Buried News: NBC Gives Only 13 Episode Order for “Organized Crime,” Raising Questions About Chris Meloni’s Elliot Stabler

Buried in their renewal news the other day was an NBC nugget: while “Law & Order” and “SVU” each got 22 episode orders for the fall season, “Organized Crime” got only 13.

Huh? “SVU” and “Organized Crime” have run in tandem every since the latter show arrived as a spin off. “OC” has never aired on its own independent of the 25 year old “SVU.” It’s just been used as an opportunity to milk the pseudo romance between Mariska Hargitay’s Olivia Benson and Chris Meloni’s Elliot Stabler. They even killed off Stabler’s wife to achieve that goal.

But “OC” has never caught on. Its ratings are way below the other two shows. The Meloni show is now on its fifth show runner and never has achieved its own identity. No one knows what its purpose is, why it exists other than to have Stabler ready to flirt with Benson at a moment’s notice.

The idea was that “OC” would be the third part of an all-Thursday Dick Wolf block on NBC, the way he has the “Chicago” shows on NBC Wednesdays and “FBI” night on Tuesdays on CBS. To get “OC” on the air, NBC had to knock off the popular “Manifest,” which led to protests and Netflix taking on the other show so it could play out its cliffhanger plots.

So now what? What happens when “OC” runs out of shows? Will Wolf cede his third hour on Thursdays? Will Meloni move to “SVU”? Will all of “OC” be used as crossovers with “SVU”? And will we ever know what “Organized Crime” was about?

Literally, stay tuned…