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, incompetence reigns.

Episode 4.12 “The Hat”

(Dir by Peter Medak, originally aired on January 19th, 1996)

There’s a running theme in this week’s episode and that theme is incompetence.

With Russert having been demoted all the way back to detective, there is now a captain’s vacancy.  The squad room is convinced that Giardello is going to get promoted.  For that matter, Giardello is also convinced that he’s going to be promoted.  Instead, the promotion goes to Roger Gaffney (Walt MacPherson), the racist martinet former homicide detective who nearly got into a fist fight with Pembleton during the white glove murder investigation.

(Giardello, for all of his strengths, has never played the political game as well as those around him.)

Munch thinks that a lawyer who he arrested for murder is going to be convicted.  However, it turns out that the video that Brodie shot at the crime scene shows that a key piece of evidence was mishandled.  Munch tells Brodie to erase the tape.  Brodie refuses to tamper with evidence.  (“It’s illegal,” he says.)  As a result, the murderer walks free.  And while it’s true that Brodie’s refusal to erase the tape did lead to an guilty man walking, it’s also true that it wouldn’t have been a problem if the cops on the scene hadn’t screwed up in the first place.

Finally, Lewis and Kellerman are sent to Pennsylvania to pick up Rose Halligan (Lily Tomlin), a woman suspected of murdering her husband in Baltimore.  Lewis and Kellerman are supposed to go straight to Pennsylvania and then come right back to Maryland, without making any unnecessary stops.  Instead, they screw up.  Kellerman decides to stop off at a run-down amusement park that he remembers from his childhood.  Later, Lewis and Kellerman stop off at a diner so they can get some dinner.  When Rose excuses herself to go to the restroom, they not only remove her handcuffs but they also allow her to go unaccompanied.  Needless to say, Rose escapes, makes her way back to Baltimore, and stabs her husband’s mistress to death before getting Lewis and Kellerman track her down.

Lily Tomlin was this episode’s big guest star, for better or worse.  Sometimes, when a big name appears on a television show, it becomes obvious that there wasn’t anyone around who was willing to tell them that they were overacting just a bit and that would certainly seem to be the case here.  Rose is a music teacher so this episode really tests one’s tolerance for Lily Tomlin singing opera.  That said, Tomlin was quietly effective at the end of the episode, sitting out on a porch while her former friend lay dead in the house.  Rose says she was returning her friend’s hate and, indeed, the dead woman in wearing the hat that Rose wore throughout almost the entire episode.

All said, I enjoyed this episode.  Lewis and Kellerman may be incompetent but they’re still entertaining to watch.  As for the hated Roger Gaffney getting the job that Giardello deserved …. well, isn’t that always the way?