Written by Rafael Alvarez; story by James
Yoshimura & Julie Martin
Directed by Matt Reeves
Homicide's track record with introducing new characters has always been
decidedly hit or miss and that's particularly true with female regulars. Generally
the show's pattern has been that they start out like gangbusters and then as time
goes by they become less significant to the overall plot until they eventually
end up leaving. While there were outside factors in each case, we saw this play
out with Isabella Hoffman as Russert and we've been seeing it playout with
Michelle Forbes's Cox this season.
It would have been easy to assume the same
pattern was going to play out with Callie Thorne's Laura Ballard. Just like Russert she was introduced as a
force of nature in the three part season premiere and has been less of a
presence ever since, barely getting ten minutes of screentime in the four
episodes that followed. But perhaps because they were now facing the certainty
of their star leaving the show and a still uncertain future the writers now
knew they had to build up the new arrivals as forces in their own right.
They've spent much of the first third of the season on Paul Falsone to the
point you might have forgotten that Ballard and Gharty were still there.
All is Bright seeks to rectify this in what is one
of the biggest departures from the pattern. This is the first episode in years
in which the main story features entirely along two detectives who the viewer
has little knowledge of. Gharty has the advantage of having been around a few
episodes over two previous season so we know his character a bit but we don't
know his prowess as a detective and we haven't seen Ballard in action at all.
So there's something of a thrill that when the teaser ends and a name is
written in red under a detective who to this point we've never seen investigate
case as a primary. The result is a tour
de force by Thorne and it confirms that the writers have no intention of
failing Ballard. And though the viewer can't know it yet it's a harbinger of
how well it will do by the various newcomers who will join the unit during the
final seasons.
That is does so in one of the bleakest storylines
the show has done – in a Christmas episode, no less! – is a tribute to how the
series has complete confidence in everything it does even as it's future is
still uncertain going into the end of 1997.
Its entertaining seeing Ballard and Gharty bickering
about how apparently a waitress at Jimmy's mistook them for a married couple. (Considering
how so many partnerships are closer then marriages its harder to argue this.)
Ballard's annoyed about the assumption, Gharty's annoyed that Ballard doesn't
think he's good enough to be married to so Ballard just says they'd be fine together.
Pembleton and Bayliss talk about the darker parts of humanity while driving to
crime scenes, Ballard and Gharty bicker about whether the fact that he spills
gravy on his pants is a disqualifier for a husband.
The victim is Philip Longley, killed as his local
laundromat with a bottle of liquid detergent and he hits the machine on the way
down. Cox actually misses that at the crime scene someone poured bleach down
his throat. This leads to Gharty asking at the morgue: "Anything else in
his system? Drugs, alcohol, fabric softener?" (It was that line, more than
anything, that made me accept Gharty as murder police.) The owner doesn't know
much. She went to get quarters for the machine and when she came back Longley
was dead on the floor.
Longley's parents assume that their son was a
victim of urban crime, but we already know this isn't a robbery. As we'll see
they didn't know their son at all or for that matter, neither did the many
women he was seeing. Gharty handles it with decorum we haven't seen him use so
far this series and he and Ballard get to some part of it.
Philip seems to have been what was then referred
to as ladies' man and now more accurately might be called a 'man-whore'. We see
four different girlfriends, all of whom seemed to be fine just sleeping with
him. And its clear he was whatever each of the women he was sleeping with
wanted him to be. "Pick your
adjective we got it covered," Gharty tells Giardello. Its clear all of
them knew about the other women but none of them had a reason to kill him. Then
we get to the very real motive: Longley was HIV positive.
Its worth noting Longley was aware of his
diagnosis and yet made no effort to tell any of the women he was sleeping with
during this period. Ballard immediately finds this as a reason to hate the
victim and honestly it's hard to blame her.
It's one thing to be a womanizer, it's another to be one who has a fatal
disease that is transmitted sexually and not tell your partners. Gharty immediately
shows his problem saying Longley had AIDS and doesn't want to tell the mother. Tellingly his mother knows and has been keeping
it from her husband, not even planning to tell him if it led to her son dying.
She spent all her savings keeping him alive for the last six years. Gharty actually
has the moral high ground when he points out she also knew of her son's
womanizing. He swore that he used protection and she believed him – except with
Rita Hale who isn't his address book.
There are many extraordinary guest performances
in Season Six and the Emmys was more than generous for once. But Kathryn Erbe's
work as Rita, the woman who was a victim of Philip Longley before he met his
end, is one of the most haunting in the entire series. Considering that during
the 1990s Hollywood was giving a fair amount of awards recognition to those who
played victims of AIDS its surprising that Erbe didn't get nominated. Then
again, maybe it's not. With the sarcomas of the disease all over her face and a
death shawl practically hanging over her, her Rita has all the mark's of
someone dying of AIDS but doesn't wear the cause of victim. Indeed her first
line is of someone who is expecting the cops to show up at her door, who almost
seems more than happy to confess to her crime.
Much of it involves a long monologue by Erbe in
which she tells the detectives the story of who she was before and when she met
Longley. She was practically a virgin, still waitressing, barely out of college
and she fell in love with him because he put maple syrup on his scrambled eggs
like her. Marriage and children were
discussed. Then there was a blood drive.
She learns she's HIV positive. And Phil reveals what we already know. He
played the same line on her with every other woman he's been with. "My
life is over, Detective, I get sicker and sicker. Soon enough I die." The
treatments that are working just fine for the man who infected her are not
doing a damn thing for her. She makes it clear that all the headlines about the
AIDS epidemic being contained are a bad joke as far as she's concerned.
"Their cocktails work for two-thirds of the people who need it. For the
rest of us, it doesn't do jack." She has less than five months to live and
nothing to lose.
She's on the verge of confessing when Ballard
walks out the room with Gharty behind her. Ostensibly its because she doesn't
believe in her condition a woman of Rita's size can do this. Gharty says
"You're angry enough you find the strength." He points out she did
just admit. "He gives her AIDS. She gets sick. He doesn't." Ballard
doesn't want to get the confession out of her.
Gharty keeps pressing her and blows up: "You don't want to go after
her because she's sick." Ballard retaliates: "You want to go after her
for exactly the same reason." Then she loses her ground saying: "You
know what's unfair? What Longley did to her." Gharty then acts like a
grownup (for once) "Let's forget about the disease…and treat her like any
other suspect."
The show also takes a bit more of the shine off
Falsone. The moment he learns Hale has AIDS he's stunned that Kellerman and
Lewis don't seem more bothered and seems determined to get the courthouse. His
excuse is that he's suing for custody of his son and he doesn't want this to be
used against him. But that's a straw man argument and we all know it. The way
he argues against Meldrick saying that you can't get it by breathing the same
air really sounds like the kind of rhetoric you'd hear from an anti-vaxxer.
That immediately afterwards Kellerman confronts him about leaving the Mahoney
file on his desk – and then he starts right up taunting him again – is perhaps
the best explanation why so many fans took a very hostile look at the character
by this point.
The scene in the box between Gharty, Ballard and
Hale is one of the best scenes in the entire season, arguably one of the best interrogation
scenes of the entire series. Considering that at this point the two actresses
had little experience in TV and the other has no experience in the
interrogation room, its striking just how well it holds against any of the scenes
we've seen Braugher and Secor do over the years. What's also clear is the empathy she shares with
the suspect: they're both 29, she broke up with her fiancée in Seattle and
she's dating again.
When they go back in the room Hale almost seems
to enjoy haranguing the detective about the single life: "Always wear a
rubber." She says she should do public service announcements instead of
sitcom stars. (That said her argument about using her as a public service announcement
does foreshadow how some groups have dealt with diseases like lung cancer in
the 21st century.) Eventually Gharty starts leading the conversation
where it needs to go. Finally Hale denies it saying that she was at home sick
as a dog. Ballard tries a sympathetic approach saying that if she explains her
story to a jury it'll be okay. Hale explodes. "Nothing will be OK!"
Both detectives get to the same point. Gharty
thinks she did this because she felt nothing mattered she was still going to
die. Ballard says the killing was justifiable based on Longley's actions.
"So you gather up the last bit of strength that you have and you follow
him to the laundromat."
(I have to tell you when Rita tells you that poor
people are told 'a healthy dose of bleach will clean out the virus', you might
get triggered, )
Her last words on the subject will haunt anyone.
"Philip Longley murdered me. I murdered Philip Longley. Wouldn't you have
done the same?"
Ballard actively pleads with them not to charge
her and Giardello is utterly unsentimental. "Don't we have an infirmary at
the state prison?" He points out Rita Hale committed premeditated murder
and ignores Ballard's attempt to try and argue this is self-defense. He tells
her that in Italy a person with AIDS can't be sent to prison. (Or at least it
was true in 1997.) He tells them of one man who robbed eleven banks in one
summer and each time he was caught and released. Ballard tries to argue that
this is a reason to let Hale go. Gee reminds her this is Baltimore, not Italy.
Ballard storms off and Gharty finds her. He
admits he understands why she did what she did but he doesn't believe she
should get away with it. He's closer in spirit to Pembleton in this case.
Ballard then says that she's worried about all of Longley's girlfriends who
didn't know about his having HIV. So
then they spent the next several hours notifying them of his condition and we
see it play out (see below)
What stops this episode from getting too bleak is
that the B-plot centers on John Munch. Munch has no more use for Christmas now
then he was partnered with Bolander but now he owns a bar and has to get it ready
for Yuletide customers. Now he's
summoning his inner Charlie Brown saying that Christmas is too commercial. His
fellow detectives and Billie Lou are helping him at first but in typical Homicide
fashion one by one he's abandoned.
It is the fact that he's busy cleaning that we
finally meet someone we've never met in five and a half seasons – Munch's own Ghost
of Christmas Past.
Yes its
his first ex-wife Gwen, played by that
fireball of comic energy Carol Kane. In a wonderful touch a performer known for
her brilliant eccentricity a comedienne chooses to turn her panache so low its
practically a straight woman. And that's
because she knows Richard Belzer is the comic star of Homicide and when
you get a chance to use that power you don't get in his way. She can joke with
the best of them but all of them are delivered almost deadpan. She's here for a
sad reason: her mother has died. John can't even bother to mask his unhappiness:
John: She loathed me and I loathed here right
back.
Gwen: She didn't loathe you.
John: She despised me.
Gwen: She didn't despise you.
John: She disliked me?"
(Pause)
Gwen: Okay, maybe loathed is the word.
Munch doesn't know how he can help his
mother-in-law met a horrible end. Gwen's response: "Sorry to disappoint
you." She needs him to plan what she believes will be a very elaborate
funeral.
Gwen's mother was a literary critic of some note
and she is planning a funeral in which she expects everyone she ever reviewed
to show up to pay their respects. (Clearly Gwen has to good a view of both her
mother and critics overall.) Gwen goes through the funeral with starry eyes,
thinking of what an extraordinary life her mother led and so many experiences.
Munch argues she did a number on him and he honestly thinks she did on Gwen.
When Gwen says she likes some of the men she brought home John can't contain
himself: "Briscoe?" The more
he brings it up Gwen tells him to stop the car and she gets out in the middle
of the road, hailing a cab.
The joke, of course, is that Mrs. Munch is buried
to an empty room with only Gwen, a shill that Bernard paid as the deluxe package
and Peter Maas, the author of Serpico and The Valachi Papers, among
others. (Of course he knows David Simon from around.) John immediately tries to
console his ex-wife. "It's not an empty room, there's you…and me…and a
woman crying…" Maas came down from New York to "have a last laugh at
a petty, vindictive, parasitic old hag."
He uses his own prose to illustrate that Gwen's mother was a bitter old
crone who didn't know "good writing if it were tattooed on her forehead." He came to the funeral to make sure the woman
was really, most sincerely dead.
The end of the episode balances all the parts. We
have one of those rarities for Homicide a conversation between two
female characters. I'm not sure it was quite pass the Bechdel Test; they're not
talking about men so much as their fears of the single life. Ballard talks
about her failed engagement without every mentioning the man's name (save to
say he was an idiot) and that while she's cautious, she's not sure she trusts
her own judgment. Cox points out she's no help as she definitely doesn't
trust her own. (We're going to get an example of that in the final minute.)
Their final exchange is about how frequently you should get tested.
The final scene is in the Waterfront where the Yuletide
joy is in full swing. Pembleton has a drink and goes home to be with his
family. Gwen is now in the position of realizing
just what a monster her mother was and John is trying to make his wife feel
better.
And what happened next? Well in the Waterfront
they say Munch's heart grew three sizes that day. He raised his glass and says
one of the sweetest things he'll ever say on the show:
"On this evening a solemn ceremony was held
to convey the remains of Genevieve Talbot. She was a strong woman possessed of
many opinions. She lived life on her own terms. She had a daughter, a beautiful
daughter, who took as her husband a charming if somewhat peculiar man. Genevive
Talbot loved her beautiful daughter and so feared for her happiness that she
did everything she could to discourage this union for the man was hopelessly
peculiar and quite perverse. And the daughter, she was a rare gift, who
deserved much, much better."
And after a season of flirtations and longing on
one part Bayliss gives Cox a Christmas present and the two kiss for the first
time. On some shows this would be a sign for happiness going forward. On this
show…well, that's actually one of the more daring themes of the final season.
To wrap this up I have to tell I have a special place
in my heart for All Is Bright because it's one of the darkest Christmas-set
episodes in all my years of TV viewing. Does that make me peculiar and
perverse? Maybe. But maybe once you've been deluged in twenty-four hours of It's
A Wonderful Life sometimes you want a different kind of Christmas episode. Because
a lot of Christmas's are really like this, with random hookups and bad holiday
experiences. I love 'The Constant' don't get me wrong but there's something to
be said to ringing in the holidays with Blood Makes Noise over a woman getting
tested for HIV. And sometimes we need it
more than we think.
Anyway, Merry Christmas.
NOTES FROM THE BOARD
"Detective Munch": Typically for
Christmas we get to see a lot more of Munch's Jewish side then usual, starting
in the Waterfront. Lewis actually gets the best line: "Hey Munch, you're
gonna make some poor orphan I nice Jewish mother someday.
As you'd expect the best scenes come with Undertaker
Munch who seems determined to mark up the price. John then tells his brother: "When you
were nobody, when you had no connections, when you asked your brother the
Homicide cop to pass around a few business cards to the relatives of those
recently departed, who was there for
you?" Bernard then meekly goes back to his calculator and comes up with a
reduced rate. "You're a real mensch. "
That plus his eulogy at the end really shows the worst
and best parts of him
Mahoney PTSD: Kellerman gets back to the squad
and finds pictures of Luther Mahoney on Falsone's desk. It's almost as if
Falsone is openly taunting him now. He confesses to Juliana he has yet to tell Lewis
or Stivers about what Georgia Rae has on him. Kellerman is dodging it, saying
he's waiting until after Christmas. Juliana tells him to man up. When he does
tell Meldrick at the end of the episode he tries to assure Lewis that even if
Georgia Rae has a videotape we don't know what's on it. Lewis doesn't bother
with this: "We know what's on it. Kellerman ices dealer. News at
eleven." Kellerman tries to tell the story on the official report and
Lewis makes it very clear that this he's not buying that either.
Continuity Error: When Munch goes to SVU we'll
eventually see Gwen and she seems to have lapsed into some kind of mental
condition, either bipolar or schizoid-effective. There's no real evidence of it
during this episode, though her outburst might be a precursor of a condition
that developed later. (There was a lapse of nearly a decade between that
appearance and this one.)
FUTURE INMATE: Kathryn Erbe already had a decent
resume having starred in What About Bob, the sequel to The Mighty Ducks and the
Nicolas Cage film noir Kiss of Death. Then after this role Tom Fontana would
cast her as Shirley Bellinger, the Susan Smith type killer who spent the better
part of three seasons as the only woman on OZ waiting on Death Row before being
hung. It was one of the most memorable stints on this series.
Immediately after her character was killed off
she would be cast as Detective Eames on Law & Order: CI. (And in the way
episode are aired 'All Is bright' aired immediately after The Subway, which
meant if you watch Homicide that December you saw the two main leads of that
show and didn't know it.) She was so focused on that she did nothing else
during its run and has done relatively little for awhile afterwards. But by
2017 she was acting more regularly playing Kay Ambrose on Season 1 of The
Sinner, Jacqueline on Season 4 of How to Get Away With Murder (Jimmy Smits'
ex-wife) and has since been seen on Pose, Instinct, The Good Fight, The
Blacklist and had a recurring role on the series City on A Hill. Her last role
was in the Emmy nominated Black Rabbit,
Hey, Isn't That…Carol Kane broke into Hollywood
in the 1970s starring in small roles in such seminal films as Carnal Knowledge,
The Last Detail and Annie Hall. She was nominated for Best Actress for playing
Giti in Hester Street in 1975. She would start in such cult films as When A
Stranger Calls and La Sabina before finally breaking out as Simka, the girlfriend
and future wife of Latka on Taxi. She is best known to millions for playing
Valerie ("I'm not a witch, I'm your wife)in The Princess Bride and the Ghost
of Christmas Present in Scrooged.
Let's focus on TV for the rest of this. She
played Aunt Sylvia on the Emmy winning Brooklyn Bridge and received an Emmy
nomination for playing Marguerite Birch on Chicago Hope in 1995. She had the
role of Annie in the one season show Pearl, LL on the Showtime critical hit
Beggars and Chooser's, would play the Penguin's mother on Gotham and Lillian on Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. She
PLAYED Bianca on Los Espookys, Mindy Markowitz on Hunters and is currently
playing Pelia on Strange New Worlds. I could tell you about her voice work but
that's another page.
By the way you'll blink if you miss her but Jenny
is played by Rhea Seehorn in what was her first screen role. Her career for the
next fifteen years was not that great. She was a regular on one season comedies
like 'I'm With Her' an even more
short-lived series The Singles Table, a role on The Starter Wife and played
Roxanne on Whitney for three season, and the recurring role of Ellen on Franklin
& Bash.
All of which is to say if you never heard of her
before she was cast as Kim Wexler its not your fault. Vince Gilligan seeing
something in her as Kim is just as remarkable as what he saw in Bryan Cranston
and Bob Odenkirk.
Oh and in case you were wondering…yes the Matt
Reeves who directed this episode is THAT Matt Reeves. He was a TV director for shows
like Felicity and Homicide before he managed to direct Cloverfield. After that
came the Andy Serkis led Planet of the Apes franchise and now Batman. It's not
just great actors that get their start in TV.
