I don’t think Grace on Grace Under Fire relapsed with alcohol, but she did get addicted to pain pills in one episode. A bit ironic that her character didn’t relapse, because the actress (Brett Butler) had multiple relapses during the series run, which eventually led to it being cancelled.
There was an episode (I think it was a different one) where Chief Daniels confronts him with the results of a routine drug test that showed Furillo had recently drunk alcohol.
Lennie had a few after witnessing an execution. Claire Kincaid came to the bar where he’d been drinking with McCoy, to give McCoy a ride, but McCoy had left, so she offered Lennie a ride, and they got hit by a drunk driver, and she was killed. Lennie jumped right back on the wagon. So, basically one night of getting drunk, and that was it for Lennie. He didn’t even relapse when his daughter was killed.
If he and Claire hadn’t been struck by the drunk, who knows what might have happened to Lennie, though?
And no, Cragen never relapsed. He even kept alcohol in his desk to offer to other people, and never drank it himself. Cragen didn’t have continuity, but his character was probably part of L&O longer than any other. He started out as the Lt. on TOS in 1990, then left that show after about three years (sacrificed to the need Dick Wolf felt to have more women on the show). In 1999, he reappeared as the Lt and eventually CPT of the SVU precinct, and was there until, IIRC, two years ago. So he was already in recovery in 1990, and had not relapsed by 2015. He did once state that the closest he came was when his wife died.
Given that Lennie’s relapse was part of a contrivance to get Jill Hennessey off the show because she wanted to do other things, it probably wasn’t planned from the beginning. That is, when Lennie was stated to be an alcoholic at his first appearance, I don’t think there was ever a plan to have him jump off the wagon some day. The episode where it happens, “Aftershock,” is a departure for the show, and just shows all the characters trying to cope with having witnessed an execution. It was some kind of federal execution they had played a part in because NY didn’t have the death penalty at the time, and I think it was polemic-- that is, it was a statement against the Death Penalty. I was in and out of Manhattan at the time, and reading lots of Manhattan papers even when I wasn’t living there, and the DP was very much on the minds of New Yorkers at the time.
Sometimes I really want to go back to NY, but I don’t want to uproot my son.
It was actually a NY death penalty case. Pataki reinstated the death penalty in 1995; it stayed in effect until 2004. And while in real life it wasn’t used during that period, the L&O writers made plenty of use of it - there were several L&O, SVU, and CI cases where the (now legal) death penalty was either a plot point or a threat or a sentence. That particular episode was supposed to have been the first person executed since reinstatement.
I have watched a lot of L&O.
To the OP - I don’t remember Murphy Brown relapsing.
He did, in… I want to say Feet of Clay, maybe? He gets fired, and is later found black-out drunk in his room with his badge in his fist.
I think that’s the only time, though.
Men at Arms, I think. But that was before he swore off the stuff. He was still a drunk then, so it wasn’t a relapse.
Agent Lattimer on Warehouse 13 was a recovering alcoholic who didn’t relapse. He DID once magically switch bodies with someone who had been drinking, but I’m pretty sure that doesn’t really count.
Come to think of it, isn’t it the Vice President – played by Tim Matheson – who runs the AA meetings? I don’t remember him ever knocking back a drink.
Are you sure? I seem to remember some song and dace about why they were all involved. Besides, it was a season 6 ep, which means that someone someone convicted in 1995 could not have gotten through the appeals process that quickly. I don’t know if you can waive appeal in NY.
Also, even when Pataki lifted the ban, NY still did not have a MEANS of execution. I don’t remember exactly how long that took to hammer out, but it was quite a while, and until NY had a means, executions weren’t possible.
I remember some anti-DP groups advocating for hanging, in the hope that no one would ever convict to hang, or that it would be found “cruel and unusual” on appeal.
The key lines from the episode were, as far as I can tell, “today the state of New York put a man to death,” alongside “he beat her to death with a tire iron, and today the state of New York got its revenge.” And, of the body: “it’ll be buried at state expense.”
(Oh, and “we caught him, McCoy cooked him.”)
It was pretty subtle, but Fusco in Person of Interest was definitely a recovering alcoholic, even though I’m not sure it was ever specifically stated (except that he would get club soda at bars and such). He never fell off the wagon, either.
The most hilarious show with a sort of derivative of what the OP describes is an episode of Seventh Heaven. One of the kids had a friend whose father was an alcoholic. The preacher’s family gets word that this friend is going to a party where OH NOOOOOO!!! HE MIGHT DRINK A BEER!!!
A panicked chase ensues trying to track down this teenage kid before he drinks his first beer. It’s all played very straight with lines like, “His father is an alcoholic!.” Yep, one beer and he’ll be hooked!
I laughed so hard.