John Munch

From The Law & Order Wiki

John Munch
Detective John Munch.
Rank Sergeant
Affiliation New York City Police Department
Division Special Victims Unit
Occupation Police Officer
First Appearance L&O: "Charm City"
Played by Richard Belzer

Sergeant John Munch, born July 31, 1952, is a detective, previously affiliated with the Baltimore Police Department, who is now assigned to the NYPD's Special Victims Unit.

[edit] History

Very little is known about John Munch, and over the years, he has tried to keep it that way. What is known is that his childhood was not a happy one. He and his brother (who now works as a mortician) were frequently beaten by their father, who was apparently bipolar. One night, after getting a beating "for being a wiseass", John told his father that he hated his guts. That was the last thing he ever said to his father; the elder Munch killed himself with a gunshot to the head shortly after. (SVU: Painless) As if that wasn't traumatic enough, when he was in high school, Munch began to see a little girl watching him from the porch across the street from his house, always looking at him with an expression that he didn't recognize. He became accustomed to seeing her every afternoon when he got home from school, but then, one afternoon, she stopped appearing; the poor girl had been killed by her abusive mother, who had shoved her through a plate-glass window.

In the sixties, Munch went through a free-love hippie phase. One of his girlfriends during that period photographed him naked one night; that girlfriend later became a successful artistic photographer, and in the 1980's the photo ended up in a public exhibition, much to his chagrin.

As an adult, Munch became a homicide detective in Baltimore. During his time, he met his first wife, Gwen, who was mentally unstable. Munch loved her, but she refused to take medication and wouldn't see a therapist, and finally, her mental illness became too much of a strain and they divorced. Little is known about the second and third marriage, but he eventually married a final time, to Billie Lou, a bartender at the Waterfront Bar, which Munch owned with fellow detectives Tim Bayliss and Meldrick Lewis. However, by late 1999, the couple had broken up after Billie Lou (supposedly) slept with another officer from the Baltimore P.D. and was in the process of getting divorced. Sometime after his fourth marriage collapsed, he and his fellow officers met Lennie Briscoe and Reynaldo Curtis, who had come to investigate a murder that had happened in New York, but whose roots appeared to trace back to Baltimore. Munch disliked Briscoe at first because Briscoe had slept with one of Munch's ex-wives. However, in time, they became good friends and would team up two more times.

Munch took early retirement from the Baltimore P.D. in 1999 and moved to New York, swearing he would never step foot in Baltimore again. While living off his pension from Baltimore, Munch joined the NYPD and was assigned to the Special Victims Unit. He has had three partners there over the years: Brian Cassidy, Monique Jeffries, and Odafin Tutuola.

In 2006 his uncle Andrew (played by Jerry Lewis) re-entered his life in New York City, after being found sleeping on a grate. Munch thought his uncle was in Florida at a nursing home and had no idea that he was homeless. While in the squad room Andrew overheard Dani Beck talking to a rape victim. When that case was thrown out for inproper procedure Andrew followed the suspect along with Stabler and Beck, and pushed the man onto the tracks of an oncoming subway car. Horrified by his own actions, Andrew said goodbye to Munch, and then had himself committed to a mental facility. (SVU: "Uncle")

More recently, Munch was reunited with Gwen when he discovered that she'd been communicating with a dangerous paranoiac named Peter Harrison. When Harrison's lawyer was murdered during his arrest, the NYPD rounded up everyone else who'd been in regular contact with him, including Gwen. Gwen was infuriated by this and, believing that Munch had sold her out, told him she never wanted to see him again. ("Zebras") 

[edit] Appearances/Actors

• Canon (5 shows)
  • Homicide: Life on the Street (First appearance, 122 episodes) - Richard Belzer
  • Homicide: The Movie - Richard Belzer
  • Law & Order (4 episodes) - Richard Belzer
  • Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (220 episodes) - Richard Belzer
  • Law & Order: Trial by Jury (1 episode) - Richard Belzer

• Non-canon (5 shows, 5 seasons, 5 episodes)
  • The X Files (First appearance, 1 season, 1 episode) - Richard Belzer
  • The Beat (1 season, 1 episode) - Richard Belzer
  • Arrested Development (1 season, 1 episode) - Richard Belzer
  • Sesame Street (1 season, 1 episode) - Joey Mazzarino
  • The Wire (1 season, 1 episode) - Richard Belzer

[edit] Trivia

• Munch is a huge conspiracy theorist, much to the dismay of many of his fellow detectives who frequently ignore his ramblings or tune him out.
• Munch is the only character to have appeared on every iteration of Law & Order (except Law & Order: Criminal Intent), and also the only one carried over from another franchise (Homicide: Life on the Street).
• In addition to English, Munch speaks Yiddish, Hebrew, Russian, and Greek.
• Munch is the first detective in Manhattan SVU to be promoted to Sergeant.
• According to (SVU: "Taken"), John has a brother who works as a mortician.