About Last Night…LAW & ORDER and HOMICIDE: LIFE ON THE STREET

Let’s talk about Thursday night’s TV!

LAW & ORDER: “Charm City”: My quest to remain unspoiled meant I only discovered the next episode of HOMICIDE was actually part of a L&O crossover when I saw a handful of those actors appear in the opening guest star credits. So I paused that, popped on the mothership (thanks, Hulu!), and started this first.

It was fascinating to watch these worlds collide in this way given the overlap that continues to this day. A number of key figures in the HOMICIDE world are a part of the present-day SVU world (and obviously Munch was there for more than half of the show’s run; Andre Braugher also played a different character on SVU for a brief time, too), McCoy only just left the mothership, and obviously S. Epatha Merkerson is still within the Wolf Entertainment world on CHICAGO MED. In many ways, seeing L&O and HOMICIDE crossover felt a bit like an AVENGERS-type moment for the TV world, but it was delightful.

Crossovers aren’t easy, especially when they’re essentially set in the same world like this and don’t have the history, say, a LAW & ORDER: SVU/ORGANIZED or THE FBIS crossover might have. It felt like it was most delicately handled during the interrogation scenes; you couldn’t have the HOMICIDE or L&O team be clearly better, but you could have there be trouble because the HOMICIDE crew didn’t know all of the NYC rules.

In many ways, this episode made me sad about what we didn’t have with the current revival. There are great actors there, but, man, watching Sam McCoy give his closing argument here…I wish we had gotten more of him from his tenure in the recent seasons.

That being said, this was an episode where my expectations were thwarted because I assumed the two-parter meant there wouldn’t be a guilty verdict. But it being a bigger conspiracy also made sense given you need something big to justify a crossover like this.

(LOL to Tim flirting with Claire.)

HOMICIDE: LIFE ON THE STREET: “For Love and Country”: Look, I know there were very disturbing things at play here, but Munch freaking out that Gwen dated Briscoe was very funny and made me want to rewatch every interaction the two men had during the SVU days.

Not surprising, but good God J.K. Simmons can play creepy terrifyingly well. The horrific racism and terror just…hit in a real, awful, way right now. Clearly, things haven’t changed that much, and it’s depressing as hell given this episode aired nearly 30 years ago.

Rausch’s death by suicide was predictable, but I truly did not see Frank’s breakdown coming. What fantastic acting from Andre Braugher; what a beautiful (heartbreaking) moment of support from Tim, too, as Frank was so visibly, almost alarmingly, distraught over Rausch getting one last kick in the guts to them all and justice never really getting served. 

“The Hat”: Well, I wanted to punch Gaffney in a place that would really hurt him before they revealed he was going to be captain. His sexism and just gross behavior toward Megan…absolutely not. I can’t wait until he’s (hopefully) gone.

But: Lily Tomlin! So delighted to see her here. Rose was a mess, of course, and it felt obvious she would escape—killing again was a bit extra, but, hey, she was already caught, so why not go all out, I guess?—but it was fun to watch her outsmart our guys for a bit.

It’s been interesting to see who Munch was here versus who he becomes on SVU. I know the SVU Munch so, so, so well, so it’s interesting that this one was, arguably, more corrupt. I’m not sure how much of it was the time—do the wrong thing for the right reason—versus an intentional (or unintentional) shift. But it’s been something I’ve thought about a lot when he does something that doesn’t necessarily align with the character I’ve watched in hundreds of hours of TV. (Also weird to have watched almost every show John Munch has appeared in—and, boy, were there a lot—but be watching his origin story, essentially, last.)

Which shows did you watch last night?

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