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, Bolander and Howard return to Homicide.

Episode 3.16 “The Old and the Dead”

(Dir by Michael Fields, originally aired on March 3rd, 1995)

When Giardello discovers that Colonel Granger (Walt MacPherson) has been hiring his brother-in-law’s shady plumbing firm to do unnecessary repairs at the city’s police stations, he leaks the story to the press.  When the scandal forces Granger out, Captain Barnfather is promoted to replace him.  Giardello thinks that, with his years of experience, he’ll be the obvious replacement for Barnfather.  Instead, the captain position is offered to Russert.  As Barnfather explains it, the mayor is aware that the majority of the voters in Baltimore are women.  When Giardello mentions that even more of the voters are black, Barnfather explains that the mayor’s leadership team already has a black man, him.

Giradello is not happy and he doesn’t hold back from letting Russert know about his displeasure.  I have to say that I respected Giardello for not holding back.  Russert has less experience than Giardello and, from what we’ve seen of her, she doesn’t appear to be as good at her job as Giardello is.  I mean, let’s be honest.  Russert had an affair with Beau Felton, of all people!  It’s a little bit hard to respect her judgment.

While Giardello was once again failing in his efforts to move up, both Howard and Bolander returned to duty.  Howard, on light duty, still manages to solve a case.  Bolander, meanwhile, is now wearing a hat to cover up the surgery scars that crisscross his head.  Ned Beatty, as usual, gave a good performance as Bolander.  I like Ned Beatty.  For some reason, I’ve never really liked Stanley Bolander.  I think it might be because he’s always complaining about something.  Maybe it’s because I’m still annoyed by the amount of unnecessary time that the first season spent on Bolander’s love life.  Or maybe it’s because Munch is devoted to the guy and Bolander still treats him like crap every chance that he gets.  For whatever reason, Bolander has always just kind of annoyed me.  That was the case with this episode.  I’m not saying I felt good about it.  Bolander was shot in the head and nearly died!  He has every right to be grumpy.  But there is just a part of me that is like, “If you hate your job so much, just retire.  Otherwise, stop bitching about everything!”

Finally, Bayliss and Felton worked surprisingly well together as they investigated a skeleton found in someone’s backyard.  It turned out that two men has never reported the death of their father so that they could continue to collect his social security checks.

As much as I complain about Bolander, this was not a bad episode.  This was a good example of an episode where the mysteries and plotlines were less important than just watching everyone in the cast play off of each other.  As of this season, the ensemble has really come together as a tight unit and each character has really come to life as an individual.  That’s one reason why I enjoyed watching Bayliss and Felton work together.  It was interesting to see how they interreacted and to compare it to how Bayliss worked with Pembleton and Felton with Howard.

Finally, this episode featured a cute cameo from the late Tim Russert, who is introduced as being Megan’s cousin.  Felton says that he never misses Meet the Press.  For some reason, I doubt that.