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Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone.
IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: November 15, 1940
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: Who was your favorite Law & Order lineup? It varies from person to person. Some were partial to the Mike Logan (Chris Noth), Ben Stone (Michael Moriarty), Donald Cragen (Dann Florek) era. Others were into Jesse L. Martin and Dennis Farina and come of the later cast members. For me, and I would wager for a lot of Law & Order fans, the sweet spot is: Jerry Orbach, Benjamin Bratt, and S. Epathan Merkerson as “Law,” with Sam Waterston, Angie Harmon, and Steven Hill as “Order.”
With Orbach, you got that Catskills-y one-liner delivery and ex-wife jokes. Bratt was the greenhorn. Harmon was the sop to conservative, merciless justice. Merkerson and Hill were the steady authority figures. And Sam Waterston was there as Jack McCoy, the showboatiest District Attorney that ever was. God bless and keep him.
McCoy was just the best. His courtroom manner could be best described as “coiled muskrat with strong internal sense of justice, marred by vocal modulation difficulties.” Every McCoy monologue is an adventure. Will he get so riles up this time that his voice will not merely crack but will fail him entirely? Will he be so effective in his attempts to shame the guilty that they throw themselves in jail??
Sam Waterston has such a core of decency to him, but it’s in the shell of an old crankypants, and he’s made that work for him throughout his career, specifically, as of late, in The Newsroom and Grace and Frankie.
But it’s Jack McCoy who Waterston will be remembered for. For his courtroom theatrics and for his ability to unite an entire viewing audience behind one zealous prosecutor with the best interests of the entire justice system at heart.
