Spoilers ahead for Episode 14 of Law & Order Season 24, called "A Price to Pay" and available streaming next day with a Peacock subscription.
Law & Order revisited Shaw's past as a cop and the connections he made back in the day with the latest episode of the 2025 TV schedule, but "A Price to Pay" didn't focus on Mehcad Brooks' character from start to finish like I expected. The detective decided to protect his old CO, Darryl Moore, by giving him the heads up to take a Marine assignment far from NYC to avoid ruining (and possibly) ending his life with testimony, and he didn't bother concealing from Price what he'd done.
The Assistant District Attorney was more furious than I expected even after the promo that aired at the end of the previous episode with Selenis Leyva; combined with him opening up about his late brother way sooner that I would have guessed, comments from Hugh Dancy weeks ago suddenly make much more sense.
How Law & Order Revisited Price's Tragic Backstory
Shaw became less cooperative with the attorneys about the case once it became clear that Darryl was a lot more involved with the drug dealer-turned-murderer than he initially admitted. His impassioned speech about why the Marine deserved to be protected from testimony didn't land on entirely unsympathetic ears, and DA Baxter understood that Darryl wasn't using ketamine the same way that the dead movie star had been... but the law was the law, and they needed his testimony to put a killer away at trial.
Realizing that Darryl might end his own life if Price put him on the stand, Shaw crossed a line to give him the heads up to get out of town. Meanwhile, Price came clean to Baxter about why he was so determined to come down hard on the drug dealer, confessing that his brother had died due to addiction. Regular Law & Order viewers already knew that, of course, as the show focused on that family storyline less than a month ago. I definitely didn't think the death of his brother would be part of a plot again so soon, but it wasn't an unpleasant surprise!
Hugh Dancy and Mehcad Brooks are always interesting when Price and Shaw clash, and their opposite approaches to the drug case culminated in Price furiously calling out Shaw, saying:
I don't know what you did and I don't want to know. But I know this: there are people in that courtroom who deserve justice. You took that from them. You took that from me! And worse yet, you tampered with a witness. You committed a crime. I could have you arrested.
Shaw regretted nothing, saying that he'd saved the life of a man he loved like a brother and the cost was "a little more prison time for a drug dealer." He made a choice, he's sticking by it, and the episode of course didn't end with Price having the detective arrested. But Price's fury – surely informed by what happened with his brother, after he brought it up to Baxter – that Shaw also took justice from him reminded me of when I spoke with Hugh Dancy about his character's pride in his work.
Hugh Dancy's Thoughts On Price's Pride
Hugh Dancy took the time for an interview with CinemaBlend back in January, timed to the episode that introduced Justin Chatwin as Nolan's brother Thomas. That installment was an emotional ride as he finally decided to take their father off of life support despite the baggage from their late brother, and it was a huge moment for the character. But this being the very procedural Law & Order, I didn't think Price would mention his brother again for a while, let alone in an episode that was promoted as Shaw-centric.
And when I spoke to Dancy about whether the decisions about his family would impact his character moving forward, the Hannibal alum responded at the time:
I think he's still the workaholic type, and that's partly just because he’s on Law & Order. [laughs] He'd better keep showing up to work! But I think it's also just true of him. This is not a big turning point in his life, like a road to Damascus kind of thing. I think he maybe surprises himself a little bit in the moment of making a decision that he wasn't expecting to, but he's still very conflicted about it, and he's still going to take all that conflict and take the unresolved stuff with his brother and he's going to bury it in work.
Price made some progress in dealing with his brother's death enough to say goodbye to his father, but he didn't get over all of those years of baggage in one fell swoop, and we see in "A Price to Pay" that Price is practicing what Dancy preached and burying himself in work. The actor went on:
He's very good at putting weight on his own shoulders. I think he has lots of good, completely valid reasons for caring about his work, and I think he wants to do right by the people that he feels need to be represented. And I also think he has a kind of pride in himself because he's very good at his job, and that's fair enough. But I also think it's just where he puts all of his feelings. [laughs]
Is it any wonder that Price reacted so extremely to Shaw going the extra mile to protect Darryl? At the same time, Shaw's actions were very understandable, and I can see why the episode ended in more of a stalemate between the pair than in any kind of escalated conflict or resolution. Will Law & Order go back to what went down in this episode by the end of Season 24 for Price or Shaw?
I won't rule anything out after how quickly the show went back to Nolan's tragic backstory, and I wouldn't mind seeing Odelya Halevi in the spotlight again after her big episode. For now, new episodes of Law & Order will continue airing on Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET on NBC, ahead of Law & Order: SVU. Law & Order: Organized Crime also finally got a premiere date, although Season 5 will release on Peacock instead of NBC with L&O and SVU.
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