Law & Order: Organized Crime's Chris Meloni Talks Stabler/Benson's 'Intoxicating' Partnership, The Sneaky Line He Slipped Into Season 5 And More

Though Law & Order: Organized Crime Season 5 has been available on Peacock since April, the season will make its debut on NBC tonight at 10/9c. And since we had such a good time when series star/executive producer Chris Meloni took part in a TVLine Spotlight chat earlier this year, we thought we'd revisit the conversation for those of you who might not have Peacock and haven't yet seen what Det. Elliot Stabler goes through in the episodes ahead.

The event's live audience greeted Meloni with hoots and applause, then he and I got right into a discussion of how Stabler has struggled a bit since his return to New York, and how the pull of his family versus the responsibilities of his job weigh on him in the upcoming episodes. In Season 5, "What he goes through are things that we realize we've never been shown, we never knew about, the SVU traumas," Meloni says in the video above.

Speaking of SVU: Of course we spent a good amount of time talking about Stabler's original partnership with Law & Order: SVU's Olivia Benson and crossovers between the two shows, past and future. (Mariska Hargitay's Benson shows up in Season 5's second episode, which Meloni wrote.)

"When you have a partner, and you get in a place that you come alive and you're connected, and you're thought of as competent, and so are they, you're of one mind almost," he says, reminiscing about Stabler's partnership with Benson on SVU, "that's intoxicating."

As viewers of both shows know, that partnership continues in fits and starts, sometimes romantically tinged and sometimes not. As we talked, Meloni admitted that at least one major 'EO' scene between the pair wasn't successful ("I don't think it worked") and that he snuck another cheeky moment for the two of them in the OC hour that he wrote ("I slipped it in there").

Press PLAY on the spoiler-free video above to hear it all, then hit the comments with your thoughts on all things Organized Crime and SVU!