Yaphet Kotto (1939-2021)

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hearthesilence
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Re: Yaphet Kotto (1939-2021)

#26 Post by hearthesilence » Wed Mar 17, 2021 5:02 pm

bearcuborg wrote:
Wed Mar 17, 2021 4:32 pm
I assume you mean the Tonight Show going from Carson to Leno? Because I don't think Leno's tenure had any stretch that was watchable. Newsradio might have got screwed over in promotion, but the show was pretty much great till Phil passed, and even that last season had some good episodes.
YES, I f***ing hated Leno, and even if he didn't do all that slimy shit for which he was rewarded for by NBC, he was unbearably smarmy. I had someone in my dorm who DID watch him regularly, and that's how I found out Leno was lifting a lot of Letterman's classic bits and doing them very poorly. (The worst was Rupert and the hidden camera, a bit Leno's show appropriated with Howie Mandel.)

The DVDs for NewsRadio mention a lot of meddling by NBC, and to their credit they pushed back. The best was when the network wanted a wedding for Lisa, and the show responded with a hilarious bit with Joe Rogan "confessing his love" and proposing on-air under the direction of Jimmy James. (NBC was not amused.)

But they eventually had to cave - remember the intern during Hartman's last season?
I'm not sure if you remember HLOTS season 4 with the stakeout episode, but that one pretty much concludes the Crosetti storyline with Meldrick having a heart to heart with Kay, and Kotto gets some great stuff regarding his daughter - his scene with Pempleton is pretty powerful. Homicide was maybe the first great black TV drama. Kudos to the production team in understanding Baltimore in that regard.
I do NOT remember that well, but if I can track down a clip, maybe it'll jog my memory. Stakeout - did the conversation of smoking come up in that one or was that a different episode? Regardless, I enjoyed that bit when I first saw it, especially as someone who was way too young to smoke. IIRC one pair of detectives was coming to the conclusion that they needed to quit smoking, like NOW, and the other pair, both former smokers, were perilously getting close to falling back into the habit when they recalled the visceral and physical pleasures of smoking, right down the crinkling sound of the polypropylene wrap.

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domino harvey
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Re: Yaphet Kotto (1939-2021)

#27 Post by domino harvey » Wed Mar 17, 2021 5:06 pm

hearthesilence wrote:
Wed Mar 17, 2021 5:02 pm

The DVDs for NewsRadio mention a lot of meddling by NBC, and to their credit they pushed back. The best was when the network wanted a wedding for Lisa, and the show responded with a hilarious bit with Joe Rogan "confessing his love" and proposing on-air under the direction of Jimmy James. (NBC was not amused.)

But they eventually had to cave - remember the intern during Hartman's last season?
The thing is though, as you note, NewsRadio at its height was so good that network interference didn't deter them, they just used it to buy them good will. I mean, the episodes with Lauren Graham in them are some of the best they ever made, and she was 100% foisted on them by the network

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hearthesilence
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Re: Yaphet Kotto (1939-2021)

#28 Post by hearthesilence » Wed Mar 17, 2021 5:11 pm

domino harvey wrote:
Wed Mar 17, 2021 5:06 pm
hearthesilence wrote:
Wed Mar 17, 2021 5:02 pm

The DVDs for NewsRadio mention a lot of meddling by NBC, and to their credit they pushed back. The best was when the network wanted a wedding for Lisa, and the show responded with a hilarious bit with Joe Rogan "confessing his love" and proposing on-air under the direction of Jimmy James. (NBC was not amused.)

But they eventually had to cave - remember the intern during Hartman's last season?
The thing is though, as you note, NewsRadio at its height was so good that network interference didn't deter them, they just used it to buy them good will. I mean, the episodes with Lauren Graham in them are some of the best they ever made, and she was 100% foisted on them by the network
Totally. They always responded to network demands with a knowing irreverence that allowed them to pull it off with more success than not. It kind of helped that the show was about a network show (albeit radio), so plotwise, they were able to be self-reflexive in a way that wasn't so literal like Seinfeld's fourth season.

Which reminds me, at the time, it was the only other scripted TV show besides The Larry Sanders Show that was able to get Seinfeld as a guest star during Seinfeld's run. (Seinfeld tried acting in other shows before, but once he became established as a major star, it was very different.) Business connections likely played a big role, but I don't think Seinfeld would have done it if he didn't like the show.

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domino harvey
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Re: Yaphet Kotto (1939-2021)

#29 Post by domino harvey » Wed Mar 17, 2021 5:15 pm

To this day I think Bill's line "Jerry Seinfeld: a case of too much too soon, or too little too late?" is one of the most perfectly crafted comic lines ever

Anyhoo, we should continue this line of discussion here

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bearcuborg
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Re: Yaphet Kotto (1939-2021)

#30 Post by bearcuborg » Wed Mar 17, 2021 6:09 pm

hearthesilence wrote:
Wed Mar 17, 2021 5:02 pm
I do NOT remember that well, but if I can track down a clip, maybe it'll jog my memory. Stakeout - did the conversation of smoking come up in that one or was that a different episode? Regardless, I enjoyed that bit when I first saw it, especially as someone who was way too young to smoke. IIRC one pair of detectives was coming to the conclusion that they needed to quit smoking, like NOW, and the other pair, both former smokers, were perilously getting close to falling back into the habit when they recalled the visceral and physical pleasures of smoking, right down the crinkling sound of the polypropylene wrap.
Yeah, that smoking exchange is towards the end of the episode, directed by John McNaughton. Yaphet should have gotten an Emmy for that scene.

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feihong
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Re: Yaphet Kotto (1939-2021)

#31 Post by feihong » Wed Mar 17, 2021 6:31 pm

Not a major role, perhaps, but I thought he brought an undeserved touch of subtlety to his role as king pimp in Truck Turner, acting with Isaac Hayes and Nichelle Nichols. In all the goofing around in that movie, Kotto brings this sudden gravity. His character's death in the film has a lot more pathos than that of the other villains, maybe because he plays it a little more Shakespearean than the other actors do. But I swear they linger on him a lot longer than the other villains, as well. Interesting to contrast his grand manner in Truck Turner with the long, verite-style dialogues in Alien, and the understated unpredictability of his character in Homicide. He was an actor who could work––in spite of a very particular voice and an unmistakable look––in such a range of different modes.

I had always heard Kotto was the member of some royal family––I had always heard he was a prince of Equatorial Guinea. Turns out his father was a member of the ruling family of Cameroon. So the rumor I had heard wasn't unfounded, but still not totally correct.

Zot!
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Re: Yaphet Kotto (1939-2021)

#32 Post by Zot! » Thu Mar 18, 2021 4:39 am

hearthesilence wrote:
Wed Mar 17, 2021 4:26 pm
beamish14 wrote:
Wed Mar 17, 2021 4:01 pm
domino harvey wrote:
Wed Mar 17, 2021 3:03 pm
It was shot on film but almost surely edited/finished on tape, so I don't think there's any risk of a Blu-ray release, since no one's footing the bill for that-- it's a miracle A&E even bothered to release the whole series on DVD. And I'd say the show was great for far longer than just the first two seasons, but it was always kinda a mixed bag: as good as the acting and characters are, the handheld swishy filming style is pretty outre and tiring to sit through, let's be real

It's been too long since I've really watched either show, but wasn't the handheld aesthetic also a staple of Hill Street Blues, at least initially?

Much like how the Law and Order series pay the bills for a lot of Obie/Pulitzer-winning playwrights on their writing staffs, Homicide employed a lot of indie/upstart American filmmakers.
Very true. Quite a few excellent directors passed through Homicide.

Re: Hill Street Blues I bought the first two (or three?) seasons on DVD when they came out, and I sold them like a month later. It was a good show, but it was massively disappointing - it made the case that American TV had spent most of its years playing catch up with theatrical films, and even then it was severely hampered by its self-imposed limitations. Everything that was innovative about Hill Street Blues was old hat to Hollywood - The French Connection alone had already done what HSB accomplished and more a dozen years earlier. There were scenes from HSB that did use handheld camera, but it was pretty sparing. Much of the "documentary"-like aspects of HSB were a bit watered down or undermined by other elements of the show. It still felt slick and staged compared to the best police movies of the previous decade. The acting was pretty good, but the writing often got ridiculous - I can still remember David Caruso's Irish gang leader with his leprechaun hat. Convincing if West Side Story is your idea of real urban street gangs.
Friedkin acknowledged that the "documentary" style camera in French Connection was knicked from Costas-Gavras "Z", which I'm sure got it from "Battle of Algiers"...etc..etc...

What I didn't know is that Lars von Trier credited Homicide as being the inspiration for the hand-held work on his films, which probably restarted the trend.

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hearthesilence
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Re: Yaphet Kotto (1939-2021)

#33 Post by hearthesilence » Thu Mar 18, 2021 10:41 am

Zot! wrote:
Thu Mar 18, 2021 4:39 am
Friedkin acknowledged that the "documentary" style camera in French Connection was knicked from Costas-Gavras "Z", which I'm sure got it from "Battle of Algiers"...etc..etc...
Of course. I like The French Connection, but most of its innovations weren't new at all, it either took previous accomplishments up a notch (like the concept of a police drama done with real law enforcement in real locations, etc.) or applied them to a novel context. The only thing truly innovative about it was ethically questionable - putting the public at risk with reckless driving that made it into the famous chase sequence.
What I didn't know is that Lars von Trier credited Homicide as being the inspiration for the hand-held work on his films, which probably restarted the trend.
NYPD Blue adopted the same concept too, and unlike Homicide, it had great ratings and far more Emmys to go with its good press. I think that alone popularized the style, and it arguably made it pro forma for TV dramas, especially police dramas. (The first time I saw The Shield, what was once a great innovation 40-50 years earlier was reduced to a cheap and lazy conceit.)

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bearcuborg
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Re: Yaphet Kotto (1939-2021)

#34 Post by bearcuborg » Thu Mar 18, 2021 3:22 pm

I often wonder what made NYPD Blue, and Law & Order garner Emmys and ratings. Yaphet might say (and I wouldn’t disagree) that perhaps America wasn’t interested in a largely black TV show. Another notable thing about Homicide (though I’m not sure I can defend) is that they often lost-and they accepted their routine losses, often with dark cop humor. In the first Law & Order crossover, Baltimore lost out on jurisdiction, and prosecution of a shared suspect. In the first few seasons there were never any “don’t worry m’am, we’ll find the killer!” moments. Later seasons seemed to change toward what we traditionally expect from a cop show, and that’s where I lost a bit of interest.

They also wrote themselves into a corner with the Kellerman storyline, but he and Meldrick were a great pairing. Pembleton and Baylis got to be a bit much near the end. Kellerman coming back in the movie was the 2nd best part of the finale, after the ending - but unfortunately that came at the cost of essentially losing Yaphet Kotto for nearly the entire episode.

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hearthesilence
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Re: Yaphet Kotto (1939-2021)

#35 Post by hearthesilence » Thu Mar 18, 2021 3:47 pm

bearcuborg wrote:
Thu Mar 18, 2021 3:22 pm
I often wonder what made NYPD Blue, and Law & Order garner Emmys and ratings. Yaphet might say (and I wouldn’t disagree) that perhaps America wasn’t interested in a largely black TV show. Another notable thing about Homicide (though I’m not sure I can defend) is that they often lost-and they accepted their routine losses, often with dark cop humor. In the first Law & Order crossover, Baltimore lost out on jurisdiction, and prosecution of a shared suspect. In the first few seasons there were never any “don’t worry m’am, we’ll find the killer!” moments. Later seasons seemed to change toward what we traditionally expect from a cop show, and that’s where I lost a bit of interest.

They also wrote themselves into a corner with the Kellerman storyline, but he and Meldrick were a great pairing. Pembleton and Baylis got to be a bit much near the end. Kellerman coming back in the movie was the 2nd best part of the finale, after the ending - but unfortunately that came at the cost of essentially losing Yaphet Kotto for nearly the entire episode.
I watched a bit of NYPD Blue when it hit DVD - the first two seasons, maybe three if that made it to DVD. It was a good show, but I could see how it was more popular - a lot of what's enjoyable about it is very conventional. The sex got a lot of attention, but it was also heavy on relationships. Most of my memories of the first season involved John Kelly's marriage finally collapsing, his affair with another cop and then a new relationship with a close friend by season's end - and that was all topped by Sipowicz's highly popular romance with the assistant D.A. That's a LOT to pack into its two leads in just one season. Done well, yes, but at heart pretty soapy. I can't remember ANYTHING about Homicide's first two seasons that was particularly romantic, which is probably why they brought in a new character to replace Crosetti, one who became Beau's new romance.

EDIT: I forgot about Gail O'Grady! She grew up in Illinois so the press there gave her a lot of coverage. During that first season, she had a very popular affair with Gordon Clapp's character. (The years working for John Sayles finally paid off - he was on the show for most of its run and I imagine it came with a good salary since he earned Emmy nods from the very start.) Supposedly sales for a robe she was wearing (and removing when they first consummated their affair) went through the roof the day after the episode aired. Sex sells, in more ways than one.

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knives
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Re: Yaphet Kotto (1939-2021)

#36 Post by knives » Thu Mar 18, 2021 4:32 pm

Classic Law and Order is just good grindstone storytelling. Sometimes that’s all you need for success.

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hearthesilence
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Re: Yaphet Kotto (1939-2021)

#37 Post by hearthesilence » Thu Mar 18, 2021 4:53 pm

Law and Order is fast food meat and potatoes. You know exactly what you're getting, and for a lot of people that's all they want at least once a week (or even once a day).

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Re: Yaphet Kotto (1939-2021)

#38 Post by domino harvey » Thu Mar 18, 2021 5:14 pm

hearthesilence wrote:
Thu Mar 18, 2021 4:53 pm
Law and Order is fast food meat and potatoes. You know exactly what you're getting, and for a lot of people that's all they want at least once a week (or even once a day).
How many episodes have you seen? There is constant complexity, novelty, and gray areas rampant throughout the bifurcated structure of the series. Calling it "fast food," as though it were just disposable junk that managed to coast by for two decades is unfair to what it achieved

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Re: Yaphet Kotto (1939-2021)

#39 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu Mar 18, 2021 5:29 pm

I think that's true, but I still think John Mulaney sums up the recycled bits well

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hearthesilence
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Re: Yaphet Kotto (1939-2021)

#40 Post by hearthesilence » Thu Mar 18, 2021 6:03 pm

domino harvey wrote:
Thu Mar 18, 2021 5:14 pm
hearthesilence wrote:
Thu Mar 18, 2021 4:53 pm
Law and Order is fast food meat and potatoes. You know exactly what you're getting, and for a lot of people that's all they want at least once a week (or even once a day).
How many episodes have you seen? There is constant complexity, novelty, and gray areas rampant throughout the bifurcated structure of the series. Calling it "fast food," as though it were just disposable junk that managed to coast by for two decades is unfair to what it achieved
PLENTY. I really wish I could agree with this, but I was actually trying to be kind when I called it "fast food meat and potatoes." (I actually like burgers and fries, and health issues aside wouldn't mind eating it everyday.) I meant it more as formula than disposability. It's a fine show if I keep my expectations low, but it never exceeded those standards. A lot of times, the resolutions can seem easy and preposterous at the same time, especially when it's painfully obvious what inspired that particular episode. (The one inspired by Kurt Cobain's death was a real low point.) Sometimes they bring up interesting points, like the issue of diplomatic immunity in the Pinochet-inspired episode, and they even make a smart choice NOT to show the final resolution. And there are good setups like when Sam Waterson has to go up against Carrie Lowell or when he has a case related to the death of his former lover/colleague. Those generally rest on the trial part of the episodes, not the police work, which was usually fine but never as memorable to me.

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bearcuborg
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Re: Yaphet Kotto (1939-2021)

#41 Post by bearcuborg » Thu Mar 18, 2021 6:22 pm

God, that standup bit is hilarious.

Personally I always found the show rather silly, whenever I think of it, I think of Ted2 making up lyrics to the theme.

I’ve seen enough (whenever someone else has it on) to know that show does seem have some kind of dilemma, and ambiguity - usually on the law side of things. Still, Waterson is annoying with his self-righteousness. The cop side is ridiculous. The constant quips feel forced. But I’ve always found the show sort of laughable, the way it deals with common New Yorkers feels generic despite it being a virtual institution for actors in the area.

It’s worth noting I’m a true crime TV junkie, and consider criminal justice shows a waste of my time compared to Dateline or Forensic Files-both shows often showcasing prosecutors, and detectives complaining how shows like Law & Order make their job harder.

It’s hard to pin why I liked Homicide so much better than NYPD Blue, or Law & Order - but I would say it had soul, and I never got that from my limited viewings of those other shows. When Homicide started to lose that, is when I lost interest-because it more resembled what was already out there. Spot on hearthesilence, if you keep your expectations low it’s a good show for what it is, but Homicide raised my expectations on what a good cop show could be.

*Also, Sigourney on Kotto, with a pretty touching YouTube clip covering Yaphet’s encounter with Japanese tourists during his trip to DC.

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feihong
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Re: Yaphet Kotto (1939-2021)

#42 Post by feihong » Fri Mar 19, 2021 8:50 am

The first few seasons of Law and Order had a different cast and a very different tenor to it than what came after. The lead prosecutor was Michael Moriarty, and his assistant was a very edgy-looking Richard Brooks, from The Hidden. Before the doctor from Dirty Dancing, they had Paul Sorvino opposite Chris Noth as the cops. The show was, to my memory, a lot more realistically murky and dour, and Moriarty frequently lost his cases, and was left wondering how a jury could see things so differently than he did, etc. There was a pretty wide range of different outcomes to the cases, and the one thing you could be sure of was that, whatever the outcome, Moriarty wasn't going to be happy about it, and Brooks would never relax. I remember Sorvino very realistically roughing perps up, as well, in a couple of instances. Altogether, that early iteration of the show seemed to have a harder edge to it.

But that iteration of the show got very low ratings, and so they made some changes. They brought on Sam Waterson, and he suddenly started winning all the cases, or, at least, most of them. The ratings climbed much higher, as the show really hardened into formula. Whether he was morally right or wrong, McCoy won the case, damn it all.

Even at its worst, Homocide was hard to predict, and ended up feeding me a lot of material I would never have sought out for myself––like the episode where Pembleton has to talk a guy caught halfway onto the tracks of a subway train through the fact that they absolutely could not save him...the guy was a pretty affecting Vincent D'onofrio. But I also remember Meldrick's surprise wedding being a standout episode. Even when the show tried to be more appealing and generalized, there were still interesting episodes. I remember one in which Reed Diamond and Clark Johnson investigate a death at a motel, and end up spending the night sitting around talking with all the weird guests. The character work was interesting, and it was hardly how I imagined the episode was going to go. I think the show still had that power pretty late into its' run. I also liked how the Georgia Ray storyline kept building in the background of the show over two seasons before erupting in the couple of episodes around the finale.

Not part of my defense of the later seasons, but I saw the end of the first season recently, and it was an episode I think I missed the first time I watched the show. The squad has to stay in the precinct for the night shift, and it's sweltering. That's the premise for the episode, but it eventually involves Yaphet Kotto discovering a presumably abandoned baby in a cage in the maintenance area in the basement. They're about to turn the baby over to child protective services and it turns out it belongs to the substitute cleaning lady who is going through the building. She takes the baby with her to do her job, because she has no one to care for the baby. They ask her about the cage, and she say she doesn't want rats to get at her baby. It's such a flabbergasting episode, weirdly funny and edgy and strange. Honestly, Homocide might be the only prime time TV series I've ever liked at all.

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hearthesilence
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Re: Yaphet Kotto (1939-2021)

#43 Post by hearthesilence » Fri Mar 19, 2021 11:16 am

feihong wrote:
Fri Mar 19, 2021 8:50 am
Before the doctor from Dirty Dancing
Forgot about that - I still associate him primarily with Crimes and Misdemeanors, partly because of his real-life friendship with Joey Gallo. He wasn't a criminal himself, but I get the impression the franchise casted him, Ice-T and others as in-jokes.

I think Moriarty was recognized with at least one Best Actor nomination and reportedly said Waterson wasn't "tough" enough (or something like that) for the show right after he was announced as a replacement.
feihong wrote:
Fri Mar 19, 2021 8:50 am
Not part of my defense of the later seasons, but I saw the end of the first season recently, and it was an episode I think I missed the first time I watched the show. The squad has to stay in the precinct for the night shift, and it's sweltering.
Yes, I remember that one, partly because I lived in Baltimore and Washington one summer, and afterwards, when I saw that episode again, it made a bigger impression. (Before I went out there, I was warned by someone, "you're going to find out why they grow tobacco out there" and compared to the Midwest it really is like a humidor during the summer, even at night.)

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Murdoch
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Re: Yaphet Kotto (1939-2021)

#44 Post by Murdoch » Fri Mar 19, 2021 1:14 pm

hearthesilence wrote:
Thu Mar 18, 2021 6:03 pm
PLENTY. I really wish I could agree with this, but I was actually trying to be kind when I called it "fast food meat and potatoes." (I actually like burgers and fries, and health issues aside wouldn't mind eating it everyday.) I meant it more as formula than disposability. It's a fine show if I keep my expectations low, but it never exceeded those standards. A lot of times, the resolutions can seem easy and preposterous at the same time, especially when it's painfully obvious what inspired that particular episode. (The one inspired by Kurt Cobain's death was a real low point.) Sometimes they bring up interesting points, like the issue of diplomatic immunity in the Pinochet-inspired episode, and they even make a smart choice NOT to show the final resolution. And there are good setups like when Sam Waterson has to go up against Carrie Lowell or when he has a case related to the death of his former lover/colleague. Those generally rest on the trial part of the episodes, not the police work, which was usually fine but never as memorable to me.
This is close to my take. I'm not big on cop shows but Law and Order never did much for me. It had some decent moments in its early days but I really have to set my expectations as low as possible to garner much enjoyment of it. Fast food TV seems about right.

Homicide, though, I always found engaging, largely because it was much more grounded in its approach and didn't engage in the self-righteous posturing of L&O at its worst.

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hearthesilence
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Re: Yaphet Kotto (1939-2021)

#45 Post by hearthesilence » Fri Mar 19, 2021 3:18 pm

For those who haven't seen it, John Waters's second cameo on Homicide, with Chris Noth playing his character from Law & Order - it's the whole episode (flipped horizontally), but the scene is the opener before the credits.

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Re: Yaphet Kotto (1939-2021)

#46 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Mon Mar 22, 2021 4:31 pm

bearcuborg wrote:
Wed Mar 17, 2021 12:32 pm
There’s an episode where he feels rejected by a black woman for being too dark-and for anyone who followed him on Facebook knows that he had some brilliant opinions on race/politics.
Wasn't he a Trump supporter?

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