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.

No one’s happy this week.

Episode 3.6 “A Model Citizen”

(Dir by John McNaughton, originally aired on November 11th, 1994)

Welcome to Baltimore, where everyone is depressed.  Consider this week’s episode of Homicide: Life On The Street.

1. The episode opens with Munch, Bolander, Howard, and Felton in a morgue, waiting for the results of an autopsy.  They start talking about the shows that they watched as children and how many of them had their origins right in Baltimore.  Of course, none of those shows are on the air anymore.  Munch mentions his favorite childhood shows and is ridiculed for liking things when he was a kid.
2. Emma Zoole (Lauren Tom), an artist who makes models of crime scenes for use in criminal court, stops by the department.  She’s looking for Steve Crosetti, to get his input on a recreation.  Meldrick Lewis tells her that Crosetti’s dead but he offers to help.  Lewis has a crush.  However, Emma likes Bayliss and Bayliss likes Emma.  Bayliss is even turned on by the fact that Emma sleeps in a coffin.  However, when Bayliss sees how upset Lewis is over his relationship with Emma, Bayliss tries to break up with her.  They end up having sex in the coffin instead.
3. That’s it!, Lewis declares.  He cannot go into the bar business with Tim Bayliss.  Then again, there might not be a bar business anyway because Munch got kicked out of the state-required alcohol awareness class.  Munch, for whatever reason, decided to argue about whether or not a bartender could really be held responsible for getting someone drunk.
4. Pembleton, Russert, and the city of Baltimore are all being sued by serial killer Pamela Wilgis.  Wilgis claims that Pembleton violated her civil rights when he interrogated her.  Pembleton’s entire interrogation style is put on trial.  He feels like he’s being attacked on all sides.  Finally, Pembleton gets depressed enough to reenter a church, even though he earlier claimed to no longer have any use for religion.
5. Munch and Howard investigate the accidental shooting of a child by his older brother.  Much gets extremely upset while searching for the gun, taking Howard totally be surprise.  Howard comes to realize that Much actually cares about protecting children from violence and Munch realizes that the world is a terrible place.
6. Beau Felton returns to his house and discovers that both his wife and his son have left and they’ve taken all the furniture with them.  Goodbye is scrawled, in lipstick, on the bathroom mirror.
7. Much ends up sitting outside, staring at the ground while Lewis and then Howard both talk to him about how much life sucks.
8. No one wants to end up like Steve Crosetti, Howard says at one point.  Good luck!  This job is depressing!

This was a good episode, one that really captured the emotional turmoil of seeing the worse that humanity has to offer while, at the same time, acknowledging that depressed people often use humor to deal with their feelings.  A few of Munch’s and Lewis’s line made me laugh out loud but seriously, I felt so bad for both of them!

Hopefully, everyone will have cheered up by next week.