No, he was just transferred to Staten Island, apparently purgatory or worse for a Manhattan detective. He doesn’t consider it cushy, spending a lot of time trying to get back to the city. In this episode, they say Van Buren has been trying to get him back, but the higher ups won’t let him. Makes me wonder how he will get on the Major Case squad.
I missed it.
Was anybody mentioning Lenny Briscoe?
“Hey, where’s Lenny?”
“Uh, he retired…and died”
Anything like that?
No, but that’s understandable. Logan was interacting with cops who’d never met Briscoe (that I recall), let alone worked with him, so why would he expect them to know anything useful about him?
I thought it unfortunate that the climax of the episode fell back on the conventional pop-psychology from D’Onofrio, instead of letting Logan give somebody a beating (or threaten to).
Sam Waterson is 10 times better as a DA than Michael Moriarty ever was.
In his case, it really was exhaustion. He was doing multiple projects and passed out on the set one day. IIRC, there were some insulin-control problems which exacerbated his situation.
Chris Noth kicks ass – that was great. I’d take one of his superior facial expressions over ten thousand of D’Onofrio’s smug, swaggering pontifications.
During the final stand-off, though, I kept waiting for:
“Unlock the gate, Duddits!”
“Can oo see da yine, 'Ogan?” 
Heh.
I appreciated that they showed how different Logan was to Goren, but he was still a crafty, worthy detective, especially the scene where he’s
searching his girlfriend’s apartment.
Bryan Ekers, I disagree. But then, I’m a huge fan of Goren’s mental powahs, shakily-written as they can be.
[spoiler]Especially in the climax. He turned one guard, and then got the others to fall into place just because it was what everyone else was doing. Creepy. As DA Carver says, oh, the irony. But, I thought during the middle of that scene that Goren was just stalling for time until backup arrived.
I wouldn’t have traded Logan picking up the stick and staring down the guard for anything. Damn.[/spoiler]
One thing that worries me is the lack of chemistry between Logan and Eames. I like Eames. I don’t want her pushed aside for the Mike Logan Show. Already she was relegated to following Carver around.
I’ve liked CI, but it’s always been a mystery show. Now it’ll be a cop show. And that will rock. 
That was great. I laughed out loud when he did that.
Wasn’t Logan’s partner in Exciled the same actress (if not charater) as Goren’s partner in CI?
Nobody else thought Chris Noth looked awful in his CI return?
Okay, okay, so he’s gotten old like everyone else does. But some actors age gracefully - like Dustin Hoffman, Katherine Hepburn, Gregory Peck, Bogie, his wife, etc.
But Noth…
I liked his character very much and was pissed off when he was written out of L&E. Nevertheless, it was hard looking at him this time around. That wonderfully great nose of his seems to have grown larger while the rest of his face got smaller, thinner.
Happily, though, the energy, the sarcasm, the smirks and smiles are all intact. I’m glad he’s back.
Then, there’s Jerry Orbach. I liked him too, but…
His immense popularity remains a mystery to me. He was obviously too old for Lennie over the last millenium of his career; he couldn’t act to save his ass and was comfortable only with those acrid tag lines, after which the scene usually went to black. All in all, I think he was likeable, but wooden.
Jerry seemed to have had a presence that made real cops proud. I’ve heard he was The Real Thing in their eyes.
To be fair, this was a running gag on L&O. Briscoe was often out of breath and hobbled while young buck Green chased down suspects.