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 elusive Glenn Holton is captured but is really the shooter?  Read on and find out!

Episode 3.13 “Dead End”

(Dir by Whitney Ransick, originally aired on February 3rd, 1995)

There’s a truly remarkable moment in this week’s episode of Homicide.

Glenn Holton (Steve Hofvendahl) has finally been arrested and is sitting in the Box.  Holton is the pedophile who is suspected of murdering a child.  Last week, Felton, Bolander, and Howard were all shot while trying to serve a warrant for his arrest.  Bayliss and Pembleton are interviewing him, attempting to get him to confess to shooting the detectives.

At first, Holton is adamant that he did not shoot anyone.  But as Pembleton and Bayliss shout at him and tell him about all the things that are going to happen to him as a sex offender in prison, Holton’s demeanor starts to change.  He becomes desperate and confused and suddenly, he confesses to shooting the detectives.  The only problem is that the story Holton comes up with doesn’t match the facts of the case.  He claims that he shot the detectives on the roof of his apartment building.  He claims they were coming at him.  When asked what type of gun he used, Holton says it was just some gun that he bought on the street.  The more Holton talks, the more obvious it becomes that, while he did murder the child, he didn’t shoot the detectives.

It’s an interesting scene because it shows just how easy it could be to get a false confession out of a suspect.  It’s left ambiguous as to whether or not Holton was lying because he preferred to be sent to prison for shooting a cop instead of killing a kid or if maybe Holton actually had deluded himself into thinking he was the shooter.  If Bayliss and Pembleton hadn’t asked him follow-up questions about the shooting, Holton probably would have been charged with the shooting.  He did, after all, confess.

Holton’s going to jail for murder but the shooter is still out there.  Who fired the gun?  I suspect I know, just because next week’s episode features a special guest star.  But we’ll talk about that next week!

The interrogation scene was the highlight of this week’s episode.  Still, I enjoyed the scenes of Munch working with Bolander’s ex-partner Mitch and struggling to hide his jealousy.  (Bolander is always complaining that Mitch was a far better partner than Munch.)  I was a bit less interested in this week’s Russert plot.  Megan was told to investigate whether or not Giardello was at fault for the detectives going to the wrong apartment.  She discovered Giardello did approve and initial the warrant without double-checking the address.  Giardello  was prepared to take the blame but Russet instead lied and claimed that, because of budget cuts, she and Giardello were both often rushed into signing things without getting a chance to fully examine them.  I’m not sure that’s a particularly good excuse but it worked.

At the hospital, Howard woke up from her coma.  Bolander is still in his coma and was not present during this episode.  (From what I’ve read, Ned Beatty was apparently not happy with the whole shooting storyling, feeling that it went against the realism that was supposed to be Homicide’s calling card.)  Lewis and Felton had a heart-to-heart about what it’s like to lose one’s partner.  It was an effective scene, even if Felton has become a bit of a one-note character.

This was a good episode and a marked improvement on last week.  I look forward to seeing how things conclude (or if they even do conclude) in the next episode.