WISH-CRAFT - STANDING/MUNCH/LUTHER

'NEW TRICKS'
"BERMONDSEY BOY"

ROBIN:
Cait tells me you grew up round here, Gerry?
GERRY:
That's right.
ROBIN:
Rough corners.
GERRY:
Rough what?
ROBIN:
Street corners.
GERRY:
This is Bermondsey, not Baltimore.

It may seem strange that retired Detective Sergeant Gerry Standing might be making a reference to an American city for its street violence when there surely must have been a location closer to home that would have served the same purpose.

It could be that Gerry's future son-in-law Robin was referring to a TV show. In our world there were a few that were set in Baltimore and dealing with crime - 'Homicide: Life On Streets', 'The Wire', and perhaps more germane to the dialogue reprinted above, 'The Corner'.

But all three of those shows should be sharing the same TV dimension with 'New Tricks' - your favorite* and mine, Earth Prime-Time. So I have to find another reason why Gerry might have been so familiar with the rampant crime problems in "Balmer".

Sure, it could be on the news, and with the internet making the world so much smaller, it's easy enough to get the news that normally wouldn't be covered by local media.

But I'm thinking it's pozz'ble, just pozz'ble, that Gerry Standing once met somebody from Baltimore, somebody very familiar with the crime situation in "Charm City".

Somebody like the King of TV Crossovers, Detective John Munch.

At some point in his career as a cop, the Munchkin must have come over to London, perhaps on some sort of fact-finding exchange program just as Lt. Columbo did back in the early 1970s.

While in Great Britain, Munch could have met Gerry, perhaps at some international police detective conclave. Hound-dogs that they are, they could have been swapping stories that eventually led to tales about their jobs.

At such a conclave Munch must have also met Detective Chief Inspector John Luther. (Both 'Luther' and 'New Tricks' take place in London.) How else would Luther have known to contact him with regards to a particular case he was working on? ('Luther 1.5')

And because he told the other detective to contact Munch in New York City, it's likely he met the SVU detective after he had already transferred from Baltimore.

It's the flimsiest of possibilities that this could have happened, but who knows?

BCnU!

*Of course, if you've constructed your own alternate reality TV universe, I'm sure that's your favorite. Hello, Robert!

This post is dedicated to Jill Cohen-Wilson, one of my fellow Iddiots and formerly of Baltimore.....