On Tuesday night, I was settled into the couch to watch Happy! starring The Great Christopher Meloni when my husband innocently asked, “Where do I know him from?” I screeched: “He’s Detective Stabler! From Law & Order: SVU!” My husband looked at me blankly, so I added, “You don’t know DE-TEC-TIVE STAB-LER?” Then he made an extremely poor choice by asking, “And what’s… the deal… with Detective Stabler?” I silently navigated over to YouTube. Soon we were watching fan compilation videos of Stabler, sleeves rolled up, grilling perps and banging his fist on tables as the head-banging melody of Evanescence’s Bring Me to Life filled our living room.
Meanwhile, I explained that Stabler was one of the stars of Law & Order: SVU, a procedural cop drama about the NYPD’s “sex crimes” unit. “He’s this tortured former Marine with explosive anger issues,” I explained. “A wounded tough guy fighting the good fight.”
It had been, oh perhaps, a dozen or so years since I’d gone looking for Detective Stabler fan compilation videos on YouTube. But here some of the same ones were, preserved a decade-plus for this important teaching moment, alongside years and years and YEARS of newer compilations. Despite Meloni having left SVU nearly a decade ago in 2011, and after two-hundred-and-seventy-two episodes, there are fan edits published as recently as a couple of weeks ago. He eternally lives on in obsessive videos that recall themed highlights from the show against saccharine musical soundtracks and even render alternate fan-fic storylines. Which is how last night I found myself exclaiming something I rarely ever do anymore: “I love the internet!”
The rest is pretty much: Stabler shirtless, kissing his wife, or doing tough-guy stuff. (In one case, it’s a critique of producers’ handling of his sex scene with on-screen text reading, “KEEP THE LIGHT ON FOR CRYING OUT LOUD! Yeesh!”) One edit—by a user named ElliotStablerLova and titled “The many moods of Elliot Stabler”—is set to stirring classical music and unveils a series of illustrative moments from the show with Stabler’s “mood” labeled in a stock 2007-era video editing font. “Horny!” and “Sexy!!!” and “shirtless!” are “moods,” FYI.
And he’s hot. My unconscious is a hot cop.