Mary Jefferson | 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, things get emotional on Homicide!

Episode 1.4 “Son of a Gun”

(Dir by Nick Gomez, originally aired on February 10th, 1993)

Officer Chris Thormann (Lee Tergesen), a patrol officer who is friendly with the Homicide detectives and who is a bit of protegee to Steve Crosetti, has been shot. While Thormann lies in surgery with a bullet in his brain, his wife (Edie Falco, in one of her first television appearances) waits for news from the doctors and tries to avoid the members of the callous press. Crosetti demands to be put in charge of the investigation into Thormann’s shooting and when Giardello points out, quite correctly, that Crosetti is too close to the victim to be objective, Crosetti strips down to his boxers and shows Giardello the scars left behind by every time that he’s been shot.

It’s an odd scene, one that seems to come out of nowhere in an episode that, up until that moment, had been pretty serious. Kotto does a great job of capturing Giardello’s horror as Crosetti drops his pants. It’s obvious that this is not the first time that Crosetti has shown off his scars to get assigned to a certain case. It’s a scene that shouldn’t work but it does work because not only is it well-acted by Yaphet Kotto and Jon Polito but it also captures the insanity of being a homicide detective. Just four episodes in, Homicide has already shown that it can be a funny show but the humor is rooted in the darkest corners of the human experience. To survive as a homicide detective, you have to harden yourself to the point of being callous and you have to be able to see the humor in just about everything. Crosetti, with his constant analysis of the Lincoln assassination and his inventory of bullet scars, may seem crazy but actually, he’s doing what he has to do to survive.

The episode ends with Thormann alive but in a coma and possibly brain-damaged. And it ends with the shooter still at large. Crosetti has received an anonymous tip from someone saying that the killer was a man named Alfred Smith. But who knows if that’s true.

The Adeena Watson case remains open, as well. Bayliss and Pembleton are still struggling to figure out how to work together. Bayliss is too obsessed with the case. Pembleton is too determined to show up the new guy. A raid on the apartment where it’s believed Adeena was murdered turns up nothing but more evidence of human misery. That said, a cheerful guy (played by Paul Schulze) who claims to be an agent for hitmen does give up several of his clients, allowing Howard and Felton to close even more cases. Even Calpurnia Church (Mary Jefferson), the “black widow” from the pilot, is finally arrested due to the agent’s testimony.

Finally, Stanley Bolander goes on his first date with Dr. Blythe. Before going on his date, he meets his neighbor, Larry Molera (Luis Guzman). Larry is a carpenter. He’s built a coffin that is currently sitting in living room. Bolander’s date goes well but the nervous Bolander turns down Blythe’s offer to go back to her place with her. Bolander returns to his apartment, where he discovers that Larry is dead and lying in his coffin. (Much, who was called when Larry’s body was discovered, is shocked to see Bolander. Bolander is not happy that Much now knows where he lives.) Larry’s death inspires Boland to return to Dr. Blythe’s apartment.

This was an emotional episode. Thormann is clinging to his life while his wife and Crosetti wait for him to wake up. The recently divorced Bolander finally found the courage to go out with Dr. Blythe. Bayliss appears to be so obsessed with the Adeena Watson case that he’s struggling to think straight. This episode takes a look at the mental strain that comes from dealing with crime and death on a daily basis. It’s well-done, even if it’s not quite as memorable as Night of the Dead Living. (The stuff with Larry and his coffin was a bit too self-consciously quirky to be as emotionally devastating as the show obviously meant for it to be.) If I took anything away from this episode, it’s that fate is random. Officer Thormann has been shot in the head but he survived hours of surgery. Larry seemed to be healthy but he suddenly died while Bolander was on his date. Adeena’s killer may never be caught while Calpurnia Church was caught because of an initially unrelated investigation. Some of the detectives are skilled. Some of them are not. But, in the end, they’re all at the random mercy of fate.

Today, I take a look at the pilot for a show that has been called one of the best of all time.

Episode 1.1 “Gone For Goode”

(Directed by Barry Levinson, originally aired on January 31st, 1993)

The opening credits for the first episode of Homicide: Life on the Street immediately announce that the show is not going to be a typical network cop show. The music starts out as moody and low-key before eventually being dominated by a pulsating beat. The images of dirty streets and crumbling rowhouses and of a dog running around behind a fence are all in black-and-white. The faces of the cast appear, the majority of them in harsh close-up. When viewed today, most of the faces are familiar. Daniel Baldwin, Ned Beatty, Andre Braugher, Clark Johnson, Yaphet Kotto, Melissa Leo, Jon Polito, and Kyle Secor all flash by and the thing that the viewer will immediately notice is that it’s almost as if they’ve been filmed to remove any hint of glamour or attractiveness. (Out of that impressive cast, only Baldwin, Johnson, Leo, and Secor are still with us.)

Gone for Goode tells several stories, introducing the detectives as they investigate various murders in Baltimore. Meldrick Lewis (Clark Johnson) and Steve Crosetti (Jon Polito) are first seen searching for a bullet in a dark alleyway and arguing in only the way that two people who have worked with each other for a long time can argue. Lewis continually refers to Crosetti as a “salami-head,” and Crosetti, who claims that he’s being kept up at night by his doubts about whether or not John Wilkes Booth was actually Lincoln’s assassin, repeatedly says that Lewis will regret that. Later, Crosetti writes a complaint about the ethnic insults that he’s been forced to listen to but apparently, he never actually sends it.

When not arguing with each other, Crosetti and Lewis investigate “Aunt Calpurnia,” who has buried five husbands and whose niece has nearly been murdered three times. Aunt Calpurnia has life insurance policies out on everyone. While digging up Calpurnia’s former husband, Lewis comments that the body in the grave doesn’t look as large as the man in the picture that he’s been given. The cemetery’s caretaker replies, “Nobody stays fat down there.” Technically, that’s true but it also turns out that the wrong man was buried in the grave and the caretaker has no idea where anyone is actually buried.

Detective Felton (Daniel Baldwin) and Detective Howard (Melissa Leo) investigate the murder of a man who was found decaying in a basement. Howard is the primary detective on the case because Felton, being a screw-up, has too many unsolved cases under his name on the dry-erase board that dominates the squad room. Howard currently has a streak of solved homicides and that continues for her when the murderer just happens to call the crime scene and then agrees to come in for a talk.

Detective Stanley Bolander (Ned Beatty) guilts Detective John Munch (Richard Belzer, who would play the same character years later on Law & Order: SVU) into investigating a hit-and-run that happened months ago. Munch, who earlier tells a suspect that he is not Montel Williams (“So don’t like to me like I’m Montel Williams”) and leaves both Bolander and the suspect confused as to who Montel Williams is, eventually discovers that the murder was committed by a brain-dread idiot who can only repeat, “I was drinking,” when he’s confronted with his guilt.

Finally, Lt. Al Giardello (Yaphet Kotto) assigns Felton to work with Frank Pembleton (Andre Braugher), a brilliant but arrogant detective who insists on working alone. Pembleton and Felton’s partnership begins with Pembleton spending an hour in the station’s garage, searching for his squad car because Pembleton forgot to write down the parking space on the back of his keys. (Of course the garage is full of identical white cars.) When Felton says suggests just going upstairs and getting a new set of keys, Pembleton shouts that the next car he tries to unlock could be the right car.

Needless to say, the Pembleton/Felton partnership does not last and Pembleton instead ends up working with an eager newcomer to the squad, Tim Bayliss (Kyle Secor). They two of them work surprisingly well together until Bayliss objects to Pembleton “fooling” a suspect into waving his right to an attorney.

As the episode comes to a close, Bayliss answers his first call in the squad room. At the crime scene, in the middle of a torrential storm, he discovers the body of a small girl.

I have to say that the idea of trying to review Homicide: Life on The Street is a bit intimidating, just because the show has got an almost legendary reputation. It’s often described as being the best cop show of the 90s, as well as being held up as a perfect example of a show that was too good to last. It was never a hit in the ratings and came close to being canceled several times. Because it was filmed in Baltimore, it was viewed as being an outsider amongst the New York and Hollywood-produced shows that dominated the airwaves. Executive produced by Barry Levinson (who also directed Gone for Goode) and based on a non-fiction book by David Simon, Homicide is the show that is often cited as the precursor for The Wire, another show that was loved by the critics but not by its network or the Emmy voters.

The pilot is intriguing, largely because it seems determined to scare off its audience. Unlike other television detectives, who are inevitably portrayed as being crusaders who are obsessed with justice, the detectives in Homicide are a blue collar bunch who, for the most part, are just doing their job. Sure, someone like Frank Pembleton might be brilliant. And Stanley Bolander might truly mean it when he tells Munch that “we speak for the dead.” And Bayliss does seem to be very enthusiastic about being a “thinking” policeman. But the show suggests that most detectives are like Felton, Lewis, and Much. They’re not particularly brilliant and their approach to the job can sometimes seem callous. But occasionally, they get lucky and a murder is solved. Indeed, if there is any real message to the pilot, it’s that criminals are stupid. They get caught not because of brilliant police work but because they do stupid things, like calling the crime scene or failing to ditch the car that they sole.

That said, the pilot also does what a pilot is supposed to do. It introduces the characters and gives them just enough space to make an impression, along with also leaving enough room for them to grow. The characters may not all be instantly likeable but, fortunately, the strong cast holds your interest. The pilot is very much a product of the 90s, with Munch ranting about Montel Williams and Crosetti mentioning Madonna at one point. But, at the same time, it still feels relevant today. Pop culture might change but murder remains the same.