Law & Order: Organized Crime season 5 demonstrates that Stabler (Christopher Meloni) should not return to Law & Order: SVU full-time. Stabler originated on SVU, and many of the best episodes of Law & Order: SVU during these early years featured Stabler and Benson working together to solve sexual assault cases. Thus, when Law & Order: Organized Crime premiered 10 years after Stabler left Law & Order: SVU, there was widespread speculation about whether he and Benson would resume their relationship.

Law & Order: Organized Crime Season 5 Has Been About Stabler & His Family

Most Stories Have Included Conflicts With His Family

Bernie is surrounded by family in her hospital bed in Law & Order: Organized Crime

Law & Order: Organized Crime has focused on Stabler’s family to a greater degree than any other season. Stabler’s mother (Ellen Burstyn) was reintroduced in season 2 after appearing in one episode of Law & Order: SVU season 10, eleven years earlier. However, in season 5, the Stabler family can’t tell whether his mother’s insistence that she is talking to his missing brother, Joey (Michael Trotter), is a sign of increasing cognitive decline. Stabler also has an ongoing issue with Randall (Dean Norris), who has been pressuring him to attend therapy sessions and otherwise interfering in Stabler’s personal life.

These stories have allowed Stabler to have meatier conflicts between job and family obligations than he has had in the past. Law & Order: Organized Crime season 5, episode 8, was the most intense example, as Stabler’s mother was hospitalized with a serious heart issue, and Stabler had to find a way to wait with his family for news about her condition while continuing to lead an investigation into a terrorist group that was targeting wealthy CEOs, including hospital executives.

SVU Cannot Only Be About Stabler Or Anyone’s Personal Story

The Focus is On Victims And How They Are Impacted

Bernadette sitting by Stabler in Law & Order Organized Crime

Law & Order: SVU sometimes has subplots where characters deal with personal or family issues. However, these stories are always secondary to the cases, as they should be. Law & Order: SVU is about empowering survivors, so the focus needs to be on Benson and her team attempting to bring perpetrators to justice and reassuring survivors that they have not given up on their case. Overly focusing on personal storylines would distract from this goal. Law & Order: SVU season 26 has had even fewer of these types of stories than past seasons.

Law & Order: Organized Crime season 5 has made Stabler’s family central to each story rather than a secondary story that is dealt with between procedural-oriented scenes.

When SVU first began, Stabler’s family was prominent. However, even these subplots were secondary to the case of the week. Most of the time, the purpose of these stories was to illustrate the challenges Stabler faced in being there for his kids due to the demanding nature of his job. Conversely, Law & Order: Organized Crime season 5 has made Stabler’s family central to each story rather than a secondary story that is dealt with between procedural-oriented scenes.

Why Stabler-Centric Law & Order: Organized Crime Is Better Off In Streaming

Fewer Content Restrictions Allows This Series To Tell The Stories It Wants To Tell

Law & Order: Organized Crime is a distinct series from the other shows in the franchise. It is more character-driven, focused mostly on how the cases affect Stabler’s mental health and family relationships, and utilizes a small cast that makes progress toward solving complicated cases that span multiple episodes. These types of dramas are more suited to streaming than to broadcast TV, where audiences have different expectations, and there are more restrictions on the type of content that can be shown.

In addition to being focused on Stabler and his family, Law & Order: Organized Crime is often more violent than the other Law & Order shows. This makes sense for the series because cases deal with mob bosses and other violent criminals. Thus, the procedural can be written more realistically with a streaming service like Peacock than it could when it was broadcast on NBC. The looser restrictions and ability to focus more closely on Stabler make Peacock the perfect fit for this series, and it would not be satisfying for Stabler to return to Law & Order: SVU after going in this new direction.