Results tagged “lenniebriscoe”

What a strange way for Community Board 5 to decide whether to name 53rd Street at 8th Avenue after Jerry Orbach.

There's Joey Ramone Place and Peter Jennings Way. But getting a street named after the city's arguably most famous TV detective who was also a Broadway legend is no easy task. The NY Times has the full story about the quest for Jerry Orbach's name to grace a street corner. Specifically the corner of West 53rd and 8th Avenue, where he and his wife Elaine Orbach lived.

It's not the same as an invisible Snuffleupagus, but there is something very exciting happening with Sesame Street. On August 14, a segment called "Law and Order Special Letters Unit" will premiere, starting with "The Missing M." Hal Boedeker at the Orlando Sentinel reports that the actual cast voices will be used, and Dick Wolf himself said, "I feel like a tobacco company executive, because hopefully we will hook 4- and 5- and 6-year-olds on the brand now." A Sesame Street press release says that there's definitely a Richard Belzer muppet and that plot includes detectives finding "things that start with the letter 'M' such as a cow named Murray that makes mmooo sounds." Hmm, Law & Order: Playground Control Team, anyone? And as we did some searching, we found this cool video of "Law & Order: Special Muppets Unit" on YouTube!

wasn't enough evidence to convict a woman who killed her abusive husband. Judy Castillo-Thomas had apparently been in a two-year long abusive relationship with Jason Thomas, and after three weeks of marriage. The Daily News reports that he beat her in May of 2003 as he taunted her "that she was 'too skinny' and her buttocks were 'too skinny.'" If this were a Law & Order episode, Lennie Briscoe would have a line for the husband being a sick bastard, but he'd also say something along the lines of "Damned if you do, damned if you don't." Castillo-Thomas tried to escape with a knife, but when Thomas stopped her, she says, "All of a sudden, the knife got short." Thomas died from the stabbing, and prosecutors had claimed that since the knife "penetrated 6 inches deep in a downward motion," the killing was not an accident.

You'd think that being a tourist from Baltimore, you'd be able to get away from shootings, but on Saturday, a woman visiting from Charm City was shot during a botched robbery. A group of men were trying to steal DVDs and CDs from a vendor at 1204 Broadway, around 29th Street, a building full of vendors; Newsday reported that two men argued with the vendor about the movie selection, in order to distract him while others could steal CDs. The vendor called 911, but then the robbers beat him up as the argument moved outside and then they tried shoot him, shooting 25 year-old Sheria Guster of Baltimore instead. Guster had been on a Flatiron shopping tour, and ended up going to St. Vincent's Hospital for her single bullet wound. She was released from the hospital yesterday. While reports say that Guster was alert and even smiled when an ambulance took her, another person on her tour said, "It turned out to be a terrible shopping day," which is a Lennie Briscoe-ism if we ever heard one; thank goodness Guster is all right. At any rate, two men were charged in connection to the crime yesterday, but the police are still awaiting ballistics results.

Yesterday, people from TV, film, and Broadway, as well as the public, gathered to pay tribute to the dearly missed Jerry Orbach. The attendees included Angela Lansbury, Al Pacino, Benjamin Bratt, Chris Noth, Jill Hennessy, Jane Alexander, Karen Ziemba, and Dick Wolf, plus many regular New Yorkers who cherished Orbach's contribution as an actor. Former Mayor David Dinkins was there, and Mayor Bloomberg spoke to the crowd, saying, "Briscoe exuded the life of the city in all its moxie...Jerry came to personify New York in both body and soul." NBC President Jeff Zucker and L&O producer Dick Wolf presented Orbach's widow Elaine with a $1 million check for Sloane Kettering's Cancer research fund as well.

Oh, Jerry. The Screen Actors Guild has given you a nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series, a now-posthumous tribute to your work as Detective Lennie Briscoe on Law & Order. Though you face some tough (James Gandolfini in the Sopranos, Kiefer "Job/Sisyhpus" Sutherland in 24) competition, Gothamist feels your work ruled, because you created a character whose interior life we could imagine with just a wiggle of your eyebrow. We're just curious if the SAG voters will be swayed by your recent death and will hand you a trophy; we're unsure if that'd be crass or a fitting tribute.

It's unfortunate that we have to read all these wonderful stories about Jerry Orbach in the many obituaries today, but Gothamist is heartened by the fact that many people, from fans to critics, as well as his peers, found him to be a great actor and a wonderful person. Gothamist thinks that was part of why we love Jerry so much, whether he was Detective Lennie Briscoe or Lumiere or Harry McGraw: He was wise and approachable. A few of the quotes we like:

In other Law & Order news, Michael Imperioli, aka "Christufuh" on the Sopranos, will be guest-starring three of the last four episodes of the season. He'll be playing a detective who Detective Fontana, played by Dennis Farina, is paired with while Detective Green is filming Rent in San Francisco (yes, yes, it's actually Jesse L. Martin). This is the first time on Law & Order that there's been a guest detective (Law & Order: Criminal Intent did have a guest second banana detective to Vincent D'Onofrio's Detective Goren when Kathryne Erbe was pregnant), and we'll have to finally summon up the courage to bug Imperioli the next time we see him in TriBeCa.

Scott's review of The Day After Tomorrow begins with "The Day After Tomorrow, a two-hour $125 million disaster — excuse me, I mean disaster — that opens nationwide on Friday..."

Last night's season finale of Law & Order featured the final appearance of Jerry Orbach as eternally wisecracking Detective Lennie Briscoe. In a divergence from the usual L&O practice of not dwelling on the police-or-law characters, attention was drawn to how Briscoe was leaving the precinct, Green's reaction, opening the door for working with the D.A.'s office, and Briscoe packing up his desk. As a result, Gothamist feels the cases were a little rushed (a couple loose ends and, Elizabeth Rohm, even though your hair is looking fabulous these days, could you be any more shrill?), if fun for the Strangers on a Train reference. And Lennie's pithy one-liner to the woman having an affair with the delivery guy - "Guess he was delivering more than just packages, huh?" - was a great last shot.

The new line-up also includes a boxing reality show (zzzz), a show starring Melissa Etheridge's wife, the Americano version of The Office, a sitcom with John Cho (starred in Better Luck Tomorrow but is better known as one of the MILF guys from American Pie), and a show called Medical Investigations with a young and sexy cast but it just sounds like Diagnosis Murder to us. And while Friends spin-off Joey seems dubious (in spite of the good buzz NBC is trying to "leak"), we must give NBC's marketing department for releasing this photo from the show, to help American think "Well, it's Matt LeBlanc as Joey Tribbiani - and there will be hot girls in a tight clothes - we're on board!" Actually, NBC showed an entire episode of Joey, which surprised the Daily News' David Bianculli with how good it was; apparently Drea de Matteo, as Joey's sister, makes him feels her boob job. Even if it's good, it's going to be a long fall. But in the good news, Scrubs was renewed for another two seasons, and there's a new drama, LAX, starring Heather Locklear. For that, Gothamist is thankful, because TV without Heather Locklear just doesn't seem like TV.

What about the show, you ask. There is speculation that Detective Green will get promoted and will take on the "wise veteran" dynamic of the group. While Gothamist has utmost faith in Dick Wolf and his producers decisions (even though we don't forgive them for giving us Serena Boring Bones Southerlyn), we foresee a rocky start for the newbie to fill Lennie's shoes.

In the world of television, there is one television program that has been entertaining people for fourteen seasons and has attracted a wide following, hooked on the self-contained stories, doses of New York cynicism, and fight for justice in this crazy world, with some fans veering on the obssessive. This is a story about two of obsessive fans who got to visit the set of Law & Order.

Check out the second batch of pictures from our visit to the set of Law & Order as well as the gallery of photos Jake took until the Gothamist post.

The Law & Order t-shirt we want, an Evening of Law & Order, the Law & Order coloring book, and our thoughts about a spin-off with just Lennie Briscoe.