Homicide Episode Guide: Wanted Dead or Alive, Part 2

Written by Anya Epstein

Directed by Robert Harmon

Near the end of this episode, Joey Errico, the fugitive that the detectives and the bounty hunters have spent two episodes chasing, when confronted with all the charges against him, starts to rage against the detectives. "You guys are shooting innocent people. You're crashing cars. You're the ones who are out of control." I can't help but look at this as some kind of self-criticism as to what the seventh season of Homicide has become by this point. I doubt it's intentional (the writers are many things, but they rarely draw attention to themselves in this way), but is symptomatic of how badly the series has sunk.

The second part of Wanted Dead or Alive is not much better than its first. It's telling that the only time in the series we have a car chase, we spend more time dealing with the fallout than the actual thrill. Meldrick is in the hospital with broken ribs and a punctured lung (but he'll be back in time for next week's episodes, another element that seems very unrealistic), and we are far more concerned about what happened to Lewis than the woman he hit. We know from pretty much the moment that it happens she's very likely doomed, and at least the series is true in that regard. The bosses are less concerned with the loss of life than they are about being sued. Gaffney, who was so quick to try and butter up Mike Gee in the last episode, reverts to form and tries to set him up at the scapegoat. Al tries to protect his son, but is more concern with the department being hurt than the life of the victim. Only Mike remains gunshot for most of the episode, and his reaction is by far the truest. Esposito once again managed to raise what could be a dire story by the plain truth of his performance.

But otherwise, there isn't a lot of truth going on. Dennis Noe comes back to the story trying to track down his bounty, and seems remarkably placid about the fact that his people have been responsible for two bodies in just in a couple of days. There's a lot of room in his performance than we've seen, but it's very telling that Mike seems to be the only one not taken in by it. Falsone seems to be more interested in getting into the bounty hunter's good graces, and its irks Al so much that he ends up kicking him off the hunt just when it enters its next phase.

 And then, we reach the absolute nadir of the entire series, when it turns out Errico has run off to Miami. At this point, the series has gone from the realistic police drama of Hill Street Blues to the tawdry cliches of USA's Silk Stalkings, and the fact that we spend much of the second half in that show's setting, just shows how far we have fallen. There's no need to go to Florida. Errico could have just as easily (and more realistically) gone to New York or DC. No, we're in Miami because this is the producers attempt to give in to what NBC has been asking for. It's bloated, overblown and the final capture of the fugitive plays like something from the kind of shows David Simon loathed. The only part that rings remotely true is when Bayliss gets into a comparison with a local Miami detective about the comparison of Florida and Maryland crabs. And even this gets ruined in the last acts, when we have a throwaway gag where Bayliss bills the department for a shipment of Florida crabs. Munch might have done this; Bayliss wouldn't.

Now, I'll grant you this is a pretty crappy episode. But even the worst episodes of Homicide contain some decent character moments. Most of the good ones come from Esposito. Every action he takes in the episode seems right, more like a chance to try and somehow rectify the horrible mistake he has made. But even when he brings the fugitive to justice, he feels no comfort in a job well done. He is bothered that, just like Errico, a case involving a few vials spun this drastically out of control. The last scene basically belongs to him, and it works near perfectly. He takes the remainder of the bounty that has been chased for long, and puts in the mailbox of the widower of the woman he killed. He knocks on the door to apologize - and the lights go out. It's as simple a message as the series could say without words. The sections with Meldrick in the aftermath are right too, including the awkward conversation he tries to have with the victim's husband, and gets hung up on.

There's also some better stuff going on about Gharty's divorce. As is the custom in so many of the marriages on this series, we are now in the legal phase, and its looking like poor Stu's going to get cleaned out. Munch, who was hostile to him in the last episode, now offers a certain amount of sympathy, discussing the states of the failed unions, and is bemused by the fact that Meldrick is now suing his ex for alimony. Things aren't going to get much better for Gharty, and money is only the start. There's also an eerie bit of prescience, when after Ballard asks if anybody in the unit hasn't ended up in the hospital, Munch tell Sheppard to watch out. Unfortunately, the Ballard-Falsone relationship is still going on, and it's entering the sickeningly cute phase.

Wanted Dead or Alive essentially does everything that we've come not to expect from Homicide. Only a handful of the detectives get to do anything good, most of the action feels like in comes from an episode of Miami Vice (literally in some cases), and the character moments are few are far between. The only good thing about is, after this we can only go up, and fortunately, we do.

My score: 2 stars.