I put the blame for the implausibility of Stabler's conduct on the writers rather than Christopher Meloni. Stabler's been in SVU how long?... at least ten years, given that he was partnered with Olivia well before the pilot episode. He has seen instances of multiple personality disorder before this, so there is no excuse for him to fly off the handle at Cynthia Nixon's several characters. I have to say that for me this episode belongs to Cynthia Nixon. She was completely convincing in the breaks and differentiation between her characters. However, Stabler's behaviour pointed up everything I dislike about the character: rush to judgement, too early to resort to violence, tendency to scene-chewing in the Jack Nicholson mould. When Stabler departed the series I was hugely relieved and I am not happy that the character has been resurrected in "Law & Order: Organized Crime". I had been suppressing my urges to comment on the way the character is presented, because he left SVU and there didn't seem much point. However, since he's back in the spin-off, I really need to make a point to the writers. Much weight was put throughout SVU on Stabler's ancestry - typically "Stabler... that's Irish Catholic, isn't it?" The writers really need to be aware that in the Irish telephone directory there are two (yes, 2) people called Stabler or Staebler. Compare this with the thousands of Stablers, Staeblers and Stäblers in Switzerland, Germany and Austria. You get the picture - Elliot Stabler with an Irish Catholic background is as convincing as the US Navy recovering the the Enigma codebooks.
