Today was mainly work after I got started. That was late, no doubt about it. Up at the crack of ten, I believe is the phrase, then some mindless newspaper reading/CNBC watching (business news only–they never mention Britney!), web browsing and belly scratching before I sat down to watch the series I’ve been following, Homicide: Life On the Stre et. It plays at 11 am on WGN, the Chicago station. When I retired, I caught up on damn near all the Law and Order (in its many varieties), which took about six months.

I watched one today, and it seemed cheap in comparison to Homicide. At least to the first three years or so, when Ned Beatty was playing Stan Bolander. Bolander and John Munch—played by Richard Belzer, who migrated the character to Law and Order: Special Victims Unit— had some very interesting conversations.

As a matter of fact, there were lots of off-case discussions and philosophic discussions prompted by the case at hand. At least for the first several seasons. Now, in the latter parts of the series, which is where the WGN run is at, the writers keep depending on plot twists to keep up the depth of feeling that had earlier been developed by locating the irony and pain of the situation. This morning, they through Detective Meldrick Lewis into a windshield and left his condition as a cliffhanger for tomorrow. And just ten or so episodes back, the writers staged a shootout in the squad room, wounding two, Detectives Bayliss and Stivers.

It’s hard to maintain quality writing in a series, of course, and in a detective series, it may be more difficult. One of the problems you face, if you’re the writer, is that your characters face situations from which they must learn. Bayliss returned from his shooting very Buddhist in outlook and full of pithy observation on the passing nature of the world. Very good, except it’s a pose that’s difficult to maintain when you get back out in places where people are getting killed and, occasionally, some of them are trying to kill you. I watched NYPD Blue for quite a while and, after a few seasons, it became apparent the writers were going to have to let Andy Sipowicz learn something from all of his missteps and temper tantrums and many instances of jumping to a thousand conclusions. If he didn’t learn, they’d have to kill him off. The problem, though, at least by the end of that show’s run, was that it had become the trials of Saint Sipowicz, his losses had become so great–a partner (or was it two?), at least one wife and a son killed off. Plus his many suspensions or near suspensions. The last episode I watched, Sipowicz was actually visited by Bobby’s ghost who explained, badly, what it’s like on the other side and reassured poor Andy that whatever the problem up at the moment was going to turn out all right.