Written by Henry Bromell
Directed by Whit Stillman
As I have mentioned previously, one of the reasons
Homicide was such a brilliant show was because of how
it dealt with that most painful of emotions: grief. Considering how well they
had handled the feeling in such brilliant episodes as ‘Every Mother’s Son’ or
‘A Doll’s Eyes’, you wouldn’t think there were any more that they could mine
from this subject. ’Heart of a Saturday Night’ proves them wrong.
Once again we see the effect of murder on the
bereaved. This time, however, we see it from a different angle: the way that
those left behind try to deal with their emotions. In this case, writer Henry Bromell shows a
group therapy session for the survivors of three recent murders, which all took
place on the same Saturday night. In a homage to the shows old look, all of the
present-day therapy sessions are filmed in harsh decolorized images, while the
flashbacks to the Homicide Squad are all in full color. The bleached-out look
fits the therapy session— a vital part of their lives has been drained from it,
never to return.
The survivors are four very different people--- a
young accountant whose wife was killed in a carjacking, a young woman whose
husband died in a bar brawl, and the very late middle-aged parents of a wild teenager who was raped and
strangled. All are dealing with their grief differently but some emotions are
common to all of them. They are all angry but their anger is directed as
different people. The husband’s anger is directed towards the killer who was
never caught. The parents of the teenager are angry at each other--- both of
them still have very divergent views of their daughter. The wife is angry at
her dead husband--- he was a pretty lousy person who she was working up the
courage to leave, but now will never be able to. They are also feeling an
intense pain that will never truly end, and whether or not the killer was
caught, or if they had people to support them, they may never be able to find
peace.
The detectives at the squad are all feeling their own
kind of pain. Pembleton and Kellerman are still chained to their desks and are
going through the agony pf being treated as furniture. You’d think that this
link would bond them but Frank, as we all know, doesn’t bond. Mike takes some
of his frustration out on Frank and says some pretty mean things, but in the
end the two form a kind of fragile bond dealing with their problems.
Lewis and Munch have their own set of problems. The
carjacking case is a dud and they both know it, and they spend much of their
investigation looking for the victim’s three year old who was in the car when
it was taking. In a rare moment of kindness the baby is alive. But there are
even worse problems ahead for them--- the bar brawl that led to the second
death took place in the Waterfront.
Another man going through his own kind of agony is
Lieutenant
Giardello. For reasons
that are not initially clear, he assigns himself to investigation the bar brawl
rather than Howard. Through his own
persistence, he manages to close the murder. When Howard asks him why, he went
to such trouble, he tells her that he is still feeling guilty for killing a man
when he went out on the street in last season’s ‘The Wedding’. For him this is
his way of proving to himself that he is still good police. However, it is
clear that even this success will never take the sting away.
Frank is also trying to prove he’s still got it. Even
though he is stuck to his desk, he helps Bayliss identify the third victim.
Then, through a thorough interview with the kids who found the body, he manages
to track down the man who killed her. Frank still isn’t all the way back but
he’s getting there, step by step.
But without question, the most shocking revelation
occurs with Dr. Cox
when she appears at the
same therapy session as the other survivors.
It turns out that her father’s death was not from the result of an
illness. In fact, he was the victim of a car accident when an aggressive and
unidentified driver forced him off the road. Considering how long he lingered
after the accident, it’s a little hard to believe that his death was a ‘murder’
but no matter what you call it, there is no doubt that Cox is still in a lot of
pain. Of all the survivors, she has found the best way of dealing with her loss
through her kind of detachment as an M.E. But, as we will find out soon, this
detachment costs her a great deal and makes her react in ways that are not
always healthy.
Even for an episode of Homicide, this episode requires that a great deal of attention must
be paid. By switching between flashbacks and current events, the viewers have
to work hard to understand what is going on. It is a credit to the show that
Bromell believed that this was something that the average viewer, often
demeaned by other television shows, could manage to do. The directors of Homicide often have difficult tasks, and
it is due to the fine work of Whit Stillman, director of critically
acclaimed, low budget films such as Metropolitan
and Barcelona that have the same kind of emotions and thoughtfulness of
Homicide. The guest actors are also up to the material, particularly Rosanna
Arquette and Chris Eigeman, two of the more underrated actors in Hollywood
‘The Heart of a Saturday Night’ ultimately doesn’t
have the same emotional impact such as ‘Bop Gun’ or ‘Every Mother’s Son’,
mainly because the action follows so many different plots that the ultimate
effect very slightly reduces the emotional impact. But the pain for all of the
survivors is real, and it comes through the screen loud and clear. Grief does
not go away, whether or not there is closure, whether or not you have someone
to support you. And some scars from emotional damage never go away.
My score: 4.5 stars.
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