 In writing the script , Attanasio , Levinson and Fontana wanted the dialogue to reflect the kinds of things detectives would talk about when not discussing murders or cases , which led to the inclusion of several scenes in which detectives talk casually among themselves during lunch or around the office . Fontana , who compared the scenes to Levinson 's 1982 film Diner , said , " That really made the show different from other shows , because we had the room to have conversations that seemingly didn 't ( <unk> ) connect anything , but they did reveal a lot about the characters . " Levinson specifically asked that the body by Howard and Felton be badly decomposing and attracting flies because he felt other police dramas did not portray corpses in a realistic way . 
