Good-bye, Detective Green

For many years of my TV addiction, we specialized in watching one-hour dramas directed or produced by people such as John Wells (“ER” and “West Wing”), David Kelley (“Picket Fences” and “Ally McBeal”), Steven Bocchio (“Hill Street Blues” and “NYPD Blue”), and Dick Wolf (“Law and Order”), and then – belatedly – Top Gun producer (“CSI,” “Cold Case,” “Without a Trace”). One of our favorites was the 18-year-old Wednesday 10 p.m. NBC show “Law and Order” and its various spinoffs. I even used to mention “Law and Order” to my classes, when I talked about research about the New York City crime wave of the late 1980s and early 1990s (when I lived in New York City) and how some of the most popular TV dramas (at least a few years ago) – like “Blue” and “Law” – were born of that crime wave (and were filmed in New York). (Unlike "Blue," which focused on the detectives' complex personal levels, L&O focused more on investigating the crime and prosecuting the criminal. But the accounting for the crime was already complex and the legal battles typically pitted warring principles against each other in interesting ways - a thinking person's police show - with the lead characters rarely sounding like they were speechifying.) (L&O also featured several crossover episodes - before Detective Green's time - with another favorite show of ours, "Homicide: Life on the Street."0We’ve quit watching 10 p.m. TV stations so that (until blogging started) we could go to bed early (since I get up on weekday mornings at about 5:20 a.m.) and lately we’ve quit watching TV altogether (except for – as should be obvious from blog entries – for “Idol” and “Ghost Hunters” and occasionally “House” or “Bones” – Fox runs local news at 10 p.m. so we are allowed to watch all of their shows). For a while, I watched “Law and Order,” which – unlike its two spinoffs – was on Friday nights lately – when we were allowed to stay up later. But, now, it’s back on Wednesday nights at 10. While blogging, I stayed up and watched most of it lately. The task should be familiar to “Law and Order” viewers – how to exit a cast member – since the show has been a revolving door. The more recent changes – exiting more lawyers and police officers last summer – was a little too much for me. Still on the show is Sam Waterson, now in a reduced role, as now District Attorney McCoy (the actor who played his former boss, Fred Thompson, ran for president), I’m a fan of, having watched “I’ll Fly Away” and seen him in the title role as Lincoln in Illinois on Broadway. S. Epatha Merkerson, from “Terminator 2,” has also been on as a police captain for much of the show’s run (her predecessor is on “Special Victims Unit”). But Jesse L. Martin’s exit – who we watched in “Ally McBeal” but missed in “Rent” – represents an important departure. He was the last partner of Jerry Orbach, a long series mainstay as Detective Briscoe, before Orbach transferred to another L&O spinoff and shortly thereafter died. We’ve mourned Orbach’s departure and the departure of many other L&O regulars (Michael Moriarty, Jill Hennessy, Chris Noth, Carey Lowell), and we mourn Martin’s loss. His friendly demeanor and usually cool head (as Detective Ed Green, the show’s first African American police officer) was an antidote to Orbach’s wise-cracking and Waterson’s moralizing. His final episode saw him exit – somewhat voluntarily – after evidence (uncovered partly by a character played by Anthony Anderson, who will replace Martin on the show) that Green had been involved in gambling and a controversial shooting after Briscoe’s death. (Martin is currently filming a Marvin Gay biopic.) Wolf’s objective is for “Law and Order” (which started out in fall 1990) to beat the record “Gunsmoke” set for regular scripted series of 20 years. But who knows if the show will make it (since it’s a modestly rated show in the least watched of the four networks and has two years to go)? We’ll miss you, Jesse L. Martin, and – even if we’re not watching – we’ll miss you, “Law and Order,” after you’re gone (though some reruns will no doubt still proliferate).