The new season of Law & Order: Organized Crime is the first under Breaking Bad alum John Shiban as showrunner, and the early episodes so far have delved further into Elliot Stabler’s family history than every season of OC and SVU that came before, which… says a lot, considering how long Christopher Meloni has been in the Law & Order universe! As somebody who watched him in his SVU run long before OC was even a rumor, I’ve been enjoying seeing more of the Stabler family, but also wondering if OC is rewriting a bit of the character’s history in light of just how much we’re learning this season.
So, to satisfy that curiosity, I revisited the two episodes of SVU that I think shed the most light on Stabler’s family beyond Kathy and the kids, to see what the show actually told us about his parents. First, though, let's look at the latest from OC!
What Organized Crime Told Us About Stabler’s Family In Season 4
Earlier seasons of OC forced Stabler to look at his dad’s time in the NYPD differently, and the 2024 TV schedule has been delivering peeks into his family past with some extra screentime for Bernie (Ellen Burstyn) as well as the arrivals of older brother Randall (Dean Norris) and younger brother Joe Jr. (Michael Trotter). Bernie’s continued memory problems resulted in hints about her husband’s impropriety, and then “The Last Supper” on February 8 turned everything upside down at a family dinner.
Bernie decided that it was time to reveal that Randall hadn’t left home willingly all those years ago, but she had kicked him out after he had called Internal Affairs and ratted his dad out. Randall picked up the story and revealed that Joe Stabler Sr. had been beating Bernie nightly, in spots where the bruises wouldn’t show. It was an ugly scene that ended with Randall on the floor and Elliot's grandkids being ushered out of the house, but an important scene.
Later, after the dinner broke up and tempers had cooled between the two Stabler oldest brothers, Randall revealed that he’d gone to their sisters in Florida after being kicked out, but also bought bus tickets for their mom if she wanted to leave their father.
So, as of the end of “The Last Supper,” Joe Sr. has been established as physically and emotionally abusive beyond what Elliot knew as a kid, since Bernie had hidden it from him. Still, the excellent scene between the Stablers and all the new family details nagged at me a bit as a longtime SVU fans, and there were two episodes that I went back to look at to check if OC was rewriting history: “Ripped” from Season 7 and “Swing” from Season 10.
Law & Order: SVU Season 7, Episode 4 - “Ripped”
“Ripped” aired on NBC back in 2005 and was one of several SVU episodes that showed what can happen when Stabler takes a case too personally. It was also the rare episode that saw Stabler opening up to help, seeking guidance from a therapist played by Mary Stuart Masterson. (The episode also featured future The Vampire Diaries star Paul Wesley.)
Speaking with Dr. Hendrix, Stabler recounted a time in his childhood when his dad helped him make a Civil War diorama for a project. On the surface, there didn’t seem to be much to the story beyond a father helping his son with his homework, but the doctor did a little bit of digging to get Stabler to elaborate. He finally explained that he got an F on the project, saying:
I didn’t hand it in… I moved one of the trees, and my father saw it as I was leaving for school. He took it out of my hands, and he threw it on the ground and he stomped on it… He took off his belt and he beat me with it because I cried, and only pansies cry. He said I was weak and called me a failure. Called me that a lot.
It was clear in “Ripped” that his father calling him a failure and weak continued to affect him well into his adulthood, and Dr. Hendrix commented that it “takes a lot more balls to talk about your problems than beat the hell out of a ghost.” Of course, the episode that aired in 2005 was hardly the debut of a kinder, gentler Stabler with the self-awareness to stop taking cases personally, but it shed some light on his past.
I had actually remembered the incident between Elliot and his dad over the diorama, but rewatching the scene with my Peacock Premium subscription after watching “The Last Supper” made it hit a little harder this time. Nothing about the OC episode rewrote what the character confessed back in Season 7; if anything, it established the precedent for Joe Sr. being set off by little things.
Law & Order: SVU Season 10, Episode 3 - “Swing”
“Swing” debuted on NBC back in 2008, and it was the first episode that featured Bernie Stabler, with Ellen Burstyn earning the Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama for her performance. The case of the week involved Kathleen Stabler, who broke into a house as a result of previously undiagnosed mental health issues. The case prompted Stabler to visit his estranged mother, who had been living with bipolar disorder for as long as he could remember.
He didn’t make much progress in convincing his mom to speak to Kathleen, and she flat-out tried to deny what her son described as "mood swings" and "crazy ideas," even when he cited specific examples. With his focus on Kathleen, he didn't really note when Bernie said that her Macy's card was the only kind of credit card his father would let her have, or her explanation of why she'd go to bed for a month every time Joe Sr. brought her back. She said:
Because I was upset! Because he was always trying to crush my dreams!... You're just like your father. All buttoned up. No imagination, no spirit. If anything is just a little out of the ordinary, it scares you to death, doesn't it? Anything that doesn't fit into your neat little boxes, you just can't take it.
That not only isn't contradicted by Organized Crime Season 4, but is more heartbreaking looking back now! There were plenty of comments about Joe Jr.'s failures as a husband and father in "Swing," coming from Bernie, Elliot, and even Benson from what she'd heard. The focus was more on Bernie than Joe about why Elliot had "erased his childhood," and it shed more light on Stabler's past than I remembered.
Do I think that all of the backstory that has been revealed in Organized Crime was already planned back when SVU debuted Bernie and hinted about Stabler's childhood? Definitely not, but I don't think OC has contradicted anything that was revealed in Christopher Meloni's previous series. I'm actually surprised by how well the two shows match when it comes to his history, considering more than 15 years passed between SVU Season 10 and OC Season 4!
Plus, I appreciate that Organized Crime finally shed some more light on the Stabler sisters. Not a lot, but we do know now that they are named Sharon and Dee and lived in Florida at one point. Only time will tell if OC has more to say about the sisters, but it seems safe to say that Season 4 isn’t finished with the family drama. Elliot and Randall aren’t buying Joe Jr.’s story about his dishonorable discharge from the army, and Randall dropped a hint about something stupid that their father had done. He didn’t elaborate when his brother pressed him for details, saying “that’s a saga for another night.” Another Thursday night, perhaps?
New episodes of Law & Order: Organized Crime air on Thursdays at 10 p.m. ET on NBC, following Law & Order: SVU at 9 p.m. and Law & Order at 8 p.m. OC and SVU have kept some nice continuity in 2024, while L&O remains mostly separate as it prepares to say goodbye to Sam Waterston as Jack McCoy. If you want to revisit the “Swing” and “Ripped” episodes of SVU to see Stabler’s backstory for yourself, you can find them streaming via Hulu subscription and/or Peacock subscription.
