Roger Robinson | 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’s episode was written by none other than Yaphet Kotto!

Episode 5.20 “Narcissus”

(Dir by Jean de Segonzac, originally aired on May 2nd, 1997)

A shooting at four in the morning leads to a group of white patrolmen chasing a black suspect across West Baltimore until he ducks into a building that they’ve been told not to enter. The building is the headquarters of the African Revival Moment, a militant group that is led by a former cop who goes by the name of Burundi Robinson (Roger Robinson). Robinson is one of the most powerful men in West Baltimore, a hero to the community and also someone who has connections to Baltimore’s police commissioner, James Harris.

As Robinson explains to Lt. Giardello, he and Harris were once partners. When he and Harris busted a heroin dealer, Harris sold the drugs back to the dealer for $10,000. When it was discovered that the drugs were missing from the evidence lock-up, Harris and Robinson flipped a coin with the understanding that the loser would resign from the force and take the fall. Robinson lost the coin toss. Robinson went on to start ARM and Harris became the police commissioner.

At first, Harris (who doesn’t appear in this episode but instead is simply a background figure of menace) protects Robinson and sends Col. Barnfather to the scene to order Detectives Pembleton and Munch to back off. However, when a member of ARM comes forward to say that Robinson ordered the shooting because the victim was going to expose Robinson’s history of taking sexual improprieties with his followers, Harris suddenly starts ordering the police to get more aggressive with Robinson and ARM. Harris does this with the full knowledge that the police raiding ARM headquarters and attempting to arrest Robinson will lead to a violent confrontation. When the police eventually do bust into the headquarters, they discover that Robinson and all of his followers have committed suicide. Giardello understands that was Harris’s hope all along. He was willing to risk a riot just to silence the one man who could prove his corruption.

This episode was written by Yaphet Kotto and, not surprisingly, Giardello is at the center of the action. The lengthy scene where he meets with Robinson is the highlight of the episode as both Giardello and Robinson have a unique understanding of how things work in Baltimore. Giardello has had first-hand experience with Harris’s corruption and he’s not in the least bit surprised by either Robinson’s story or Harris’s heavy-handed attempts to control the investigation. In a bit of wonderful irony, when Harris initially tries to protect the African Revival Moment, he uses the racist Captain Gaffney to interfere with Munch and Pembleton’s investigation. Gaffney, one of the most loathsome characters on the show, is suddenly the one who is telling a suspect to demand a lawyer and leaking the name of the informant to Robinson.

This episode was a strong one all the way around, with Kotto, Andre Braugher, and Roger Robinson all playing proud men who each had their own unique view on how to best deal with the issue of race in Baltimore. (One thing that sets Homicide apart from so many other shows is not just the diversity of the cast but also the diversity of personalities and opinions.) The ending carries a punch. When Giardello says that there will be Hell to pay, you believe him.

1979’s Meteor is about a big rock that is tumbling through space. Earth is directly in its path and, if it hits the planet, it could be an extinction-level event. Unfortunately, little bits of the rock keep breaking off and crashing into Earth, destroying cities and fleeing extras. Goodbye, Hong Kong. Goodbye, Switzerland, which is destroyed via stock footage lifted from Avalanche. Goodbye, New York, which blows up in such spectacular fashion that the scene was later re-used in The Day After.

It might seem like the planet is doomed. The meteor is unstoppable. Bruce Willis hasn’t become a star yet. But fear not! Some of the brightest faces of the 70s have been recruited to stop the meteor. Natalie Wood, in one of her final films, plays a translator and gets covered in muddy river water. Sean Connery wears a turtleneck and curses in that Scottish way of his. Karl Malden wears a hat and tells people to calm down while he calls the President. Brian Keith plays a Russian with all the grace and skill of a cat trying to rip open a bag of treats. Martin Landau is the military official who doesn’t think that the scientist know what they’re talking about. Henry Fonda is the president. That’s a lot of balding men for one movie and it’s hard not to notice that both Malden and Keith often seem to be wearing a hat whenever they share a scene with Connery. My personal theory is that the production, having spent all of their money on blowing up New York, couldn’t afford more than two toupees so everyone had to take turns wearing them. (The few scenes where Malden is hatless while in Connery’s presence are often oddly filmed, with either Connery on Malden standing with their back to the camera, almost as if the scenes were actually done with a stand-in.)

We’re supposed to breathe a sigh of relief when we see that Henry Fonda is playing the President but I’ve seen Fail Safe and I remember him allowing the Russian to nuke New York City. Interestingly enough, New York gets destroyed in this film too. Why didn’t President Fonda care about New York City? Of course, the scientists and the military folks are all located in a control center that’s located under the city. Malden mentions that they’re right next to the Hudson River. It doesn’t seem to occur to anyone that this is a bad idea but, then again, they also elected Henry Fonda president again.

My late friend and colleague Gary Loggins described Meteor as being a “crashing bore.” I have to admit that this is one of the few times that I have ever disagreed with Gary. Meteor is a tremendous amount of fun, as long as you’re watching it with a group of people and nobody takes it seriously. (The first time I saw it was at one in the morning while I was in college. Jeff and I watched it in the lounge of one of the dorms. We may be the only two people to have romantic memories of Meteor.) Meteor features a cast of champion scenery chewers. Karl Malden, Sean Connery, Martin Landau, Brian Keith, none of them were exactly subtle actors and giving them an excuse to argue about how to deal with a meteor allows for a lot of very enjoyable overacting. As well, the special effects are so cheap and obviously fake that it’s hard not to laugh out loud whenever the film cuts to that shot of the meteor rolling through space or the incredibly shiny American and Russian missiles slowly heading towards it.

Meteor’s a lot of fun, even if it is one of those movies where no one points out that our heroes inevitably seem to make every situation worse with their own stupidity. It’s very much at the tail-end of the 70s disaster boom. Watch it for the stars. Watch it for the rock. And watch it for the hairpieces.

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