Homicide Episode Guide: A Case of Do Or Die

Written by Anya Epstein

Directed by Tim Van Patten

One of the more annoying habits of NBC's programmers attitude towards Homicide is that they would frequently switch the order of episodes so that more 'sensational' cases could air out of order. This might work for CSI or Law & Order, but for a character based drama, it was demeaning. The executives had mostly quit doing by this point in  the series run, but in the case of the first episode scheduled to air in 1999, they shifted it nearly five weeks into the season. It's almost understandable, though, as the main story was one of the darker ones in the series run, even though we don't know what happened.

A woman goes out walking her dog, and falls to her death. While the cause is clear, the circumstances are hard to fathom. Did she just fall? Was she pushed? Or did she commit suicide? What makes it even harder to determine this is the fact that the woman died the day before her wedding. The devastation and grief are horrible, particularly in one of the more saddening scenes, as the detective have to go to the church to tell the wedding guest why there will be no wedding. The case also gnaws at Ballard in a way that so many drug murders do not, particular because the longer the investigation goes on, the more ambiguous the circumstances become. There are no clear suspects and no clear motives. The only possibility for a suspect is that she may have been attacked by a robber, but when they finally capture the stick-up artist, its clear he couldn't have committed the crime. The desperation for any kind of clarity forces the detectives to look at a painting the victim made to try and determine whether a silhouette in the picture was flying or falling.

Homicide traditionally has been a show all about ambiguity. In this case, the ambiguity is so maddening because this was a woman who had every reason to live, and yet may not have been able to deal with the realties of her situation. And as a result, those left behind are left to deal with her absence. But at least when someone is murdered, there can at least be an explanation, and perhaps some peace. Here, the family is left in ruin because there is no explanation. Dan Futterman, a TV actor and future Oscar-nominated screenwriter for Capote, gives a memorable performance as a fiance who can't accept his loss, and may never be able to move on. A very young Amy Ryan also gives a memorable stint as the sister of victim, who now has to deal with the fact that her sister may have been trying to tell her something that she couldn't hear. And Callie Thorne gives her moat emotional performance after half a season of looking generally unflattering work this year, as a detective torn up by a woman whose life so clearly mirrors her own. We don't learn the obvious connection until the end of the episode. We've known that Ballard ended an engagement, but we haven't really learned how hard that was emotionally. It plays through the episode solidly.

The darkness so oppressive that we desperately need comedy, and fortunately for us, the secondary story gives to us in spades. Mike Giardello and Sheppard catch a suspicious death at a vintage Baltimore theater, where the victim seemed to have suffered a heart attack. Then we learned that at these midnight showings, the victim talked through the movie loudly and incessantly. As Munch puts it, for all the reasons to kill a man, "talking during the movies is the most reasonable." Then we learn the victim had overdosed on sleeping pills. And then we find out the manager of the theater (in a wonderful bit by Wallace Shawn) was understandably aggravated by the fact that this customer talked through every movie he came to, upsetting the customers and causing the theater to start losing business. (Apparently the victim was played by an actual Baltimore film critic. I'm not sure if he worked for the Sun.) Out of desperation, the manager put sleeping pills in his popcorn butter. Detective Sheppard seems almost apologetic when she has to put the cuffs on him. We can even forgive the overly done Casablanca references because, frankly, they make the story even funnier.  It's old school humor which, frankly, the series has been missing for quite some time.

The episode also features an interesting sidebar. Charisse, Al's beloved oldest daughter, who he couldn't bear getting married a couple years back, has given birth to a child. Which means that Al Giardello is officially a grandfather.  In a rare moment of unity that we almost never see between the Giardello famigilia, when Al tells Mike the news, they embrace in one of the few emotionally open moments we've seen from Al in the entire series. Yaphet Kotto is good throughout the entire episode, particularly in the segments where, while he gently his detectives to try and solve the crime, he acknowledging eventually that this is one of those case that may never be solved. But in the final scene where he embraces his son (its probably the only happy moment in their entire time together) we get the feeling of what a good person he is, especially knowing what has happened to him in his life.

One understands why this episode may have been passed over for flashier ones, but A Case of Do or Die is so close to coming back to the series that so many fans have some to appreciate that one wishes the executives would have had more confidence in airing it in order. Had the fans known that their series was getting back in order at last, maybe they would have returned after having been driven away, and Season 7 wouldn't have been the end.

My score: 4.5 stars.