Bye Jack McCoy!

 So long to one of TV's best characters. Jack McCoy left Law & Order because he had the sense to know at age 83 it was time to go. Hold on I mean Sam Waterston, who IS Jack McCoy. 

I love Law & Order and I make no apologies for it. It's an old school procedural in which 99% of the time, by the end of the 60 minutes, it's all wrapped up. For some of us, that's just fine. I never really needed to know if Jack was screwing ADA Claire Kincaid (Jill Hennesey) or Defense Attorney Danielle Melnick (Tovah Feldshuh) though he at least bent the law to save them both at one point. 

Jack McCoy could be infuriating to old school liberals like me as he refused often to see that what he was doing to convict someone was not justice but stubbornness. But Jack could also stand up to the weird casting of Fred Thompson as the conservative cynical DA Arthur Branch , who seemed to just be an extension of Thompson himself and there to argue conservative politics.

Law & Order has gone on for 30 some years and once the morally superior Ben Stone (Michael Moriarty) left for personal reasons, McCoy jumped right in. With Jack's comradery with Adam Schiff (Steven Hill) who played the DA with such reality (Make this go away Jack) and his fellow DA's , the doomed Claire Kincaid (why just why did they kill her?), the professional Texan, Abby Carmichael (Angie Harmon), the crusader Connie Rubirosa (Alana De La Garza)and the voice of reason, Serena Southerlyn (Elizabeth Rohm, wow what an exit!) Jack got along with all. 

405 episodes as one character is unheard of. Waterston pulled it off week after week. The great S Epatha Merkerson pulled off 391 episodes as Lt Anita Van Buren (dont ask me her character's name in Chicago Med cuz she's just Lt Van Buren to me forever) and of course, the legend himself, Lenny Briscoe played by the consummate New Yorker, Jerry Orbach.

I can and do watch the L&O reruns religiously because I can't remember what happened 80% of the time and it's all new to me. Actors who are now famous both in film, TV and Broadway all appeared on this show (remember the great Tony Awards bit where they showed all the L&O actors, some in more than one episode) .

Farewell Jack McCoy, you Irish bastard. But you'll never leave me alone, not with reruns on 24/7 somewhere.