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, we discover that Daniel Baldwin will not be returning to Homicide.

Episode 5.21 “Partners and Other Strangers”

(Dir by Leslie Libman and Larry Williams, originally aired on May 9th, 1997)

A call to investigate what appears to be a suicide leads Pembleton and Brodie to an isolated house in Baltimore.  The dead man has been found with a shotgun in his hands and his face blown apart.  It’s not until Pembleton looks at the dead man’s ID that he discovers that the man is former Detective Beau Felton.

Played by Daniel Baldwin, Felton was originally a major character on Homicide.  He was the cynical, sweaty detective who had an affair with Megan Russert, a partnership with Kay Howard, and a marriage with a crazy woman who wouldn’t let him see his kids.  Felton is the one who Robin Williams yelled at for being an insensitive ass in the Bop Gun episode.  As the series progressed and the focus shifted from characters like Felton and Bolander to Pembleton and Bayliss, Felton was given less and less too.  Daniel Baldwin was fired from the series at the end of season 3.  Felton was said to have been suspended for his rowdy behavior at a convention.

The episode fills us in on what happened to Felton after his suspension.  He apparently retired from the force and then stopped returning phone calls.  He disappeared and everyone else moved on.  At first, the squad room wonders if they could have done anything to prevent Felton’s suicide.  Howard and Lewis (who lost his previous partner to suicide and who nearly lost Kellerman to the same thing) are especially hit hard.  We get several flashbacks to the episodes that featured Felton and we’re reminded of just how much Daniel Baldwin used to sweat when he was on the show.

Dr. Cox takes a look at the skull fragments and the blood splatter and she realizes that Felton didn’t kill himself.  He was shot in the back of the head and then someone tried to make it look like he committed suicide.  Pembleton, Howard, and Bayliss are now investigating the murder of Beau Felton and they’re getting some help.

Megan Russert flies in from France to offer up her skills as an investigator.  If I remember correctly, Russert was never that good of a detective but it’s nice that she showed up.

Detective Paul Falsone (Jon Seda), from the auto theft squad, says that Felton was working with a notorious group of car thieves.  Falsone wants to help the investigation for …. reasons, I guess.

Finally, Detective Stuart Gharty (Peter Gerety) shows up.  When we last saw Gharty, he was a decorated cop who was too scared to enter an apartment building to help out one of his fellow officers.  Now, Gharty is working for Internal Affairs.  He reveals to Giardello that Felton was working undercover and he was helping to uncover a crooked cop in the department.  Colonel Barnfather announces that Gharty is going to work with Homicide on the Felton case.

Even if I didn’t already know that Falsone and Gharty are going to become regular characters during season six, it would be obvious from the introductions they’re given in this episode.  Peter Gerety, who later played a sympathetic judge on The Wire, is fine in the role of Gharty.  But I can already tell that Falsone is going to annoy me.  Some of it is because his character is the type of cliche that Homicide has, to this point, avoided.  He’s a young rebel who gets results …. HIS WAY!  From the minute he shows up, he’s telling Howard and Pembleton how they should conduct their investigation and it’s kind of annoying.  I mean, who the Hell is this jerk?  As played by Jon Seda, Falsone mumbles the majority of his dialogue and he just doesn’t seem like he belongs on Homicide.

This is a two-parter so we’ll see how the investigation wraps up (or doesn’t) next week.  Oddly, I have to admit that Felton’s death didn’t really have the type of emotional impact that the show seemed to think that it would.  Unlike the lovably eccentric Crosetti, Felton was never really that interesting of a character.  Far more impactful than the squadroom thinking about all of the times Felton acted like a jerk was the scene where Pembleton followed Bayliss to his uncle’s home.  Later, Pembleton told Bayliss that he now understood why Bayliss has been missing work.  In the past, this would have led to a fight between the two of them but both Bayliss and Pembleton have grown over the season.  Pembleton apologizes for following Bayliss.  (“I’m a detective.  It’s what I do.”)  Bayliss opens up about how he’s struggling with the concept of forgiveness.  As always, the show’s heart is with Bayliss and Pembleton.

Next week, season 5 comes to an end!