Life and Death In Charm City: Intro, Part 2

Because Homicide  was very different from any police procedural that had come before. For one thing, there was the quality of the acting. It wasn’t the kind of show that relied on famous faces, though a few would show up. Most of them were character actors who would become famous later. (The few exceptions were often comedians, which we will deal with as well.)And keeping in with the fact that Baltimore is one of the blackest cities in America, many of them were black. In an industry which is known for featuring white actors and for a white audience, this was exceptional. The show would also quite frequently deal with race  without being obvious, something which few shows even attempt, let alone successfully pull off

            The show was also notable in its camerawork. Even the casual fan of the show would note it’s effective use of jump-cuts and camera movement, often imitated but rarely as effectively. Equally notable  (especially in the early years) was the bleached out look of the show. Some shows like The X-Files are notable for being ’dark’; Homicide looked pale.  The show would also in its later seasons , be noted for its use of songs as background music. This too been done in other shows, but rarely to the same effect.

            Just as important was the use of  recollection. Most TV shows feature characters who don’t remember things that happened in the previous episode, let alone later. Homicide had a long memory .Events that happened in the squad would have reverberations that people would remember not just over the season but for years afterward. These memories and experiences would help shape the character, and in a medium when any change in characters is consider bad, this was exceptional.

            The show also had something that very few police shows have: a sense of humor.  Perhaps it was because the detectives dealt with death every day that needed some kind of defense, but the show had a dry wit. And frequently the wit would come from the crime and the criminals themselves. This infusion of comedy into drama was rather daring, though later shows like Buffy The Vampire Slayer  and The West Wing would turn it into an art. Comedians would be used frequently over the show’s run, often to surprising dramatic effect.

            The show was also adult, but not for the usual reasons. There wasn’t a lot of sex and what there was almost never went into the bedrooms of the detectives.

Unlike NYPD Blue, a contemporary show, detectives did not become involved with other detectives (at least not until near the shows conclusion). Most of the romance (what there was of it)happened off-screen. There was also very little on-screen violence; it became clear very early in the shows run that the detectives would  rarely pull their guns much less fire them. The show was for mature audiences because it dealt with mature issues. The most obvious one was murder but they  also included racism, sexual assault, child abuse, loyalty (particularly loyalty to  fellow policemen.) And the drug market. Baltimore is mired very deep in the world of heroin trafficking. Most crimes in Baltimore involve drugs in some form. They are the cause and effect of most murders. Simon would be drawn to this world of drugs and eventually write another book and create another TV series based on the war on drugs. In this series, however, stories about drugs were frequently and subtly told. And unlike many police dramas, the messages would not be telegraphed but subtly written.

            Finally, there were the portrayals of the detectives themselves. These were not heroes or invincible warriors. No, these were flawed (sometimes deeply) human beings who sometimes would have to bend the rules in order to close the case. They didn’t  believe in the integrity of the criminal justice system because they knew how it worked.  This is not a world where every crime has the same value. Even though when were dead were all the same, sometimes how we die is more important. These are hard lessons and we learned them a lot. And the men who were in charge of these squads were undeserving of their position and how they used rank to the detriment of some of the characters

            All  of the moral issues that Homicide would deal with made it a great drama. Combined with the high quality of the direction, acting and writing and you had a TV show that may have been the best program of the 1990’s.

During the course of these reviews, we will examine some of the investigations that the show would deal with along with how the characters were affected. We will see how closely to the parameters of the book Fontana and Yoshimura and the rest would stay--- and when they began to stray from it. We will see how the characters would evolve--- and how they stayed the same.