Retro Television Review: Homicide: Life On The Street 5.21 “Partners And Other Strangers”

Posted on August 16, 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, we discover that Daniel Baldwin will not be returning to Homicide.

Episode 5.21 “Partners and Other Strangers”

(Dir by Leslie Libman and Larry Williams, originally aired on May 9th, 1997)

A call to investigate what appears to be a suicide leads Pembleton and Brodie to an isolated house in Baltimore. The dead man has been found with a shotgun in his hands and his face blown apart. It’s not until Pembleton looks at the dead man’s ID that he discovers that the man is former Detective Beau Felton.

Played by Daniel Baldwin, Felton was originally a major character on Homicide. He was the cynical, sweaty detective who had an affair with Megan Russert, a partnership with Kay Howard, and a marriage with a crazy woman who wouldn’t let him see his kids. Felton is the one who Robin Williams yelled at for being an insensitive ass in the Bop Gun episode. As the series progressed and the focus shifted from characters like Felton and Bolander to Pembleton and Bayliss, Felton was given less and less too. Daniel Baldwin was fired from the series at the end of season 3. Felton was said to have been suspended for his rowdy behavior at a convention.

The episode fills us in on what happened to Felton after his suspension. He apparently retired from the force and then stopped returning phone calls. He disappeared and everyone else moved on. At first, the squad room wonders if they could have done anything to prevent Felton’s suicide. Howard and Lewis (who lost his previous partner to suicide and who nearly lost Kellerman to the same thing) are especially hit hard. We get several flashbacks to the episodes that featured Felton and we’re reminded of just how much Daniel Baldwin used to sweat when he was on the show.

Dr. Cox takes a look at the skull fragments and the blood splatter and she realizes that Felton didn’t kill himself. He was shot in the back of the head and then someone tried to make it look like he committed suicide. Pembleton, Howard, and Bayliss are now investigating the murder of Beau Felton and they’re getting some help.

Megan Russert flies in from France to offer up her skills as an investigator. If I remember correctly, Russert was never that good of a detective but it’s nice that she showed up.

Detective Paul Falsone (Jon Seda), from the auto theft squad, says that Felton was working with a notorious group of car thieves. Falsone wants to help the investigation for …. reasons, I guess.

Finally, Detective Stuart Gharty (Peter Gerety) shows up. When we last saw Gharty, he was a decorated cop who was too scared to enter an apartment building to help out one of his fellow officers. Now, Gharty is working for Internal Affairs. He reveals to Giardello that Felton was working undercover and he was helping to uncover a crooked cop in the department. Colonel Barnfather announces that Gharty is going to work with Homicide on the Felton case.

Even if I didn’t already know that Falsone and Gharty are going to become regular characters during season six, it would be obvious from the introductions they’re given in this episode. Peter Gerety, who later played a sympathetic judge on The Wire, is fine in the role of Gharty. But I can already tell that Falsone is going to annoy me. Some of it is because his character is the type of cliche that Homicide has, to this point, avoided. He’s a young rebel who gets results …. HIS WAY! From the minute he shows up, he’s telling Howard and Pembleton how they should conduct their investigation and it’s kind of annoying. I mean, who the Hell is this jerk? As played by Jon Seda, Falsone mumbles the majority of his dialogue and he just doesn’t seem like he belongs on Homicide.

This is a two-parter so we’ll see how the investigation wraps up (or doesn’t) next week. Oddly, I have to admit that Felton’s death didn’t really have the type of emotional impact that the show seemed to think that it would. Unlike the lovably eccentric Crosetti, Felton was never really that interesting of a character. Far more impactful than the squadroom thinking about all of the times Felton acted like a jerk was the scene where Pembleton followed Bayliss to his uncle’s home. Later, Pembleton told Bayliss that he now understood why Bayliss has been missing work. In the past, this would have led to a fight between the two of them but both Bayliss and Pembleton have grown over the season. Pembleton apologizes for following Bayliss. (“I’m a detective. It’s what I do.”) Bayliss opens up about how he’s struggling with the concept of forgiveness. As always, the show’s heart is with Bayliss and Pembleton.

Next week, season 5 comes to an end!

Retro Television Review: Homicide: Life On The Street 4.10 “Full Moon”

Posted on October 12, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, Kellerman and Lewis head to a motel.

Episode 4.10 “Full Moon”

(Directed by Leslie Libman and Larry Williams, originally aired on April 5th, 1996)

If you go back and look over my reviews of Homicide, you might notice that the dates don’t always add up. Last week’s episode aired at the start of January of 1996. This week’s episode aired in April. That’s because, when this show originally aired on NBC, the network did not adhere to the production order. For instance, the show’s producers intended for Blue Moon to be the 10th episode of season 4. NBC, however, decided to air it later in the season, as the 17th episode.. For the purposes of these reviews, I am following the production order as opposed to NBC’s order.

(Production order is also the order the was used when Homicide was released on DVD,)

As for this episode, it’s a bit of a change of pace. For one thing, the episode centers on Lewis and Kellerman, with some assistance from John Munch. The rest of the squad goes unseen as Lewis and Kellerman investigate a murder at a cheap motel on the outskirts of the Baltimore city limits. As a result, the vibe of this episode is a bit less intense than the Pembleton/Bayliss episodes. Lewis and Kellerman were far different detectives from Pembleton and Bayliss. Whereas Pembleton and, at times, Bayliss often seemed to be on a holy crusade, Lewis and Kellerman were just doing their job.

That works for this episode, which is really more of a mood piece than a typical detective show. An ex-con is shot and killed at a motel. Lewis and Kellerman investigate the crime and meet the collection of eccentrics who work and live at the motel. A large family of illegal immigrants lives in one small room. A prostitute swims naked in the pool. (Of course, Kellerman finds time to talk to her.) The motel night clerk is studying for a better life. The Reverend Horton Heat appears as a preacher. The victim’s next door neighbor is an ex-con who stays at the motel because it feels like a prison. This episode is full of slow and moody images and it’s far more of an examination of life on the fringes than a standard episode of Homicide.

Lewis does talk about his youth, growing up in the projects of Baltimore. At the end of the show, he watches as the apartment building where he grew up is destroyed by controlled demolition. The watching crowd cheers. Lewis says, “Wow,” and then grabs a brick. Meanwhile, the desperate characters at the motel go on with their eccentric lives.

This episode was a welcome change-of-pace, a noirish mood piece that showcased the teamwork of Clark Johnson and Reed Diamond as Lewis and Kellerman. After the intensity of the sniper storyline, it was nice to just sit under the moon and watch things unfold.

Girls On Probation (1938, directed by William C. McGann)

Posted on May 3, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

Eager to get away from her abusive father (Sig Ruman), Connie Heath (Jane Bryan) keeps making the mistake of hanging out with the ultimate bad friend, Hilda Engstrom (Sheila Bromley). Hilda steals a dress from where they work and when the dress is torn, Hilda lets Connie take the blame. When the dress’s owner (Susan Hayward, making her film debut) insists on pressing charges, insurance investigator Neil Dillon (Ronald Reagan) helps Connie get off the hook and out of jail.

Having not learned her lesson, Connie continues to hang out with Hilda and her new boyfriend, Tony Rand (Anthony Averill). This time, Connie gets caught up in a bank robbery. Will Neil be able to get her out of another jam?

63-minutes long, Girl on Probation is a Warner Bros. B-movie. Ronald Reagan is surprisingly mellow as someone falling in love with a woman who keeps getting framed for his crimes she didn’t commit. Sheila Bromley steals the show as the out-of-control dangerous blonde who tells a priest, “I’m about to meet your boss.” The main problem with the film is that Connie is incredibly stupid. How many times can one person be framed? Jane Bryan, who played Connie, ended her acting career when she got married but she and her millionaire husband later helped to bankroll Reagan’s first political campaign and both of them were members of his unofficial “kitchen cabinet” when he was governor of California.

The movie has never been released on DVD and is hard to find. It plays on TCM occasionally, which is where I saw it. Online, the only place it appears to be streaming, ironically enough, is on a Russian site.

Music Video of the Day: (Forever) Live and Die by Orchestral Manoeuvres In the Dark (1986, directed by Leslie Libman and Larry Williams)

Posted on April 2, 2022 by Jedadiah Leland

Today’s music video of the day is the video for one of OMD’s most underrated songs, (Forever) Live and Die. It’s a performance clip, along with a few shots that incorporate the city and the beach. The 80s were a good time for videos that featured the members of New Wave bands walking through seemingly deserted European cities. A few years after the release of this video, INXS perfected the style with their video for Never Tear Us Apart.

There are two directors credited for this director. Leslie Libman is still directing, though mostly for television shows like NCIS and Bull. Larry Williams also directed the video for OMD’s Shame.

Enjoy!

A Movie A Day #222: Secret Service of the Air (1939, directed by Noel M. Smith)

Posted on August 18, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

When a secret service agent’s investigation into a supposed counterfeiting ring instead leads to him discovering a plot to smuggle illegal aliens into the United States via airplanes, the agent ends up plummeting several hundred miles to his death. Realizing that they need someone who can go undercover and infiltrate the smuggling ring, the Secret Service recruits Lt. Brass Bancroft (Ronald Reagan). Bancroft is a war hero who is now a commercial airline pilot. He is also good with his fists, has an innate sense of right and wrong, and a sidekick named Gabby (Eddie Foy Jr., giving a very broad performance as the movie’s comic relief). But before Brass can win the trust of the smugglers, he will have to establish a firm cover story and that means allowing himself to be arrested on fake charges. In order to save the day, Brass will have to first survive prison.

If Secret Service of the Air is remembered today, it is because it featured future President Ronald Reagan in an early starring role. In the role of Brass Bancroft, Reagan gives a performance that can be best described as being amiable. He may not be anyone’s idea of a good actor but he is likable, a trait that served him well when, 26 years later, he ran for governor of California. As for the rest of the movie, it was obviously cheaply made but it is also only an hour long, which means that there is rarely time for a dull moment. It plays out like as serial, with a new cliffhanger ever few minutes. Though Reagan was dismissive in the film in his autobiography, Secret Service of the Air was enough of an unexpected success that he would play Brass Bancroft is two sequels.

Music Video of the Day: Lil’ Devil by The Cult (1987, dir. Larry Williams)

Posted on October 11, 2016 by Valerie Troutman

I guess I could have done the music video for The Witch since there is that movie called The Witch that came out this year. I could have also done Love Removal Machine considering I plan to review the late night cable movie called The Love Machine (2016). However, I saw “Devil” in the title, and figured why not do it for October. I’ll get around to those music videos eventually. Plus, this one is timely for a good reason–much to my surprise. I didn’t know that till I sat down to write this post.

I cannot find any information on the music video itself beyond some of the people who worked on it. I can tell you that it is in that glorious 80s purple tinted black and white making it very much a music video of its’ time. The rest of it might as well be just one of those early 80s stage performance music videos. Speaking of which, there is a second version of this music video I found that appears to be entirely undocumented. But let’s first talk about the people who worked on this one.

Larry Williams was the director, and seems to have done at least 25 music videos in the 1980s. I say “at least” because I can find him on IMDb listing some music video credits that don’t appear in the usual places. He died in 1999 at the age of 48. I have seen one of his few directing credits other than this music video. He directed the 1998 TV Movie adaptation of Brave New World. There is one other thing of note with Larry Williams. I can find a Larry Williams II who works on music videos today. I have no idea if there is any relation.

Francie Moore produced this music video. I can find credits for her having worked mostly on either Larry Williams or Leslie Libman music videos. There is one that stands out. She produced Manic Monday for The Bangles.

June Guterman produced this music video too. I can only find a handful of credits for her as well, but she managed to do two well-known ones. She produced The Perfect Drug for Nine Inch Nails and Foolish Games for Jewel.

I can find a few more credits for Guterman such as producing Dice Rules (1991) and working on Prince of the City (1980) as well as Raging Bull (1980). However, I would bet that both her and Moore are two of those people who have a lot more credits in the music video department than I can find. I think this is especially true since there is a decade gap between Guterman producing this and The Perfect Drug.

With that done, here is the different music video I found for this same song

I could not find any information on this one. I kind of like both of them. This one is closer to the kind of music video I expect from The Cult, but you can see in the first one why remaining members of The Doors would have lead singer Ian Astbury stand-in for Jim Morrison more than a decade later.

Speaking of Ian Astbury, while looking for information on this music video, I came across a performance and interview they did on The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers back on May 14th, 1987. They arranged to have Ian’s father call him on the show in order to wish him a happy birthday.