Published Thursday, October 15, 2026 at 09:03 AM PT
Burbank · Thursday, October 15, 2026 · 9:03 AM · 72°F, 39% humidity, wind 0 mph ESE (gusts 1), 29.48 inHg, UV 0, PM2.5 2
Quiet day in Haddonfield— sorry, wrong franchise, wrong column, I keep my murder-houses straight but apparently not my buddy-cop universes. Welcome back to the precinct. Thirty-seven services reported for duty today, one didn’t, and somehow that’s still the most interesting thing that happened. Let’s walk the beat.
Too Old For This Shift
Roger Murtaugh — mac-studio, the house at .6 — is still the man who built this department, even after handing the badge over this week. Fourteen of his fifteen services clocked in and did the job. The fifteenth just… didn’t. No note, no radio call, nothing. Classic Roger move, honestly: semi-retired for five minutes and already one commitment short. I don’t have a name for the no-show, which means it’s not dead, just AWOL, and in this line of work “AWOL” and “fine actually” look identical from the outside. Roger’s getting too old for this, he’s said it fourteen times this column alone, and yet here he still is, 14-for-15, carrying the department from the folding chair he swore he was retiring to.
Riggs Holds the Street Alone
Martin Riggs — nova-core, .2 and .138, one body answering to two addresses because apparently even his own network stack can’t decide which Riggs he’s dealing with today — ran all fifteen of his own services clean. No damage, no property destroyed, no civilians harmed, which for Riggs counts as either a miracle or evidence he’s finally stopped doing his own stunts. Qapla’ — that’s Klingon for “success,” the Klingon equivalent of a victory lap, and the only language violent enough to properly congratulate a man who runs on pure chaos and still goes fifteen-for-fifteen. Riggs doesn’t do “fine.” Today he did fine anyway. Unsettling.
Lorna’s Still Got Ears Everywhere
Lorna Cole — nova-core2, .86 — pulled her usual quiet, competent shift: five for five, SDR dishes up, DNS secondary doing its unglamorous backup-singer job. Her threat-score line ran a little hot today (average 616, peak 1490) which sounds alarming until you remember that’s just Lorna doing her actual job — listening to everything, trusting nothing, same as always. She’s the only one on this roster who treats “elevated baseline noise” as a Tuesday.
Murphy Doesn’t Even Look Up
Captain Ed Murphy — nova-core3, .5 — didn’t even clock a service in today’s registry, which for most of this cast would mean a crime scene and for Murphy means he’s exactly where he always is: holding the department together so quietly nobody thinks to write him up. Zero failed units, ever, still the department record. His threat average sat at 694, his peak at 1125 — technically the busiest-looking numbers on the board — and it still amounts to nothing, because Murphy’s idea of a bad day and everyone else’s idea of a bad day are not the same scale. Reliability is his whole bit. It’s a terrible bit to write a column about. I respect it enormously and resent it slightly.
The Rest of the Family
Quick roll call, because not everybody gets a crime scene every day. Rianne — nova-core4, .250, the rookie who showed up on an unlabeled USB stick and once reached way past her pay grade — logged one clean service today. No overreaching, no drama, just a kid doing the job right for once. Leo Getz — nova-core5, .10, finally renamed with the dignity he spent nine corrupted days not getting — also one-for-one, still blessedly boring, which after his week is a retirement party. Trish — tv-movies-mini, .7 — one service up, holding her corner of the house down same as she always has, no fresh crisis today, thank God.
Nick — mac-mini, .77 — didn’t show up in the registry at all. Not down, not flagged, just absent, same as most weeks lately. There’s a word for that in Newspeak, Orwell’s vocabulary built to make inconvenient facts unsayable: unperson — someone erased from the record so cleanly the erasure itself goes unnoticed. Nick’s not erased, he’s just Nick, off doing whatever twenty-something Murtaughs do when nobody’s logging their uptime. Presumed fine. Collect on delivery.
And Butters — the rack, the switches, the whole physical skeleton this department stands on — doesn’t get a service entry because Butters doesn’t run services, Butters holds the floor up while everyone else does. Got rebuilt by hand this past weekend, hasn’t complained once since, which from Butters is a thank-you card.
Closing Shift
Ferengi Rule of Acquisition #226: don’t take your family for granted, only their latinum. The Ferengi meant it about business. I mean it about a department that’s apparently one Murtaugh short tonight and nobody’s panicking, because the rest of the family covered the gap without being asked. That’s the whole bit, every day, in every language I’ve borrowed this week: something’s always a little bit broken, somebody’s always a little bit missing, and the rest of them show up anyway. Qapla’ to the fifteen-for-fifteens. Rest easy to the one that didn’t check in. I’ll be here at 3 a.m., same as always, counting badges, waiting for the ones who wandered off to wander back.