Homicide Episode Guide: Kaddish

Written by Linda McGibney; story by Julie Martin, James Yoshimura, and Ron Goldstein

Directed by Jean de Segonzac

In one of those odd coincidence that sometimes befall television, a week before this episode originally aired, The X-Files also broadcast an episode titled ‘Kaddish’, which as we learn in this episode is a term for a Jewish prayer made to mourn the loss of someone else. Both episodes dealt with the rituals of Judaism n relationship to a killing but the X-files episode was more interested in the crime. Homicide  cares about the crime, of course, but they are far more interested in the personal details--- this time choosing the underused John Munch.

Munch is using the glibbest and most quick-witted detectives but in this episode he goes through a wrenching personal journey back to his childhood. The victim of the murder is Helen Rosenthal, Munch’s unrequited high school love and investigating the crime he finds himself revisiting his early years, as well as a lot of former classmates and how time has treated all of them. The answer is, not very well. Helen married her high school boyfriend, the quarterback of the football team,  and they had two children,  but rather than forming the perfect couple problems came up. It turns up Mr. Perfect developed a rather serious drinking problem and one day was in accident that killed their son. Helen cut him off cold after that. Later, Helen began to see another classmate, the school bully who ragged on Munch regularly. His life isn’t much better, as he got discharged from the army for an assault, and has a pretty lousy life. He asked Helen to marry him but she turned him down cold.

Ironically, of all the people from high school, Munch seems to have emerged the least damaged—though considering what his personal life has been like, he’s had a lot more problems then he’ll admit.  Munch finds himself revisiting another part of his past--- his religion. We have never seen John acknowledge his faith (probably because he foreswore it a long time ago) but he finds himself picking it up yet again as he witnesses Helen’s daughter go through the process of burying her mother.

Richard Belzer gives arguably his deepest and most layered performance on Homicide  as we find him traversing the territory of past and religion that we have so often seen explored by Andre Braugher (We’ll get to him in a moment) Almost surprisingly, we see that he is more than up to the task as he finds that the girl he cared for so deeply in high school has been treated so cruelly by fate. But the case isn’t just about God, it is about love. The deep, wrenching agonizing feeling that we only feel when we are growing up. He cared very deeply for Helen and watching Belzer try to connect spirituality with the cold, hard facts of murder is painful for him and us. For once, he doesn’t have to go through the experience alone --- Mike Kellerman partners with him and tries to help talk Munch through some of the pain. There’s a sort of chemistry there, and next season the writers would build on it by partnering the two detectives together.

The murder is solved in typical Homicide fashion as well. The killer is not the troubled ex-husband or the spurned boyfriend but rather a complete stranger, a repeat sex offender. Munch is so angered by this he demands to know why the killer murdered Helen but he gets no answer. Whatever peace he hopes for will not come from the solution of the crime.

Frank’s having a bad week too.  We first see him in an intense interrogation with a suspect only to find out minutes later that the killer was a different man. We have never seen Frank so egregiously wrong before and he is shaken  up by this.  Then, in a rare moment of openness, he invites Tim over to his house for dinner, mentioning almost casually that Mary has left him  Here we see that Frank has been so greatly scarred that he is no longer sure of his identity – he’s not a husband, Tim’s partner, or anything else he thought he was. Frank is so clearly rattled that he finds himself going back to church for the first time in three years. Nor is it any church—it is the parish of Sister Magdalena Weber who we met way back in season three.

At that time Frank was no longer sure of God and the sister told him to look for it from his wife. But now Mary is gone, Olivia is gone and there seems to be nothing left to find peace it. The sister tells him to look for it in his job which seems a bad place to look for anything resembling faith. Then the next day he gets a sign (or at least as close to it as he’s likely to find). Called in on the death of an old woman, he finds her lying peacefully in bed with a piece from Ravel playing on the radio. In the context of everything we have seen on Homicide this is a beautiful aberration. And it does mean something--- Frank will begin to partner with Tim again, though their problems won’t be resolved until the end of the year --- or at least as resolved as anything gets on this show.

 Considering all the pain that’s going on, we hardly notice that neither Gee nor Meldrick is anywhere to be found. However, the work of Belzer and Braugher is so impressive that we are prepared to overlook these minor problems. We also get a good look at Munch as a high school student, where’s he pretty much what we expected—geeky, uncoordinated, awkward around women, talks too much. (Interestingly, there’s little evidence of the radical that he would become just a few years later; the atmosphere seems to be more of the late fifties than the sixties, particularly in music.)

At one point while talking to TV Guide, Tom Fontana said that ‘finding God is an ongoing adventure’ In ‘Kaddish’ neither John or Frank find him or much solace in their faith. But they find solace and small signs that he is there in some form, and  in this world, a little is probably all you’ll get. And there is more humanity - and agony - in this single episode than any moment Belzer would get on SVU.

My score: 4.5 stars.