Homicide Episode Guide: Shades of Grey

Teleplay by T.J. English ; Story by Julie Martin & David Simon

Directed by Adam Bernstein

Homicide was, for most of the 1990s, one of the blackest series on television. It had the most African-American regulars, a lot of African Americans in semi-regular and guest roles, and was filmed in Baltimore. And yet, for much of the series run, cast members like Andre Braugher and Yaphet Kotto would complain that the series never dealt with race enough. In Shades of Grey, Homicide dives into the issue in a way that in a striking way even for the series, and also delivers one of the angriest - and best - episodes of the series.

In the teaser, we basically see the beginnings of a riot. A white bus driver strikes a black woman with his bus while distracted when two black passengers get into a duel over whose music should be the loudest. When the driver goes out to check on the victim, the passengers get angry at the driver, and a fight breaks out. The fight spreads, and by the time the opening credits have finished rolling, the neighborhood is rioting, and two people are dead. The bus driver, Patrick McCusker, and a Jamaican found dragged into the alley nearly fifty yards away. The squad is called out, Mike Giardello and Gharty investigate the drivers murder; Sheppard and Lewis take the Jamaicans.

The tension that's in the air spreads quickly. Gharty has never been known for the most enlightened perspective, and almost from the start, he begins to clash with Mike. The question of race enters immediately, but in true Homicide fashion, they flip the script. Mike tries to play on the idea that the crime wasn't racially motivated, Gharty pushes immediately that it is. As the investigation continues things get worse between them until it explodes in a memorable argument between the two. Gharty points out the race riots that have plagued Baltimore in the past, including one that exploded in the spring of 1968. Mike counters, reminding him that it was triggered by the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Gharty's starts playing on the idea that black people are just angrier than others. Mike, who has managed to remain remarkably neutral until now, calls Stu on that particularly line - "Are the mortgage rates too high?" - and they nearly avoid coming to blows themselves.

The case, however, involves even more subtleties than that. The woman struck by the bus was a pregnant Jamaican immigrant who had been in the country little more than a week. She wasn't used to the difference in how automobiles cross the road in America as opposed to Jamaica, and crossed on the wrong side of the road. The driver was an angry man who'd received dozen of complaints over the years, and though it's not clear if he was a racist, Mike's conversation with his daughter shows that he wasn't exactly enlightened either. And after a lot of work picking through the passengers, Gharty and Mike find the Jamaican who played his music too loud, who happened to be the only passenger that implicated nobody and was implicated by nobody. Like the hit and run victim, he blames himself for being so angry about his radio getting smashed that he thought he caused the riot. (There's a bit more confusion as to who to blame for McCusker's death, but we'll get to that in a minute.)

The second murder raises as much tension as the first. Sheppard and Lewis find out that the other victim, Paxton Smart had an IID complaint for police brutality against a Baltimore uniform. In a tribute the Homicide's institutional memory, the uniform is Hellreigel, the man who covered up the police shooting of C.C. Cox back in Season 2. Apparently, he's moved up the food chain. Lewis and Sheppard try to dig up another witness to the beatdown, and find themselves going to a crackhouse. Sheppard knocks on the door, figuring they'll flush him out the back. But he comes out the front, beats Sheppard to a pulp, and another druggie steals her gun, and shoots at Lewis, putting a bullet in that fedora we've seen him wear since the Pilot. Sheppard is immediately sure that Giardello is going to pull her from the unit. And Meldrick is angrier than we've seen him get since Georgia Rae started picking on the squad. He goes to a local nightclub with about half the squad, and delivers a challenge, telling that they are going to go after the cop who killed Paxton, and he demands that Sheppard's gun be brought back to him by the end of the night. When that ends, he goes with Bayliss to squad, and demands that the man who beat down Sheppard swear out a statement against Hellreigel, all the while using all the restraint he has not to start snarling at the witness. When the episode ends, he hands Sheppard back her gun, and it seems that all is right with the world. But, as we will learn very quickly, a fissure has started between Meldrick and Sheppard, one that will not be put completely right til the end of the season, and in the process, change the fate of the squad.

The episode ends after the initial people who McCusker to death are set to do a perp walk with Helreigel, and Mike and Gharty have a much more relaxed conversation. But Mike has come to realize just how close to boiling the different between the races is in Baltimore, and that's all just waiting to come to the surface. In a way that not even David Simon could have expected, Mike has a way of explaining not only how race relations in Baltimore are, but how much of the 21st century has unfolded in the issue.

It's eerie how prescient Shades of Grey could be, and a little frightening, frankly. Despite all of that, the writers deal with it with more subtlety than a lot of other series in this century would. There's a very good conversation between Falsone and Stivers in which they discuss the differences in language that come when discussing their nationalities and each others. And they go into details of the difference between American-born blacks and Jamaicans that I don't think any other series had tried before and since. Throw in brilliant performances from Esposito, Gerety and Johnson, and you have an episode that ranks with some of the best that Homicide has ever done. That said, you may have trouble enjoying this episode, even with the light touches you can't imagine any other show doing. (They get their first break in the case when a passenger on the bus complains to a Baltimore Public transportation officer that she's owed money because the bus didn't take where she needed to go.) Still, its timely in ways that I really wish weren't relevant.

My score: 5 stars.