LAW & ORDER: ORGANIZED CRIME: Ilene Chaiken Teases a ‘Very Christmas-y’ Crossover Hour, Stabler Family Drama

‘Tis the season to be jolly…but all is not exactly well during LAW & ORDER: ORGANIZED CRIME‘s upcoming Christmas episode.

In “The Christmas Episode,” airing on Thursday, December 9, Elliot (Christopher Meloni) and the Stabler family have to contend with their first holiday season without matriarch, Kathy. Oh, and the youngest Stabler, Eli (Nicky Torchia), has gone missing at a very inopportune time, which leads Elliot to team up with his former partner/current SVU boss Olivia (Mariska Hargitay) to try and find the teen.

“It all does take place in the lead-up to Christmas,” Chaiken previews. “We want you to feel very Christmas-y. And I hope that we don’t ruin Christmas for you.”

How much will Christmas play into the hour? “You’ll certainly see Christmas paraphernalia,” Chaiken teases. But she is considerably more coy when asked whether those decorations could possibility include mistletoe, saying with a laugh, “I can’t answer that.”

(“The Christmas Episode” is the second part of the big LAW & ORDER crossover event, but the SVU hour, “People vs. Richard Wheatley,” is centered around OC villain Wheatley being tried for Kathy’s murder. SVU will have its own Christmas episode with episode 10, airing January 6.)

With Elliot spending the start of season 2 undercover, Eli struggled in his absence, stealing his grandmother’s medication and lying about it. But now that Elliot helped take down the Kosta organization, the show will be diving more thoroughly into the complexities of the Stabler family.

“We’ll see his kids now that he’s home,” Chaiken says. “We’ll see his family, we’ll see his mother. We will now live in his life as Elliot Stabler rather than Eddie Ashes. We’re telling some stories about this family, and, in some ways, going deeper than we have before.”

One of the bigger surprises of the season so far has been how much Elliot’s mother, Bernie (Ellen Burstyn), has played into the story. (Originally, Burstyn was set to return for a single installment; instead, she appeared in three of the first eight episodes of the show’s sophomore year, with Bernie now living with her son and grandson.) But how much the show examines the relationship going forward still remains to be seen.

“We hope that she’s playing a very large role in his story,” Chaiken says. “But…this has been an estranged family and an estranged relationship. It feels like they’re finding one another again. And we want to explore whether or not that can last, whether it can be a real family, and whether both the sins of the past and the difficulties of having a mother who is bipolar can be managed by Elliot Stabler.”

But with so much family to juggle, Chaiken acknowledges they aren’t planning to explore how Elliot’s once-mentioned—but never seen—three brothers and two sisters fit into the larger Stabler dynamic.

“We’re not looking [to bring in] Stabler siblings,” Chaiken says. “We have so many family members [already on the canvas], and I’m just not inclined to introduce any more.”

LAW & ORDER: ORGANIZED CRIME, Thursdays, 10/9c, NBC

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