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 have one of Homicide’s best episodes.

Episode 5.3 “Prison Riot”

(Dir by Kenneth Fink, originally aired on October 18th, 1996)

At the Maryland State Prison, convicted murderer Claude Vetter (Mark Rogers) accidentally bumps into another murderer, James Douglas (Tim McAdams), in the cafeteria.  James pulls a knife and stabs Vetter in the stomach.  As Vetter collapses, a riot breaks out.  By the time the guards have forcefully restored order, Vetter and James Douglas are dead.  Everyone knows who killed Vetter.  But who stabbed James in the back?

Lewis, Munch, Howard, Bayliss, Kellerman and Giardello head down to the scene.  (Pembleton, who is still struggling with his up-coming shooting test, is left behind.)  Munch and Lewis don’t care about solving Douglas’s murder.  As far as they’re concerned, both Claude Vetter and James Douglas got what they deserved.  Munch gets annoyed and returns to the station.  Lewis sticks around to help Bayliss with a few interrogations before he also leaves.  Bayliss, however, is determined to solve the murder of James Douglas and Kellerman, looking to make up all the ill will that has existed between him and Bayliss, does his best to help.

Bayliss is convinced that Elijah Sanborn (Charles S. Dutton) saw who killed James.  Sanborn is serving a life sentence for shooting a drug dealer who previously shot and killed Elijah’s wife in drive-by.  (Elijah’s wife was an innocent bystander.)  Elijah has been in prison for 14 years.  He’s never getting out and he sees no reason why he should help the police.  However, when Elijah’s 14 year-old son is arrested for a petty theft, Bayliss offers a deal.  If Elijah tells Bayliss who killed James Douglas, Elijah’s son will only do 6 months at a juvenile facility.  If Elijah refuses to talk, his son will be charged as an adult.

Elijah is outraged that Bayliss would “use my own son against me!”  It’s only after his estranged daughter (Heather Alicia Simms, giving a wonderful performance) visits that Elijah agrees to share what he knows.  He has one condition.  He wants to see his son.  When Elijah’s son turns out to be a sullen and uncommunicative wannabe gangster who tells his father that he doesn’t care about him, Elijah announces, “I killed James Douglas.”

Bayliss knows that Elijah is lying but he also knows that Elijah’s confession is enough to send him to the gas chamber.  With no prospects of ever walking free and having been rejected by both his daughter and his son, Elijah has decided to use the system to kill himself.

Fortunately — or unfortunately, depending on how you look at things, another prisoner, Tom Marans (Dean Winters), beats Trevor Douglas (John Epps) into a coma.  Trevor was James’s cousin and Marans reveals that Trevor is also the one who killed James because he thought James had stolen a carton of cigarettes from him.  Marans explains that he was James’s “wife” in prison.

As the episode ends, Giardello congratulates Bayliss before adding that it’ll only be a matter of time before Trevor’s people seek revenge and they all have to return to the prison to investigate the murder of Tom Marans.

This was a great episode.  After spending the past few seasons as Pembleton’s sidekick, Bayliss finally got a chance to step up and show off his own abilities as a homicide detective.  Kellerman assisting him turned out to be an inspired move, as it allowed Kellerman to finally be something more than just a kind of goofy frat boy detective.  Working together, Kyle Secor and Reed Diamond had great comedic timing, which kept this rather grim episode from getting too dark.  (Kellerman: “Do you want a hug?”  Bayliss: “Do you and Lewis often hug?”)

One thing that made this episode interesting was that the victims, the suspects, and most of the witnesses were all murderers who were previously arrested on this show.  It was interesting to see how prison had changed or, in some cases, not changed them.  The once preppy Tom Marans now had bright yellow hair, scarred knuckles, and some really nasty facial sores.  Meanwhile, James and Trevor Douglas were still the same punks that they were on the outside, when they used to film themselves committing murder.

Finally, what made this episode truly powerful was the performance of Charles S. Dutton.  A Baltimore native who served time in prison before becoming an acclaimed stage actor, Dutton has not always been served well by television and the movies.  He’s very much a theatrical actor and, when cast in the wrong role, he can come across as being a bit over-the-top.  In this episode, though, Dutton is perfectly cast and he gives a truly moving performance of as an inherently decent man who does what he has to do in order to survive as a prisoner in a system that has been constructed specifically to break and destroy him.  Elijah’s fury feels earned and deserved but, in the end, he’s ultimately just a father who wants things to be better for his son and his daughter.  When Elijah’s son rejected him, it was one of Homicide’s most heart-breaking moments.

Prison Riot has a reputation for being one of Homicide’s best episodes.  The reputation is very much deserved.