jack acknowledged he couldn’t help it. Unfortunately for Jack, though, she was there for a work-related reason: She was defending the shooter.

The father-daughter pair went to a meal, where Rebecca filled her father in on her life—problems with her husband, but they were back in counseling; their son was waiting to hear back about law school.

But when Rebecca tried to bring the topic of conversation back to the case, Jack pushed back, insisting he couldn’t talk to her about the case and that she’d have to deal with his colleague, Nolan Price (Hugh Dancy).

However, with their suspect a survivor of a mass shooting—who claimed he killed the senator after he revoked his planned vote on a gun safety bill—even Price was cautious about how to approach the case going up against his boss’ kid.

“I love my daughter dearly,” Jack insisted. “But this is just another case. And she’s just another lawyer.”



Unfortunately for Price, that quickly became the least of his issues as hearing the testimony triggered his own PTSD after witnessing the aftermath of a shooting earlier in the season. He was unable to proceed with his line of questioning and was granted recess by the judge.

After, Sam Maroun (Odelya Halevi) tried to check on her friend. “The defendant’s testimony was compelling and I have tremendous empathy for him,” Nolan said.

“I bet,” she replied. “You’ve been through something similar. What you saw in the subway last year was horrific.”

“It’s different,” Nolan noted

“Trauma is trauma,” Sam insisted. “There’s no need to minimize your experience.”

Nolan brushed it off, insisting he was fine. But as he tried to leave, he panicked at someone pulling a phone from their jacket. “Sure about that?” Sam asked.



Though Price eventually tried to offer Rebecca a deal for her client, she turned him down. With Jack in the courtroom, the verdict came in: Guilty.

Jack met up with his daughter outside of the courthouse. “I have a car—can I drop you somewhere?” Jack asks. She turned him down.

“You tried a good case; you did everything you could,” he insisted.

“Damn you,” she replied.”Why couldn’t you just—?”

Jack asked her to dinner again, but she turned him down. But as she was about to get in a taxi, she threw her father a bone, telling him her son got into Columbia law school…and she’d tell him Jack said hi.

LAW & ORDER, Thursdays, 8/7c, NBC

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