Logan’s Run Nearing the Finish Line

Here’s an article from the New York Post that gives some good information about Chris Noth’s final episode as Mike Logan with Law & Order Criminal Intent. It has a few spoilers, so read at your own risk!



Logan’s Last Stand

CHRIS NOTH HANGS UP BADGE AT 'L&O'
Chris Noth ends his run on "Law & Order" tonight.
August 16, 2008
By Kyle Smith


SO long, Mike Logan.

Eighteen years after he sweated his first suspect, the growling detective played by Chris Noth is investigating his last case on tomorrow's "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" as Jeff Goldblum prepares to step in.

The episode, titled "Last Rites," opens with a priest hearing the final confession of a man who says he committed two murders in The Bronx in 1992.

"Wild West days," says a coroner later in the episode. There were then about six murders a day in the city, and the air of nostalgia is as heavy as the smog over Beijing.

Today, Gotham's suffering a severe crime drought. If Dick Wolf wants to keep dancing with the zeitgeist his next series is going to have to be "Law & Order: Trans Fat Unit."

The priest was a friend of Lennie Briscoe's (played by the late Jerry Orbach), so he tracks down Briscoe's old partner.

Still bound by his vow to keep confessions anonymous, even though the murderer died after confessing, the priest can't furnish Logan with many details.

But together with Det. Wheeler (Julianne Nicholson), Logan is soon tearing holes in a case that has kept a man who swears he's innocent in jail for 16 years.

It turns out that the woman who put him there, an ambitious prosecutor, is running for attorney general. She won't be getting Logan's vote because of her habit of cutting corners to make headlines.

Moreover, the only witness who testified in the case is someone that she personally tracked down on the street.

It's a typical episode in the "L&O" universe - methodical, sober, stolid. Logan and Wheeler tiptoe down paths that could lead them to Mr. Big-like figures on Wall Street and the Mob.

They also have to deal with blowback within their own careers and personal lives as they figure out whether to believe the convicted man, who insists he's guilty of nothing more than trying to steal a car radio.

Unfortunately for him, it was the first night since about 1821 that nobody reported a car break-in.

So how dangerous are things going to get for Logan? Is yellow tape going to be draped around his body as a couple of detectives stand around with cold coffee cups and lukewarm one-liners?

Or is he going to face the more gruesome fate - exile to Staten Island - that he suffered the first time he left the "L&O" mothership, back in 1995?

That's where the suspense lies. Bringing in faith and politics and a sense that Logan has yet to find his real purpose, the show keeps you guessing all the way.

Noth was always one of the more interesting "L&O" actors to watch because of the way he seemed to feed on a barely controlled fury for everything.

"You sound angry," the priest tells Logan. The detective replies, "Who isn't?"

You'll be missed, Mr. Mad.




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