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John Munch is a fictional character played by actor Richard Belzer. Munch first appeared on the American crime drama television series on NBC. A regular through the entire run of the series from 1993 to 1999, Munch is a cynical detective in the Baltimore Police Department's Homicide unit, and a firm believer in conspiracy theories. He is originally partnered with Detective Stanley Bolander (Ned Beatty). Munch is based on Jay Landsman, a central figure in David Simon's 1991 true crime book .
Upon the cancellation of Homicide in 1999, Belzer was offered a regular role as Munch on the Law & Order spin-off titled . He appeared in the first 15 seasons of that series from 1999 to 2014, and occasionally as a guest thereafter. On SVU, Munch becomes a senior detective in the New York Police Department's Special Victims Unit, and is first partnered with Brian Cassidy (Dean Winters), followed by Monique Jeffries (Michelle Hurd), and Fin Tutuola (Ice-T).
In the premiere, Munch is promoted to the rank of sergeant and occasionally takes on supervisory functions within the department. In season 14, Munch is temporarily reassigned to the Cold Case Unit, after solving a decade-old child abduction case in the episode "Manhattan Vigil". He returns to the squad in "Secrets Exhumed", in which he brings back a 1980s rape-homicide cold case for the squad to investigate.
In the season 15 episode "", SVU Captain Donald Cragen (Dann Florek) and the squad throw Munch a retirement party, where past and present colleagues and family members celebrate his career. At the conclusion of the episode, Munch returns to the precinct to gather his belongings, where he and Cragen shake hands as Cragen remarks, "You had one hell of a run, Sergeant Munch." Munch returned, post-retirement, to help his colleagues in the fifteenth-season finale "" and the seventeenth-season episode "".
The character of Munch has appeared in a total of ten series on five networks since the character's debut in 1993. Apart from Homicide and SVU, however, Belzer's performances as Munch were guest appearances or crossovers rather than regular or recurring appearances. With Munch's retirement in the character's 22nd season on television, he was a regular character on American television longer than Marshal Matt Dillon ( Gunsmoke) and Frasier Crane ( Cheers and Frasier), both of whom were on television for 20 seasons; he is only behind Mariska Hargitay's character Olivia Benson and Ice-T's Fin Tutuola. Munch's return to help his friends in the SVU seventeenth-season episode "Fashionable Crimes" marks the 23rd season that the character has appeared on television in any capacity.
Barry Levinson, co-creator and executive producer of Homicide, said Belzer was a "lousy actor" during his audition when he first read lines from the script for "Gone for Goode", the first episode in the series. Levinson asked Belzer to take some time to reread and practice the material, then come back and read it again. During his second reading, Levinson said Belzer was "still terrible", but that the actor eventually found confidence in his performance.
Munch appeared as a regular character in every season, and in almost every episode, of Homicide. After Homicide: Life on the Street concluded its seventh season in May 1999, the character transferred into the Law & Order universe as a regular character on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (both Homicide and the original Law & Order had crossed-over numerous times before, and Munch had featured centrally in each crossover). It is explained that Munch had retired from the Baltimore Police Department, taken his pension as a Maryland state employee, and moved to New York to join a investigation unit, where he was eventually given a promotion to sergeant.
Munch joined the BPD's homicide unit in 1983. During the fourth-season premiere of Homicide: Life on the Street, he signs up to take a promotion exam in hopes of becoming a sergeant, but a "comedy of errors" prevents him from showing up for it. In the first episode of the ninth season of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, it is revealed that he passed the NYPD sergeant's exam, having taken it on a bar bet, and earned his promotion. He is temporarily promoted to commanding officer of the Special Victims Unit following Cragen's temporary reassignment, but is depicted as happily relinquishing control back to him, commenting upon Cragen's return, "This job sucks." He kept his rank, however, as he is still referred to as Sergeant in later episodes. He is temporarily put in charge again when Cragen is suspended after the detectives mishandle a case.
Munch makes a cameo appearance on a fifth-season episode of The Wire. Munch can be seen at Kavanaugh's Bar arguing with the bartender over his tab by referencing his experience running a bar (he opened The Waterfront Bar in Homicide). He appears in "Unusual Suspects", the third episode of the fifth season of The X-Files—the episode is set in 1989, when Munch was still at the Baltimore Police Department.
Following the conclusion of Homicide: Life on the Street, Munch retired from the Baltimore Police Department and took his pension as a Maryland state employee. He then moved to New York City, where he joined the NYPD’s Special Victims Unit. Initially partnered with Brian Cassidy, then briefly with Monique Jeffries, he ultimately formed a strong professional bond with Fin Tutuola. Their relationship, initially rocky, developed into one of mutual respect and camaraderie, demonstrated when Munch was shot and Fin stayed by his side. Throughout his time in SVU, Munch frequently referenced his past as a bar owner and even considered purchasing another bar in New York despite the late-2000s recession. Over time, Munch passed the sergeant’s exam on a bet and was promoted, serving as acting commander when needed.
Munch later married for a fifth time, this time to a rabbi, and moved back to Baltimore, where he resumed ownership of The Waterfront. In the 25th season premiere, it is revealed that Munch has died. His former colleagues, including Fin Tutuola, Dominick Carisi, Jr., and Olivia Benson, make a heartfelt toast in his memory.
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He has a younger brother named Bernie who owns a funeral parlor; he once joked that he occasionally "throws him some business". He mentioned another brother who is in the drywall business. His brother David attended his farewell roast. His cousin Lee acts as his accountant—and the accountant for The Waterfront—when he lives in Baltimore.
Munch has been described as a stubborn man who distrusts all women, all forms of government and authority, and "can smell a conspiracy at a five-year-old's lemonade stand". Munch can often be seen lecturing his co-workers on a variety of conspiracy theories, which he views as obvious truths. In the SVU pilot episode, he rants about a supposed government cover-up in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. However, Munch does not seem to believe all conspiracy theories; in The X-Files episode "Unusual Suspects"—a cross-over episode with Homicide—Munch dismisses the Lone Gunmen's claims of a government plot to expose Baltimore residents to a hallucinogenic gas.
At the onset of Homicide, he had been twice and was dating a woman named Felicia. By the seventh season, he had a total of three ex-wives until marrying Waterfront bartender Billie Lou Hatfield (Ellen McElduff). Before leaving Baltimore, Munch had divorced Billie Lou after discovering she had been having an affair with a member of his own precinct after less than one day of marriage. In the season 1 finale of SVU, a police psychiatrist notes that despite his cynicism regarding relationships, Munch still believes in true love and is devastated by the fact he has not yet found it.
He once stated that he and his first wife Gwen had sex once after their divorce. Her first on-screen appearance is the Homicide episode "All Is Bright", in which she is played by Carol Kane. Gwen shows up at The Waterfront to inform Munch her mother has died. As the two catch up, he agrees to arrange for the funeral of Gwen's mother despite the fact his ex-mother-in-law loathed him and did everything in her power to disrupt her daughter's marriage to him. Near the end of the episode, Munch performs a touching toast to his former mother-in-law in one of the few times his cynical façade slips. Kane next returns as Gwen in "", the season 10 finale of SVU, and is portrayed as suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. While working with Lennie Briscoe (Jerry Orbach) in the season four episode of Homicide, "For God and Country", a crossover with Law & Order, Munch loses badly to Briscoe in a pool game and learns Briscoe had briefly dated and slept with Gwen. Distraught, he gets drunk and proclaims that he forgives Gwen and still loves her. Despite this, he and Briscoe become quite good friends—their interaction in the two following crossovers between Homicide and Law & Order, as well as in a crossover between Law & Order and SVU, is generally friendly (Belzer originally pitched to Dick Wolf that Munch join Law & Order as Briscoe's new partner, but the role had already been filled by Ed Green, played by Jesse L. Martin).
While Munch could never be accused of being sentimental, his cynical façade has occasionally slipped, revealing a deep compassion for children born from his unhappy childhood. When Munch emerges unscathed from an ambush shooting during a third-season episode of Homicide that leaves three of his colleagues hospitalized, he tries to laugh it off but breaks down in tears. In the second season of SVU, after solving a case dealing with an abusive mother who put her daughter in a coma, Munch tells Benson that when he was in high school, one of his neighbors killed her daughter and for years afterward he felt guilty for failing to recognize the girl needed help.
Munch is a staunch believer in individual rights and occasionally finds that something he has to do in the line of duty goes against his sense of morality. A particularly disturbing experience for him was having to see patients on dialysis have their kidney transplants denied.
In a third-season episode of Homicide, Munch is suspected by Detective Tim Bayliss of having murdered Gordon Pratt (Steve Buscemi), the suspect in the shooting of three homicide detectives, including Munch's partner Stanley Bolander. Munch had motive, opportunity, an unconfirmed alibi, and never actually denies killing Pratt, but Bayliss refuses to question Munch further or test his service weapon to determine if it has been fired recently. He closes the case, informing his shift commander there was insufficient evidence to charge anyone.
Munch is fluent in French language. He also has some conversational ability in Russian language, Hebrew, Yiddish, Spanish language, Greek language, and Hungarian.
There were three specific examples of consistent continuity between the two shows, all related to Munch's personal life. One is Munch's amicable divorce from Gwen, who has appeared in episodes of both Homicide and SVU. features Munch's temporary return to assist the Baltimore Homicide Unit when his friend and former boss – BPD Lieutenant Al Giardello – has been shot, with dialogue acknowledging that Munch is currently assigned to Manhattan's Special Victims Unit. The two shows come together for Munch's retirement when his SVU party is attended by Homicide BPD Detective Meldrick Lewis (Clark Johnson) and his first and fourth ex-wives, Gwen and Billie Lou, who were both introduced as characters on Homicide.
Belzer continued to portray Munch on from 1999 to 2016, being credited in 325 episodes (appearing in 242 episodes).
Additionally, within the larger Law & Order universe, Belzer has been credited for appearing as Munch in five other episodes—four episodes in the original Law & Order series, appearances spanning from 1996 to 2000, and one episode of the short-lived spinoff series, in 2005.
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| + Law & Order: Special Victims Unit appearances |
| + Law & Order: Trial by Jury appearances |
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Munch has become the only fictional character, played by a single actor, to physically appear on 10 different television series. These shows were on five different networks: NBC ( Homicide: Life on the Street, Law & Order, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Law & Order: Trial by Jury, and 30 Rock), Fox ( The X-Files and Arrested Development), UPN ( The Beat), HBO ( The Wire) and ABC ( Jimmy Kimmel Live!). Munch has been one of the few television characters to cross genres, appearing not only in crime drama series, but sitcom ( Arrested Development and 30 Rock), adult animated sitcom ( American Dad), late night comedy ( Jimmy Kimmel Live!) and horror and science fiction ( The X-Files).
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