'Law & Order': Sam Waterston's Jack McCoy Has Left the Building

By Dustin Rowles | TV | February 23, 2024 |

By Dustin Rowles | TV | February 23, 2024 |

For better or worse, there are more than a few lawyers in America today who owe their decisions to enter the profession to Sam Waterston and his Law & Order character, Jack McCoy. I was more of a Bobby Donnell from The Practice guy (I went to law school wanting to be a public defender), but I always had immense respect for Jack McCoy, even if his methods were, let’s say “cop-like.” He was a means-justify-the-ends kind of prosecutor — justice was the end, and he’d use whatever means necessary to get there, even if that meant playing dirty, making unpopular choices, or disregarding the collateral damage. He pissed off a lot of people.

Fittingly, he pissed off the wrong person in his final episode of Law & Order after 19 seasons and 405 episodes — Waterston’s run on Law & Order began the same week that Friends premiered.

“I always knew that I was going to stay on a short time,” Waterston told the Los Angeles Times. “I didn’t want to turn on the TV and see somebody else playing the part when the show came back but I knew it was not for the long term. This was always going to be the year (to leave). And then Law & Order designed just a beautiful exit. I couldn’t have been more pleased with it,” the man nominated for three Emmys for playing the character added.

In his final episode, Jack McCoy spoke truth to power, and it cost him his job. The case involved the death of a woman found strangled in Central Park. Classic L&O. The investigation ultimately leads to a suspect, Scott Kelton, played by Rob Benedict, who was playing a college student on Felicity 15 years after Waterston’s debut on Law & Order (and what a feather in Benedict’s cap — nearly 100 credits to the journeyman actor’s name, and his first episode of Law & Order comes on Waterston’s last day).

Kelton is a well-connected tech guy who we ultimately learn raped the suspect, Veronica Knight, six years prior. On the morning of her death, Veronica confronted Kelton in Central Park, and fearing what a rape accusation would do to his life, Kelton killed her.

The problem for the prosecution is that the case is circumstantial. The defense painted their only witness as a suspect, and the therapist who knew about the rape refused to testify, citing patient-therapist confidentiality. Ultimately, the only way to convict Kelton was to call to the stand the son of the mayor, Jordan Payne, who could testify to the fact that Kelton raped the victim.

The mayor — played by Bruce Altman, who I am pretty sure has looked 55 his entire career — was a recipient of a lot of political donations from Kelton, and he didn’t want his son to take the stand because it would mean that his son would also have to admit he had an affair. It would ruin his son’s life and damage the mayor’s reputation. The mayor told ADA Nolan Price that if he called his son to the stand, the mayor would do everything in his power to elect McCoy’s opponent in the next District Attorney’s race and ensure that his first order of business would be to fire Price.

McCoy, being McCoy, was like, “F**k that. You’re off the case, Nolan! I’ll put that son of a bitch on the stand myself.” And he did, and he secured a conviction, and then he resigned because he knew the mayor would bury him and fire everyone in his office. This way, McCoy promised, the governor could appoint “someone with integrity” (who will be played by Tony Goldwyn).

“It’s been a hell of a ride,” McCoy tells Price with his final line, and it sure as hell was. Next week, for the first time in 30 years, Sam Waterston will not appear in an episode of Law & Order. And with that, we’ll leave you with a final bit from Waterston’s interview in the LA Times:

My wife likes to watch old episodes of “Law & Order” while she’s cooking. Sometimes I’m passing through the kitchen and I stop and I think, “Why were you so critical of how you looked in those days? Look at yourself now.”

Truer words.