Lennie Briscoe

Leonard W. "Lennie" Briscoe was a fictional character on NBC's long running crime drama, Law & Order. He was featured on the show for 12 seasons, from 1992 to 2004. He was created by Walon Green and Rene Balcer, and was portrayed by Jerry Orbach. He also appeared in three Law & Order spin-offs, and was part of the original cast of Law & Order: Trial by Jury, appearing in only the first two episodes due to Orbach's death.

Orbach portrayed defense attorney Frank Lehrmann in the second season episode "The Wages of Love" before assuming the role of Briscoe.

In the Law & Order universe

Lennie Briscoe is introduced in the episode "Point of View" as the new senior detective in the Homicide Department of the New York City Police Department's 27th Detective Squad. His boss during his first season on the show is Capt. Don Cragen (Dann Florek); a year later, Lt. Anita Van Buren (S. Epatha Merkerson) takes over the homicide squad. He was previously assigned as a detective in the 116th Det. Squad in Queens.

Briscoe joins the squad after Det. Mike Logan's (Chris Noth) partner, Sgt. Phil Cerreta (Paul Sorvino), is shot by a black market arms dealer and is given a desk job.

After Logan is transferred to in Staten Island Det. Rey Curtis (Benjamin Bratt) becomes Briscoe's partner. Four years later, Curtis goes into early retirement to take care of his multiple sclerosis-stricken wife, and he is replaced by Det. Ed Green (Jesse L. Martin) in 1999.

Personal life

He was born on January 2, 1940. A veteran of two failed marriages, Briscoe has two daughters, the elder Julia and the younger Cathy, and a nephew, Det. Ken Briscoe (played by Orbach's son, Chris). He mentions being a grandfather and Cathy is shown to have no children so they must be Julia's. Briscoe is portrayed as a former alcoholic, although in recovery. Many references are made to his former problems both in his personal and work life because of his alcoholism. He often makes references to being a "friend of Bill W." which is a reference to his having attended Alcoholics Anonymous. His family is fairly dysfunctional, due to his alcoholism, he was often absent from his daughters' lives, and they have distant, fractious relationships with him as adults. Briscoe blames himself, especially when Cathy, a methamphetamine addict, is murdered by a drug dealer after she testifies against the dealer in court. However, he finds closure when the drug dealer dies from a heroin overdose.

In the 1996 episode "Aftershock", after witnessing an execution from a case he helped investigate, Briscoe falls off the wagon with disastrous results; A.D.A. Claire Kincaid (Jill Hennessy) is struck and killed by a drunk driver while driving him home from a bar. The experience shakes him deeply, and he remains sober for the rest of his life.

Briscoe was raised Catholic, but is Jewish on his father's side and occasionally attends Jewish services as a courtesy to his first wife. It was revealed that his father suffered from Alzheimer's. Though not actually Jewish according to the traditional definition, Briscoe is sometimes the target of antisemitism from criminals and even some of his own colleagues. Briscoe also develops a friendship with one of the few featured Jewish police officers during his tenure, John Munch (Richard Belzer), despite Munch's initial resentment when he discovers Briscoe had slept with one of Munch's ex-wives.

Character highlights

Briscoe is one of many characters on the show to have served in the military; he was at one point a corporal in the United States Army. On several occasions he has referred to his service in the Vietnam War. After leaving the Army, Briscoe joined the NYPD in the 29th Precinct and walked a beat there with stops at the 31st, 33rd, 110th, and 116th precincts, at some point reaching the rank of detective. Briscoe's detective shield number is 8220.

Briscoe typically has a wise-crack or joke about the victim or circumstances of death at the close of the opening scene. He likes music, but mostly music that was popular in his youth. In Season 9, Curtis chides his musical taste for stopping with Bobby Darin. Briscoe use to read Langston Hughes back when he was a beatnik "for about five minutes" and "it used to work pretty good on Jewish girls."

Many of Briscoe's former partners outside the series (off screen before Briscoe joined the 27th Precinct) have been or ended up becoming corrupt. In the 1993 episode "Jurisdiction" Lieutenant Brian Torelli (Dan Hedaya) forced a confession from a mental retardation man; at the end of the episode Briscoe is present when Internal Affairs arrests Torelli for suborning perjury and obstruction of justice.

Another of Briscoe's former partners, Det. John Flynn (Kevin Conway), falsely implicates him in the 1996 episode "Corruption" for taking seized drugs from the 116th Precinct evidence room (given to him by Flynn) during their stint there several years before. Flynn makes this allegation partly to throw off the Hellman Commission, which had been convened to investigate police corruption, including the questionable shooting death of a suspect by Flynn himself, and partly as revenge against Curtis, who refused to falsely defend Flynn. Briscoe, however, has an alibi—he was having an affair with Officer Betty Abrams, a married woman. Against Briscoe's wishes, Abrams testifies before the commission to exonerate him. Because of the affair, however, the commissioners question her credibility. Although Briscoe is ultimately cleared, defense attorneys of suspects he subsequently arrests exploit the allegations through the rest of his career.

There are moments in Briscoe's career where his decisions are controversial. In the episode "Stalker", a stalker accused of murdering a woman could have gone free because the victim confessed to lying to the police about one of his earlier attacks. However, after the victim is found murdered, Briscoe goes to ADA Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston) and tells him that he now believes that the victim did not lie to the police of the stalker's earlier attacks and that he is willing to take the stand and state that the original police report was incorrect. Curtis would be called by the defense to testify that he thought the original police report was correct. At the end of the episode, the stalker is found guilty; outside the courtroom, Curtis and Briscoe reconcile.

Shortly after Green is assigned as his partner, he and Briscoe nearly come to blows during a particularly difficult investigation of a robbery/homicide. Their primary suspect confesses as he is being arrested, but because Briscoe is the only officer within earshot, Green, Van Buren, and McCoy are placed in a difficult position with regard to the confession. Again, Briscoe is eventually vindicated, and he and Green work to rebuild their professional rapport and what eventually ends up as a close friendship.

Briscoe retires from the NYPD in 2004. His successor in the 27th Detective Squad is Det. Joe Fontana (Dennis Farina), whose stint in the 27th Precinct would be far shorter than Briscoe's.

Spin-offs

On the first season of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Briscoe makes three guest appearances assisting his old boss, Don Cragen (Dann Florek). Briscoe also makes a guest appearance in the Law & Order: Criminal Intent episode "Poison", in which he assists the Major Case Squad on a similar case.

Soon after his retirement, Briscoe joins Law & Order: Trial By Jury, having accepted an appointment as an investigator in the office of New York County District Attorney Arthur Branch (Fred Thompson), with partner Inv. Hector Salazar (Kirk Acevedo).

In 2005, the Briscoe character was written out without being killed off, coinciding with Orbach's death in December 2004 from prostate cancer. In the 2005 Criminal Intent episode "Diamond Dogs" (Chris Noth's first episode as a regular cast member), Logan, questioning a burglar's fence in a pool hall, is clearly referring to Briscoe when he says that a former partner was a "wizard with the stick". In a 2007 episode of Criminal Intent, Logan says that Briscoe has died but he still sees him alive in his dreams. In 2008, Green explains he returned to gambling briefly after Briscoe died. In a 2008 episode of Criminal Intent, a Catholic priest who was a friend of Briscoe approaches Logan after a prisoner's deathbed confession to a 16-year-old double murder in The Bronx.

In the 2009 Law & Order episode Fed Briscoe's old partner Rey Curtis returns to New York to bury his deceased wife Deborah, who had finally succumbed to MS, next to her parents. Lt. Van Buren was able to come to the tail end of Deborah's funeral and meet with Curtis where Curtis revealed he spoke to Briscoe just before his death and that Lennie was his snarky self right up to the end.

Reception

• Lennie Briscoe was voted the 30th greatest television show character of all time by Bravo TV.