The Munch Paradox

Frequent commenter Todd. and I spent Saturday afternoon watching [redacted for Todd.'s peace of mind].  The conversation turned to David Simon's Homicide: Life on the Streets, then to the storied history one of Baltimore's (fictional) finest: John Munch. 

Munch, played by comedian Richard Belzer, will make television history when he appears on an episode of Simon's current show, The Wire, as it will mark the tenth separate program in which he has appeared as a character.  In addition to being a principle on Homicide and Law & Order: SVU, Munch has appeared on:

• Law & Order
• Law & Order: Trial by Jury
• The Simpsons
• Arrested Development
• The Beat
• The X-Files
• Sesame Street

What is it about Munch that people find so compelling?  The conspiracy theories?  The serial monogamy?  The counter-culture radical turned cop?  Whatever the reason, the ubiquity of Munch obscures an important fact: namely, that Simon's Homicide is an adaptation of his book of a similar name and that he based Munch on an actual murder police named Jay Landsman.  I've taught Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets before, so I'm familiar with Landsman,

of the sidelong smile and pockmarked face, who tells the mothers of wanted men that all the commotion is nothing to be upset about, just a routine murder warrant.  Landsman, who leaves empty liquor bottles in the other sergeants' desks and never fails to turn out the men's room light when a ranking officer is indisposed.  Landsman, who rides a headquarters elevator the police commissioner and leaves complaining that some sonofabitch stole his wallet.  Jay Landsman, who as a Southwestern patrolman parked his radio car at Edmondson and Hilton, then used a Quaker Oatmeal box covered in aluminum fol as a radar gun.

The pockmarked face and sneering at authority is vintage Munch.  The drinking and fake radar guns?  Reminds me more of this detective from The Wire.  His name? 

Jay Landsman.  He looks like this:

Who looks nothing like this:

And even less like this:

Who is that?  Why, that would be a retired Baltimore murder police by the name of Jay Landsman, playing a character named Dennis Mello on The Wire.  The mind boggles.  For those of you keeping score, it's possible that an upcoming episode of The Wire might now incorporate:

• John Munch, a character inspired by Jay Landsman
• Jay Landsman, a second character inspired by Jay Landsman
• the real Jay Landsman

I should be able to draw some sort of conclusion from this, but honestly, the situation seems unprecedented.  Have there ever been two fictionalized versions of the same guy and the guy himself running around the same television show?  There must be a meta-meta-meta-point to be drawn from this—something more sophisticated than "David Simon, he loves him some Landsman"—but I'm at a loss for what it might be.

Comments

[Mike Russo]

Wow, I had no idea. This is pretty excellent.

The detective in Michael Chabon's recent (and enjoyable, albeit not revelatory) Yiddish Policeman's Union is named Meyer Landsman, which I now presume is no kind of coincidence.

[Ahistoricality]

The continuity issues involved in any character crossing from X-Files to Homocide to Sesame Street.... The mind boggles.

There's a guy who's been writing short stories in Fantasy and Science Fiction based on a world in which all the old nursery rhymes and fairy tales are descriptions of actual incidents and crimes.

Cop shows = modern fairy tales.

Discuss.

[Miriam]

Wait--does Tommy Westphall's Mind now apply to real life, then? (Must check to make sure that I'm not in a snowglobe.)

[eb]

Cop shows = modern fairy tales.

In the criminal justice system, the folk are represented by two separate but equally important groups...

[todd.]

The Tommy Westphall page's list of connections has a list of rules of exclusions. Rule number six is "The Munch Rule".

It also includes this: "L&O: SVU’s John Munch appeared on the series premiere of Paris Section Criminelle a French reworking of Law and Order: Crinimal Intent." [sic].

Now I've spent too much time reading about this. On the plus side, I have a Halloween costume for next year. I'm going to wear an Oceanic Airlines shirt and carry a pack of Morley cigarettes and go as a walking TV writer in-joke.

[barry]

Tommy Westphall is fun, but pretty poorly argued really. Even if he imagined the entire run of St Elsewhere, that doesn't mean the other programs only exist in his mind - he may have watched the other shows and incorporated them into his imaginings.

However, Munch is awesome.

[nm]

The point you've missed is that the banter between the characters Jay Landman and John Munch is going to be awesome.

[SEK]

I think Barry's correct, here. For more -- you know you want more -- check this out.

Also, I admit to being surprised I'd never encountered "The Westphall Hypothesis" before. That's just the sort of useless trivia I've filled my head with for well-nigh three decades now.

[theavantridiculous]

Barry, per your argument against the Westphall claim: the autistic child may only have seen those shows prior to St. Elsewhere, right? So every show connected since must be a fantasy (unless the child is prophetic or a time-traveler). St. Elsewhere marks a specific point, like B.S.E. and A.S.E., where everything before may or may not be a fantasy and everything since must.

[theavantridiculous]

One more thing, to SEK: this is hardly useless trivia. If my tone is overly-reverent, it's because time is of the essence. Here's what I wrote on The Valve:

Crossing over may have been around for awhile, but it’s also the next big thing.

Video game designers (esp. of the simulated universe/avatar sort) are working on universal platforms where the SIMS meet WoW, etc. Rappers fashion themselves superheroes (think of Wu-Tang) and then guest-appear on other rappers’/superheroes’ albums. RZA shows up with a Wu-Tang emblem in “American Gangster,” a film set 20 years prior to Wu’s signature. It may be a bit of a trick (and just plain anachronistic), but the appearance of the Wu sign points to the intrinsic malleability of these mediums.

What a true crossover revolution requires is a new medium that can account for characters’ ontological distinctions. How can the rapping Method Man communicate with Super Mario, or with Raskolnikov? He does in my mind; he begins to on the world wide web. A platform where differences smooth out and integrity stays intact--it’s on the horizon.

[OyGevalt]

I took Chabon's "Meyer Landsman" to be a play on "lantsman," a Yiddish term for someone who shares your background from the Old Country.