Judy Thornton | Through the Shattered Lens

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, it’s another red ball on Homicide!

Episode 3.12 “The City That Bleeds”

(Dir by Tim Hunter, originally aired on January 27th, 1995)

This week’s episode opens with Bolander, Munch, Howard, and Felton having a morning meeting outside of an apartment building. They put on bullet-proof vets because they (and several uniformed officers) are about to arrest Glenn Holton, a sex offender who is believed to have murdered a child. Unfortunately, because of a transcription error on the warrant, the detective go to Apartment 201 instead of 210. As they knock on the door to 201, someone on the stairwell opens fire on them. Bolander, Howard, and Felton are hit. Munch somehow avoids being shot.

It’s red ball time! We’re only 12 episodes into season 3 and this is our third “all hands on deck” red ball of the season. NBC reportedly wanted showrunner Tom Fontana to give them more drama in return for renewing the low-rated Homicide and Fontana delivered.

And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. This was a compelling episode, featuring Pembleton tracking Glenn Holton across the city while Bayliss tried to deal with his guilt over being relieved that he wasn’t shot. After visiting the hospital, Giardello had an emotional breakdown while Lewis was driving him back to the station. Felton’s wife returned from Philadelphia to visit him in the hospital. Gloria Reuben and Tony Lo Bianco guest-starred as detectives who came in to help with the case and, for both of them, this episode felt like an audition to join the cast. Things ended with a cliffhanger. Holton is still at large. Felton is awake but hospitalized. Bolander and Kay are still in critical condition. It was an exciting episode.

And yet, one can understand why Ned Beatty later said, in an interview, that this was one of the episodes that eventually led to him leaving the show. First off, why the detectives would be serving the arrest warrant as opposed to the uniformed cops or, considering Holton’s crimes, even the SWAT team, I’m not sure. Munch makes a comment about how the four of them had served hundreds of arrest warrants in the past but it’s not something that we’ve ever seen them do on the show before. That the nonstop emotional drama was compelling was due to the strength of the cast and not the strength of the script, which was occasionally so overwrought that it felt almost like a parody of a cop show. This episode worked but, after it ended, I found myself thinking about how different it felt from the deliberately-paced and moody episodes the aired during the first and second seasons.

And finally, it’s hard not to get annoyed that, with everything going on, we still had to deal with all of Felton’s stupid domestic nonsense. I’m tried of hearing about Felton’s wife and kids and how he can’t make his marriage work. I’m even more tired of Megan Russert, a character who could be a total badass, being solely defined by her relationship with Felton.

This episode, the first of a three-parter, held my attention while I was watching it and it was only afterwards that I realized I kind of had mixed feelings about it overall. Homicide is changing. We’ll see where it goes.

This week, Bayliss loses it!

Episode 3.7 “Happy To Be Here”

(Dir by Lee Bonner, originally aired on November 18th, 1994)

This week’s episode was depressing even by Homicide standards.

Felton’s wife is still missing. Felton confronts both Kay and Megan, convinced that they know something about it. Does it ever occur to Felton that maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t have so much trouble in his marriage if he wasn’t always stumbling around like hulking dunk, sweating through his shirt and smoking up a storm? Be the change, Felton. Be the change.

Sam Thorne, the journalist played by Joe Morton, is assassinated by a Colombian cartel. It turns out that his assassin was a teenager who agreed to do it in return for a new bike. Giardello is shaken by the death of his friend and there’s a wonderfully acted scene in which Giardello visits Sam’s daughter (Maggie Rush). This storyline served to remind the viewer that Yaphet Kotto, even if he spends most of the show in his office, really is the glue that holds this show together. He’s the heart and the moral soul of Homicide.

Meanwhile, Bayliss has gone from being the clean-cut rookie to being someone who appears to be on the verge of having a complete and total breakdown. He’s still seeing Emma Zoole and Lewis is still angry with him about it. Emma likes to make love in a coffin. Bayliss can accept that. Emma wants Bayliss to hit her and that pushes Bayliss over the edge. When he stops by a convenience store to pick up a six-pack of beer, he discovers that he’s a few pennies short. The clerk says it doesn’t matter. He can’t sell Bayliss the beer. Bayliss responds by drawing his gun and robbing the place! When the police arrive, Bayliss is sitting in his car and drinking a beer.

So, I guess Bayliss is going to prison now, right? No, not in Baltimore. Instead, Bayliss shows off his badge. When that doesn’t work, he calls Pembleton. Pembleton comes down to the store and gets the clerk to drop the charges in exchange for Bayliss serving as an unpaid security guard. At the end of the episode, Bayliss is sitting in front of that store and hopefully thinking about how close he came to being sent to prison.

This was a good episode, one that looked at the pressure that goes along with being exposed to the worst that humanity has to offer. Bayliss holding that store was a scene that probably should not have worked but it did, due to the performance of Kyle Secor. In a manner of minutes, Secor took Bayliss from being tired but friendly to being so angry that I was worried he was actually going to shoot the clerk. Not only did we see Bayliss’s dark side but we also saw Pembleton’s good side as he went out of his way to keep his partner from going to prison.

How much darker can things get in Baltimore? We’ll find out next week!