Death
In 2005, the Briscoe character was written out after the second episode of Trial By Jury coinciding with Orbach's death on December 28, 2004 from prostate cancer. The character's departure from the show was originally to be in the episode "Baby Boom" where members of the DA's Office attend a memorial service for him after dying from an illness. This scene was in fact filmed but never actually made it into the episode before its airing, leaving Briscoe's whereabouts after his last appearance in the second episode unknown.
In the 2005 Law & Order: Criminal Intent episode "Diamond Dogs" (Chris Noth's first episode as a regular cast member), Logan, questioning a burglar's fence in a pool hall, is clearly referring to Briscoe when he says that a former partner was a "wizard with the stick". In the 2007 Criminal Intent episode "Renewal", Logan says that Briscoe has died but he still sees him alive in his dreams.
In 2008, Green explains he returned to gambling briefly after Briscoe died. In a 2008 episode of Criminal Intent, a Catholic priest who was a friend of Briscoe approaches Logan after a prisoner's deathbed confession to a 16-year-old double murder in The Bronx.
In the 2009 Law & Order episode "Fed", Briscoe's old partner Rey Curtis returns to New York to bury his deceased wife Deborah, who had finally succumbed to MS, next to her parents. Anita Van Buren was able to come to the tail end of Deborah's funeral and meet with Curtis where Curtis revealed that he had spoken with Lennie Briscoe just before his death and that Lennie was his old wisecracking self right up to the end.
Read more about this topic: Lennie Briscoe
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“Death is too much for men to bear, whereas women, who are practiced in bearing the deaths of men before their own and who are also practiced in bearing life, take death almost in stride. They go to meet death—that is, they attempt suicide—twice as often as men, though men are more “successful” because they use surer weapons, like guns.”
—Roger Rosenblatt (b. 1940)
“if thou slip thy troth and do not come at all.
As minutes in the clock do strike so call for death I shall:
To please both thy false heart, and rid myself from woe,
That rather had to die in troth than live forsaken so.”
—Unknown. The Lady Prayeth the Return of Her Lover Abiding on the Seas (l. 19–22)
“To die, to sleep—
No more, and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to—’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep.
To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there’s the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil
Must give us pause.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)