Law & Order: Organized Crime finally debuts on NBC next week.
The series will bring Christopher Meloni back into the Law & Order Universe following his exit a decade ago, but don't expect it to be the same as Law & Order SVU.
During a recent chat with Entertainment Weekly, executive producer Ilene Chaiken opened up about the shows' big difference.
"It's not a case of the week, because organized crime doesn't work in that way," she shared.
"It's an episodic show; the episodes will stand on their own. But the stories will also play out over the course of a whole season."
Chaiken revealed that she wants this to be a different take on the franchise.
"We want to do a different Law & Order," Chaiken says of the new series.
"If they had asked me to do a conventional procedural, I probably wouldn't have said yes, because it's not my strength and it's not my interest."
"Yes, it's very much a part of the franchise, and the fans will get all of the things they want from it. But the very first thing [Wolf's team] said to me is that the show is serialized," Chaiken continued.
"His family, his history, is all very much a part of the show. That's the show — who this man was, who he is."
Meloni himself opened up about his exit from SVU, which was due to a contract dispute, but he said he did not miss the series.
"I would have no problem admitting to it. But I was pleasantly surprised it played out as well as it did," he told Entertainment Weekly, adding:
"Because, you know, that's not how life shakes out, right? You can have all the dreams you want, all the preconceived notions of how it's going to be. But I must say, the intervening decade was everything I could have hoped for."
The new series will follow Stabler, who returns to the NYPD to battle organized crime after a devastating personal loss.
However, the city and police department have changed dramatically in the decade he's been away, and he must adapt to a criminal justice system in the midst of its own moment of reckoning.
Throughout the series, we will follow Stabler's journey to find absolution and rebuild his life while leading a new elite task force that is taking apart the city's most powerful criminal syndicates one by one.
What are your thoughts on this big change?
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