Homicide Episode Guide: Dead End

Written by Jorge Zamacona and Julie Martin; story by James Yoshimura

Directed by Whitney Rasnick

            The second episode in the ‘police shooting’ three parter moves a little slower than the previous episode. This, too, is standard ‘Homicide’ behavior.  Half of a cops life is spent on stakeouts or waiting for suspects to reappear. For the first half of ‘Dead End’ comparatively little happens. 

            That doesn’t mean that  there isn’t some great stuff. We continue o see more into the makeup of Bayliss and Pembleton. Showing some rookie tendencies even now, Tim tries to think positively and hope that his friends are OK. Pembleton is the realist. He knows that they could die but that he can do nothing about it. The only thing he can do is catch their shooter. The single-mindedness that we see in Frank continues to permeate and will not hit him until the next episode.

            Things actually are going better for the detectives. Felton  is feeling pain his foot and shoulder but he is doing  better physically. Emotionally, he’s going through some pretty dark territory. First, he has finally come to the realization that he and his wife no longer love each other---  a particularly sad one considering all the effort he put into finding her. He is also feeling guilty about the possibility that his partner might die and that he can do nothing to help it. Daniel Baldwin does some fine work in his scenes but his finest moment comes near the end when he visits Kay’s room for the first time. The look on his face as he traveled down the hall--- that was a great job.

            Even though Bolander and Howard are still in critical condition (and therefore absent from the screen for most of the show) we still get a sense of their presence. In particular, we learn a lot more about Bolander’s relationships with his partners. Mitch claims that he and Stan got along so well that they took vacations together and had great fun --- something that he has never done with Munch. Eventually Mitch confesses that they had a great deal of difficulty getting along outside the job. But despite this both men clearly care for him (though they don’t say it).

            We also meet Margie, Stan’s often spoken off but never seen ex-wife.  For all the coldness Bolander accused her of having, she seems a personable middle-aged woman who is afraid of losing her husband but its nervous about seeing him.

            During this episode, the police slowly circle the nets around Glenn Holton. We learn some more about pedophilia and learn some surprising things. Holton has a girlfriend--- or at least someone who cares enough about him to risk collecting his pornography stash.

            We also see some new faces. For the first time, we see QRT (Quick Response Team)  the police involved in dealing with big crisis. Led by Lieutenant Jasper (played by real-life Baltimore Homicide police commander Gary D’Addrio) they have there own sense of pride and confidence in their abilities. Inevitably, he and Pembleton clash on how to surveil and capture Holton in the shipyard where they finally catch him. This isn’t just Frank’s fault; as we’ll see Jaspers doesn’t get along with anybody from Homicide.

            And having spent enough time supporting the detectives the bosses decide they must look for a scapegoat. Granger and Barnfather  manipulate Russert into investigating her fellow shift commander and assigning blame for his signing the arrest warrant which (as we learned in the previous episode) had the wrong apartment number on it. At first Giardello is enraged at the lack of support. However, because he is the kind of man that he is, he takes the heat from the bosses. This time, however, Russert rushes to his defense revealing her loyalties to the job. Oddly enough Barnfather takes his rebuke quietly in a rare moment of compassion.

            But there are more serious problems ahead for everybody. Bayliss and Pembleton interrogate Holton on both the shootings and the murder he did commit. Playing to his sense of fear of what will happen to him, he ‘cops to the shooting--- only to ‘confess’ that he is actually not the shooter. The police have been chasing the wrong man; the investigation is back to square one.

            Few TV shows would dare devote more than twenty minutes, let alone two episodes to going after an attempted police killer and end up chasing the wrong man. But this is how ‘Homicide’ is different. Nothing has been gained by the end of ‘Dead End’--- the policed have no clear  idea who the shooter is, Bolander and Howard are still in critical condition--- but we feel the enormous impact of nevertheless. This is what lets what could have been a cops and criminal chase into something as effective and strong as this episode is. This is powerful stuff.

My score: 4.5 stars.