New breed ‘Law & Order’ brings back NYPD detective Stabler
The latest member of the “Law & Order” franchise has a familiar face playing a familiar character, but producer Dick Wolf says he’s switching up the storytelling.
NBC’s “Law & Order: Organized Crime” stars Christopher Meloni as New York police detective Elliot Stabler, the role he played until 2011 on “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.”
Unlike the largely self-contained episodes of its “Law & Order” relatives, the new drama shifts from one criminal syndicate to another in multi-episode arcs.
Think of it this way, Wolf suggested: “If the first eight episodes are ‘The Godfather,’ the second eight episodes are
‘American Gangster’ and the third eight episodes are ‘Scarface.’”
“You have major antagonists around to build a really good, longer-term story,” he told The Associated Press. That allows for options “we haven’t had a chance to explore yet, including antagonists that aren’t complete ‘black hats,’ that can be more nuanced.”
“Law & Order: Organized Crime” also brings a new writer-producer to the franchise’s ranks, Ilene Chaiken, whose credits include the groundbreaking “The L Word,” which featured LGBTQ characters, and “The Handmaid’s Tale.”
“I’ve known her by reputation for a long time,” Wolf said. “Over the last 30 years there’s very few truly landmark shows, but ‘The L Word’ is one of them.”
Chaiken is “not only skilled, she’s incredibly insightful about human emotion” and with a different “rhythm” than he has, Wolf said. He called that a necessity for “Organized Crime,” with Meloni’s Stabler among the most “pre-Miranda cops on television.”
In other words, the sort of law enforcement officer who didn’t like to play by the rules, such as informing a person under arrest of their rights — the sort of character that TV once routinely celebrated as heroic.
“What she had to do was keep that character intact, but soften and change him in a believable manner that got him into the present, so that’s he’s not a dinosaur,” Wolf said. “Not an easy thing to do.”