The Law & Order Problem That Nobody Wants To Talk About

For those of you who think I’m just making this up, let me give you the run-down.

After a 10-year absence from the Special Victims Unit, Elliot Stabler returns to work to avenge the death of his wife in Law & Order: Organized Crime. He joins the Organized Crime Task Force, and infiltrates the Wheatley Family, as he suspects Dylan McDermott’s Richard Wheatley of being the man that killed her. After a two-season arc, which culminates in Richard’s (never shown on-screen) death, you’d think a high-profile case involving a powerful crime family would have everybody looking for a mole in their operation.

However, after this arc, the series puts Elliot Stabler on a new assignment, and everybody seems to forget about his alias, Eddie “Ashes” Wagner, as he moves onto bigger and better things.

In order for a series like Law & Order: Organized Crime to keep moving forward, we have to suspend more than a healthy amount of disbelief with its portrayal of organized crime, Elliot Stabler’s repeated return to undercover work, and the criminals who are absolute morons despite the fact that they’re supposedly exceptionally good at what they do.

Any other crime-related storyline outside of the Law & Order universe illustrates how crime syndicates, even rival ones (the cartels in the Breaking Bad universe, for example), talk shop to make sure they’re not overstepping boundaries or acting against their established moral codes. Elliot Stabler going back to his usual tricks in season 3, season 4, and eventually season 5, should at the very least raise a few eyebrows when the same jacked, six-foot-tall, bald-headed detective is ready to infiltrate another crime ring and bring them to justice.

How does the Law & Order Universe address this problematic premise, you ask? Elliot Stabler shaves his goatee.

Even if the Law & Order criminals aren’t talking amongst each other, they have to at the very least watch the news from time to time. I’m only speaking for myself, but if I sent my goons out to rob a bank or orchestrate a kidnapping heist, I’d like to know what the authorities are up to so I can make efforts to stay one step ahead of the law. What’s more, even if I don’t know who Elliot Stabler is, if there’s some sort of buzz going around about a guy with a shady past who’s showing up at various criminal enterprises weeks or months before their operations are blown sky-high, then I’d be more than a little suspicious of who this guy actually is.

It’s also worth noting that Elliot Stabler was a prominent figure in Law & Order: SVU for 12 seasons, meaning that he’s had to have countless run-ins with criminals in the same jurisdiction, some of which he probably doesn’t even remember. To add insult to injury, there’s no clear way to know if the criminals he has apprehended in the past are now working for the very operations he’s currently trying to dismantle.

Maybe I’m being too hard on the Law & Order franchise, because at the end of the day the only way to have a long-running series is to take some creative liberties if they want Elliot Stabler to keep top-billing. Within the series’ fiction, we need to ignore the fact that not only does Stabler’s actions repeatedly lead to his cover being compromised with the criminals he’s pursuing, but also Internal Affairs because of the high-profile nature of his jobs. In the real world, or in any other work of fiction, there wouldn’t be anywhere else to go after Richard Wheatley’s presumed death.

It’s also worth mentioning that Wheatley’s demise was never actually confirmed on-screen. Should he return to the series for a big yet-to-be-seen reveal, he’s more than privy to the fact that Stabler is actually a cop.

Fans of Law & Order don’t seem to mind that Elliot Stabler’s assignments make absolutely no sense, and honestly, I don’t really blame them. After checking Reddit to see if anybody has similar grievances to myself, I found that the prevailing sentiment is something along the lines of “yeah, we know it makes no sense, but he’s such a strong character that we just roll with it.” But still, I find myself reluctant to check out season 5 when it premieres on Peacock because I’m just not buying it.