He is supposedly the one who has seen it all.
But the truth about this is that he came up from Baltimore looking for a change, not realizing that the change would be exactly what got to him. He is over thirty years' experience as a cop now, and he is still not tired of it. He has been through seven partners, and has stuck with one in both cities for longer than anyone else. He is the oldest member of the unit, the one who knows a little bit about everything, and the one who can usually be counted on to spout off about the government. He is the one whose desk is a mess and the one who will say something random every now and then just to get on his partner's nerves.
He has seen too many relationships failed and has sworn off love, for the moment.
Life is something that he has learned never to take for granted. He is the one who walked Baltimore's streets for most of his career, and he is the one who knows that it's not really all that hard to find a gun on the streets, you just have to know where to look. He is the one that has seen blood flowing in the streets, people shot point blank for no good reason, a child turned into a murderer because of circumstances beyond his control. He is the one who has slipped in the blood of colleagues as shots rang out around him, and he is the one who somehow made it out unhurt. He is the one whom Detective Bolander once said was born with a 'horseshoe up his ass', because things always seem to happen exactly when he's not around.
He is the one the department calls Sergeant Munch.
And he is the one who only took the sergeant's exam on a bet, the same way he was going to in Baltimore, only, things were different there, and people were betting against him then, and he knew it and didn't care. But there was no one here, and so he is the one who takes command of the unit when their captain is temporarily suspended/reassigned, whatever. He is the one who waits until there is no choice left but to hold a press conference, at which point he is the one the unit laughs at because he's in dress uniform and they're not, and they think it's funny. He is the one who has sat in that desk across from Detective Tutuola for the past eight years and the one who gets on said detective's nerves because of all his theories.
But they are still partners, and that is the one thing that will not change.
He is also the one who will stand on the precinct rooftop, just to think. The one who will watch the people passing below him and the one who knows that they don't give a damn what's happening unless it's plastered across the news or unless it's affecting them directly. He is the one who is a voice of reason sometimes, and the one who looks up things that sometimes break the case and sometimes don't. He is the one who stays in the squad room most of the time, because in all honesty, he's getting old and he knows it, even if he doesn't like it. He is the one to whom life has given a second chance, because when he retired out from Baltimore, he didn't think that he would have one, didn't think there was anything left for him to do. But he was wrong.
Behind the scenes, however, he is not Sergeant Munch.
And the problem with this is that back in Baltimore, John and Detective Munch had been pretty much synonymous, because on the first shift, there was no keeping personal lives out of the squad room. This was mostly because they all knew each other too well and were therefore always in each other's business, but it was also a way of coping what they saw, day in and day out, day shift, night shift, first and second, whatever. Here in New York, the two are no longer synonymous, but they are both stuck in the same person, though the detective is now a sergeant, and the whole unit still thinks it's funny. But where Sergeant Munch is the one who seems to know a little about a lot, there are still a lot of things out there that John doesn't know.
And whether or not it's because he chooses not to know, he doesn't know.
Ironic enough, but that's the way it is. Outside of the precinct, he is supposed to be himself. And John is the one who sits next to Fin and across from Olivia, who sits next to Elliot at the usual place they end up at when the workday is over. He is the one who will answer the phone in the middle of the night and the one who has changed roles by the time he shows up at the latest crime scene. He is the one who will listen to the others when they have something to say, and the one who will offer an opinion whether he's asked for it or not. He is one of the two who goes home to an apartment in Manhattan at the end of the day, when the squad splits up and they are no longer the detectives and a sergeant, but themselves as they are in civilian life.
He is the one who can find a conspiracy in a five-year-old child's lemonade stand.
He is also the one who sometimes lies awake at night and thinks of another night in which he stumbled across something he probably wasn't supposed to find. John is the one who can sometimes push Sergeant Munch out of the way, even when he's at work, because some things just have to be dealt with on a personal level. He is the one who will make an appearance at a victim's hospital bed, to read a seven-year-old girl a Dr. Seuss book, because the case got to him enough so that he wanted to be there, even though it was probably a bit odd for him to want that, but oh well. He is the one who sometimes sits at home with a book and sometimes calls the other three because there's nothing better to do, and the one who meets up with them in coffee shops at odd hours of the night.
He is the one who sometimes knows when to find himself and other times, doesn't.
It is easy enough to lose yourself, but when there are two people in the same body, it gets more complicated. Outside the precinct, it is supposed to be John that makes an appearance, but sometimes, that isn't the way it works, and sometimes, he's stuck as Sergeant Munch for an entire night. He is the one that will make the trip across the bridge to Queens just because Elliot doesn't feel like driving but he needs someone to talk to, and waking Olivia up isn't always the best idea, and neither is waking Fin up. He is the one who will sit on a front porch or outside an apartment building or on an apartment building rooftop in the middle of the night because one of the other three has summoned him, and they are the only family that he has up here.
He is the one that they can depend on when they have no one else.
He has watched Detective Benson try to hold herself and her partner together. He has watched Detective Stabler lose it, only to find it again after something hits him so profoundly that he'd have to be an idiot if he couldn't put it together. He has seen Detective Tutuola shot in the line of duty, and has been there to watch as his partner pulls together in time to solve a case he'd thought was never going to be solved. And he has watched himself become personally involved with cases, solely for the fact that sometimes, Sergeant Munch isn't the only one looking at said cases.
But at the same time, he has watched Olivia return from a stint with the Feds, having played cross-country SVU detective and pissed off her so-called handler. He has watched Elliot sliding into the squad room with an amused look on his face because of something that one of his kids has done. And he has watched Fin sit on a hotel bed in upstate New York while the two of them were on assignment, and he has listened as his partner revealed the real reasons behind his leaving Narcotics. And he has looked at himself in the mirror and seen himself and someone else, because there are two different people there, and he knows it.
He is supposed to be Sergeant Munch, the one who has seen it all. But at the same time, he is supposed to be John, the one who knows when to leave well enough alone and admit when there's something wrong.
The problem with that is that it's not always that easy to know which role he's supposed to play.
