Okay so I have Thoughts. And Opinions. About Jet’s whole little adventure through OC S5E2.
Yes, Jet was very shaken from watching a guy shoot himself in the head. Yes she was also attacked pretty violently. But I honestly don’t think that’s her main motivation for taking some time off?
So a bunch of truckers are murdering prostitutes, and Jet gets sent undercover as a prostitute to Evil Trucker Party Central (tm). In her UC role, she’s acting high, dazed, ditzy etc. She also has to wear very little clothing (so a lot less space to hide weapons) Stabler goes off on his own acting as a trucker, and Reyes’s job is essentially just to stay with Jet. She has more of a shot at getting the information they need, and he has to keep eyes on her, because to get this information she Has to be vulnerable. She can’t be looking over her shoulder or acting suspicious, she has to appear to be as easily led as possible. Reyes and Stabler are able to act tough, suspicious, threatening in their roles— she has to be as pliable and vulnerable as possible.
I saw someone on here say that they didn’t like how Jet’s attack was handled because it felt very much like a damsel in distress situation where Bobby had to save her and I gotta say, I disagree (no shade to OP tho, because law and order is shitty with their female characters and there was a thin line with them handling this badly).
One of the very first rules of Policing is you have to Trust Your Partner. Jet wasn’t unprepared for an attack or uncharacteristically clueless or anything, she was playing her role— a vulnerable girl— and trusting that Bobby would have her back. Literally his only job at this point, now that they’ve found the guy, is to Have Her Back. She can’t look over her shoulder or start getting her gun without blowing her cover.
So when Jet looks into the rearview mirror and sees the trucker coming at her with a rope, this is the same exact moment she looks into the mirror and sees that Bobby isn’t behind her anymore. Bobby doesn’t have her back anymore, and she had no idea. She trusted him to be there, to have his back.
Of Course she didn’t grab her gun, her first instinct was to protect her throat. If you’ve ever been strangled, you’ll know that all logic goes out the window and all you can really do is claw at your throat. Plus, even if she pulls her gun, the guy is in close quarters, pressed behind her, and she’s losing oxygen. He would disarm her easily, she’d never be able to get a shot.
And she doesn’t wait around for someone to save her, she gets out of the situation herself. She beats the guy off of her. Damsels in distress usually aren’t left standing while their attackers are left bleeding on the ground.
But that’s just the thing. She shouldn’t have had to save herself. Her partner should have had her back. Instead, Bobby was held up by some random trucker, and Ayanna in the surveillance van— she pisses me off this scene. She hears Jet being actively strangled— murdered— over the headset, and all she fucking says is “Guys, Jet’s in trouble” with literally no urgency. EXCUSE ME?? That could mean everything from “she’s been threatened” to “she’s been made” but it’s a little too nonchalant for “I’m hearing her be murdered in real time”!!!! Where the fuck is the 10-13 Officer in Need of Assistance!!! If that guy had a gun or knife, Jet would be dead so fast.
Instead Jet gets herself out of the situation before Bobby points his gun at the trucker. And then Stabler runs off and instead of escorting the guy back to the truck and receiving medical attention— which she probably should’ve been the one to do instead of Bobby— she follows Stabler and she has his back.
We like to compare Jet to 1.0 Olivia a lot so I wanna make the comparison here but point out an important difference— 1.0 Olivia had Elliot, always. 1.0 Olivia had someone watching her back. Imagine if this scene had played out with 1.0 EO— would Elliot have gotten held up by that trucker? Or would he have shoved him out of the way and followed Olivia? He wouldn’t have lost sight of her in that situation under any circumstances.
The OCCB has been inconsistent besides Jet, Elliot, and Ayanna. Jet has watched the team cycle through. She’s never had a steady “partner.” After Jamie’s death, when she starts getting closer to Bobby, I imagine they have some sort of unspoken rule that they won’t let anything happen to each other. But when Jet needs him— Reyes doesn’t have her back. This wasn’t a technical error or a perp getting the upper hand— this was pure negligence in the parts of Reyes, Ayanna, and honestly Benson and Stabler too because they could’ve jumped in at any point during the planning phase and said “hey, we need protocol in place to make sure someone’s with Jet in case Bobby’s incapacitated.” Because for the role she played, she could Not be as alert or careful as she usually is. She Had to be vulnerable and trust in her team.
At the end of the episode when Ayanna says “hopefully Jet finds her way back to us” or whatever, it could mean Jet is taking a general leave from work— understandably, she watched a guy kill himself, was violently attacked, and then shot and killed a perp. It’s a lot on its own. But honestly? I wouldn’t be surprised if Jet pulled an Olivia and transferred to Cybercrimes or something for a bit. Because the events of this episode demonstrated to her that OCCB doesn’t have her back. She can’t trust Reyes or Ayanna right now, and she can’t do her job if she can’t trust her team.
Obviously I want Jet back on OCCB she’s my blorbo, my babygirl, I love her and Stabler’s interactions… but I do not like how she is treated by the squad. Yes, she’s a capable cop who can be trusted to handle missions and make judgement calls. But those missions are dangerous enough on their own without basic safety protocols being disregarded— like having some way for Jet to know if Bobby lost eyes on her.
Jet is not too sensitive or too inexperienced or too trusting or whatever. The squad uses her for roles because she’s a tiny, pretty, young woman and they need bait that appears vulnerable and easily led. In return, she needs the security to be able to behave that way and know she’s still protected. She has no reason to ever trust Bobby to have her back again after this, and I’m implicating Ayanna just as much for being so careless with safety protocol, and careless with Jet’s life. Olivia and Elliot could’ve also done better, though at least Elliot checked on her twice, warned her to draw her weapon, asked after her afterwards.
TLDR; Jet’s vulnerability was a feature, not a bug, and the rest of her team failed her. So she has every justification to take a step back and reevaluate if she really wants to stick with a team that didn’t have her back when she needed it. Even though I’ll be devastated if she’s off the show for too long.
