Several months ago Richard Belzer,
the legendary standup comic and actor who was practically inescapable from the
character he portrayed for more than twenty years on countless series, passed away
from cancer. I am told his last words included a twelve-letter obscenity which
would have been completely in keeping with both him and John Munch.
I have dealt with the passing of
several actors in recent years who have been critically connected to Homicide
most significantly Yaphet Kotto and Ned Beatty, but it’s taken a lot more
time for me to find the effort to write about Belzer’s. passing. In a large
part, it’s because his death hit me far harder than any celebrity in recent
years with the sole exception of Michael K. Williams. Williams’ death hit hard
because it was shocking; Belzer’s shouldn’t have been because he’d been out of
the public eye for awhile and had clearly been ill. But it doesn’t make it hurt
any less. And that’s because John Munch may be the most iconic character not
merely in the history of Homicide or even police procedurals, but
television altogether.
He certainly showed up in so many
places. When Law and Order decided to crossover with Homicide back
in 1996 Belzer immediately had a rapport with Jerry Orbach, who had already begun
to make Lennie Briscoe one of the most iconic cops in that franchise history. Munch
was essentially a secondary character in that crossover, but in the two that
followed, Munch would take the lead in both episodes of the series, and his
banter with Orbach was incredible. I think few would have objected to a spinoff
just featuring the two of them together as a private eye team. Instead when Homicide
was cancelled in 1999, Dick Wolf cast Belzer to play one of the lead
characters in the first spinoff of the series Special Victims Unit. (One
of the fundamental reasons I disliked that show so much was not only as to how
poorly Munch’s character was utilized but how the writers basically destroyed
every element of the backstory the writers of Homicide had created to
fit him into the world of SVU.)
By that point John Munch was
beginning to show up everywhere. Even before the second Law and Order crossover
aired, he had guest starred as Munch on an episode of The X-Files. (The
episode took place four years before we first met Munch; perhaps the best joke
of the story was that the conspiracy that unfolded was too much for him to believe.)
Belzer would appear in every installment of Law and Order except for Criminal Intent. He showed
up as Munch in comedies – Arrested Development, 30 Rock and Unbreakable
Kimmy Schmidt. And even when it wouldn’t have made much sense considering
the reality of it, we actually saw John Munch in a brief scene in the final
season of The Wire, David Simon’s follow-up. The scene takes place in a
bar and he never identifies himself, but we can tell it’s him because it’s a cop
bar and he’s telling the owner that he doesn’t know the first thing about
running one.
John Munch may have been a regular
on SVU more than twice as long than he appeared on Homicide but
for anyone who truly loves the procedural, Belzer will always be associated
with Homicide first and foremost. He was not the most iconic character
of that series – Frank Pembleton and Tim Bayliss will always be on that list
ahead of him – but he may be the most quintessential one, because it’s
impossible to separate the actor from the role. Even Belzer admitted while the
series was still on the air that Munch was as close to what he would be if he
ever had been a cop. And that made him one of the most memorable characters in
TV history. This is extremely ironic because Munch’s role on Homicide was
never front and center the same way so many of the other characters were, even
though he was one of only four actors who stayed with the show from beginning
to end.
That somehow fit Munch. We were
never sure how old John Munch was. Belzer was 48 when the series began but he
looked like one of those guys who had been born in his fifties. Yet even as younger
detectives entered the squad, he was never given deference, never given respect
by his bosses. That was fitting because while Munch was never a bad cop, from
the start of the series you got the feeling he was never a great cop.
I don’t just mean in the sense of
his clearance rate (although freeze frames of the board often showed he barely
cleared more than half his cases during his stint in the Homicide Unit) It’s
that Munch seemed to give the impression most of the time he was on the job
that he wasn’t taking it seriously. He was always telling stories in the squad room
that frustrated his colleagues by their inanity; he was always telling inappropriate
jokes over dead bodies or when detectives genuinely seemed interest in doing
their jobs (which irritated many of his partners to distraction) and he was
always kvetching about something. Complaint seemed to be natural state; he was
not mad at the world or even frustrated at it, just slightly irritated.
All cops on Homicide were
cynical by default; Munch never seemed capable of turning it off. That was particularly
interesting when the writers developed a perfect back story for him early in
Season 1. Munch had been a member of the counterculture, a sixties radical who
was a revolutionary. (One of the more wonderful jokes in the series history
came in the final season when he finally managed to find his record using the
Freedom of Information Act and saw the government never took him seriously.
Naturally, he thought it was another conspiracy.) Munch believed in every government
conspiracy imaginable, from why marijuana was illegal to his suspicion as to
why Pope John Paul I died so suddenly and mysteriously. Which is why, as he
mentioned to Lewis in Season 5, that his decision to become a cop was just
another example of the supreme irony of life. (Lewis, who was trying to clean
up the aftermath of a bar brawl that left a man dead in their bar, either ignored
him or dismissed it as background noise.)
Munch was always as much the source
of the comic stories on Homicide as anything else but there was a darkness to him and genuine
rage. This was made clear in our introduction to him in the Pilot where Munch
is questioning a suspect who is telling a story that is particularly unbelievable.
Bolander (Ned Beatty) has walked off to make a phone call, and after taking as
much of the story as he can, Munch delivers one of the greatest monologues in
the show’s (and TV history):
“Oh, I get it. You’re saving your
better lies for the other guy. I’m just a doughnut in the on-deck circle. I’m Montel
Williams. You want to take to Larry King…I have been a murder police for ten
years, when you lie to me, you lie to me with respect. What is you don’t like
my haircut…Don’t you ever again lie to me like I’m Montel Williams, you understand.
I am not Montel Williams, you hear, I am not Montel Williams!”
When this beleaguered suspect asks:
“Who’s Montel Williams?” Munch just says: “I’m not Montel Williams.”
For those of you who don’t remember
Williams was a syndicated nineties African-American talk show host who happened
to film his shows in Baltimore. (He was obscure even in his own time; Bolander didn’t
know who he was either.)
Munch’s cynicism also reflected a
more depressed air that we saw in one of the final scenes of the pilot where he
talks with Lewis and Crosetti about the futility of their jobs and getting out
of police work into something more rewarding. While this is going on, these
detectives clearly make a young man who is eying them at wants to hold them up.
They’re not inclined to arrest him; they’re actually annoyed that this kid
doesn’t know that they’re cops. Finally Munch walks over and shows him his
badge: “We’re murder police. Go rob somebody else.”
There are few moments in the series
that more clearly define the kind of cop show Homicide was going to be
that Munch’s tired reaction. They don’t frisk him for weapons or drugs. They
don’t arrest him to help the good citizens of Baltimore. They don’t ask him
what made do this. All of these things would have expected if not mandatory in
any police drama before that. Munch just tells this guy to go away. It’s not
even as if they have better things to do. They just don’t want to deal with the
paperwork.
What is interesting about Munch is
perhaps more than any other detective on
the show, he wore his heart on his sleeve. It’s never been clear how many women
he married before the series began – we believe it’s only been twice at the start,
but halfway through its up to three. In the first two seasons, he has an on-again,
off again relationship with Felicia, who we never meet, and it finally ends in
disaster in Season 2 just when he seems about to propose. Halfway through Season
3 we see a reference to Brigitte (Valerie Perrine) his girlfriend from his
free-love phase, who shows a photo of him in all his unadorned glory. In Season
4, he falls in love with ME Alyssa Dyer (Harlee McBride, his wife) but ends up
bedding her cop roommate before their first date. That relationship ends in
disaster. In the final season he begins an affair with Billie Lou (Ellen
McElduff) the bartender at the bar he owns and they get engaged. They get
married in what would be the series finale, but he never consummates the union.
By the time SVU begins they are divorced, though Munch is an unreliable
narrator as to why. Having seen the women he falls in love with, the only explanation
seems to be that women do like men who make them laugh.
Munch shows a similar devotion to
his partners. This was particularly true with Bolander, who he constantly tried
to win over and would always rebuff him. When Bolander was written out of the
show in Season 4, his character was initially suspended but Munch spent much of
that season desperately trying to get Bolander to see him or even answer his
messages. During Season 4 , he would partner with the newly demoted Megan
Russert (Isabella Hoffman) and initially try to win her approval, but she continued
to reject him as sloppy. Even in partnerships when he was the elder statesmen,
as in the final two seasons he would try to be a friend but receive little
respect.
The thing was, despite Munch’s attitude,
he cared. In the middle of Season 3, while serving a warrant with Bolander,
Howard (Melissa Leo) and Felton (Daniel Baldwin) gunshots rang out. Munch was
the only one who wasn’t hit. Throughout the three episodes that followed, Belzer
did some of his best work, utterly detached in the hospital waiting room, and
then bursting into tears as he realized ‘their bloods on my shoes.” His
cynicism was detached when he kept hearing about Bolander “when he wakes up.” “They
mean if,” he told Giardello. He spent the next two episodes by Bolander’s
hospital bed and went into apoplexy when Bolander crashed after coming out of surgery.
As the investigation into the shooter, believed to be Gordon Pratt (Steve Buscemi,
in the first performance I recognized him in) a virulent racist, stalled he took
out his frustration on Pembleton and the
two got into a shoving match. Pratt would end up dead at the end of the episode
– and Bayliss, who investigated the murder, would always believe that Munch had
killed him. Munch never admitted it, but he didn’t mourn Pratt and seemed happy
that his murder had been unsolved.
When Pembleton had his stroke at the
end of Season 4, Munch was frantic when the doctors refused to initially take
him to the hospital. When Season 5 began, he was particularly unpleasant as to
how everyone seemed willing to bend over backwards to let Pembleton rejoin the
squad, saying no one would have done the same for him. (Sadly, that is very
possible.) He baited Frank from the moment he came back, and then revealed a
bitter truth. Throughout Pembleton’s recovery he had called his hospital and
him dozens of times – and Frank had never gotten back to him once. Frank rarely
admits he’s made a mistake about anything, so it was odd to see his reaction. Sheepishly,
he tells Munch he didn’t think it would matter. Munch holds a grudge for the next
episode – then when he sees Frank struggling with his memory, writes down phone
numbers where he will always see them. Things are fine with them from that
point on.
John Munch was a cynic among cynics,
a misanthrope before such characters would become popular throughout the era of
Peak TV. But no one ever found John Munch repugnant, no one ever got tired of
watching him for more than a quarter of a century. Perhaps it was because of
the fundamental nature of how Belzer played Munch, which was no doubt close to
his own philosophy of life. You can’t take anything seriously, not even murder.
Life is not a melodrama, its tragicomedy. And given how so many of the murders
on homicide occurred, Munch was in the right place for his philosophy
was writ large.
I will do a follow-up to this article
later on, to showcase some of the highpoints of Richard Belzer’s career on Homicide.
In all candor Munch should have gotten far more work to do on the show: I
only remember his character having a critical role in investigation in barely
20 percent of the show’s 123 episodes and very few of them were centered on him.
Belzer never objected to his lot in life; and was always thrilled to be working
on such a classic as Homicide. (Some of his co-stars over the years were
never as pleasant about it.) To give this performer and character his due, I
intend to deal with some of the best moments he had, some of which showed that
he was more than just the comic relief. In
another era, Munch might very well have gotten his own series. But considering Belzer’s
nature, maybe he would have turned it down. Both he and his iconic character
were always contrary.
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