Assistant Chief Medical Examiner Elizabeth Rodgers worked at the NYC Office of Chief Medical Examiner.
Character[]
Rodgers is dedicated to her work and finds it frustrating when she is badgered by the police for results when she doesn't have them yet. She sometimes finds herself in conflict with the police, most notably with Detectives Mike Logan and John Munch, the latter of whom made several flirtatious gestures towards Rodgers while receiving the results of an autopsy. (SVU: "Entitled")
Rodgers originally wanted to be a surgeon, but midway through medical school, she discovered she could not stand cutting into a live person. (CI: "Saving Face")
She also has an affinity for classical music and opera, saying once that she missed an Itzhak Perlman concert to prep a semen sample. (SVU: "Sophomore Jinx") She said she was a big fan of opera singer Gillian Booth (though Logan was not a big fan of Rodgers attempting to sing like Booth). When making an impression of bite marks on the back of an acclaimed opera conductor, Philip Reinhardt, she complimented him on his production of Aida ("One of the best nights of my life. Lennie Briscoe took me.") (CI: "Dramma Giocoso")
Rodgers also reads many crime novels; she reviews them for small magazines. During testimony against Senator Randall Bailey, Rodgers named a book that may have influenced the defendant in the murder. When she named the book, the police had not been able to find when they searched the defendant's home, since he was also a crime novel reader. However, the book did not include the details that she had thought, but instead that scenario was in another book (this scenario is a reference to Law & Order's role in the Andrea Yates case). Because of this, she wrote a letter to the judge explaining her mistake. When McCoy wanted to give the letter to the judge and leave the reference out of his summation, Branch stopped him and made Connie Rubirosa, the younger and less experienced ADA, do the summation instead. Though they ended up getting the guilty verdict without giving the judge the letter or directly mentioning the novel, Rodgers was upset by her mistake. (L&O: "The Family Hour")
Logan asks Rodgers to help investigate the death of his neighbor, a women he knew and dated as Holly Lauren. She had died falling off a roof and he wanted help to prove that she had been pushed off. He thanks Rodgers for the favors, as he had not been the detective assigned to the case. (CI: "Renewal")
Although it is never officially mentioned onscreen, there are several moments that point to a growing relationship between Rodgers and Captain Danny Ross of the Major Case Squad on Law & Order: CI. In one episode, Ross and Rodgers can be seen getting into an elevator dressed for going Lincoln Center. (CI: "Untethered") When Ross asks Rodgers for information on Detective Goren, Goren later confronts Ross with this, shouting at Ross, "Did your girlfriend tell you this?!" (CI: "Frame") After Ross is murdered, Goren and Eames arrive at the crime scene to find Rodgers already there, visibly distraught over both his death and the fact that the FBI is denying her access to the body. (CI: "Loyalty (1)")
Rodgers can often be seen eating in the morgue. In several episodes, characters comment on her lunch being near the bodies.
Trivia[]
- Rodgers was the longest-running recurring character in Law & Order before being overtaken in 2022 by Trevor Langan (as played by Peter Hermann). She however has appeared in more episodes than any other recurring character and is one of only five characters who have appeared in the first four of the Law & Order franchise shows set in New York (she has not appeared on Law & Order: Organized Crime). The other four are Lennie Briscoe, Ed Green, Arthur Branch, and Elizabeth Olivet.
- According to Leslie Hendrix, Detective Robert Goren frequently got on Rodgers' nerves, due to him "messing with her stuff all the time". Detective Mike Logan often bothered her as well, but he was easier to tolerate because they'd known each other for so long.[1]
Appearances[]
- Law & Order (19 seasons, 143 episodes):
- Season 2: "The Fertile Fields" • "Silence"
- Season 3: "Night and Fog" • "Virus"
- Season 4: "Black Tie" • "Old Friends"
- Season 5: "Second Opinion" • "Guardian" • "Progeny" • "Rage" • "Cruel and Unusual"
- Season 6: "Bitter Fruit" • "Atonement" • "Girlfriends" • "Homesick"
- Season 7: "Legacy" • "D-Girl" • "Mad Dog"
- Season 8: "Nullification" • "Baby, It's You" • "Castoff" • "Faccia a Faccia" • "Burden"
- Season 9: "Cherished" • "Flight" • "Agony" • "True North" • "Sideshow" • "Disciple" • "Harm" • "Empire" • "Admissions" • "Refuge (1)"
- Season 10: "Killerz" • "Merger" • "Blood Money" • "Sundown" • "Loco Parentis" • "Mother's Milk" • "Fools For Love" • "High & Low" • "Stiff"
- Season 11: "Thin Ice" • "Hubris" • "Whose Monkey is it Anyway?" • "Teenage Wasteland" • "Bronx Cheer" • "Ego" • "Whiplash" • "Brother's Keeper"
- Season 12: "Who Let the Dogs Out?" • "Armed Forces" • "Soldier of Fortune" • "Possession" • "Myth of Fingerprints" • "Undercovered" • "Missing" • "Born Again" • "Equal Rights" • "Dazzled" • "Oxymoron" • "Patriot"
- Season 13: "Shangri-La" • "Asterisk" • "Mother's Day" • "Star Crossed" • "Suicide Box" • "Maritime" • "Seer" • "Kid Pro Quo" • "House Calls" • "Couples" • "Smoke"
- Season 14: "Bodies" • "Bounty" • "Shrunk" • "Identity" • "Floater" • "Compassion" • "Ill-Conceived" • "Darwinian" • "Payback" • "Veteran's Day" • "Hands Free"
- Season 15: "Paradigm" • "The Dead Wives Club" • "The Brotherhood" • "Coming Down Hard" • "Gunplay" • "Cut" • "Gov Love" • "Cry Wolf" • "Enemy" • "Mammon" • "Ain't No Love" • "Fluency" • "The Sixth Man" • "Dining Out" • "Sport of Kings" • "In God We Trust"
- Season 16: "Flaw" • "Ghosts" • "Life Line" • "Birthright" • "Acid" • "Bible Story" • "Heart of Darkness" • "Choice of Evils" • "Cost of Capital" • "Thinking Makes It So" • "Positive"
- Season 17: "Avatar" • "Remains of the Day" • "Melting Pot" • "Good Faith" • "Bling" • "Captive" • "Over Here" • "The Family Hour"
- Season 18: "Called Home" • "Driven" • "Tango" • "Submission" • "Angelgrove" • "Strike"
- Season 19: "Lost Boys" • "Sweetie" • "Lucky Stiff" • "Take-Out" • "Promote This!" • "All New" • "Exchange" • "Skate or Die" • "The Drowned and the Saved"
- Season 20: "Doped" • "Fed" • "Blackmail" • "Brilliant Disguise" • "Brazil" • "Crashers" • "Immortal" • "Love Eternal" • "Rubber Room"
- Exiled: A Law & Order Movie
- Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1 season, 9 episodes):
- Season 1: "Payback" • "A Single Life" • "Hysteria" • "Sophomore Jinx" • "Stocks & Bondage" • "Bad Blood" • "Disrobed" • "Entitled" • "Misleader"
- Law & Order: Criminal Intent (10 seasons, 110 episodes):
- Season 1: "The Faithful" • "Jones" • "The Extra Man"
- Season 2: "Dead" • "Malignant" • "Tomorrow" • "Suite Sorrow" • "Probability" • "Cold Comfort" • "Zoonotic"
- Season 3: "But Not Forgotten" • "A Murderer Among Us" • "Sound Bodies" • "Mad Hops" • "Unrequited" • "Mis-Labeled" • "Conscience" • "D.A.W."
- Season 4: "Semi-Detached" • "Want" • "Great Barrier" • "In the Dark" • "View From Up Here" • "Stress Position" • "Death Roe" • "Ex Stasis" • "Shibboleth" • "Beast"
- Season 5: "Grow" • "Unchained" • "Acts of Contrition" • "In the Wee Small Hours (Part I)" • "In the Wee Small Hours (Part II)" • "Saving Face" • "Slither" • "Watch" • "Dramma Giocoso" • "The Healer" • "Cruise to Nowhere" • "To the Bone" • "On Fire"
- Season 6: "Blind Spot" • "Bedfellows" • "Country Crossover" • "The War at Home" • "Blasters" • "Weeping Willow" • "World's Fair" • "Privilege" • "Brother's Keeper" • "30" • "Players" • "Rocket Man" • "Bombshell" • "Endgame" • "Renewal"
- Season 7: "Amends" • "Seeds" • "Smile" • "Lonelyville" • "Depths" • "Offense" • "Untethered" • "Senseless" • "Purgatory" • "Contract" • "Betrayed" • "Reunion" • "Vanishing Act" • "Ten Count" • "Legacy" • "Neighborhood Watch" • "Last Rites" • "Frame"
- Season 8: "Playing Dead" • "Identity Crisis" • "In Treatment" • "Faithfully" • "Astoria Helen" • "Folie à Deux" • "The Glory That Was" • "Family Values" • "Salome in Manhattan" • "Lady's Man" • "Passion" • "Major Case" • "Alpha Dog" • "Revolution"
- Season 9: "Loyalty (1)" • "Loyalty (2)" • "Broad Channel" • "Delicate" • "Gods & Insects" • "Abel & Willing" • "Love Sick" • "Love on Ice" • "Traffic" • "Disciple" • "Lost Children of the Blood" • "True Legacy" • "The Mobster Will See You Now" • "Palimpsest" • "Inhumane Society" • "Three-In-One"
- Season 10: "Rispetto" • "The Consoler" • "Boots on the Ground" • "The Last Street in Manhattan" • "Cadaver" • "To the Boy in the Blue Knit Cap"
- Law & Order: Trial by Jury (1 season, 1 episode):