N’Bushe Wright | 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, the Homicide Squad works the night shift on the hottest night of the year.

Episode 1.3 “Night of the Dead Living”

(Dir by Michael Lehmann, originally aired on March 31st, 1993)

On the hottest night of the year, Giardello’s homicide squad works the night shift. Everyone comes in grumpy. Munch has just broken up with his girlfriend. Bolander is trying to work up the courage to call Dr. Blythe. Bayliss is still obsessing on the Adeena Watson case and he and Pembleton are still trying to figure out how to work together. Kay’s sister is having trouble at home. Felton’s wife hates him. Crosetti worries about his teenage daughter and her boyfriend. Giardello tries to figure out why the air conditioner is only blowing out hot air on what Lewis claims is the hottest night in history.

Despite the heat and the statistics that show that most homicide occur at night, no calls come in. Bayliss is convinced he’s cracked the Watson case when he discovers that the fingerprints on Adeena’s library book belongs to someone named James. He sends Thorson out to arrest James. James turns out to be a seventh grader who thinks he’s being arrested by not paying a library fine. (James did check out the book, when he was in the fifth grade.)

A drunk man dressed as Santa Claus is brought in and later falls through the ceiling when he attempts to escape custody. A baby is found in the station’s basement but it turns out to the cleaning lady’s baby. She brings him to work with her to protect him from the rats that live in their apartment building. Eventually, Bolander works up the courage to call Blythe and Bayliss and Pembleton figure out that Adeena’s body was found where it was because her killer brought the body down a fire escape. At the end of the shift, Giardello assembles his detectives on the roof and joyfully sprays them with the water hose.

It’s an episode that feels like a play, taking place in one location and featuring a lot of monologuing. Each member of the squad gets a their chance in the spotlight, with the episode revealing that every one of them is a bit more complex than they initially seem. Even Munch, the misanthrope, is shown to light a candle in memory of “all those who have been killed.” It’s one of those episodes that makes you understand why Homicide is considered to be classic while also showing you why it struggled in the ratings. In this episode, Homicide revealed itself to be not a cop show but instead a show about people who happened to be cops. Most shows about detectives end with an arrest. This episode ends with Giardello showing his love for the people who work for him. After spending an hour with everyone sweating and complaining, it’s nice to see them happy on the roof of the station house. Yaphet Kotto’s joy in the final scene is a wonder to behold. And yet, it’s easy to imagine how confused audiences, whose expectations had been set by more traditional crime show, would have been.

This episode was meant to be the third episode of the series. NBC decided that it worked better as the finale of the first season and instead made it the ninth episode. Peacock has this episode placed where it originally belonged and, with this review, that’s what I’m going with as well.

In 1969, Anthony (Larenz Tate) graduates from high school in the Bronx and shocks his family by announcing that he will not be following in his brother’s footsteps by enrolling in city college but that he will instead be enlisting in the Marines and going off to fight in Vietnam. While his friends taunt him for choosing to fight in a “white man’s war,” Anthony thinks that serving in the Marines will make him a man. His two biggest heroes, his father and the local numbers boss, Kirby (Keith David), both served in Korea. Kirby’s even lost his his leg in the war but he can still keep order in the neighborhood.

Vietnam doesn’t turn out to be what Anthony was expecting. He serves two tours of duty and becomes an efficient killing machine but he is also forced to do things that will haunt him long after the war is over. When Anthony finally returns to the Bronx in 1971, the old neighborhood has changed. Crime, drugs, and poverty are destroying the community and Anthony struggles to support his girlfriend (Rose Jackson) and his daughter.

Finally, with no other opportunities available and feeling as if his country has abandoned him, Anthony agrees to take part in an armored car robbery. Working with him are a few friends from the old days and a few members of the revolutionary Nat Turner Cadre. Anthony thinks that he has the robbery planned out perfectly but nothing ever goes as planned.

In 1993, The Hughes Brothers made their directorial debut with Menace II Society, an incendiary film that holds up as one of the best feature debuts of any filmmaker. Their follow-up to Menace II Society was Dead Presidents. While Dead Presidents operates on a more epic scale than Menace II Society, it’s also a far more uneven film. While the first part of the film (which follows Anthony and his friends during their final days of high school) is strong, things start to fall apart once the action moves to Vietnam. The Hughes Brothers tried to recreate the Vietnam War on a Grenada Invasion budget and the action never feels credible. When Anthony returns to the Bronx, Dead Presidents regains some of its footing but the eventual armored car heist is never as exciting as it could be.

Still, Dead Presidents has enough good moments that it’s always watchable. Larenz Tate gives a good performance as Anthony and he’s surrounded by the some of the best black character actors of the 90s. Keep an eye out for a young and incredibly obnoxious Terrence Howard, playing an aspiring gangster and getting a deserved beating at the hands of Anthony. Though the movie often bites off more than it can chew, it does do a good job of seriously dealing with the issues that returning vets have to contend with when they come back home. Anthony suffers from PTSD, which is something that a lot of people didn’t talk about in 1995, and the Hughes Brothers deserve much credit for their sensitive handling of the topic. Dead Presidents may not be perfect but it’s impossible not to admire the film’s ambition.