Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Sundays, I will be reviewing Homicide: Life On The Street, which aired from 1993 to 1999, on NBC!  It  can be viewed on Peacock.

This week, the Homicide detective finally arrest the shooter but can they get a confession?

Episode 3.15 “End Game”

(Dir by Lee Bonner, originally aired on February 10th, 1995)

Finally, the Homicide detectives have figured out who actually shot Bolander, Howard, and Felton.  Gordon Pratt (Steve Buscemi), who lived at the apartment that the detectives were accidentally sent to, is a gun-obsessed pseudo-intellectual whose apartment is full of books that he’s probably never read and a picture of himself posing like Lee Harvey Oswald with the rifle he used to kill JFK.  Pratt also has an outstanding warrant for his arrest, explaining why he panicked when the cops accidentally knocked on his door.

Here’s my question.  Why exactly did it not occur to anyone to see who lived in Apartment 201 when the shootings first happened?  I understand that they were focused on a different suspect but it still seems strange that, with all the detectives assigned to the case, no one bothered to check out the guy who lived in Apartment 201.

Anyway, Bayliss and Mitch Drummond drop in on Pratt’s parents, who own a farmhouse and insist that Gordon would never shoot anyone.  Meanwhile, Pratt’s co-workers all talk about how much they hate his guts with one guy mentioning that Pratt went out of his way to antagonize people.  Pratt is finally tracked down at a massage parlor.

The majority of this episode centers around Pembleton and Bayliss interrogating Pratt.  It’s an obvious attempt to recapture the intensity of the first season’s Three Men and Adena and it actually succeeds, thanks to some smart writing and the performances of Andre Braugher, Kyle Secor, and especially Steve Buscemi.  Buscemi plays Pratt as being the ultimate uneducated know-it-all, someone who has picked bits and pieces of philosophy and who has learned that, if you deliver your mundane thoughts with a sneering contempt, some people will assume that you’re smarter than you actually are.  Pembleton and Bayliss have fun picking apart Pratt’s arrogance but — and this is what sets Homicide apart from so many other cop shows — Pembleton ultimately goes too far.  When he takes a look at Pratt’s copy of Plato’s The Republic and realizes that it’s written in Greek, Pembleton can’t help but taunt Pratt and point out that, unlike Pratt, he can actually read ancient Greek because he was educated by “the Jesuits,” while Pratt didn’t even mange to graduate high school.

“I want a lawyer!” Pratt shouts.

At this point, I realized that I had gotten so wrapped up in the interrogation scene that I had totally forgotten about the fact that all of the evidence linking Pratt to the shooting was circumstantial.  Without a gun or a confession, there’s not enough evidence to hold Pratt.  He pleads out to his outstanding assault warrant and he’s free within a few hours.

“You got too cute, Frank,” Munch says, leading to Pembleton physically attacking Munch and then storming out of the station.  Munch goes to the hospital to see Bolander (who has woken up from his coma but who has no memory of who Much actually is) and Bayliss is the only person left to take the call when Gordon Pratt turns up dead in the lobby of his apartment building, shot in the head.

Who murdered Gordon Pratt and was it a cop?  That’s what Bayliss — who sarcastically declares “I love my job!” before heading to the crime scene — will have to figure out.

Great episode!  Not only was it wonderfully performed but, just when you thought to yourself, “There’s no way Pembleton could get away with this in real life,” it turns out that Pembleton couldn’t get away with it on Homicide either.  That’s what makes Frank Pembleton such a fascinating character.  He’s a brilliant detective but, in this episode, he let his desire to embarrass Pratt get in the way of doing his job.  “He who loses control loses,” Pembleton says and, in this episode, he lost control.  Pembleton’s reaction is to storm out of the station in a huff, leaving Bayliss the task of figuring out who killed Gordon Pratt.

My money’s on Munch, just because of how upset he was when Pratt walked and also that it would make sense for Munch to avenge Bolander’s head wound by shooting Pratt in the head.  We’ll see if I’m correct next week!