Fans of Law & Order: Organized Crime have been waiting since back in June of the 2025 TV schedule to learn if Christopher Meloni’s SVU spinoff will be renewed for Season 6, following its first season as a streaming original for those with a Peacock subscription. Well, OC is coming back to TV soon… sort of. The drama will return to its former 10 p.m. ET time slot on NBC, but not for a sixth season. Starting this fall, the network will air the fifth season that is already available streaming.
While I have no complaints about an excuse to watch the episodes again, I do have questions about how NBC will handle the F-bombs and increased violence that could fly on Peacock. Now, I won’t drop any spoilers about the season beyond that there were times that it felt like a totally different show and the ways that the series felt more realistic in Season 5, but the big news reminded me of what star Rick Gonzalez told CinemaBlend about getting to swear.
NBC Is Bringing Law & Order: Organized Crime Back To Thursday Nights
The Voice holding onto slots on Mondays and Tuesdays, and the Law & Order/Law & Order: SVU duo coming back to Thursdays. The shocker was that Law & Order: OC was listed in its old time slot of 10 p.m. ET on Thursday nights, following SVU at 9 p.m. ET.
Deadline cleared up what’s happening: Season 5 is getting broadcast on network television. According to the outlet, the fifth season wasn’t as dark as expected and could run for the 10 p.m. ET primetime slot and potentially reach a new audience.
It remains to be seen if/how this will affect Organized Crime having a future on Peacock or NBC, but I still have questions about how OC will be moved back to its old slot. Even if less dark than expected, there are some lines crossed on Peacock that certainly never happened when OC was on network. That includes F-bombs, and it turns out that Rick Gonzalez was about as big of a fan of dropping them on camera as his character, Detective Bobby Reyes, was.
What Rick Gonzalez Told Us About F-Bombs On Peacock
Now, anybody who has watched an R-rated movie tweaked for broadcast television or an HBO show cut for basic cable undoubtedly knows that it’s not hard to just silence an expletive or dub it over with another word. I wasn’t a big fan of how Suits approached dropping F-bombs on USA, but it’s doable.
In fact, when I live-blogged the version of the OC Season 5 premiere that aired on NBC after already seeing the version that streamed on Peacock, I noticed that “fucking dolls” on the streamer was changed to “stupid dolls” on the network. But it was just fun to see the detectives a bit more unleashed on Peacock, and Reyes in particular embraced the new F-bomb freedom.
When I spoke with Rick Gonzalez and got the scoop on what he “spoke with the writers” about for a big Reyes episode, I had to ask about characters getting to… expand their vocabularies, so to speak, on Peacock, and he shared:
I knew that. I was excited for that. I was like, ‘This is great. What can I say?’ And I’m just literally on set telling the director and the writers, like, ‘So can I say the F-bomb right now?’ They’re like, ‘Yeah,’ and I’m like, ‘Well, great, because I’m gonna say that right now!’ For all those times where they made me say, ‘Screw that!’ … No, it’s time.
“Screw that!” really didn’t do justice to some of what would go down on Law & Order: Organized Crime even during its NBC days, so who could blame Gonzalez for being excited about getting to shift over to “Fuck that!” on Peacock? When I noted in our interview that some of the murders from the first four seasons weren’t really “Gosh dang it” kinds of situation, he agreed, saying:
We don’t need to ‘screw’ those murders. We need to get to it.
For as excited as Rick Gonzalez was to drop F-bombs and clearly made the most of the opportunities to do so, he shared that there was another fun element of Season 5 moving past the NBC language barriers. After sharing that it was “not tough at all” to get used to the new normal on Peacock, he said:
For me, I got a kick out of just seeing Stabler say curse words. I’m like, ‘No, give him all the curse words. We need to see more F-bombs out of Stabler.’
Who else can think of some specific instances that Stabler might have dropped an F-bomb back in his SVU days? That’s not even to mention all the twists that really called for some harsher language once he moved over to launch Organized Crime! So, I’m left with questions.
Will NBC dub over every “fuck” like what happened when the Season 5 premiere aired on NBC? Or just silence them so that there’s a gap in the dialogue? Or is there a reality in which Stabler or Reyes or anybody else could actually go beyond the usual “Screw this” or “Damn that” that might usually be possible on network TV?
While I’m not expecting anybody to be shouting any Peacock-level expletives on NBC, shows that air in the 10 p.m. slot can often get darker than episodes that air during early hours. Just look at how Chicago P.D. compares to Chicago Fire and Chicago Med elsewhere on NBC!
Whether or not you’ve already seen the episodes on Peacock, Law & Order: Organized Crime begins its full Season 5 run on Thursday, September 25 at 10 p.m. ET, following the Season 27 premiere of Law & Order: SVU at 9 p.m. ET and the Season 25 premiere of Law & Order at 8 p.m. ET on NBC. Law & Order will be back without one series regular, although a guest star already pitched how his character could be a great fit to join full-time.