I really don't understand why they got rid of Lietenant Murtagh. He seemed to become very popular in season 3. Then in season 4 he only made one brief appearance during the episode when Steve and Carl where in the hospital, then we never see him again. Why do you think this was?

I wish I could say they got rid of him because I wrote them a letter stating how much he irritated me! ;)

Puh-lease!

lt. Murtagh was a straight up *******. He always thought that he was always right and Carl was the insubordinate one! Carl was the smarter cop and it showed in various episodes

1- Murtagh and Carl were on a stakeout, Murtagh kept fooling around and almost got them shot in the apartment building.
2- Carl corrected him about a brown lake, which was a coffee stain and murtagh told him not to correct him again.

In all, Carl actually hated Murtagh and always cringed whenever he came by. I would cringe too.

I would assume the reason the show got rid of Lieutenant Murtaugh was because Carl was eventually promoted to Lieutenant himself. When the show first started, Carl held the title of Sergeant and the producers thought it would be interesting to have a character who was the immediate superior to him, and so they brought in Lt. Murtaugh. But after Carl was promoted to Lieutenant, the producers felt it would not be interesting to have two characters on the same level in the police force.

After Carl was promoted to Lieutenant, I think it is fair to say that Murtaugh's role was replaced by Carl's new immediate superior: Captain Savage. I liked the episode when Carl tells his Captain that his new girlfriend is a stripper, when in fact the Captain already knows and gets angry at Carl for being judgmental and assigns him three months of traffic duty.