Five Reasons to Love Hal Munson

When we lost Benjamin Hendrickson earlier this year, daytime was left without one of its most unique actors and best characters, As The World Turns’s Detective Hal Munson. Hendrickson imbued Hal both with tenderness and a fierce determination for justice: He was simultaneously prickly and cuddly. Hal was the cop you wanted on your case and the dad you wished you had. Here are five reasons why we will always love Hal.

1. He fathered four children by four different women, and yet even the daughter who wasn’t biologically his somehow inherited his red hair.

2. Despite his conquests of practically half the town’s female population, he still found time to marry and divorce Barbara Ryan three times.

3. He had the moral fiber not to take the phone book to those bastards Stenbeck and Montgomery, even though they were frequently begging for it.

4. He loved his family, the Cubs, greasy breakfasts, and greasier lunches.

5. He was perpetually tired of listening to your bullshit.