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, no one’s innocent.

Episode 2.2 “See No Evil”

(Dir by Christopher Menual, originally aired on January 13th, 1994)

Watch out!  Stanley Bolander’s whining about his divorce again!

Ned Beatty was one of the great character actors and he is certainly convincing in the role of Stanley Bolander, the veteran Baltimore homicide detective who has seen the worst that humanity has to offer and who spends most of his time annoyed with his partner, John Munch.  But, as good as Beatty is, I still groan whenever Bolander starts to talk about his ex-wife and his divorce.  His bitterness was a recurring theme during the first season.  It was annoying but it was understandable because the divorce was still recent.

But now, we’ve started the second season.  It’s time move on, Big Man!

This episode finds Bolander very reluctantly taking part in sensitivity training.  He avoids meeting with Dr. Carrie Weston (Jennifer Mendenhall) until Giardello threatens to suspend him without pay.  Bolander is stunned when Dr. Weston turns out to be sympathetic to his anger over his divorce.  Bolander ever tries to ask Dr. Weston out, just for Weston to inform him that she’s just gotten out of a bad relationship and that she believes “birds of a feather should flock together” and, speaking of birds, did you know that there are lesbian seagulls?  Bolander gets the hint.  Myself, I would probably lie about being a lesbian just to get out of having to spend any more time listening to him cry about his divorce.

Far more interesting than Bolander’s angst were the two cases at the center of this week’s episode.  Chuckie Prentice (Michael Chaban) shoots his dying father (played, in a powerful and intimidating performance, by Wilford Brimley) in the head.  Though Chuckie claims that his father committed suicide, Lewis has his doubts and takes Chuckie to the station for interrogation.  Detective Beau Felton just happens to be Chuckie’s best friend and, after Chuckie tells him that his father specifically asked to be put out of his misery, Felton tries to convince Lewis to say that the shooting actually was a suicide.  At first, Lewis refuses but eventually, he agrees to look the other way while Felton takes Chuckie to wash his hands and destroy any evidence of gunpowder residue on his skin.  Without any definite evidence proving the he fired the gun, Chuckie is free to go and his father’s death is ruled a suicide.

This was a powerful story and it was all the more effective because it refused to come down on one side or the other.  Both Felton and Lewis presented their positions well and the episode ended not on a note of triumph but on a note of weary resignation.  Chuckie is free to go on with his life and his father is no longer in pain but Lewis is going to be haunted by his decision to allow evidence to be destroyed.  Personally, I’m against assisted suicide and I felt it was selfish for Chuckie’s father to ask Chuckie to pull the trigger.  But, having spent the previous few months trying to come to terms with my own father’s passing, I could understand what Chuckie was feeling.  There really are no easy answers.

As for the other case, it involved the shooting of a drug dealer.  The dealer was shot in the back.  A patrolman claimed that he slipped and his gun accidentally fired during the pursuit of the dealer.  Pembleton had his doubts about whether the shooting was really an accident or a case of police brutality.  Even after Giardello warned him that pursuing the case would turn “brother against brother” in the police force, Pembleton insisted on asking every police officer on the scene to turn in their guns for testing.  “You son of a bitch, Pembleton,” Giardello muttered.

And again, this was a storyline that worked because it refused to present an easy solution.  The dead man was a criminal and he was shot while fleeing the cops.  Even though the cop that slipped was eventually cleared of having fired the shot that killed the dealer, it was obvious that the shot did come from a cop.  Pembleton, with his black-and-white view of his job, was determined to find the truth, regardless of the professional consequences.  Giardello, with years more experience than Pembleton, spoke from the heart when he told Pembleton that investigating the case would bring harm not just to the cop who shot the dealer but to every cop working the streets, regardless of whether they were involved or not.  Felton could convince Lewis to look the other way.  Pembleton was not willing to do the same thing.

It was a strong episode, even with all of Bolander’s nonsense.  Perfectly acted, morally ambiguous, and fiercely intelligent, this is an episode that I’ll be thinking about for a while.