Retro Television Review: Homicide: Life on the Street 2.3 “Black and Blue”

Posted on January 12, 2025 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, Pembleton gets a confession.

Episode 2.3 “Black and Blue”

(Dir by Chris Menaul, originally aired on January 20th, 1994)

In this week’s episode, Pembleton manipulates a man into confessing to a murder that he didn’t commit. Pembleton does it with the full knowledge that the man is innocent and that, if the man is indicted and goes to trial, he will undoubtedly be found guilty as a result of that coerced confession. Pembleton does it to prove a point to Giardello.

The man is Lane Staley (Isaiah Washington), who has been identified (by his grandmother, who was just trying to be helpful) as an eyewitness to the shooting of Charles Courtland Cox. Pembleton is convinced that Cox was shot by a policeman and he only wants to interrogate Staley as a witness. Giardello, who feels that Pembleton is to obsessed with his cop theory and who, as a proud member of the police force, does not want Pembleton to be right, insists that Pembleton treat Staley as a suspect. Pembleton responds by going into the Box and pretending to be sympathetic to Staley’s situation. He and Staley talk about how they’re both expected to always be polite and careful about what they say around white detectives. Pembleton jokes that he always has to be extra polite when he comes to work.

Staley starts to open up to Pembleton and eventually admits that he was present when Cox was shot. That’s when Pembleton starts shouting at Staley, accusing him of being responsible and basically browbeating Staley until Staley is in tears. Pembleton makes Staley feel guilty for not doing more to protect Cox and continues to yell at him until, eventually, Staley feels that Cox’s murder was his fault. Staley finally signs a confession, even though it’s obvious that the sobbing man is not a murderer. Pembleton hands Giardello the confession and reminds him that’s the way that the police have been getting confessions out of young black suspects for years.

It’s a powerful moment and one that took me totally by surprise. Andre Braugher and Yaphet Kotto both gave excellent performances in this episode. The dynamic between Pembleton and Giardello has always been one of the more interesting parts of the show. The fact that both of them are black and both of them are portrayed as being fully aware of the racism surrounding them brings an extra edge to their debate as to whether or not the black Cox was shot by a white policeman. (At one point, Giardello snaps at Pembleton to speak to him as respectfully as he speaks to the white lieutenants and it’s the exact type of moment that most shows would never have the courage or insight to portray.) Pembleton is a great detective because he’s laser-focused on getting a confession, to the exclusion of worrying about anything else. Giardello is a great lieutenant because he’s enough of a pragmatist to understand that some battles are not worth the price of victory. In the end, Giardello comes to realize that Pembleton is right about the shooting but one still has to wonder what would have happened in Giardello hadn’t torn up Staley’s confession. The murder of Cox would have disappeared from the headlines but the innocent Staley would have disappeared into the system.

The scenes with Pembleton and Staley were so electrifying that it made up for the fact that this is yet another episode that features Bolander feeling sorry for himself after his divorce. Fortunately, for Bolander, he meets and befriends a young waitress named Linda (Julianne Margulies) who mentions that she plays the violin. Bolander reveals that he plays the cello — WHAT!? Since when has Bolander, someone who has expressed no interest in art or creativity or even music during his entire time of the show, become a cello player? The episode ends with Bolander and Linda playing their instruments together and it’s a sweet scene but it’s still a bit hard to buy that apparently every woman in Baltimore is instantly attracted to a middle-aged, balding cop who spends all of his time talking about his divorce. Ned Beatty was one of the great character actors but it sometimes feels like Homicide wasn’t sure what to do with his character.

But, hey, maybe Bolander will finally stop being so whiny. That’s my hope. This episode found Munch breaking up with his girlfriend after he accidentally gave her a carnivorous fish that ate all of her other fish. At one point, Munch says that he can’t accept the idea of Bolander being happier than him. Seriously, Munch, don’t jinx this. I’ve been listening to Bolander complain nonstop for 15 episodes. If he’s happy now, let him have it!

Next week …. life on the street continues!

Retro Television Review: Homicide: Life on The Street 2.2 “See No Evil”

Posted on January 5, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, no one’s innocent.

Episode 2.2 “See No Evil”

(Dir by Christopher Menual, originally aired on January 13th, 1994)

Watch out! Stanley Bolander’s whining about his divorce again!

Ned Beatty was one of the great character actors and he is certainly convincing in the role of Stanley Bolander, the veteran Baltimore homicide detective who has seen the worst that humanity has to offer and who spends most of his time annoyed with his partner, John Munch. But, as good as Beatty is, I still groan whenever Bolander starts to talk about his ex-wife and his divorce. His bitterness was a recurring theme during the first season. It was annoying but it was understandable because the divorce was still recent.

But now, we’ve started the second season. It’s time move on, Big Man!

This episode finds Bolander very reluctantly taking part in sensitivity training. He avoids meeting with Dr. Carrie Weston (Jennifer Mendenhall) until Giardello threatens to suspend him without pay. Bolander is stunned when Dr. Weston turns out to be sympathetic to his anger over his divorce. Bolander ever tries to ask Dr. Weston out, just for Weston to inform him that she’s just gotten out of a bad relationship and that she believes “birds of a feather should flock together” and, speaking of birds, did you know that there are lesbian seagulls? Bolander gets the hint. Myself, I would probably lie about being a lesbian just to get out of having to spend any more time listening to him cry about his divorce.

Far more interesting than Bolander’s angst were the two cases at the center of this week’s episode. Chuckie Prentice (Michael Chaban) shoots his dying father (played, in a powerful and intimidating performance, by Wilford Brimley) in the head. Though Chuckie claims that his father committed suicide, Lewis has his doubts and takes Chuckie to the station for interrogation. Detective Beau Felton just happens to be Chuckie’s best friend and, after Chuckie tells him that his father specifically asked to be put out of his misery, Felton tries to convince Lewis to say that the shooting actually was a suicide. At first, Lewis refuses but eventually, he agrees to look the other way while Felton takes Chuckie to wash his hands and destroy any evidence of gunpowder residue on his skin. Without any definite evidence proving the he fired the gun, Chuckie is free to go and his father’s death is ruled a suicide.

This was a powerful story and it was all the more effective because it refused to come down on one side or the other. Both Felton and Lewis presented their positions well and the episode ended not on a note of triumph but on a note of weary resignation. Chuckie is free to go on with his life and his father is no longer in pain but Lewis is going to be haunted by his decision to allow evidence to be destroyed. Personally, I’m against assisted suicide and I felt it was selfish for Chuckie’s father to ask Chuckie to pull the trigger. But, having spent the previous few months trying to come to terms with my own father’s passing, I could understand what Chuckie was feeling. There really are no easy answers.

As for the other case, it involved the shooting of a drug dealer. The dealer was shot in the back. A patrolman claimed that he slipped and his gun accidentally fired during the pursuit of the dealer. Pembleton had his doubts about whether the shooting was really an accident or a case of police brutality. Even after Giardello warned him that pursuing the case would turn “brother against brother” in the police force, Pembleton insisted on asking every police officer on the scene to turn in their guns for testing. “You son of a bitch, Pembleton,” Giardello muttered.

And again, this was a storyline that worked because it refused to present an easy solution. The dead man was a criminal and he was shot while fleeing the cops. Even though the cop that slipped was eventually cleared of having fired the shot that killed the dealer, it was obvious that the shot did come from a cop. Pembleton, with his black-and-white view of his job, was determined to find the truth, regardless of the professional consequences. Giardello, with years more experience than Pembleton, spoke from the heart when he told Pembleton that investigating the case would bring harm not just to the cop who shot the dealer but to every cop working the streets, regardless of whether they were involved or not. Felton could convince Lewis to look the other way. Pembleton was not willing to do the same thing.

It was a strong episode, even with all of Bolander’s nonsense. Perfectly acted, morally ambiguous, and fiercely intelligent, this is an episode that I’ll be thinking about for a while.

Retro Television Review: Homicide: Life on the Street 1.2 “Ghost of a Chance”

Posted on October 13, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, the search for Adeena Watson’s murderer begins.

Episode 1.2 “Ghost of a Chance”

(Dir by Martin Campbell, originally aired on February 3rd, 1993)

There’s been a murder in Baltimore. That, in itself, is not news. The pilot firmly established that murder is a fact of life in Baltimore. But, the victim of this crime is an 11 year-old girl named Adeena Watson, who left her home to go to the library and who never returned. The press is covering every detail. The police brass want an arrest and they want an arrest quickly. And the primary detective on the case is rookie Tim Bayliss, who has never even worked a murder case on his own before. Giardello refuses to replace Bayliss but he also makes it clear that he needs Bayliss to bring him something.

As for Bayliss, he spends most of this episode struggling. Not only does he not have the respect of his fellow detective but he also, as a rookie, doesn’t even have a desk until Giardello, in a fit of anger, knocks everything off an unoccupied desk and awards it to Bayliss. (So, was that desk just sitting there the whole time? I thought they didn’t have any available desks.) Because this crime is what is known as a “red ball,” (i.e., a murder that has attracted the attention of the media and the public), every detective is looking for Adeena’s murderer. While Bayliss obsesses on who Adeena was before she was killed, the rest of the squad does the practical things, like talking to neighbors and bringing in all of the city’s sex offenders for interrogation.

My heart broke for Bayliss while watching this episode. Kyle Secor did a good job of capturing both Bayliss’s outrage over the crime and his fear of failing to solve his first case as a primary. While Bayliss stared at Adeena’s body in the alley, Munch, Lewis, and Crosetti debated sports. And while their attitude may have seemed callous, this episode established that disconnecting is the only way to handle working Homicide. Bayliss, having not learned how to disconnect, grows more and more obsessed with Adeena. I cheered a little when Bayliss finally stood up for himself and even won the grudging respect of Frank Pembleton. That said, the change in Bayliss happened almost too quickly to be credible. Apparently, all it took was for Giardello to give him a desk for Bayliss to go from being meek and overwhelmed to being a confident and take-charge detective.

While Bayliss searched for Adeena’s killer, Much and Bolander dealt with a murder that happened in a wealthy neighborhood. The killer (Gwen Verdon) was a wife who snapped after 60 years of marriage. As she explained to Bolander and Munch, she and her husband had earlier promised each other that they wouldn’t get a divorce until the children died. Bolander has a crush on the coroner, Dr. Blythe (Wendy Hughes), but he’s worried about getting back in the dating game after his own divorce. When Munch asks Bolander how old he is, Bolander replies, “48.” Ned Beatty was a great actor and I’ve never seen a bad Ned Beatty performance. That said, it’s also hard for me to think of any film where he looked a day under 50.

Meanwhile, Kay tries to get a confession from a guy who is about to go on trial for murder. Felton laughs when Kay says that she was visited by the ghost of the guy’s victim. However, Felton makes up for being a jerk by helping Kay find the murder weapon. This whole subplot was odd to me, largely because Kay really doesn’t come across as the type to believe in ghosts. But whatever works, I guess! Melissa Leo and Daniel Baldwin did a good job in this episode, selling a storyline that had the potential to be a little bit too cute for its own good.

As the episode ended, the killer of Adeena Watson had yet to be captured. While the other detective drank at a wharf bar, Bayliss went to Adeena’s memorial service and stared at her coffin, haunted. It was a powerful moment but one that left the viewer worried about Bayliss’s sanity. Earlier in this episode, Pembleton said that a murder that goes 72 hours without being solved will never be solved. Bayliss is running out of time.