KOJAK: GREEK MYTHOLOGY. Back in the mid-1970s, I was a big fan of Kojak, a cop show on CBS. Not that I was a big cop show fan, nor was I a big Telly Savalas fan. But there was something about the character that Mr. Savalas portrayed, i.e. Theo Kojak. If you don’t recall the show, or wasn’t even born at the time, Kojak was a fictional New York Police lieutenant assigned to the Manhattan South district. Kojak was far from a “Dirty Harry” kind of cop, but he wasn’t exactly by-the-book either. His former partner, Frank McNeil, knew how to play Department politics, and thus became Captain of Investigations and Kojak’s boss. Obviously, Kojak wasn’t into political correctness. He was on a mission to get the bad guys and help the good people, even when the Department got in the way.

That was the true charm of Kojak. The NYPD was not portrayed as totally evil, but you were made aware of the political maneuvering and the occasional corruption of its members. I’ve read that a lot of real cops thought Kojak was one of the most realistic cop shows ever. Sometimes, Lieutenant Kojak’s biggest foil was the internal friction of working with his supervisors and co-workers. And yet, he never gave in to it. He approached each murder or robbery with the same “do or die” attitude. It wasn’t just his job. It was his life. Theo Kojak was portrayed as a middle-aged bachelor, assumedly without kids. Although he dated women (so as to keep the gay faction from claiming him) and knew how to have a good time, there really wasn’t anything else in his life but the Force. And there he made his stand. Everything else probably went wrong for him, but this he would do right. He would go after the bad guys, not just enough to make it to retirement, but enough to make a difference in the world.

It must have been a tough role for Telly Savalas, portraying a noble loser who never gave in. And yet, he did it beautifully. Sure, his gruff coolness, his lollipops and his “who loves ya baby” attitude masked the usual pallor that losers carry. And on most nights, Kojak got his man, although not without some ironies. But ultimately, Kojak was a Greek myth, the Sisyphus who kept rolling the rock up the mountain even if it would come right down again. On one episode, I remember him lecturing a cop gone bad, “yea, it’s a tough job, but ya gotta keep trying”. Ah, the noble irony, the fire that can’t be extinguished, the last man at his post on the night the world ended.

These days, I work for an urban law enforcement agency, though not in a very exciting role. I’m not at all like Kojak. But still, I face many of the same depressing realities that were admitted to in that show. And yes, it does get to me some days. Perhaps I need to do what the ancient Greeks did. Perhaps I need to turn to a myth. The Kojak myth.

(It’s just too darn bad that you can’t find old episodes being played anywhere, not even here in the NY area where the myth was born. And no, NYPD Blue is not a good substitute. Dennis Franz as Andy Sipowitz could never recreate the spirit of Lieutenant Theo Kojak. Just not Greek enough.)