Michael "Mike" Logan, played by
Chris Noth, is a
fictional character in the
Law & Order
franchise.
History in the franchise
Logan initially appeared on
Law
& Order from the show's
pilot
episode. He appeared in every episode beginning with the first
season in 1990 until Noth's dismissal from the series in 1995.
After appearing in the franchise telemovie
Exiled, the character
then guest-starred in the
Law & Order: Criminal
Intent Season 4 episode "Stress Position". Logan
subsequently became a regular on
Criminal Intent, starting
with the first episode of season five, (
CI: "Grow") which
originally aired on September 25, 2005. Logan then leaves the
series in the 21st episode of season seven, "Last Rites", which
originally aired on August 17, 2008.
Character development
Mike Logan
was born in New York
City
into a working-class,
Irish Catholic family, and attended a
Catholic school.
Law & Order
He is originally portrayed as a cocky
chauvinist with a short temper. As the show
progressed, however, it supplied more of the character's
backstory; subsequent episodes revealed that he
had been
abused as a child, both
physically (by his unstable,
alcoholic
mother) and
sexually (by his
parish priest, whom he later confronts and brings to justice).
These early
trauma breed in him
a cynical view of the Church; he quips in the episode "Apocrypha"
that "My mother beat me with one hand while she held a
rosary with the other. The next time I enter a
church, it'll be in a pine box carried by six of my friends." When
he was a young man, his
pregnant girlfriend
had an
abortion against his wishes. As
these
trauma are revealed, his
"short fuse" evolves into a deep-seated pathological anger.
His anger explodes when his first partner,
Max Greevey, is
murdered by a suspect and he comes close to killing
the perpetrator, relenting only at the last minute and nearly
losing his job over it. Throughout the ordeal, he forms a strong
bond with
Elizabeth Olivet, the
department's resident
psychiatrist. In
the 2008 episode "Betrayal", it is implied that Logan and Olivet
had a brief affair.
Logan's second partner,
Phil Cerreta,
is also shot in the line of duty, but he survives and takes on a
desk job. In the following episodes, his partner is
Lennie Briscoe.
He has professed a serious dislike for upper-class professions,
especially
lawyers, accounting for his
antagonistic relationship with
Jack
McCoy. He has diverse political views; he is adamantly
pro-choice, supports
gay
rights, compares the
Patriot Act
to
George Orwell's
1984 and, while he has at various points
held slight prejudices against people of
Arabic
and
Japanese descent, by 2007 he
shows unbridled disdain towards any form of
racism.
Appearances post-Law & Order &
pre-Criminal Intent
When Noth
was fired from the show in 1995 over a salary dispute, the Logan
character was written out; in the Law & Order universe, Logan is transferred from
Manhattan
Homicide to the Staten Island
Domestic Disputes squad in 1995 for publicly
punching a homophobic politician who had
been tried for the murder of a gay man (based on
the Dan White case), and is replaced by
Det. Rey
Curtis.
The Logan character was revived in 1998 and given his own
TV movie,
Exiled: A Law & Order
Movie. In the movie, Logan tries to get his old job back
by solving the murder of a
prostitute, in
the process discovering that his old friend,
Detective Tony Profaci, is involved in the
crime. During the course of the film, he becomes a homicide
detective again, but is kept on Staten Island, where he has little
opportunity to pursue significant cases.
Criminal Intent
In 2005, the character was added to
Law & Order: Criminal
Intent. He was reintroduced in the fourth season episode
"
Stress Position," where he helps
the Major Case Squad's investigation of a case of
prisoner abuse involving corrupt corrections
officers who
torture Muslim prisoners. Detectives
Robert Goren and
Alexandra Eames question Logan's girlfriend,
prison nurse Gina Lowe, about prison drug testing and her
interactions with a murdered corrections officer. Later, the
detectives deduce that Unit Counselor Kurt Plumm is planning to
have Lowe killed; Goren and Logan attempt to escort her to safety
but the prison goes into lockdown, trapping all three inside. Plumm
and his partners corner Logan, Goren, and Lowe in a corridor, and
Plumm implies that they intend to kill them. Goren convinces the
other guards to defy Plumm, however, and one of the officers opens
the gates to free the detectives and Lowe. Logan picks up one of
the guards' discarded billy club and approaches Plumm menacingly,
but he resists the urge to
assault the man.
"That guy," Logan later says to Goren, "he woulda been worth
another ten years in Staten Island." Also in the episode, Captain
James Deakins reveals that Logan's
former superior officer, Lieutenant
Anita Van Buren, had tried three times to
get him transferred back to her command after his reassignment, all
to no avail.
Deakins returns Logan to active duty as a detective under his
command in the fifth season, when he is partnered with
Det. Carolyn
Barek. In a 2006 episode, he accidentally shoots an undercover
police officer while investigating a homicide instigated by the
officer's foster mother. He is cleared of official misconduct, but
is troubled by having killed someone; he reaches out to Olivet for
counseling.
In the fifth-season episode "
The
Healer," it is revealed that Logan has a severe allergy to
poison ivy, which manifests itself as a
rash, fever, and stomach pains.
In the sixth season, the Major Case Squad is handed over to a new
captain,
Danny Ross, and Logan is
assigned a new partner,
Det. Megan Wheeler. In the seventh season, he works
with Det.
Nola Falacci, a temporary
partner assigned to him while Wheeler is teaching American police
procedures to officers in
Europe.
In the episode "
Last
Rites", Logan goes head to head with Terry Driver, a corrupt
ADA who had enhanced her own reputation at the expense of others.
Driver,
who is running for attorney
general, goes after Logan's job and builds a case against
Wheeler's fiancé, who is arrested by the FBI
for fraud and racketeering. Logan solves a
16-year-old homicide, but the inflexibility and corruption of the
justice system he sees in this case leaves him badly shaken. A
priest who first put Logan on the case advises him to get out while
he can, but Logan's decision is not revealed until the following
season, when Ross mentions to Wheeler that her partner quit on her,
referring to Logan. He is replaced by
Zach
Nichols.
Fictional Work History
Notes
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