Peter Markle | 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, 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.

The fourth of NBC’s In The Line of Duty movies, Mob Justice opens with the murder of an undercover DEA agent by a low-level gangster who has just been released from prison. While the gangster goes into hiding, the DEA mobilizes and starts to make life so difficult for all of the other mobsters in New York that soon, the Mafia is as determined to get justice as law enforcement.

This was the first In The Line Of Duty film not be directed by Dick Lowry. Lowry’s fast-paced style is missed as Mob Justice takes forever to get going and regularly gets bogged down with scenes lifted from other mafia movies. The old mobsters talk about the importance of family, play cards in the backroom, and eat big dinners. Opera blares on the soundtrack when the DEA starts to harass them. For a movie that is supposed to honor the work and the sacrifice of federal law enforcement, the DEA actually comes across as being thoroughly incompetent in Mob Justice. A dumb mistake leads to the first murder. A series of other misjudgments lead to the Mafia dispensing the own type of violent justice before the DEA can arrest their man.

The most interesting thing about Mob Justice is the cast.

The trigger-happy gangster is played by Tony Danza, who I guess was trying to prove himself as a dramatic actor after spending years on Taxi and Who’s The Boss but who still comes across like Tony Micelli having a bad day. His best friend is played Nicholas Turturro, who later played a straight arrow detective on NYPD Blue. Frank Vincent and Leonardo Cimino plays the mob bosses who knows that murdering a federal agent is bad for business.

The head of the investigation is played by Ted Levine, who has had a long career but will always be remembered as the killer from The Silence of the Lambs. Working under him is Dan Lauria, who a generation will instantly recognize as being the long-suffering and frequently angry father from The Wonder Years. You know that this is a big case is Buffalo Bill and Jack Arnold are working together. (Dan Lauria actually appeared in several In The Line of Duty films, always playing different characters.)

And finally, the murdered DEA agent is played by none other than Samuel L. Jackson. It’s never a good thing when the best actor in a movie is killed off after the first fifteen minutes.

The cast is great but Mob Justice is forgettable. The main problem is that, after Jackson is taken out of the picture, the rest of the movie is just Danza hiding in different apartments while Levine and Lauria annoy Frank Vincent. Danza’s murderer is never smart nor interesting enough to be a compelling antagonist and there’s never any doubt that, one way or another, he will pay for his stupidity. There is one memorable scene where Danza freaks out while wearing a blonde wig but otherwise, Mob Justice doesn’t leave much of an impression.