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 third season of Homicide comes to an end.

Episode 3.2o “The Gas Man”

(Dir by Barry Levinson, originally aired on May 5th, 1995)

The third season of Homicide was coming to an end and NBC was dragging its heels as to whether or not it would renew the show.  Homicide was critically acclaimed but its ratings were low, despite the efforts to make the show more audience-friendly during the third season.  Producer Barry Levinson grew frustrated with NBC’s refusal to tell him whether or not the show would be renewed.  Feeling that show was probably over, Levinson and showrunner Tom Fontana decided to do something truly radical.  They crafted a series finale that sidelined most of the major characters.

Instead, The Gas Man focuses on Victor Helms (Bruno Kirby) and his best friend, Danny Newton (Richard Edson).  Helms has just gotten out of prison, where he served six years after a gas heater he installed malfunctioned and caused the death of one of his customers.  Helms blames Frank Pembleton for the loss of both his freedom and his family.  (After getting released, Helms tries to talk to his teenage son but is rejected.)  Helms and Newton follow Pembleton across Baltimore, watching as he goes to work and to a fertility clinic.  While Pembleton is investigating the murder of a fortune teller, Helms and Newton sneak onto the crime scene and find both the murder weapon and the fortune teller’s severed head.  Helms takes both of them home and sends pictures to the Baltimore Sun, trying to taunt Pembleton.  Both the Sun and Pembleton assume its a hoax.  Eventually, Helms makes his move and, even with a knife to Pembleton’s throat, he realizes that he doesn’t have it in him to commit a cold-blooded murder.  He starts to cry.  Pembleton arrests him.  Life goes on.

This was an interesting episode.  The first time I saw it, I was a bit annoyed that the focus was taken off the lead characters.  But the more I think about it, the more I appreciate what Levinson was going for.  With this episode, he shows us what happens after the investigation and the conviction.  Victor Helms is angry because he feels, perhaps with some justification, that he was unfairly charged and convicted.  He’s obsessed with Pembleton but it’s clear that Pembleton doesn’t even remember him.  For Pembleton, arresting Victor Helms was a part of his job, nothing more.  For Helms, it was the moment that his entire life collapsed.  Bruno Kirby and Richard Edson both gave good performances as Helms and Danny.  Kirby captured Helms’s obsession but he also gave us some glimpses of the man that Helms used to be.  As portrayed by Edson, Danny’s loyalty to his friend was actually kind of touching.

Of course, it turned out that this episode was not the series finale.  Homicide would return for a fourth season, without Daniel Baldwin or Ned Beatty.  We’ll start season four next week!