Retro Television Review: Homicide: Life on The Street 4.2 “Fire Part Two”

Posted on August 17, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Sundays, Lisa will be reviewing Homicide: Life On The Street, which aired from 1993 to 1999, on NBC! It can be viewed on Peacock.

Guest reviewer alert! I’m filling in for Lisa on the Homicide beat this week. Let’s take a look at the second episode of the fourth season.

Episode 4.2 “Fire Part Two”

(Dir by Nick Gomez, originally aired on October 27th, 1995)

Continuing from where the previous episode ended, Pembleton, Bayliss, and Kellerman investigate the second warehouse fire. Another victims has been found burned to a crisp in the fire. Her dental records identify here are Bonnie Nash, a teenage girl. The positioning of her body indicates that, unlike the first victim, she was already dead when the fire was set.

Pembleton continues to dislike Kellerman and gets especially annoyed when Kellerman announces that he’s decided to quit smoking. Bayliss is suffering from a degenerative disc and spends more time complaining about the pain than actually investigating the case. It’s Kellerman who solves the case and tricks chemistry teacher Gavin Robb (Adam Trese) into confessing. While in the box with him, Kellerman plays good cop and even tells Robb that he’s free to leave after Robb denies being the arsonist. As Robb stands, Kellerman whispers, “Why did you kill the dog?”

Without thinking, Robb replies, “I didn’t know it was there.”

(Of course, there was no dog there.)

Realizing his mistake, Robb confesses. Bonnie was one of his students. Having decided to kill her, Robb set the first fire to fool everyone into thinking that there was a serial arsonist on the loose so that the arsonist would be blamed when Bonnie’s body was found in the second fire. The first death was an accident. The death of Bonnie was premeditated. When asked why he killed Bonnie, Robb replies, “That’s my personal business.”

Giardello invites Kellerman to join Homicide. At first, Kellerman refuses because he doesn’t think he’s smart enough to be a member of the murder police. But after visiting his father at his dead-end job in a distillery, Kellerman changes his mind.

Meanwhile, Kay and Munch both study for the sergeant’s exam. Kay makes it to the exam and probably aces it. Munch can’t find his lucky socks and misses it. I would have missed it too. You can’t do anything without the lucky socks.

This episode was an improvement over the previous episode. Last episode, Kellerman came across as being a cliche, the hot-headed cop who has a problem with authority. This episode, Kellerman was more likable and also a lot less cocky. That he’s insecure about whether or not he can keep up with the other homicide detectives makes him a very relatable character. It would have to be intimidating to find yourself suddenly working with someone like Frank Pembleton, who is always portrayed as being the best of the best.

As I mentioned last week, Reed Diamond was originally a controversial addition to the cast. At the time, many critics said the show was selling out by casting an actor who didn’t look like Ned Beatty or Jon Polito. Reed Diamond and Mike Kellerman would both prove themselves, leaving little doubt that they belonged. Later, Homicide would make some bad casting decisions. (Five word: Jon Seda as Paul Falsone.) But Reed Diamond, with this episode, steps up and shows that he can keep up with the rest of the squad.

Retro Television Review: Homicide: Life on the Street 3.11 “Cradle to Grave”

Posted on May 11, 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, secrets are uncovered and trust is betrayed.

Episode 3.11 “Cradle to Grave”

(Dir by Myles Connell, originally aired on January 13th, 1995)

Police Commissioner James Harris (Al Freeman, Jr.) gives Pembleton a special assignment. A congressman (Dick Stillwell) claims to have been temporarily abducted by a man in a van but he also says that he doesn’t want to press charges. Both Harris and Pembleton suspect that the Congressman is lying and that he filed a false police report, which is itself a crime. Pembleton’s investigation leads to the discovery that the abduction story was actually the congressman’s attempt to cover-up a quarrel between him and his lover (Christopher Glenn Wilson). Pembleton goes to the congressman and offers to drop the investigation into the abduction so that the congressman’s personal life will not be exposed. The congressman agrees.

Unfortunately, news of the false police report still gets out and Pembleton is sold out by Harris, who claims that he never gave Pembleton permission to drop the investigation, even though Harris made it clear that he wanted the problem to go away. Outraged over being sold out by his boss and also by Giardello’s refusal to back him up (Giardello is upset that Pembleton lied to him about the investigation), Pembleton turns in his badge and quits the force.

Meanwhile, Lewis and Much investigate the murder of a biker. What they discover is that the biker sacrificed his own life after it was discovered that his wife was an FBI informant. In order to keep the gang from going after his daughter, the victim agreed to be killed in retribution.

And finally, Felton and Howard try to investigate a murder but …. where’s the body!? It turns out that the body is on the move. First, it’s accidentally sent to the hospital before Felton and Howard can get a look at it. Then, it’s returned to the crime scene while Felton and Howard are heading to the morgue. Apparently, this was based on a true story and I can believe it. There’s no incompetence like bureaucratic incompetence.

This was not a bad episode. Andre Braugher did a great job of capturing Pembleton’s pain at being betrayed by his mentor, Commission Harris. Even the biker stuff was well-handled, with Timothy Wheeler giving a strong performance as the club’s “warlord.” The biker stuff had an interesting subplot, with one of the bikers revealing himself to be an undercover FBI agent trying to make a RICO case. As with the case involving the congressman, it helped to create a definite atmosphere of mistrust that ran through the entire episode. Whether it was the FBI or the congressman or just the EMTs, no one could be trusted and no one knew what they were doing.

It’s a good episode. I hope Pembleton reconsiders quitting. The city needs him.

Retro Television Review: Homicide: Life On The Street 3.7 “Happy To Be Here”

Posted on April 6, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

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!

Retro Television Review: Homicide: Life On The Street 3.5 “The Last Of The Watermen”

Posted on March 9, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

If you’re checking with the imdb and saying, “You’re reviewing these out of order!,” I’m reviewing them in the order that they were meant to air as opposed to the order by which NBC showed them.

Episode 3.5 “The Last of the Watermen”

(Dir by Richard Pearce, originally aired on December 9th, 1994)

We learn a bit more about the personal lives of Baltimore’s Homicide detectives with this episode.

For instance, we discover that Munch and Gee living in the same neighborhood. When Gee, whose washing machine has broken down, visits the local laundromat, he’s not necessarily overjoyed to see Munch sitting there. Munch talks and talks. Gee lights a cigar and tries to read his newspaper in peace. Munch keeps talking. Gee points out that it’s the weekend and he doesn’t like to talk to anyone on the weekend. Sunday is his day. Munch nods and then keeps talking. Gee stands up and moves to another part of the laundromat.

We also get to meet Kay Howard’s family. Disgusted by the latest murder scene that she and Beau have come across and the fact that an elderly woman was murdered and her tongue was subsequently cut out and then stuffed down her throat (yikes!), Kay decides that she’s due some vacation time. She leaves Baltimore and drives out to the local fishing village where she grew up. She spends time with her father and her brother and a guy who she once had a romantic relationship with. She visits her mother’s grave. It’s interesting to see Kay outside of Baltimore and to see how she interacts with family. It was so interesting that I was kind of annoyed that she still ended up working a murder. A local environmental activist is murdered. Kay worries that the murderer might have been her brother but it turns out to have been another fisherman. I mean, I get it. The show is called Homicide and Kay is a detective but still, I would have been just as happy if the show had just focused on her family and their rituals. This episode is 30 years old but the scenes of the blue collar fishermen talking about how they were being “regulated” out of their life’s work still rang true.

While Kay was visiting family, Felton got a temporary new partner and you’ve probably already guessed that it was Pembleton. This is not the first time that Pembleton has been assigned to work with Felton. The pilot featured that classic scene of Pembleton checking car-after-car while Felton complained about Pembleton always having to be right. Felton and Pembleton do make for an interesting team, if just because they do seem to sincerely dislike each other. (I also enjoyed Gee’s half-smile as Pembleton reacted to the news that he would be working with Felton.) In this case, Pembleton and Felton working together didn’t lead to any great fireworks, other than Felton reacting with shock at the idea of Pembleton preferring hockey to basketball. The killer of the elderly woman turned out to be her grandson who said he did it because she wouldn’t stop talking. That was sad, to be honest. Grandmothers are supposed to talk. Felton and Pembleton dragged the kid off to jail.

This was an okay episode. After the emotional powerhouse of Crosetti, it was good to get something that was a bit more lowkey. It was nice to be reminded that everyone has a family.

Retro Television Review: Homicide: Life On The Street 3.1 “Nearer My God To Thee”

Posted on January 26, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, we begin the third season!

Episode 3.1 “Nearer My God To Thee”

(Dir by Tim Hunter, originally aired on October 14th, 1994)

The third season of Homicide opens with a disgusted Stan Bolander watching a relatively tame soap opera in the breakroom. He’s offended by the fact that two of the show’s characters are shown in bed. To Bolander, that’s the equivalent of pornography on network television. Lewis points out that television execs force showrunners to add sex in order to bring in ratings. Munch mentions that it’s strange that television is allowed to show sex but not nudity. Munch then goes on to predict that there will soon be hundreds of channels, a channel for every interest. There will be channels about animals and religion and politics and soon, anything you want to see will be at your finger tips and it will lead to people becoming dull and lazy. John Munch, super prophet!

Hmmm …. do you think maybe Tom Fontana, who wrote this script and was one of Homicide’s executive producers, was maybe venting some of his own frustration over the demands that NBC was making in return for giving a third season to the critically acclaimed but low-rated Homicide? Because the third season premiere of Homicide is a bit different from the previous two seasons. For one thing, Jon Polito is no longer in the cast. (Lewis mentions that Crosetti is on vacation in Atlantic City.) Isabelle Hofman, who is certainly more attractive than anyone who has previously appeared on the show, has joined the cast as Lt. Megan Russert, the second shift commander. And this episode features its share of nudity and sex.

At the same time, it’s still an excellent episode of Homicide. Isabelle Hofman gives a tough and no-nonsense performance as Russert and, by the end of the episode, she seems as if she belongs in the ensemble as much as her less glamorous castmates. And this episode has its share of sex and nudity but it’s all essential to the plot. This episode lets us know that, for now, Homicide is a show that can adjust without losing its integrity.

The episode’s case is a red ball (which is a term used to indicate it’s a case that’s going to get media attention). Katharine Goodrich, the 30 year-old founder of a shelter for battered women, has been found dead in a dumpster, nude except for a pair of long white cotton gloves, the type of gloves that you might expect to see at a royal procession but not at a crime scene. Russert’s shift has picked up the case and, to everyone’s horror, the incompetent and racist Roger Gaffney (Walt MacPherson) is the primary detective. The brass ask Giardello to keep an eye on Russert because they feel she’s too inexperienced to handle the investigation. Giardello (and let’s take a moment to acknowledge just how wonderful Yaphet Kotto was in this role) calls in his own detectives to help out the second shift. As you might have guessed, the two shifts do not have much respect for each other. It’s chaos, especially when Gaffney and Pembleton nearly come to blows over Gaffney’s racism, Russert defuses the situation and the scene, to be honest, is a bit overwritten. From the first minute she appeared in the episode, Hofman has been credible as a detective and a lieutenant so writing one heavy-handed scene just so she can further prove herself feels almost an insult to the strength of her performance. Hofman (and Russert) has already proven herself without having to dare Pembleton to shoot Gaffney and throw his life away.

That said, this was a strong episode. Goodrich was a devout Catholic and Pembleton and Bayliss discuss their own views on religion. Bayliss has tried out all the Protestant denominations (even the — *snort* — Unitarians) and is a bit of a cynic. Pembleton was educated by Jesuits and says at one point that, “There are two types of Catholics. Devout and fallen. I fell.” It’s a scene that could have been awkward but Andre Braugher and Kyle Secor pull it off wonderfully. Secor, especially, has really come into his own. Bayliss is no longer the awkward and earnest rookie from the first season. In fact, Bayliss has so come into his own that he agrees to invest in a bar with Lewis and Munch. They’re burying the Waterfront!

(Before Bayliss offers to invest, there’s a humorous scene where Much and Lewis try to convince Bolander to not only invest but to also be the bar’s mascot. “A big man deserves a big meal,” Munch says. Bolander — who I’m happy to say is far less whiny in this episode than he was during the previous two seasons — is not interested. It’s kind of funny how Munch basically hero worships a guy who really seems like he wants nothing to do with him outside of work.)

Kay spends the episode taking calls from Felton’s wife, Beth (Mary B. Ward). Beth recently kicked Felton out of the house because she thought Felton was cheating on her. Felton admits to Kay that he is cheating on her. When Kay isn’t running interference for her partner, she’s defending Russert when the other detectives insinuate that Russert must be slept her way to the top. Kay lists all of Russert’s qualifications and commendations. Yay, Kay! You tell them! Later, Russert sees Kay looking exhausted and snaps at her to get to work. “Bitch,” Kay mutters. Ouch! Still, I laughed.

Felton breaks into his house to retrieve a suit, just to be confronted by Beth. An obviously unstable Beth proceeds to take a pair of scissors to Felton’s jacket before then stripping down to her underwear, getting in bed, and asking Felton to leave so she can get some sleep. (I’m going to guess that rather disturbing and deliberately anti-erotic scene was Fontana’s subversive answer to the NBC execs who asked him to sex up the show a little.) Later, Russert finally goes home to get some rest and check in on her daughter. Felton shows up at her front door and, after he tells her the one of his leads on the Goodrich murder went dry, she responds by passionately kissing him. Now, we know where Felton has been going whenever Beth kicks him out.

As for the Goodrich murder, it turns out that, despite what everyone assumed, she was not raped. After a nun tells Pembleton and Bayliss that Katherine never wore gloves, Pembleton deduces the gloves were put on her body after she was killed. Gaffney insists that Katherine’s murderer was probably the boyfriend of one of the women at the shelter but Pembleton disagrees. (This leads to the fight that I mentioned earlier.) While Russert wants to keep the gloves out of the news, a smarmy reporter (Tony Todd) threatens to reveal their existence unless she agrees to come to him first with any developments. As the episode ends, Pembleton and Bayliss are canvassing the crime scene and it’s hard not to notice that they are now the ones wearing white gloves, rubber in this case. Bayliss says its pointless to keep canvassing the crime scene. But then he and Pembleton spot a storage shed with a busted lock. As they open the door, the end credits begin.

To be continued!

What a great way start to season 3. Yes, I realize that this case is pretty much the exact opposite of the gritty, pointless murders that the first two seasons focused on but still, I am now very much wondering who killed Katherine Goodrich and why they put the gloves on her hands. I hope this won’t be another unsolvable Adena Watson case. Fortunately, I have total faith in Frank Pembleton.

I can’t wait to see what happens next week!