‘Law,’ ‘Homicide’ Cross Paths on the Atlantic Coast

Another merger.

The prosecutors and coppers cum laude of “Law & Order” intersect this week with NBC’s other heroic crime series, “Homicide: Life on the Street.” The dramatic device is a lethal gas attack on African Americans in a Manhattan subway station that brings Baltimore’s finest to New York to investigate a possible link to a similar slaughter in their city. Turf battles, short tempers and some of prime-time’s best television ensue.

Tonight’s “Law & Order” initiates the volatile partnership, and Friday’s “Homicide” ends it, with characters from two of TV’s finest series mingling at times like Crips and Bloods.

“Law & Order” is an especially fascinating creature, having lost not a step while undergoing a near complete cast turnover since its inception in 1990. That’s because, unlike conventional TV, it’s a plot-driven series whose consistently good scripts earn top billing.

Only Steven Hill, a subtle actor whose voice, body and skin sag wearily as pessimistic, harrumphing Dist. Atty. Adam Schiff, remains from the original cast.

“Law & Order” has never been better. Dour Jerry Orbach and this season’s newcomer, Benjamin Bratt, serve ably as unglamorous straight-arrows Lennie Briscoe and Rey Curtis, the New York detectives who slog through the show’s muddy trenches while using its first half hour to build the cases that Schiff’s office hopes to prosecute. S. Epatha Merkerson spits vinegar as their boss, Lt. Anita Van Buren.

No flab here. A terse, methodical, “just-the-facts-ma’am” austerity pervades the cops, who are foreplay for the second half hour, where “Law & Order” does its briskest business via Sam Waterston as Asst. Dist. Atty. Jack McCoy and Jill Hennessy as second banana, Asst. Dist. Atty. Claire Kincaid.

Although court work is as severely abridged as cop work on “Law & Order,” and the show and its fine cast fast-forward snappily, the producers tackle social and legal issues from racism to capital punishment without lecturing sanctimoniously, and pack an amazing amount of good stuff into the last 30 minutes. It’s like watching a dozen long-legged circus clowns emerge somehow from a mini-car.

McCoy and Kincaid are hardly clowns. But they aren’t superheroes, either. They win most of the time, but not every time, and sometimes when they do prevail, Kincaid, in particular, questions whether they should have and appears troubled by the way the aggressive McCoy at times brushes closely with impropriety.

Giving “Law & Order” an edge it didn’t have before, Waterston’s McCoy entered the series in 1994, succeeding minimalist Michael Moriarty’s Ben Stone as lead assistant D.A. Stone had his own bloodless streak, but seems almost a softy compared with the more abrasive McCoy, who takes no prisoners in pursuit of a conviction.

As in all good crime series, there are elements of mystery and suspense in “Law & Order.” What marks it so distinctly and engages you so thoroughly, though, are its protagonists’ fallibilities and a willingness to leave loose ends unknotted. As the hour ends, they’re thinking, you’re thinking.

The show’s latest outburst of angst came last Wednesday when the cloud of a wrongful prosecution thickened over McCoy, who was accused of withholding evidence that could have led to an acquittal of a man wrongfully convicted of serial murder. Meanwhile, the real killer had struck again.

With Schiff fussing about “gangrene” creeping into the prosecutor’s office, shady tactics didn’t seem entirely out of character for his lead assistant. “Jack, you have made some pretty close calls,” Kincaid told her unrepentant partner.

As it turned out, reports of McCoy’s extreme ethical decay were premature, the actual culprit turning out to be a former assistant D.A. who was sleeping with him at the time and hoped her unsavory action would gain a high-profile conviction that would advance McCoy’s career. It did, and ultimately she paid a price for her corruption. Yet as this captivating hour ended, McCoy’s own behavior remained an issue.

In the course of all this, the former lover (artfully played by Laila Robbins) accused the reserved Kincaid of also sleeping with McCoy. Kincaid’s stony non-response was vintage “Law & Order,” leaving you to contemplate the titillating possibilities (she and McCoy seem all business at the office) on your own.

This week’s “Law & Order”/”Homicide” hybrid tries some minor matchmaking of its own when free-spirited Det. Tim Bayliss (Kyle Secor) of the latter series attempts cozying up to Kincaid. Although Kincaid responds amiably, she’d obviously prefer sleeping with her attache case. She has no chemistry with Bayliss, perhaps because the shows they represent are so unalike.

The New York subway incident that temporarily unites them is a near ringer for a church gassing in Baltimore whose six victims also were African American. So up to New York come Bayliss and his partner, Det. Frank Pembleton (Andre Braugher), to check out suspect Brian Egan (Kevin Geer), who is white. In the process, a simmering squabble over territorial rights builds to an electrifying clash between the opposing detectives, and Pembleton makes a goof that jeopardizes the case and angers McCoy.

Shades of a reverse O.J. Simpson trial: Egan is defended by a shrewd white attorney who plays the race card (“Time to send a message--you can’t blame whitey for everything,” he tells the middle-class white jury), before the episode ends with a sizzle.

Written by Michael Chernuchin (“Law & Order”) and Jorge Zamacona (“Homicide”), the plot and some of its New Yorkers on Friday travel to Baltimore, where white supremacist revelations and more good storytelling and superior performances await.

They include Richard Belzer as the comic Det. John Munch, who could pass for one of the sleazy Baltimore hucksters whom “Homicide” executive producer Barry Levinson depicted in his movie “Tin Men,” and especially Braugher, one of the very best actors in TV despite being snubbed by Emmy nominators.

His Frank Pembleton is soft and introspective one moment, a sharp kinetic jolt the next, a sum of combustible moods and tensions ever raw and energizing--typifying “Homicide” and its hotter-blooded, more fully developed characters, yet not especially harmonious with “Law & Order.”

These series are whipped-cream wonders, rewarding as part of the same sundae this week, yet even more digestible as separate scoops.

* “Law & Order” airs at 10 tonight and “Homicide” airs Friday at 10 p.m., both on NBC (Channel 4). Reruns of “Law & Order” also air weekdays at 8 p.m. on A&E; cable.