Retro Television Review: Homicide: Life On The Street 5.7 “The Heart of a Saturday Night”

Posted on April 26, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

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, Whit Stillman directs a story of pain and tragedy.

Episode 5.7 “The Heart of a Saturday Night”

(Dir by Whit Stillman, originally aired on November 15th, 1995)

The Heart of a Saturday Night is a great episode of Homicide, with the exception of one decision that annoyed the Hell out of me.

It’s an experimental episode. We watch as the Homicide detectives work three cases — a carjacking the results in the death of a wife and mother, a bar fight at the Waterfront that results in the death of an alcoholic husband, and the assault and murder of a young woman in East Baltimore. While Bayliss, Giardello, Munch, and Lewis investigate the cases, we see the survivors at a group therapy meeting. Rosanna Arquette plays the widow of the man killed in the bar fight. The great Chris Eigeman is the widower of the carjacking victim. Polly Holliday and Tom Quinn play the parents of the murdered woman.

It’s a bit stagey and talky but it works, largely due to the performances of the guest cast and the intelligent direction of Whit Stillman. As anyone who has seen any of his films can attest, Stillman is unusually skilled at making conversation compelling. It’s a powerful episode because it reminds us that while the Homicide detectives are just doing their job, the cases they investigate leave lasting scars on those left behind. Munch is more concerned with the murder at his bar than the carjacking to which he and Lewis have been assigned but Giardello explains that Munch cannot investigate a crime that occurred at a location that he owns. Giardello investigated the murder at the bar and one gets the feeling that he largely just wants to get out of the office. Lewis becomes obsessed with solving the carjacking but we all know eventually he’ll move on because that’s his job. There’s always going to be another murder. But for the victim’s husband, life is never going to be the same again. He’s angry and bitter, especially since he knows the carjackers will probably never be caught. (At the end of the episode, his wife’s name is the only one still in red on the board,) His words aren’t always pleasant but he has every right to be angry. Chris Eigeman’s performance is incredible and heart-breaking. Even more so than the effective but overwrought Bop Gun, this episode captured the pain of being a survivor.

It’s a powerful episode, up until the the moment that the final member of the therapy group shows up and it turns out to be Dr. Cox. As good as Michelle Forbes has been in the role, this is the third episode-in-a-row in which Cox suddenly takes center stage. It’s hard not to feel that the show is demanding that we love Dr. Cox as much as the writers obviously do. The problem is that this is only Dr. Cox’s third episode. The constant spotlight on Cox feels hamfisted and a bit premature. It reminds me of when The Office tried to make us embrace characters like Robert California and Nellie Bertram. (This is probably the only time in history that The Office and Homicide will ever be compared to each other.)

Other than the awkward inclusion of Dr. Cox at the end, this was a powerful episode. Homicide took a risk and, for the most part, it paid off.

Scenes That I Love: Charlie Comes Up With An Acronym in Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan

Posted on January 25, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Shattered Lens wishes a happy birthday to director Whit Stillman!

Today’s scene that I love comes from Stillman’s first film, 1990’s Metropolitan. In this scene, Charlie (Taylor Nichols) explains why UHB is a much better term for their social class than preppy. As usual, Nick (Chris Eigeman) is there to provide support in his own unique way. Nichols and Eigeman were both perfectly cast in this film.

Scenes That I Love: Nick Confronts Rick Von Slonecker in Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan

Posted on January 25, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Shattered Lens wishes a happy birthday to director Whit Stillman!

Today’s scene that I love comes from Stillman’s first film, 1990’s Metropolitan. In this scene of preppie-on-preppie violence, Nick (Chris Eigeman) confronts the loathsome aristocrat Rick Von Slonecker (Will Kempe). Upper class fisticuffs follow. Chris Eigeman is about as perfectly cast as any actor ever has been in the role of Nick.

Guilty Pleasure No. 50: Maid in Manhattan (dir by Wayne Wang)

Posted on December 24, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Whenever I see that the 2002 film, Maid in Manhattan, is going to be playing on HBO or Cinemax, I always think to myself, “I can’t understand why everyone hates on this film. I mean, it’s not that bad. It may be predictable and silly but it’s kind of sweet and Jennifer Lopez and Matthew McConaughey have a tame but sexy chemistry.”

Of course, then I watch the film and I discover that Maid in Manhattan is not the film where Jennifer Lopez and Matthew McConaughey fall in love. That’s The Wedding Planner. Instead, Maid in Manhattan is the one where Jennifer Lopez is a maid who works in a big fancy hotel and who is a single mother to a precocious child who is obsessed with Richard Nixon. Maid in Manhattan is also the one where Jennifer Lopez falls in love with Ralph Fiennes. Fiennes plays a candidate for the U.S. Senate. Everyone is worried that he’ll never make it to Washington if people discover that his girlfriend is a maid. I think his bigger problem is that he’s a Republican running for the U.S. Senate in New York. (At least, I assume he’s a Republican because — as we learn from his conversations with Lopez’s son — he certainly seems to know a lot about and be rather sympathetic to Richard Nixon.)

I still like Maid in Manhattan, though perhaps not as sincerely as I like The Wedding Planner. Some of that is because Maid in Manhattan takes place during the Christmas season and I love a good wintry romance. Some of it is because this is probably the only mainstream film to feature people discussing the good points of Richard Nixon. There’s the fact that Jennifer Lopez is always perfectly cast as someone determined to make something out of her life, regardless of whether or not the world supports her or not. She’s always had the ability to make steely ambition sympathetic and that’s a good ability to have when you’re playing a maid who is determined to get promoted into management.

Finally, there’s the odd romantic pairing of Ralph Fiennes and Jennifer Lopez. It’s one of those things that shouldn’t work and yet, strangely, it does. Fiennes always brings a certain off-center, neurotic energy to his performances, which not only explains why he’s played so many villains but also why it’s strange to see him starring in a romantic comedy. And yet, that odd energy is exactly what Maid in Manhattan needs. It keeps the viewer on their toes and it makes the surprising discovery that Fiennes and Lopez have romantic chemistry all the more rewarding.

Don’t get me wrong, of course. This is a deeply silly movie and there’s a lot of less than sparkling dialogue and the plot falls apart if you even start to think about it. The entire story revolves around mistaken identity, with Fiennes not realizing that Jennifer Lopez is a maid and …. well, it’s all a bit unnecessarily complicated. The film also takes Fiennes’s political aspirations a bit too seriously. It’s not quite as bad the whole thing with Matt Damon running for the Senate in The Adjustment Bureau (“Due to his charming concession speech, he will someday be elected President,” — whatever, Beto) but it gets close.

But, still — I love romance and I love New York and the pairing of Jennifer Lopez and Ralph Fiennes in Maid in Manhattan is just too strange (and oddly effective) for me to resist.