LAW & ORDER: ORGANIZED CRIME is Shaking Up Its Format in Season 3

When LAW & ORDER: ORGANIZED CRIME kicks off its third season (on Thursday, September 22), Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni) will be doing his job in a new—but familiar—way.

“This is the first season where he’s actually a detective working cases as Elliot Stabler,” new ORGANIZED CRIME showrunner Bryan Goluboff previews.

“The entry into [ORGANIZED CRIME] was he was in Italy for years—he came back, his wife was murdered in a horrible way, and he was on this terrible revenge kick against the Wheatleys,” he continues. “And it was really a feverish eight episodes on that [storyline]. Then he was undercover with the Albanians, [and then later] embedded with Donnelly and the Brotherhood, who were dirty cops. Coming into this season, it’s the first time he is Elliot Stabler, a detective with the [Organized Crime task force].”

Which means, yes, Stabler is done with long-term undercover gigs. “I think you can’t do anything that begs credulity—and he’s a very famous cop right now,” Goluboff says. “So unless it’s out of state or international, I don’t think he can easily mesh with criminals in an undercover way in New York.”

But as Elliot works at settling back into his real identity, things are changing around him. “He’s in a weird time of his life: He just dropped Eli off at college in California; his mother is now staying with Kathleen,” Goluboff teases. “He’s got an empty nest, and he’s looking at his life. What was the cost of this job and what did he give up? It’s been a blur. And Bell, at the end of last season, her wife left—she took the baby, as a result of the way Bell did her job.”

“[Bell] and Stabler are looking at [their empty] houses, and work becomes a place where they come together,” he continues. “Where they say, ‘We lost everything because of our jobs. We’re gonna do our jobs as well as we possibly can, and it’s the bad guys who are gonna pay for what we sacrificed.’ The unit comes together in a much deeper way because of where their lives are at.”

What the task force sets their focus on? A new casino opening up in New York—and the power couple at the center of it. As such, the show will also be shaking up how it tells its stories: Rather than tell episodes in confined pods, “we’re gonna have an overarching story for the season, but it’s one that we can go away from—and we’re going to a lot of sort of two and three episodes quick-hitters [outside of the main arc],” Goluboff previews. “There is going to be a lot of variety [to the episodes]—a lot of them are going to be sort of connected to our main story in various ways.”

“The serialized story aspect of it is also going to come from our squad,” he continues. “We’re really trying to invest in our people, our characters, making [them] the home base. So there’s a lot of different work that we’re doing. But there is a big story that we’re gonna follow from from beginning to end, but we’re gonna be able to pivot from it and do a lot of different things.”

Though this is Goluboff’s first season with ORGANIZED CRIME, he spent last season working on LAW & ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT—including co-writing “I Thought You Were on My Side,” an unofficial crossover hour between the two shows.

“The episode we did [on SVU] with Chris—with Gabe Navarro and the woman who was the singer in the nightclub; that whole thing with the conflict between Benson and Stabler—that was an episode where I really enjoyed being in the OC universe…the size of it and the international scope of the crimes,” Goluboff says. “It kind of hooked me into talking about OC with the Wolf [Entertainment] people, and getting an understanding of where the show could go…I enjoyed being in that universe with them. And it’s definitely sparked a lot of stuff [for me].”

His time on SVU—Goluboff also worked on season 13—is proving essential as the two writers’ rooms work together on the upcoming seasons, including both shows diving further into what Elliot was up to in the decade he was away.

“I’ve worked with [SVU executive producer] Julie [Martin] very closely, and it allows us to have a very easy back and forth between the two shows, so that they can exist a little bit more in the same universe,” he says. “Which I think is really respectful to the fans. We really want to be respectful to their investment in these characters, because it’s special. We cherish it and we cherish the passion that they bring to watching our show and we want to honor it.”

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

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