An open letter to Dick Wolf:
Dear Mr. Wolf.
This is an
appeal to bring back our beloved Bolander (and his originator in
actor Ned Beatty) for one more run at glory as a "very special
guest star" on
Law & Order : Special Victims Unit.
Your career, Mr. Wolf, is a
story, a story of stories, a story of storytelling, a story of bringing not just stories to life, but entire storied
worlds. The worlds of
Hill Street Blues and
Miami Vice and the vast
revolving,
evolving,
crime-
solving Universe found in the many
faces
Law & Order.
It is no doubt creditable to your
wisdom that the
character of
Detective John Munch, ably portrayed by
Richard Belzer, was successfully "transferred" from
Homicide: Life on the Streets to
Law & Order: SVU at the
culmination of the former series.
No doubt you know that on
Homicide, Munch was partnered with Detective Stanley Bolander, portrayed by the inestimable Ned Beatty, a character nicknamed "The Big Man" because, as Munch would put it, "He is in all senses a man of
magnitude - enormously
fair, tremendously
honest, and a
whale of a
detective." In the Universe of
Homicide, Bolander
retired; he did not suffer the fate of certain other colleagues who were dramatically killed off when their
tenure on the show was up. He lives on, in the fictive Universe shared by
Homicide and
Law & Order thanks to a
multiplicity of
crossovers between the two series.
The
circumstances for Bolander's one-shot
return are so easily set forth -- here is the retired
police detective in
Baltimore who, perhaps, knows of someone in trouble in
New York City. Not at all a difficult circumstance to
imagine given the
social intercourse between the regions. Perhaps he has a grand-
niece who's gone
missing, or a friend's son wrongly accused of a crime, or the
stepchild of an
ex-wife mixed up in some murderous mess. Veritably, what reaction would be more natural than for him to call upon a former
partner now, as we have established, employed in a top-notch
department of the New York City police force? To hurry to the headquarters of that department and perhaps call upon old
favors?
Imagine the renewed, if somewhat exasperated
banter between Munch and Bolander. Imagine Munch's rolling of eyes and throwing up of hands as Bolander and Fin Tutuola compare stories of what it is like to be partnered with Detective John Munch. (Ned Beatty sharing quality screen time with
Ice-T!!) And, imagine the elder pair reviving their old
intuitive and
interrogative skills to crack the
case and see
justice done, one last impeccable
victory for an aging Bolander to carry into his
twilight years.
So please, Mr. Wolf, bring back Bolander, Munch's old
Homicide partner played by Ned Beatty. And just please don't make him turn out to be the
villain, or kill him off, or send him to some similarly sorrowful fate. Bolander was, as a character, a class act, brought to life by a class actor, so what do you say, give him a whale of a last act!!
Yours truly,
A
Fan