Retro Television Review: Homicide: Life On The Street 3.6 “A Model Citizen”

Posted on March 16, 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.

No one’s happy this week.

Episode 3.6 “A Model Citizen”

(Dir by John McNaughton, originally aired on November 11th, 1994)

Welcome to Baltimore, where everyone is depressed. Consider this week’s episode of Homicide: Life On The Street.

The episode opens with Munch, Bolander, Howard, and Felton in a morgue, waiting for the results of an autopsy. They start talking about the shows that they watched as children and how many of them had their origins right in Baltimore. Of course, none of those shows are on the air anymore. Munch mentions his favorite childhood shows and is ridiculed for liking things when he was a kid.
Emma Zoole (Lauren Tom), an artist who makes models of crime scenes for use in criminal court, stops by the department. She’s looking for Steve Crosetti, to get his input on a recreation. Meldrick Lewis tells her that Crosetti’s dead but he offers to help. Lewis has a crush. However, Emma likes Bayliss and Bayliss likes Emma. Bayliss is even turned on by the fact that Emma sleeps in a coffin. However, when Bayliss sees how upset Lewis is over his relationship with Emma, Bayliss tries to break up with her. They end up having sex in the coffin instead.
That’s it!, Lewis declares. He cannot go into the bar business with Tim Bayliss. Then again, there might not be a bar business anyway because Munch got kicked out of the state-required alcohol awareness class. Munch, for whatever reason, decided to argue about whether or not a bartender could really be held responsible for getting someone drunk.
Pembleton, Russert, and the city of Baltimore are all being sued by serial killer Pamela Wilgis. Wilgis claims that Pembleton violated her civil rights when he interrogated her. Pembleton’s entire interrogation style is put on trial. He feels like he’s being attacked on all sides. Finally, Pembleton gets depressed enough to reenter a church, even though he earlier claimed to no longer have any use for religion.
Munch and Howard investigate the accidental shooting of a child by his older brother. Much gets extremely upset while searching for the gun, taking Howard totally be surprise. Howard comes to realize that Much actually cares about protecting children from violence and Munch realizes that the world is a terrible place.
Beau Felton returns to his house and discovers that both his wife and his son have left and they’ve taken all the furniture with them. Goodbye is scrawled, in lipstick, on the bathroom mirror.
Much ends up sitting outside, staring at the ground while Lewis and then Howard both talk to him about how much life sucks.
No one wants to end up like Steve Crosetti, Howard says at one point. Good luck! This job is depressing!

This was a good episode, one that really captured the emotional turmoil of seeing the worse that humanity has to offer while, at the same time, acknowledging that depressed people often use humor to deal with their feelings. A few of Munch’s and Lewis’s line made me laugh out loud but seriously, I felt so bad for both of them!

Hopefully, everyone will have cheered up by next week.

Retro Television Review: Homicide: Life On The Street 3.3 “Extreme Unction”

Posted on February 16, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, the White Glove Killer is discovered.

Episode 3.3 “Extreme Unction”

(Dir by Keith Gordon, originally aired on October 28th, 1994)

For all the hours that Pembleton and the other detectives put in and for all the motives that were considered and the suspects were interviewed, the murderer of Katherine Goodrich and two other women is captured not through deductive brilliance but because she herself enters the police station.

When Pamela Wilgis (Lucinda Jenney) first enters the station, she claims to have just witnessed two men dumping the third victim. Pembleton is dismissive of her until she mentions the white gloves, a detail that has not been released to the public. While Pembleton talks to her, the other detectives check out Pamela’s apartment and discover 12 sets of white cotton gloves hanging in her bathroom. Pamela is the murderer.

When Pembleton asks Pamela about the gloves, Pamela suddenly starts speaking in an Irish accent. Later, she starts speaking like an angry and rebellious child. Later still, she reverts to being a wide-eyed innocent who says she had no idea how she ended up in the interrogation room. Pembleton is convinced that she’s faking her alternate personalities but, despite his best efforts, he can never get her to actually confess that she committed the murders.

From the start, Homicide has emphasizes the role of luck in solving murders. The majority of the show’s murders are solved precisely because someone thought they could outsmart the police or because they made a very obvious error. For all of Pembleton’s strengths in the Box, his interrogation technique works best when he’s dealing with someone who doesn’t understand how the system works. Pamela, on the other hand, obviously understands what he’s trying to do. She knows the system and she knows how to game it. Pamela does eventually confess but not Pembleton. Instead, she does an interview with the obnoxious reported played by Tony Todd, blaming her crimes on the abuse she suffered as a child and her dissociative disorder. Pembleton’s pride is hurt but he also finds himself struggling with his faith. How can Pamela, after killing three saintly women, now avoid paying for her crimes? Even with the thrilling interrogation scene between Pembleton and Pamela and the excellent performances of Andre Braugher and Lucinda Jenney, it’s all feels a bit anticlimactic. But it also feels appropriate for the world in which Homicide takes place.

This episode also wrapped up a few other plotlines. Munch, Bayliss, and Lewis finally own their bar. Good for them. I’m not really a bar person or a drinker but I probably would have enjoyed visiting the Waterfront whenever Munch was working the bar. Even more importantly, Felton returned to his mentally unstable wife. And again, that’s a good thing if just because I was getting sick of listening to Felton whine about his marriage. So was Kay.

This episode was effective enough. The scenes between Andre Braugher and Lucinda Jenney alone made the episode memorable. At the same time, as I watched, it occurred to me that, if this episode had aired during the first season, the White Glove Murders probably never would have been solved. If Adena Watson had died during the third season, one can be sure Bayliss would have gotten a confession out Risley Tucker.

Next week, we find out why Detective Crosetti has yet to return from Atlantic City.

Retro Television Review: Homicide: Life On The Street 1.8 “And the Rockets’ Dead Glare”

Posted on November 24, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, Detective Munch takes a stand!

Episode 1.8 “And the Rockets’ Dead Glare”

(Dir by Peter Markle, originally aired on March 17th, 1993)

Is John Munch a stoner?

That’s the question that Stanley Bolander finds himself considering during this week’s episode of Homicide: Life On The Street. At a crime scene, Munch displays an encyclopedic knowledge of marijuana and later, while talking to a narcotics detective at the station house, both Munch and Bayliss argue that drugs should be legalized. That night, as they wait to bust a man who earlier killed a drug currier, Bolander flat out asks Munch if he gets high. Munch refuses to answer.

Of course, those of us watching already know. Of course, John Munch gets high! He’s played by Richard Belzer, the thin, middle-aged man who never takes off his sunglasses and who is continually rattling off trivial knowledge in a mellow tone of voice. Munch not only gets high but he was probably high through this entire episode. Whenever Munch appeared on another television show, he was probably high then. And when he eventually ended up on Law & Order: SVU, he was probably so stoned that I’m surprised Stabler didn’t put him in a headlock and start yelling about how he didn’t want Munch serving as a bad example for the youth of New York City.

There’s no surprise that Munch would be in favor of legalizing drugs. (It’s a bit more surprising that straight-laced Bayliss would agree but whatever.) What was surprising, to me, was how I reacted to his argument. There was a time when I was 100% enthusiastically in favor of legalizing all drugs, or at least leaving it up to individual states. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to realize that it’s not that simple. Legalizing drugs is not the societal cure-all that many of us assumed it would be. Then again, weed is kind of boring now that it’s socially acceptable so maybe the best way to keep people off of drugs is to broadcast nonstop YouTube commercials featuring middle-aged suburbanites talking about how much they love their edibles.

(To be honest, Munch and Bayliss’s sudden advocacy for drug legalization reminded me of one of the things that always makes me laugh about Law & Order, i.e. the tendency to have blue-collar cops, who are not exactly the most liberal of constituencies, suddenly start talking like MSNBC pundits.)

While Munch argued for drug legalization, Pembleton considered whether or not to accept a promotion, Kay testified in a murder trial and accepted the offer of a dinner date from State’s Attorney Ed Danvers (Zeljko Ivanek), and Corsetti and Lewis drove to Washington D.C. to investigate the murder of a Chinese dissident. Officially, they went to D.C. so that they could question the people at the Chinese embassy about the victim and the possibility that his murder was related to politics. However, the real reason they went to D.C. was so that Crosetti could visit some historical sites and expound on his theories about who really killed Abraham Lincoln. A somewhat sinister secret service agent (played by Ed Lauter) was happy to show them around in return for them not making trouble at the embassy. Crosetti was excited. Lewis was considerably less impressed. I enjoyed the DC storyline, if just because I’m both a history and a conspiracy nerd and, when Jeff and I last went to our nation’s capital, I got excited about seeing some of the same locations that Crosetti got excited about.

This episode was a day-in-the-life episode, with all of the detectives getting their share of attention. (Even Felton, who accompanied Kay to the courthouse, got a few moments to shine.) If the episode didn’t have the emotional impact of Night of the Dead Living, it still did a good job of portraying the comradery of a group of people who are linked by their knowledge of what it’s like to see others at their worst. In the end, Pembleton turns down the promotion and finally, joins his fellow detectives for an after-work drink. I’m glad he did. They’re good company.

Cleaning Out The DVR: Just The Ticket (dir by Richard Wenk)

Posted on December 15, 2017 by Lisa Marie Bowman

(Hi there! So, as you may know because I’ve been talking about it on this site all year, I have got way too much stuff on my DVR. Seriously, I currently have 193 things recorded! I’ve decided that, on January 15th, I am going to erase everything on the DVR, regardless of whether I’ve watched it or not. So, that means that I’ve now have only have a month to clean out the DVR! Will I make it? Keep checking this site to find out! I recorded the 1999 romantic comedy Just The Ticket off of Epix on October 13th!)

Just The Ticket tells the story of Gary Starke (Andy Garcia).

Gary lives in New York City. He is a tough, streetwise character, loyal to his friends and quick to anger if he feels that anyone is trying to take advantage of him. He has no time for pretentious posturing or snobbish social gatherings. Gary’s a man of the people. He works with and takes care of an aging former boxer named Benny (Richard Bradford). He looks after a pregnant, former drug addict named Alice (Laura Harris). When the slick and dangerous Casino (Andre B. Blake) starts to do business in Gary’s territory, Gary is the only person with the guts to stand up to him. Having never had a family (he’s never even seen his birth certificate and has no idea who his parents were), Gary has adopted the street people as his surrogate family.

That’s not all. Gary is also a lapsed Catholic who, when he goes to confession, opens by saying that it’s been 25 years since his last confession and that he’s taken the Lord’s name in vain 20 to 30 times that morning. Gary needs some help because his girlfriend, an aspiring chef named Linda (Andie McDowell), has left him and Gary wants to win her back. The priest asks Gary if he can get him tickets to see the Knicks…

Why does he ask that?

You see, Gary is a legendary ticket scalper and…

Okay, I probably just lost you when I used the terms “legendary” and “ticket scalper” in the same sentence. And I’ll admit that, when I discovered this movie was about ticket scalpers, it nearly lost me as well. Just The Ticket treats ticket scalping with a dignity and reverence that I’m not quite sure it deserves. I wasn’t surprised to discover that director/writer Richard Wenk apparently based the character of Gary on an actual ticket scalper that he knew. A lot of bad movies have been made as the result of a director, writer, or producer coming across some mundane activity and thinking, “Wow, this would make a great movie!”

(That’s one reason why, every few years, we suddenly get a dozen movies about race car drivers.)

However, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Just The Ticket is not a terrible movie. Admittedly, it’s totally predictable and there are a lot of scenes that don’t work. For instance, there’s a lengthy scene where Gary and Linda destroy a snobbish food critic’s kitchen. I could imagine Gary doing that because he has nothing to lose. But Linda is actually hoping to become a chef in New York City. Would she really run the risk of making a permanent enemy at the New York Times? There’s nothing about Andie McDowell’s performance that suggests she would. The scenes between Gary and his aging partner also tend to overplay their hand. Richard Bradford gives a good performance as Benny but we all know what’s going to end up happening to him as soon as he starts crying after Gary insults him.

With all that in mind, Just The Ticket still has an undeniable charm. Some of it is due to Andy Garcia’s dedicated performance. He is frequently better than the material and he and Andie McDowell have enough chemistry that you do want to see Linda and Gary get back together. Some of it is because Just The Ticket is not afraid to shy away from being sentimental. It’s hard to think of any other romantic comedy in which the Pope plays such an important supporting role. It’s a sweet movie. It has a good heart.

There’s something to be said for that.