Retro Television Review: Homicide: Life on the Street 4.8 “Sniper, Part One”

Posted on September 28, 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, Lisa will be reviewing Homicide: Life On The Street, which aired from 1993 to 1999, on NBC! It can be viewed on Peacock.

This week, a sniper terrorized Baltimore.

Episode 4.8 “Sniper, Part One”

(Dir by Jean de Segonzac, originally aired on January 5th, 1996)

This week, Bayliss investigates a red ball!

Actually, the case turns out to be a red ball within a red ball!

And then it turns into a third red ball!

A red ball is a term used for a case that is going to draw a lot of media attention and which is going to result in pressure from the guys in command. It’s an actual term, one that was introduced in the David Simon book that served as the inspiration for Homicide. I’m pretty sure that the term was also used in The Wire, though perhaps not as much as it was used in Homicide.

It’s hard not to notice that, starting with the third season, there have been a lot of red balls on Homicide. If one were to judge solely based on seasons 3 and 4, one might be justified in thinking that Baltimore was the serial killer capitol of the world. That’s not really a complaint because most of the red ball episodes have been pretty entertaining. Still, it’s very much a contrast to the first two seasons, where the emphasis was always put on gritty realism and the recurring theme was that, outside of the Homicide detectives, the media didn’t really care about the majority of the murders taking place in Baltimore because the victims were almost always minorities in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods.

This latest red ball involves a sniper who is gunning down people at random and leaving behind a hangman game at each location. He’s trying to figure out a 9-letter word. It’s an odd motivation but serial killers are odd people. Bayliss, who is suffering from back pain and popping muscle relaxants like candy, gets the case because, as he continually reminds us, he was the one who answered the phone. (Somehow, Bayliss does manage to get through the investigation without bringing up Adena Watson.)

While Bayliss tries to find a killer who shoots people at random, Russet deals with the brass. Colonel Barnfather, who was originally quite enthusiastic about promoting her, now suddenly hates her and the episode ends with Russert getting demoted back down to being a detective. (So, I guess that Giardello’s homicide squat will be getting a new investigator.) Russert’s demotion felt like it came out of nowhere but, from a dramatic point of view, it made sense. This show already has Giardello as the beloved boss. It didn’t also need Russert in the role.

As for the killer, he is tracked down by his signature on the receipt that he signed when he purchased his chalk. He turns out to be a nervous insurance agent who has a big house in the suburbs and who is playing a hangman game in his study. When Bayliss attempts to negotiate with him and asks him to leave the study, the insurance agent asks for a letter. “Uhmm …. B,” Bayliss says. B turns out to be just the letter that was needed and the insurance agent promptly shoots himself in the head.

The word that he was trying to come up with turns out to be Eromitlab. Look at in a mirror.

This was a good episode, even if it did sometimes go a bit over the top with everyone shouting, “We’ve got a red ball!” and the nonstop montages of the detectives swarming the streets of Baltimore. I’ve really grown to love Kyle Secor’s performance as Tim Bayliss and this episode featured Bayliss at his loopy best. For an episode about a serial sniper who ended up killing eight people, there was a rather odd sense of humor running through it. This is an episode that started with Jay Leno coming in the Waterfront Bar. (Munch tells Bayliss that Leno is probably sick of people treating him like he’s famous so they decide to ignore him until Leno gets mad and leaves the bar.) When the first shooting is called in, the phone rings several times before anyone is able to answer, leading to Munch to question whether a murder has actually occurred if no one answers the phone. Bayliss obsesses on his upcoming back surgery. “Its says a possible side effect is death!” Bayliss exclaims, looking over the information about the operation. Meanwhile, Brodie gets on everyone’s nerves with his big video camera.

Ominously, this episode with a second sniper climbing up to the roof of the building. The red balls continue.

Retro Television Review: Homicide: Life On The Street 4.7 “Thrill of the Kill”

Posted on September 21, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, Homicide explores the theory that, when it comes to twins, there’s always an evil one.

Episode 4.7 “Thrill of the Kill”

(Dir by Tim Hunter, originally aired on November 10th, 1995)

Pembleton and Bayliss are working with the FBI to try tack down Newton Dell (Jeffrey Donovan), a Florida man who the FBI believes has committed a series of murders up and down the interstate. He’s in Maryland now, driving a stolen truck. Pembleton and Bayliss are able to catch him, though not before three murders have been committed in their jurisdiction. However, in the Box, Newton insists that he was not the murderer. He says that the murderer was someone who was traveling with him but he refuses to give out the name. He says he can’t betray the murderer. Even when it’s pointed out that his fingerprints were found at the crime scenes, Newton insists that that the murderer wasn’t him.

Bayliss thinks that Newton is trying to set up a insanity defense. Pembleton doesn’t care. His job is to catch people who commit murder and, as far as he’s concerned, he’s done just that. Besides, Newton Dell’s story doesn’t make any sense. Why would his fingerprints be all over the crime scene if he wasn’t the killer? Why has every witness provided a description that roughly fits Newton Dell?

Strangely, neither man seems to remember that Munch earlier mentioned that Newton Dell has a twin brother.

Yes, you read that correctly. This week, Homicide — a show that started off as a very realistic and gritty crime drama — present us with a murderous twin!

Miles Dell calls the department and lets them know that he can’t let his brother go to prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Soon, all of the cops are pulling up outside of a convenience store. Miles (also played by Jeffrey Donovan) is waiting for them. In the store, a dead clerk is sprawled out on the floor. So, that’s another murder that occurred because Pembleton and Bayliss somehow overlooked the evil twin theory!

The entire tone of this episode feels different from every episode that preceded it. With this episode, we hear the tortured inner thoughts of Miles Dell, we get some random slow motion, and we finally get an ending that is so over the top that it feels like a dry run for CSI or Criminal Minds. Yes, Bayliss and Pembleton do have their usual philosophical debates about the nature of evil. This is definitely a Homicide episode. However, it’s also a Homicide episode that shamelessly embraces the melodrama. There’s not a subtle moment to be found in this episode. It’s a weirdly entertaining episode but it’s still somewhat jarring to watch. This is one of those episodes that was obviously made to keep NBC happy. One need only compare it to something like Doll’s Eyes to see how different this episode was from what came before it.

Again, it’s an entertainingly trashy episode. Bayliss and Pembleton are enjoyable to listen to. Jeffrey Donovan was entertainingly over-the-top as both Newton and Miles. That said, I hope this episode was just a one-off and not a sign of what’s waiting for me over the rest of the season 4.

Retro Television Review: Homicide: Life On The Street 3.19 “Colors”

Posted on July 27, 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.

This week …. is the Homicide Unit cursed?

Episode 3.19 “Colors”

(Dir by Peter Medak, originally aired on April 28h, 1995)

A Turkish teenager who is dressed and made up like a member of KISS is lying dead on a front porch. Jim Bayliss (David Morse) claims that the teenager was banging on his door and acting aggressive. He says that he grabbed his gun to protect his family and that he ordered the teenager to get off his porch before he shot him. The teen’s friend, who was standing a few feet away, says that the victim raised his hands before he was shot and that he was only at the house because he was trying to go to a party and got the wrong address.

Pembleton thinks that Jim shot the teenager even though he knew the teen was no longer a threat and because he was angered by the teen’s broken English. It’s true that Jim did once get into a fight in a bar with someone who was visibly Middle Eastern. Jim’s wife mentions that Jim gets annoyed with people who can’t speak English. Pembleton says that Jim is so prejudiced that he doesn’t even think twice about assuming the worse about anyone who isn’t white.

Complicating things is that Jim Bayliss is the cousin of Tim Bayliss.

Tim spends almost the entire episode trying to defend his cousin. He asks Giardello for permission to be in the Box during the interrogation, (Giardello refuses, rightly pointing out that Tim has a conflict of interest.) Later, while watching the interrogation, Tim gets so angry that he breaks a two-way mirror. Oddly, the one thing that Tim doesn’t do is tell his cousin to ask for a lawyer, which would have ended the interrogation before it could even get started. Eventually, Ed Danvers, who we haven’t seen much of this season, takes Jim before a Grand Jury and the Grand Jury declines to indict. Everyone in the courtroom applauds but Tim is left to wonder if Pembleton was correct about his cousin.

At one point, Bolander says that he fears that the Homicide Squad may be cursed and then he lists all of the things that have happened over the course of the third season — Crosetti committed suicide, three detectives were nearly killed in a shooting, Munch opened a bar, and now Bayliss and Pembleton are fighting. Bolander has a point. It’s a bit much, particularly when you compare it to the first two seasons. Homicide took a melodramatic turn during the third season. That doesn’t mean that the show hasn’t been good. The acting continues to be amazing. But it’s still quite a contrast to how the show started.

As for this episode, David Morse kept you guessing as Jim Bayliss. At first, Jim just seems like a harried home owner who wanted to protect his family. As the episode progresses, his anger becomes more and more pronounced until the viewer is left feeling that Jim was destined to eventually shoot someone. That said, this episode was occasionally a bit too much on the nose in its storytelling. It also left unaddressed something that should have been a bigger issue. Should Pembleton have been allowed to investigate the case or lead the interrogation, considering that Tim is his partner? Giardello was rightly concerned about Tim’s conflict of interest but he never addressed the fact that Pembleton potentially had one as well.

Next week, season 3 comes to an end.

Retro Television Review: Homicide: Life On The Street 3.13 “The City That Bleeds”

Posted on June 15, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, it’s another red ball on Homicide!

Episode 3.12 “The City That Bleeds”

(Dir by Tim Hunter, originally aired on January 27th, 1995)

This week’s episode opens with Bolander, Munch, Howard, and Felton having a morning meeting outside of an apartment building. They put on bullet-proof vets because they (and several uniformed officers) are about to arrest Glenn Holton, a sex offender who is believed to have murdered a child. Unfortunately, because of a transcription error on the warrant, the detective go to Apartment 201 instead of 210. As they knock on the door to 201, someone on the stairwell opens fire on them. Bolander, Howard, and Felton are hit. Munch somehow avoids being shot.

It’s red ball time! We’re only 12 episodes into season 3 and this is our third “all hands on deck” red ball of the season. NBC reportedly wanted showrunner Tom Fontana to give them more drama in return for renewing the low-rated Homicide and Fontana delivered.

And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. This was a compelling episode, featuring Pembleton tracking Glenn Holton across the city while Bayliss tried to deal with his guilt over being relieved that he wasn’t shot. After visiting the hospital, Giardello had an emotional breakdown while Lewis was driving him back to the station. Felton’s wife returned from Philadelphia to visit him in the hospital. Gloria Reuben and Tony Lo Bianco guest-starred as detectives who came in to help with the case and, for both of them, this episode felt like an audition to join the cast. Things ended with a cliffhanger. Holton is still at large. Felton is awake but hospitalized. Bolander and Kay are still in critical condition. It was an exciting episode.

And yet, one can understand why Ned Beatty later said, in an interview, that this was one of the episodes that eventually led to him leaving the show. First off, why the detectives would be serving the arrest warrant as opposed to the uniformed cops or, considering Holton’s crimes, even the SWAT team, I’m not sure. Munch makes a comment about how the four of them had served hundreds of arrest warrants in the past but it’s not something that we’ve ever seen them do on the show before. That the nonstop emotional drama was compelling was due to the strength of the cast and not the strength of the script, which was occasionally so overwrought that it felt almost like a parody of a cop show. This episode worked but, after it ended, I found myself thinking about how different it felt from the deliberately-paced and moody episodes the aired during the first and second seasons.

And finally, it’s hard not to get annoyed that, with everything going on, we still had to deal with all of Felton’s stupid domestic nonsense. I’m tried of hearing about Felton’s wife and kids and how he can’t make his marriage work. I’m even more tired of Megan Russert, a character who could be a total badass, being solely defined by her relationship with Felton.

This episode, the first of a three-parter, held my attention while I was watching it and it was only afterwards that I realized I kind of had mixed feelings about it overall. Homicide is changing. We’ll see where it goes.