Homicide Revisited
Over the past few months, I’ve been re-watching Homicide: Life on the Street, the classic low-rated show about the humdrum lives of Baltimore homicide detectives. I was primarily inspired to do this when I found myself unable to wait a full week for The Wire’s final seasons. I had just re-watched the first four seasons in anticipation of its fifth and final season, so what else to do but revisit its spiritual cousin.
I don’t want to use the word “mistake” to describe the experience, but it’s certainly shattered my fond (and vague) memories of the show. It’s actually been beneficial in illustrating the many ways networks compromise a series’ artistic and intellectual ambitions for the sake of sensationalism and ratings. This isn’t exactly a new thing, obviously, and I suppose some credit must be given to NBC for tinkering with the show rather than simply canceling it.
The first two seasons — and many episodes from the show’s third season — take the bold stance that the life of a homicide detective is boring, repetitive, and draining on the soul. They establish a cross-section of young detectives and old-timers, black and white, men and women, and use these characters to imply bleak things like, “You want to see Pembleton in 20 years? Take a look at Bolander.”
One first-season episode takes place entirely in the squad room. No murders happen; no cases are solved. Hell, only one case is even discussed, and even then only peripherally. It’s just these people, hanging out, allowing us to get to know and understand them. In some series, that isn’t abnormal; in a cop show…well, let’s just say sitting around listening to existential malaise and debating the merits of classic rock over country music shine a light on why the series wasn’t exactly a ratings winner.
Another episode concentrates the bulk of its action to the interrogation room — The Box — as Pembleton and Bayliss attempt to get a confession out of an elderly arabber* suspected of raping and murdering a little girl. It’s just three characters, going around and around, with the detectives realizing they aren’t getting anywhere. Credit the writers for turning these little plays, which could be both tedious and hackneyed, into taut hours of television.
No, they saved “tedious and hackneyed” for the fourth season. Okay, that was a cheap shot, but there is a near-instant drop in quality that starts in the fourth season. With a few notable exceptions, the show turns into…every other cop show on TV. Suddenly, this noble tribe of detectives are battling ruthless serial killers on an almost-weekly basis, we’re treated to lingering shots of the more-gruesome-than-before corpses, cops are getting involved in fistfights (or worse, gunfights) with suspects for no reason other than action. The characters’ depressed, existential rants form an uneasy marriage with an emphasis on ripped-from-the-headlines violence and cop-show clichés, morphing from Homicide: Life on the Street into Law & Order: Baltimore.
And then I hit the wall: Frank Pembleton’s stroke moment.
In its initial run, I clearly stopped watching the show at some point in the third season, probably when I lost track of it in the time-slot shuffle, and I’m not a big fan of spoilers, even of 10-year-old shows. I didn’t see it coming, and yet I suspect upon watching it: this is the definitive jump-the-shark moment.
“Jumping the shark” is a phrase I’ve kinda learned to loathe. Everywhere you go, people toss that phrase around like it means something. Maybe that’s what I’m doing right now, because the “jump-the-shark” moment is usually something that can’t be identified until long after a series has ended. What if Happy Days, after Fonzie had jumped that shark, had gotten better and better? What if Ron Howard leaving and Ted McGinley joining hadn’t affected the show at all? It could have just as easily been like Diane getting replaced with Rebecca on Cheers (or even Woody replacing Coach). You can’t say (though many did) that “the Tailies” showing up on Lost is its jump-the-shark moment, because maybe Ana-Lucia was annoying, but nobody could know her presence on the show or the distraction from the main story would cause a huge quality decline, just as you couldn’t have known the writers would cut these storylines short after negative fan reaction.
Considering the slow degrade of Homicide over the course of the fourth season, maybe it’s already jumped the shark — maybe getting rid of Bolander and Felton was the first bad move. Maybe promoting Howard to sergeant did it. I haven’t watched the last three seasons, so I can’t really be certain. I just have a feeling, after this stroke incident, the show isn’t going to improve. Andre Braugher’s a tremendous actor who could most certainly manage the complexities of a once-brilliant detective hobbled both mentally and physically. Will the writing match the performance?
I guess time will tell. This storyline could give the show a shot in the arm and return it to compelling television. Maybe NBC, once they buried it in the Friday night dead zone, stopped giving a shit about trying to boost the ratings and just let it be what it is.
I have doubts, but it’ll be nice if this move doesn’t totally ruin the show.
*One of the many joys of watching this series and The Wire is learning the colloquialisms and customs of a city. Both of these shows revel in Baltimore and its eccentricities, building a sense of place few series match. An arabber (or A-rab, depending on which neighborhood you come from) is Baltimore slang for street peddlers who use horse-drawn carts. [Back]
Posted by Stan on March 30, 2008 2:41 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Reviews | Digg It
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