What was evident a long time has come to pass: “Law & Order: Organized Crime” is over.
Five seasons. Five showrunners. And no one knew what this “Law & Order” spin was about.
Chris Meloni played Elliot Stabler from “SVU.” Except now he was involved with chasing down various kinds of Mafia. The whole first season concerned one mobster named Sinatra, played by Dylan McDermott. The whole story was so convoluted and unpleasant that eventually McDermott was moved to another Dick Wolf show, “FBI,” on CBS.
The other storyline was Stabler being unable to express his love for Mariska Hargitay’s Olivia Benson. The romance was written for two year olds. The whole arc was the two of them staring at each other like kids in junior high school.
When one new producer after another didn’t have a clue about the show, they brought in Stabler’s family including the Oscar winning actress Ellen Burstyn as his mother. At that point, “Organized Crime” became a violent soap opera.
In the end, NBC moved “OG” to Peacock to fulfill its series order.
It’s too bad. Dick Wolf is usually more savvy. But his first showrunner, Ilene Chaiken, didn’t even plan the first season until the last minute. I reported at the time that she hadn’t even submitted an outline or scripts. Things just deteriorated after that.
I do think Meloni and everyone else knew it was dead and not coming back then. Meloni has moved on, to an HBO show. There’s been no mention of Stabler on “SVU” in a long time. Will the Benson-Stabler romance ever be consummated? Perhaps, in a nursing home. After all, this has been going on for 25 years.
