'It's Not Unicorns And Rainbows': Law And Order: Organized Crime Stars Talk The Stabler Brothers' Intervention, And I Hope It Goes Better Than Elliot's Did
Law & Order: Organized Crime is on the way back to primetime in the 2024 TV schedule with a new episode of Season 4 after a brief break. While fans are still waiting on news of a renewal, they can count on a pretty intense hour of TV for the Stabler brothers on April 11. Elliot and Randall are set to stage an intervention on Joe Jr., and the Stabler brother stars spoke with CinemaBlend about how it's going to go down. On the whole, it may not go any better than the intervention on Elliot years ago!
The clues have been mounting up in Season 4 that Joe Jr. might be dealing with a drug problem, not least of which was the foil that Elliot found in his garbage after the messy family dinner. In the "Semper Fi" episode, Randall and Elliot will decide that it's time for an intervention on their youngest brother.
Considering that disaster tends to happen whenever too many Stablers are in the same room this season, I noted to actors Dean Norris and Michael Trotter that it seems unlikely that the intervention could go smoothly, and they previewed what's ahead. Norris, who plays Randall, said:
It's not going to go down well. We'll put it there. But not for lack of trying, at least on my character's part. Randall thinks he's gonna walk in there and he's got the solution, and Joey's gonna listen, and we're gonna walk out of there and sing Kumbaya, take him to rehab, but does not work that way.
Well, at least one of the brothers will have the best of intentions when going into the intervention! Would this really be Law & Order: Organized Crime if a Stabler man did exactly what he was told? All in all, it sounds like Joey isn't going to hear his brothers out the way that Randall has in mind. Michael Trotter, a.k.a. Joe Jr., agreed with his co-star and said:
Just reiterating what Dean said, no, it's not unicorns and rainbows, that's for sure. It's messy, and I think it's indicative of their past and them trying to navigate it. It's dramatic. It's messy, and they're trying to find their way through it, and this is just sort of another instance of needing some more work to be done, to kind of wrap their head around the best way in which they can try to understand each other as a family and understand what they've been through.
There's certainly plenty for the brothers to "find their way through," and I'd say that's not just limited to Joe despite him receiving the intervention. After all, Elliot and Randall were the ones who got physical with each other at the family dinner! (You can revisit that episode streaming with a Peacock Premium subscription.)
After Norris previewed Randall's approach, I have to wonder what Elliot's will be like, as he was the recipient of an intervention himself back in Season 1, when his kids recruited Olivia Benson over from Law & Order: SVU to try and get through to him after Kathy's death. As fans may remember, he didn't blow up at anybody, but he did make arguably the most ill-timed confession of love in the history of the Law & Order franchise with a VERY long pause before including everybody in his "I love you."
Fans may also remember that the intervention didn't exactly work on Elliot, whose anger and grief drove him for much of Season 1. Will Joe Jr. be more receptive that his older brother was? The circumstances are of course very different, but we can be certain of no unicorns, no rainbows, and no "Kumbaya" in the next episode.
As for what else is on the way, be sure to tune in to NBC on Thursday, April 11 at 10 p.m. ET for the "Semper Fi" episode of Law & Order: Organized Crime, following an episode of SVU at 9 p.m. ET that Mariska Hargitay directed. At the time of writing, Organized Crime is the only one of the nine Dick Wolf shows not renewed yet, so hopefully some good news will break soon to guarantee another season of Stabler family complications.
