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!

This week, we spend way too much time with Paul Falsone.

Episode 6.12 “Something Sacred: Part One”

(Dir by Uli Edel, originally aired on January 30th, 1998)

A priest has been murdered, stabbed to death in his own rectory. Two Guatemalan refugees who were staying with the priest are caught trying to leave Maryland for Canada. (One of the refugees is played by a young Michael Peña.) The archdiocese demands that the BPD release the refugees into their custody. The refugees vanish once again, and a monsignor is murdered. It’s yet another red ball and, since this is just part one, we won’t get the solution until next week.

In the past, whenever a member of the clergy was a victim, you could be sure that Frank Pembleton would be the primary and that the episode would be a nuanced look at faith and the nature of good and evil. However, since this is the sixth season, Pembleton is hardly in this episode. Instead, the investigation into the first murder is headed up by Ballard and Gharty. Ballard is a boring atheist. Gharty is a stereotypical blue-collar Catholic who once thought of becoming a priest. Though both Callie Thorne and Peter Gerety give good performances in the roles, neither character has the depth of Pembleton and, as a result, this episode falls flat. Ballard, at one point, gets upset because she feels everyone is assuming that, since she’s not Catholic, she can’t handle the case. Well, Ballard, they kind of have a point. Pembleton pops up long enough to tell her that she’s lucky to not have faith because it means she can focus on the facts. Spoken like a true Jesuit, Pembleton.

Lewis is on suspension, so Stivers is sent over as a replacement. Kellerman thinks that it’s all part of a conspiracy to make it look like he murdered Luther Mahoney. Whatever. I’m getting bored with this storyline. Either resolve it or move on.

And, of course, there’s Falsone. Falsone wants custody of his kid, so we get to sit through a bunch of courtroom scenes. Giardello gets upset at Falsone for coming to work late, but he cuts Falsone some slack after Falsone says that nothing is more important to him than his son. Giardello has never cut anyone else any slack, so what makes Falsone so damn special? Why are we supposed to be invested in the personal life of a detective whom we barely know and who doesn’t seem to be particularly interesting? We already went through Beau Felton trying to get custody of his kids and we didn’t care. Felton may not have been a particularly compelling character, but he was still more interesting than Falsone. Seriously, this is Homicide. Why is Pembleton only getting five minutes of screen time while Falsone is getting an entire B-plot?

This episode ends with Pembleton and Stivers being called to investigate the murder of the Monsignor. Now that Pembleton’s on the case, maybe the second part of “Something Sacred” will be an improvement. We’ll find out next week.