Law & Order: Organized Crime Premiere: Stabler And Benson Reunite Under Dire Circumstances As Season 5 Begins
Editor's note: This recap covers both the Season 5 premiere, which is streaming on Peacock and which aired on NBC Thursday, and Season 5, Episode 2, which is available only on Peacock.
The bad news: Det. Elliot Stabler nearly dies at the end of Law & Order: Organized Crime's Season 5 premiere, thanks to getting T-boned by a ticked-off trucker-turned-human-trafficker.
The good news: His really gnarly injuries bring Capt. Olivia Benson running to his hospital room. And if you don't 'ship it, well then Episode 2 was probably not your favorite hour of the show ever.
In a minute, I want to hear what you thought about the two-episode premiere. First, though, read on for the highlights of Episodes 1 and 2. (Then make sure to a) see what Meloni was up to in the Law & Order: ISVU crossover earlier in the evening, and b) hear him explain why the episode has a little less Mariska Hargitay than he meant it to.)
JUST WHEN I THINK I'M OUT... | The first hour finds Bell calling Stabler to ask him to go undercover again, this time with a trucking company that's smuggling drugs across the border and is likely tied to a dangerous biker gang. He's hesitant, but then she sends out Stabler's personalized siren call: "Elliot, they're not just moving drugs, they're trafficking women. Possibly underage girls, too." Next thing we know, he's interviewing at 3 Kings Hauling as Henry Drummond, the same alias he used during the honey fiasco. Sadly, there's not enough time for him to grow his customary undercover goatee. But he takes on a little southern accent, talks about how he delivered honey "and other stuff" for Mama Boone's, and Hank is hired.
3 Kings consists of Mark, the boss; his brother Steve, who runs the motel and is, without question from the first moment you see him, a pimp; and Vic, their other brother who runs the trucking yard and seems dangerous. At the start of the episode, we saw Vic with the biker gang, watching a man's corpse get burned, so we know he's up to some bad stuff. (Side note: The start of the episode also featured the new-to-Peacock series' first curse. For the record, it was "f—king," and it was uttered by someone yelling at a young girl who lives at the motel.)
MAD COYOTES | Back at the office, Bell is dealing with an interloping FBI agent named Sheppard (played by Ozark's McKinley Belcher III) who already botched one op with the biker gang and now is hypercritical of how Stabler is going about his mission. Can we talk for a minute about how the biker gang is called the Mad Coyotes? And how they're French, so they're really called Les Coyotes Enragé? And how that makes it all seem terribly silly, even though I know it's not?
Something to note: When Bell has Reyes and Jet in her office and asks if there's anything else they want to discuss, and they took a beat before saying no, that means there's absolutely something going on between them still. Not that anyone asked, but I'm into it.
MEET BUNNY | Back at 3 Kings, Stabler is sleeping in his cab one night when the girl we saw at the top of the episode breaks in and tries to steal stuff from his bag. He gently stops her, learns her name is Bunny, and walks her back to the room. She won't let him come up to talk to her parent or guardian, but she hugs him before she goes, which surprises him a bit.
After Bunny leaves, Stabler hears a woman yelling "Stop, please!" and sounds of struggle. He happens to be holding a baseball bat from his truck, so he busts into one of the motel rooms and finds a guy on top of one of the sex workers; she's crying. He beats the guy up a bit, which endears him to all of the other sex workers in the motel but gets him in big trouble with Mark and Vic. He's sent on a rendezvous with the Coyotes as punishment, and that's where Stabler comes face-to-face with Andre, the biker gang's sadistic leader. He lights a dude on fire without blinking an eye, which makes an impression on even the I've-seen-it-all Stabler.
More casual questioning around the truck yard helps Stabler find out that Bunny's mom likely was trafficked, which probably was the situation with a young woman named Sad Eyes who just disappeared. While Stabler gets assigned to another run — guns and explosives — Bell and the team investigate Sad Eyes' whereabouts and learn that there are 36 unsolved killings of women along a particular stretch of highway in upstate New York: There's a serial killer on the road.
A LEAD ON SAD EYES | Eli, with a new short haircut and a brand-spanking uniform, starts at the police department. He holds a barbecue at the apartment for a bunch of his NYPD friends, with Randall working the grill. Stabler pretends to be fixing a truck so he can call his son and leave him a voicemail. "It's an honor to be your dad," he says. "I love you." Aw, guys! After he hangs up, Bell text Stabler to let him know that she thinks Sad Eyes was the serial killer's latest victim. First Stabler curse: "Oh s—t."
When Bunny goes missing and Stabler finds a Polaroid of her — aka pedophile currency — he beats up Mark and then takes off until he finds Bunny. She's tied up and gagged in the secret compartment of a truck in the middle of nowhere, and Bad Things have happened to her. Stabler gently puts her in the backseat of his pickup and they take off, Vic tailing them in the cab of a semi. Stabler thinks he's lost him, and he's asking Bunny if she wants some ice cream, when all of a sudden Vic slams into Stabler's truck, square into the driver's side.
'DO NOT MAKE ME BURY YOU' | Episode 2 — which Meloni wrote and which is only available on Peacock — starts with Randall getting the call that his brother has been brought to the hospital. We see El in the hospital bed, having a dream in which he's wandering the hospital hallways alongside a rabbit (?) and calling for Liv. In reality, Benson is standing next to his bedside. He's unconscious, and she looks wrecked.
Bernie and the kids are there. Bell is there. Stabler has had a traumatic brain injury, and Randall says the hospital is suggesting they have a priest on deck for last rites, but Bernie is adamant that they don't need one. "Do not make me bury you," she says sadly to her son as he lies in the bed. Later, when Randall is alone with his brother, he chastises him for "running around, trying to make Dad proud of you" and he starts crying as he tells Elliot he loves him.
He's interrupted by Benson's arrival; we quickly surmise that they haven't met. "You two, you're uh, partners?" Randall asks her. "And great friends... from the beginning," she answers. He's flirting with her a little bit, talking BBQ right there over Stabler's chiseled-yet-tattered body, when El wakes up to pronounce that Liv's coleslaw is better than Randall's. As Randall runs to get the doctor, Stabler asks Benson if he scared her. "No, not even a little," she lies. I thought he says "Good girl" in response, but I'm pretty sure he says "The girl?," asking about Bunny. (I was way more intrigued by the first option. Sorry, Bunny.) The way Olivia talks about the kid makes it seem like things are touch-and-go. Then she says she's going to go debrief Bell & Co. and "let them know that you're going to be OK," which is quite a broad and optimistic outlook on the mangled man in front of her, but go off, Dr. Benson!
IN WHICH STABLER CAN'T STAY PUT | Stabler dreams/hallucinates that Bunny is in his hospital room, giving him a silver medallion that says "I am a Catholic. In case of accident, call a priest." She makes him promise that he'll find Sad Eyes. Then she leaves. When he wakes up, we learn that Sad Eyes has been given to a guy named Sloppy Joe (ew). And even though Stabler is in no way ready to sit up, much less continue his investigation, he marshals all his strength to pull himself to standing, leaning all his incapacitated weight on his IV pole like it's Liv and he's just been drugged by the Albanians.
Once he calls in to where Benson is working with Bell and the rest of the Organized Crime Control Bureau, and that's how he learns that Vic shot himself when the police raided 3 Kings. Stabler, who's still waltzing around his hospital room with the IV, decides that he needs to leave and take out the remaining two brothers. Which is nice and all, but he passes out after doing a little detective legwork in the hospital.
When Liv arrives at his room, he's getting dressed. She's irked that he won't take time to rest and heal. "You can't expect me to lie down in that bed. That would kill me," he says, wheezing and tilting in a way that makes me think that leaning down to put on one of his shoes might ACTUALLY kill him. "Why you gotta make everything so difficult?" she asks, taking his face in her hands. "Liv, I'm going home, and you can either start your car and help me out, or stand there and watch me get naked," he says. Sadly, she chooses the former.
BACK WHERE WE BEGAN | We also learn that Bunny was dead when he first asked about her; she appears to Stabler as an apparition (or just because he's whacked out on pain meds) while he and Liv interrogate Mark and Steve. The brothers eventually sing and lead the police to a swap meet, where the guy who bought Sad Eyes is torturing her in the back of his specially squicky truck. Stabler and Slootmaekers eventually rescue her, shooting the man dead, but Stabler winds up taking a nail to the chest and winds up back in the hospital with Bernie worrying over him again.
By the end of the hour, he's back at work, hugging Bell and assuring her he's processing everything that he's gone through. Before she signs off for the night, she tells him that they found something in his pocket... and hands him the silver medallion. In the episode's final moments, Bunny appears behind him at his desk.
Now it's your turn. What did you think of the episodes? Grade them via the polls below, then hit the comments with your thoughts!