Homicide Episode Guide: Sideshow, Part 2

Written by David Simon

Directed by Ed Sherin

The writers of Homicide and Law and Order  have, by now, created an annual tradition of doing a crossover every year. So many of the episode used Richard Belzer to the full extent of his abilities that it's small wonder Wolf recruited him for Special Victims Unit later this year. And frankly, on that series, he was so rarely used to his full extent (and so much of his character bio on Homicide ending up getting trashed) that it was a general waste of his talent. It's a great pity, because in Sideshow, by far the best crossover between the two series, one could really see just how great the potential of that character was.

This episode finally realizes what is Munch's (and probably Belzer's) heart's desire; after six and a half seasons of railing about government conspiracies, Munch finally gets to an investigate one. When a Baltimore government official named Janine McBride is found dead in New York, Munch and Sheppard are called in to investigate. As Briscoe and Curtis get called in, they find out that McBride was a lesbian and may have been removed from her job because of some kind of government power play. This leads to some funny moments, when its revealed that Sheppard has good gay-dar and tells Curtis how he's part of it, and Munch and Briscoe have solid back and forth about just how bad things will be for men given the success rate of lesbians. Briscoe dismisses Munch's complaints about government maneuvering, but for once, his paranoia turns out to be accurate. When Jack McCoy and Danvers get called into the case, and then finally learn that one of the witnesses, a former lover of McBride, can identify the killer, they find themselves on the radar of William Dell, the independent council. George Hearn, a veteran Broadway and character actor, does a magnificent job playing a man who is more than willing to step over anyone he wants to get the outcome he desires. Modeled after Kenneth Starr, Hearn plays him as the second coming of Roy Cohn, and McCoy, who as any viewer of Law and Order knows is a ruthless prosecutor, finds himself on the other end, and he doesn't like it. (Full credit must go to the writers for doing the rare amount of character back-story that Law and Order usually isn't known for, as we find several of Jack's far more ethically questionable decisions coming back to haunt him.) Waterston demonstrates again why he was one of the finest actors working in any medium.)

The story seems to get wrapped at the end of Law & Order, when the suspect is murdered  by McBride's utterly love-struck former boyfriend - until they find Purcell had a number for the White House on her. Then the action shifts back to Baltimore, and, as is the case in these crossovers, things get more intense.

For starters, the hostility that has been brewing in the Giardello family comes to a boil, when Al reams out Mike for leaking information about the murder to a supervisor - who gave it directly to Dell. Mike is floored by this, and is on the outside looking in for most of the episode; as a consequence, his work in the squad will never truly recover from this betrayal, even after he tries to redeem himself.

Sheppard, in the meantime, finds her relationships in the squad deteriorating. Lewis is still chilly with her, and now Ballard and Stivers, who have reason to find themselves in situation closer to the one that sidelined her, are talking behind her back. When Stivers tries to talk about with her, Renee has nothing but disdain. (Credit to Simon for not trying to automatically assume female detectives would automatically form a sisterhood). For the first time, though, we get a little hint of just where Meldrick is coming from when he has a conversation with Falsone, about just how much getting shot at has rattled him. When Falsone points out that he and Lewis were victims of shooting too, and they're still copacetic, Lewis tries to point out that there might be something deeper here.

But the center of the episode revolves around the unfolding investigation. As is the case in the last crossover, Zeljko Ivanek manages to get some put much-deserved screen-time as he reveals that, in his own way, he is as ruthless a prosecutor as McCoy can be. They go after Dell directly early on, and he becomes more engaged the longer the investigation becomes. Even when they find themselves in the White House for a murder investigation - something that seems to rattle the ever belligerent McCoy - he remains calm. And it costs him. As we learn in the episode, he's just been nominated by the governor for a judgeship. He's still willing to try and put himself on the line - when Sheppard and Munch tell him that, in order to try and pursue the case, he's going to have to confront a federal magistrate on what could be a quid prop quo, he does so. But after he indicts the man behind the murder, the independent counsel comes after him, and it torpedoes him. As a juvenile Danvers was part of a street gang that was involved in a racially motivated assault. When the record comes into play, he confesses to Al about this, and Gee rallies the troops (including Bonfather, of all people), to stand by him. This, however, costs him any chance of him being confirmed by the Maryland legislature.

But for all the efforts of their investigations, the police and legal work come to nothing. Just as they arrest the man behind the murder, Dell's representatives move in, and take him into custody. When Danvers and McCoy furiously confront Dell, he makes it very clear that he considers their murder meaningless compared to his investigation into the White House. He's never been interested in justice, and he makes it clear to them. There are no winners here. The woman McBride was having an affair with becomes a subject for a mockery. The man who negotiated the murder will see death row, while the man who carried out gets immunity. (the fact that the dealer is black and the fixer white isn't even brought up.) The woman who started the dominoes falling resigns. Dell is the only winner.

Everybody reacts differently. Danvers and McCoy can only reflect on how they were used by Dell as his figureheads. The detectives, except for Briscoe, get drunk at the Waterfront. Sheppard starts ranting about the investigation, which turns halfway through, to one against Meldrick. And when the detectives leave the bar, Munch salutes a present flag, says: "I'm too damn sober," and they all go back in.

There are a lot of other great moments in this crossover. Particularly wonderful is when Munch, who requested his FBI file a couple of weeks, gets it during the course of the investigation, and Briscoe has to break it to him, that he was never consider a serious threat to the government. And when Munch tries to thrill his fellow detectives to the details of the investigation, there are some nice in-jokes including a reference to L.P. Everett, and the fact that Homicide was now in syndication at Court TV. But there are also great performances from just about everybody involved, and Waterston and Orbach finally get used to their full potential. (Wouldn't it have been great to see a spin-off show with Briscoe and Munch as PI's?). It's really a shame that this was, by design, the last crossover between the two series. Though Wolf has engaged in countless ones since in his Chicago PD and other Law & Order franchises, none have sung anywhere near as much as these episodes.

My score: 4.5 stars.

Better (And I Mean Better) Late Than Never: GLOW Season 2

I can now say with confidence that the Emmys under-recognized the first season of GLOW, the brilliant comedy-drama on Netflix about the makings of the eponymous women's wrestling series of the 1980s. Sure, it got eight nominations, but there was nothing for Alison Brie and Marc Maron, the forces of nature that really command the series. I was only willing to not castigate the Emmys for the utter rarity of not giving enough awards to a Netflix series, but I held because I figured the show would get more chances. And based on what I've seen of Season 2, the actors and writers are going to get a lot more of them.

When Season 1 came to a close, all of the chaos and confusion that had plagued the characters seemed to come to an end when the pilot of the series finally managed to get filmed. Now that the show is officially underway, everybody is working towards making it work, and Sam (Maron) seems determined to become even more of an asshole than he could be during production. The relationship that he spent the majority of Season 1 building with Ruth (Brie) seems utterly non-existent (at least throughout the first three episodes), and he seems to be determined to act like even more of a prick towards the women who are making this series work. He doesn't like being controlled by anybody, and its clear that he's not used to any kind of success. The fact that he now has to raise a teenage daughter (as was revealed at the end of last season) isn't helping his state of mind, either.

As for the relationship between Ruth and Debbie (Betty Gilpin, still remarkable), Ruth is trying as hard  as possible to work her way back into her best friend's good graces. This isn't helped by the fact that Debbie's marriage is now officially kaput, or that the last act of her husband was to negotiate a contract where Debbie is now a producer of the series. Neither Sam nor Bash seem determined to take her job that seriously, and its very striking that these two men, who have been nothing but cheerleaders for the women of this show so far, fall back to the traditional sexist roles as far as having a woman work with them. But Debbie is far too smart for that, and seems to finding a way to work slowly into their graces. However, just when she reaches the border of being a little too likable, she goes out of her way to sabotage Ruth. Ruth has been working towards having a relationship with a cameraman on the show, but given the chance to have a real date or try to make her friendship work with Ruth, she opts for the latter, and its devastating when Debbie reveals that the whole thing was a sham.

For all the portrayals of darkness that the series is willing to play into, GLOW is, first and foremost, a comedy. And a lot of the time, it can be very funny. This can be particularly remarkable when the women are trying to stage their wrestling acts for the camera using the personas they spent most of the season developing. A particularly engaging sequence came when two of the women played elderly characters, then used one of their matches to mutate into younger radioactive fighters - "We couldn't be old biddies any longer." And all of the actors on these series are exceptional at giving fully rounded characters. The series will show Sam being snide to the network and everybody else, and reluctant to help a friend - in this case, Cherry, who is currently being written out of the show she got last season - and then, he will be supportive and instructive to her, and go to the mat to get her a soft landing. Maron really deserves an Emmy nomination this year. I'm saying this now so they don't forget.

I will now officially say something I neglected to last year when I had the opportunity: GLOW is one of the best series on any platform. Considering it's a Jenji Kohan show, and I haven't liked much of her work before this, this is a huge admission for me.  And considering how much the last few months have redefined the gender wars, we need shows like this now more than ever. Of course, we also need shows like this because they're funny and entertaining. And also to remind us that wrestling, while not a sport, is still a kind of art.

My score: 4.75 stars.

A Solid Rookie Performance

Nathan Fillion has always had a genuine nice guy feel to him, along with his roguish good looks. It led him to cult stardom in the works of Joss Whedon - even after fifteen years, there are still millions of acolytes missing Firefly - and genuine stardom in the romantic police drama Castle.  Even when he has placed the most despicable villains as he did in the last weeks of Buffy,  there was always something charming about him that you couldn't quite resist.

So it follows that his return to TV in ABC's cop drama, The Rookie, is one of the most eagerly anticipated events of the season - at least, by some of us. It's not because of the original source material  - it's adapted from a failed network drama starring Paul Sorvino in the late 1980s. But Fillion has a gift of rising above what can be considered tired clichés. What is more surprising is how much the series manages to rise above even the standards of the traditional cop drama and give it some genuine energy.

Fillion plays John Nolan, a forty-ish Philadelphia construction business owner, who in the opening of the pilot is filing for bankruptcy. When a robbery occurs at the bank where he's cleaning out his safety deposit box, he manages to stall the robbers, and in doing so, manages to awaken some part of himself that seemed dead. A little more than six months later, he has relocated to LA, gone through the police academy, and has become a rookie beat cop. And it is clear from the minute he gets there, that much of the brass doesn't like his presence, and is openly rooting for him to fail

Were the series to just follow Nolan and his story, it would make for an intriguing show, albeit one that was slightly gimmicky. What raises The Rookie above the traditional stuff we get from Wolf and Bruckheimer is that the series keeps it focus around the other officer and their COs. Nolan's CO is Bishop (Afton Williamson) a no-nonsense cop focused on becoming detective, torn between the pressure to make sure he doesn't make her look bad (not helped by the plethora of car crashes in the second episode) and similar pressure to bounce him. The other rookies who have come up with Nolan are Lopez ( Alyssa Diaz), who is saddled with Bradford, a cop who seems determined to break her balls in every way possible (even after getting shot in the pilot) and Jackson (Titus Makin) the son of one of the top brass, who seems to have the book memorized, but the first time he's under fire, he freezes. Another series would have him kicked out or killed by the end of the first episode; his CO, Lucy Chen covers for him, but is very clear that he has to play hard or he'll get bounced.

But most of the series is focused on Nolan and his journey. Which is fitting, considering that after nearly eight years of being known for playing a character who was police-adjacent in Castle, Fillion now gets to play an actual cop. And while he has some of Castle's charm and sexuality (he's having an affair with Lopez, and it seems he has some relationship in the past with the captain), he's also covering new territory playing a character who is at a loss most of the time, and doesn't have all the answers. Nor are his superiors prepared to give him any - over and over we get the message that real cops aren't supposed to focused on 'the why'.

The Rookie has elements of being not just another good vehicle for vehicle, but a solid ensemble cop drama as well. Like the legal drama, the network police procedural has been running on fumes for awhile - successful but always routine. Despite being a remake of a sort, it has more versatility than the usual ones, and I hope enough viewers tune in to find that.

My score: 4 stars.

One Screwed Up Camping Trip

Throughout her entire career, Jennifer Garner's characters have always had a high degree of Everywoman to them, even in her most famous role as secret agent Sydney Bristow on Alias. Most of her better film roles - the desperate to be mother in Juno, the nurse in Dallas Buyers Club - have focused in on that likeability. It is therefore very intriguing that in her return to television in HBO's Camping, Garner has chosen a character as far removed from that as possible.

Garner plays Kathryn, a mid-forties wife and mother, who has planned to the nth degree a camping trip to celebrate her husband Walt's (David Tennant), 45th birthday. She has invited three couples, Carleen (Ione Skye) her sister, and her husband Joe (This is Us' Chris Sullivan), Walt's brother George (Brett Gelman) and his wife. and their friend Miguel and his wife. From the start, its clear that Kathryn utterly refuses to tolerate any deviation in her schedule which has been planned minute by minute. It's amazing that everybody has been willing to tolerate this, frankly, but it's clear Kathryn is in a class by herself. We hear she suffered through ten operation for an injured back, including a double hysterectomy. And one can tell almost from the beginning, that something is going to go horribly wrong. We just don't know how until happens. Miguel is going through an ugly divorce, and initially doesn't plan to show up. Then late at night in the Pilot he does - with the quintessential New Ager Jandice. She's played by Juliette Lewis, which, in itself, should tell you everything you need to know about her.

The first episode I thought was very amusing, but in the second episode, the spiraling clearly gets out of hand. During a touch football game, Jandice ends up putting Walt and Kathryn's son out of action. Kathryn insists on driving him to the nearest hospital anyway, and utterly refuses to accept the doctor's diagnosis that her son is fine. Meanwhile, the rest of the group ends up driving, per Jandice suggestion (of course) to a nearby town, and everybody gets seriously drunk. Including Joe, who is a recent alcoholic. Jandice and Miguel then leave the bar and end up in a store, where they have sex in the changing room. When they get back, Jandice then gives the drunk Joe Oxy, and he and George have a bizarre fight over a weird term he refers to his bi-racial wife by.

Camping alternates between being very funny, with the very disgusting body humor, and some jokes that straddle the line between funny and offensive. Perhaps this shouldn't come as a huge shock, consider that the series has its origins from a British TV series, and was adapted  by Lena Dunham, the force behind Girls, a series I still consider one of the most overrated of the decade. Garner does a fairly good job of playing a control freak, even though it can be off-putting at times. But Lewis drags down every scene she is. I realize that this is by design - she's not so much a real character as the instrument of disruption - but all the other characters so far have at least some degree of humanity. Jandice's sole purpose seems to be to bring out the worst aspect in everyone.

What makes this show watchable are the other supporting performances, particularly Tennant. Best known as one of the great Doctors of all time, Tennant has a superbly drawn American accent, and plays a very restrained man who just wants everybody to be happy, including Kathryn, even though this may be scientifically impossible. There's also good work from Sullivan, playing against type who gets really angry when someone offends him,  and Skye who has been absent from everywhere for awhile.

Camping has some good parts to it that generally work well, but you wonder just how the writers are going to sustain it. It's only an eight episode season, but it was renewed for Season 2 before it even premiered. Throw in the fact that Dunhan and her long time writing partner Jenni Konner ended their partnership not long after they began work on this series, and you really question how long it can last. But it's good to see a lot of the actors here, particularly Garner. This shows her range in a way we haven't seen in far too long.

My score: 3.25 stars.

Homicide Episode Guide: Homicide.com

Teleplay by Sara B. Charno; Story by Sara B. Charno & Ayelet Sela

Directed by Jay Tobias

One of the more intriguing ways that Homicide was ahead of the curve as a series was that it was one of the first shows to take advantage of the Internet. There were early message boards for the series, and by Season 5, NBC developed an internet spinoff of the show called Second Shift. Featuring a different casts, actors would appear on web episodes dealing with separate stories that would occasionally feature guest appearances from cast member like Erik Todd Dellums and Reed Diamond. The series even did something fairly revolutionary even by today's standards, in which it would feature crossovers from the web to the broadcast show. Unfortunately, like so much of the details regarding Homicide in the past two decades, most of that information has disappeared, even from the far corners of the web. The only evidence that the Second Shift ever existed occurred in Homicide.com

The central story of the episode seems both incredibly relevant and very dated simultaneously. Sheppard is called in on a crime scene of a young woman who was found murdered with of the usual signs. It soon becomes clear that their was evidence of a staged crime with a real murder. This is where the second shift, Bonaventura and LZ Austin at computer crimes, come in. The victim was called in for involvement with the staging of a ritual murder that was broadcast on the Internet two days earlier. The next day, a similar invitation was sent out - only this time it was real. As Bayliss and Sheppard begin trying to trace the killer, another invitation goes out for another murder at midnight. Sheppard has, as Bayliss puts it, downloaded her first red ball.

Sheppard has been trying to prove that she's up to snuff, but she has been taking so much abuse from Meldrick, that she doesn't know where to accept help when she gets it. Bayliss tries very hard to act as a mentor and a friend to her, but unlike previous episodes, she seems to resent it. The tension gets worse as they get closer to midnight, and they're no closer to catching the killer. When Mike suggests that they try to trace the killer from the moment he starts his ritual, Gee is furious and doesn't want to consider it. The only reason he changes his mind is when time starts to run out.

The detectives then start tracing the killer the moment the next broadcast begins, but he leads them down a false alley and mocks them (digitally) when they get to the address and find no one there. Barnfather than starts making overtures to Gee telling them that to make Bayliss the primary, and Gee, who usually bucks the bosses, agrees with them. By far, the best scenes in this episode have nothing to do with the murder. Bayliss corners Sheppard in the aquarium, and tries to buck her up. She ignores him again, refuses to accept his help, and mocks Frank Pembleton. Bayliss loses the equilibrium he's had all season, and starts raging at her for acting like a crybaby with a chip on her shoulder, and the two storm off.

In its own way, this may manage to push Renee forward, as she finds a way to get at the killer: Luke Ryland. She sets out a message for him on a website devoted to the murder, and taunts Ryland into revealing himself, into committing another murder that they can track using his cellphone. When Gee hears about this, he gets irked, and then Renee finally starts telling him off, to the point where he practically shouts at here. In this case, though the ritual which Ryland has been upgrading gets more elaborate, and the detectives finally nab the killer.

There are some very intriguing elements to this episode, but the fact is, nearly two decades later, a lot of them seem to have dated. Admittedly, some of this is due to the fact  that we've seen this kind of story countless times on lesser television series - I don't want to even guess how often CSI, Law & Order, and Criminal Minds mined this particular trope. And watching how the government has to go through various hoops just to get what they need to search the internet seems particularly dated in a post 9/11 world - one needs only see a single sequence of 24 to remember just how quickly CTU would've been able to resolve a crime like this one. Though I have to admit, when it comes to using computers to track down criminals, this version is still (sadly) probably more accurate.

More importantly, it seems like Charno and the other writers are having far too many jabs at the expense of all of the people on the net who nitpicked every detail of the series. At least two of the scenes involve detectives checking the chatrooms and saying how irritated they are that all of their personal details are being fleshed out on the net for all to see. The fact that when Sheppard goes online, and is first berated for using profanity, than asked if she used to be Miss Ann Arundel County seems way to self-aware. And the fact the final element of the crime involves the killer using Bayliss' website, which the other detectives quickly pickup on, seems likes one in-joke too many.

And there's nothing particularly astonishing about this serial killer, save his means of technology. His murders are brutal and explicit, but compared to some of the killings on this series, they're not particularly shocking. Which makes the actions of the end of the series so much harder to accept. (I'll explain when I get there.

What makes the episode work a little better is the utter blankness of the faces of the people who tune in to see this killing. They have the same blank expressions that they would have watching your average Youtube clip of a cat being cute. The most telling detail comes when Ballard interviews a witness who saw the killing and fought it was fake, and when he's told it actually happened, he says: "That's so cool." I don't know if a murder has happened online yet (and frankly, I'm not sure I want to know), but given the world we live in today, I don't think the killing would even get that kind of reaction.

But as an episode of the series, Homicide.com even lags behind the quality of the series we've gotten the last few weeks. What saves it is the work of Michelle and Secor. Michelle plays much of the episode like someone trying too hard to succeed, and the comparison to Bayliss during the Adena Watson murder (which Gee brings up to Tim very derogatorily) is apt. Her righteous anger is a highpoint. And seeing Secor finally in the stages of a mentor to newer detectives shows just how far he has come over the course of the series run. They are solid performance but, much like the killer, there's too much flash and not enough substance.

My score: 3 stars.

Come Back To Riverdale: Season 3 Review

It's only been a year and a half since Riverdale, the CW's reinvention of the Archie Comics, made its debut, but one can hardly deny that it's become a phenomenom.  Considering that it has some of the most adult storylines of any series in the Berlanti world, its rather remarkable that it's popularity has become enormous among teenagers. It was one of the major powers at the MTV Movie and TV awards, with Madeline Peutsch winning a trophy for her incredible work as scene stealer Cherry Blossom. It was the big winner at the Nick Teen Choice Awards. It's become a big deal at conventions, actually inspiring its own. And now, there's going to be a spinoff for Netflix about Sabrina the Teenage Witch, which just from the look of it, seems to be aiming for ten times the darkness factor of Stranger Things. (I'm still going to take a look at it because Sabrina will be played by Kieran Shpika.  Sally Draper is getting her own series at last.)

Of course, this begs the question: Is Riverdale any good? Well, its definitely playing by its own set of rules. The series is very clearly a shadow of Twin Peaks, and one can definitely see that this might have been the direction David Lynch would have taken the series had it had a longer run on ABC. And every season so far, it continues to plumb what can only be considered Lynchian territory with its central characters. Archie (KJ Apa, who spent most of Season 2 exploring his own darkness, now seems to be trying to pay for his sins. Accused of a murder he didn't commit, he ended up taking a sentence to juvie in order to pay for his sins. Which seems to be a recurring theme. The Serpents and the Ghoulies, two gangs who he tried to mediate between are in jail with him, neither has occasion to trust him, and  he just seems to have been tapped for an underground fighting ring.

Things are not much brighter for the other students at Riverdale High. Veronica (Camilla Mendes) has officially renounced her crime boss father, and doesn't have must use for her mother (Marisol Nichols), who even though she was elected Mayor seems to be a pawn of her father. She's trying to hold on to some frays of normality, running Pop's and trying like hell to get her 'Archiekins' out of jail. Betty (Lili Reinhart) has spent the summer reeling from the revelation that her father was The Black Hood, has become addicted to Adderall, and now seems to be dealing with the possibility that her sister and her mother (the always fascinating Madchen Amick) seem to be under the sway of the cult. And then Jughead, who last season embraced his title of 'Serpent King', now finds that there seems to be a new and even more frightening murder mystery developing that has ties to a role-playing game 'Gryphons and Gargoyles' (The satire of everyday items is one of the few real ties this series has to the official comics. ) This leads to a promising storyline in which it has become very clear that the parents of all the teenagers know something about the murders that are taking place - and that has happened when they were teenagers.

Riverdale is a very dark series, and seems to revel in this darkness with an equal amount of daring. I don't know any other series that would decide, for its musical show, to do the score of Carrie. And it seems to love subverting every old chestnut from the series - Mrs. Grundy and Midge were murdered last season, Moose is now in a gay relationship and Cherry is having a lesbian affair with one of the Pussycats. And it has a lot of talent playing the adults - in addition to Amick, Skeet Ulrich, Luke Perry, and Robin Givens are among the parental figures in play. (I look forward to an upcoming flashback episode where the teenage actors play the young versions of their parents). My one problem with the show is the same with so many in the Berlanti-verse -  last season, so many of the characters played against type to an end result that was frustrating because it didn't seem to accomplish anything. But the fact of the matter is, like with Twin Peaks, of which this show is the red-headed child, it's all about the journey. And few series  make this journey worthwhile.

My score: 4.25 stars.

Homicide Episode Guide: The Same Coin

Teleplay by Sharon Guskin, Story by James Yoshimura & David Simon

Directed by Lisa Cholodenko

There's always been a tremendous amount of tension on Homicide, which is one of the things that made it such a great series. Most of the anger that's always simmering is between the detectives and the perps, or the bosses and the rank and file. Often though, the writers realized that a lot of better drama came when it put tension between the detectives. There was always a fair amount of strain between Bayliss and Pembleton in the early years of their partnership, which eventually led to a split in Season 5.  Kellerman and Lewis had a fair amount of anger during last season, but the strain between him and the rest of the unit was particular great during the entire Mahoney storyline.

But the last few episodes of this season, there's been a lot of hostility between many of the detectives, and in The Same Coin, a lot of it comes to a head. Some of it centers around the aftermath of Sheppard's beatdown, and now that she's gotten back into the rotation, its clear that it's still a problem. On her first day back, Lewis answers a stone cold whodunit, and his 'concern' leads him to do something that we've never seen happen on the series before, and will never see again. He trades cases with Falsone, taking a dunker away from him. Sheppard sees through the ruse immediately, and she calls Meldrick on it right away, particularly the last moment in last week's episode. She's clearly hit a nerve, and she and Meldrick will not partner again until the end of the season.

Nor do the consequences end here. Stivers also realizes what Falsone has done, and she gets pissed. But she becomes utterly furious when, after an encounter with a random dealers goes badly, Falsone throws the man to the ground hard. When she has a conversation with Sheppard later that day, it becomes very clear that both find the macho posturing their partners are doing dangerous.

But the major hostility this season has been going on between Gharty and Munch, and it explodes at the end of the episode. First off, it's clear that Stu has been having a hard time since his divorce. The opening sequence of the episode is one of the more surreal this ultra-real series has ever done, starting out with Gharty and Ballard making a stop at a gas station, and ending with Stu holding his gun on Laura dressed in full military gear. It's some kind of cross between a flashback and a drunken stupor, and it demonstrates how badly Gharty has been doing all season. His mood is not helped, when after months of flirting with Billie Lou, he finally gets the nerve to ask her out, and she tells him she's engaged to Munch. All he can say is that John's been married three times. Her response: "So have I."

Munch and Mike Giardello spend most of the episode dealing with a hit and run that makes it seem like the driver went out of his way to kill the victim. The victim, Robert Corrigan, is carrying a bayonet that Stu fancies, and eventually identifies a tattoo on the victim as being part of an air cavalry regiment that was prominent in Vietnam. It eventually becomes clear that Corrigan, unlike some veterans, actually had a bad life going into the war, and actually got worse afterwards. As Mike puts it: "He got murdered early. It took thirty years to finish the job." (It's also interesting to see a younger Margo Martindale playing an ex of his a full decade before she broke big on Justified and The Americans.)

 Munch continues to chafe at even the idea that Stu might have done something heroic in the war, and eventually does something reprehensible even by his standards. While requesting Corrigan's military records, he also requests Gharty's, and find out that the man received a dishonorable discharge for being insubordinate. Not content with dressing him down to Mike, he also goes to Ballard with this information first, which doesn't do anything to make her more inclined to be nice to him.

The climax of this episode doesn't come, rarely enough, with the resolution of the case. Indeed, that actually provides some of the little humor from this dark episode. The car is found to be a rental for a Walter Drummond, a tourist who can't come up with a convincing explanation as to why there's no police report or report to the rental company. Unfortunately, the detectives have to apologize to him when the real 'perp' turns himself in. (Munch tries to console Drummond by telling him to go to the Aquarium.) The 'killer' is a barely adolescent boys, who stole the car, and while trying to tune the radio, accidentally hit Corrigan. He comes in with his mother:, who keeps telling him: "Say you're sorry."

The culmination of the episode's tension comes in the Waterfront, where Gharty storms in after Ballard tells Gharty what she knows. Despite Bayliss and Mike's efforts on one side, and Ballard's on the other, Munch and Gharty start snarling at each other. Gharty knocks Ballard back, who bashes into Billie Lou, and the usually equitable bartender gets so pissed she screams at both of them before storming out. Then Gharty relates his Vietnam experience - when he was 19, he entered a friendly village, and his entire unit starting rounding up villagers and killing them. He held his gun on his friend, and when a commanding officer ordered him to stand down, he aimed his rifle at him. (I'm pretty sure they used Walt MacPherson to play the CO in the flashback, even though he's not credited. I think there were more than a few Gaffneys in command in Vietnam.) His officer ordered him off, and as he got in the chopper, they finished the massacre. Munch finally calms down, and finishes a story he told Mike earlier. He and a friend applied for CO status in 1968. Munch followed through; his friend didn't, and he died in the war. The two detectives reach detente, even though things will never quite be alright with them.

The Same Coin is a brutal episode, and rare because so much of the tension is only partially related to the investigations involved. You wouldn't want to see an experiment like this presented every week, but Homicide has earned enough credit over the years to make it worth while. This is arguably Peter Gerety's finest hour on the show. In a lesser series, Gharty would use this experience to get out of his alcoholic stupor, but he stays in the bottle for much of the season. Belzer continues to demonstrates that he's so much more than 'the funny detective', and Michele is showing depths she really didn't seem to have when she first appeared. There were definite signs of a future for Homicide -  but time was starting to run out.

My Score: 4.5 stars.

a million little things review

In the classic drama, I Never Sang For My Father, the play opens with the protagonist saying one of the great lines for any medium: "Death ends a life, but it does not end a relationship." I come back to that line frequently when looking at ABC's newest ensemble series A Million Little Things. The series begins with a death - in this case, the suicide of John Dixon (Ron Livingston) a successful businessman, a husband with two children, and a circle of friends - in other words, the kind of man who literally had everything to live for.

The people who are especially shattered by his death are his three closest friends, each of whom was going through their own crisis. Eddie (David Glutnick) is in an unhappy marriage with his workaholic wife Katherine (Grace Park), and was planning to leave his wife for her within minutes of the death on John.  Gary (James Roday, a revelation to those who only knew him from Psych) is still reeling from being in remission from breast cancer, something that has given him a grim sense of humor towards life. And Rome (Romany Malco) was a cheerful filmmaker, who the moment he received the call telling him about his friends death had a mouthful of pills. None of the three survivors knew about their crises any more than they knew why John killed himself.

The response to all the suicide shakes all of them to their core, but for other reasons than the obvious. Eddie was having an affair with Delilah, John's wife - and in the last episode, everybody found out the details. Rome has been trying to come to grips with his own depression, and can't understand how a man who was always smiling was in such a dark place. Gary is still reeling from it, but seems to be getting into a better through a relationship with a fellow breast cancer survivor, Maggie (Allison Miller) They have great sexual chemistry, but seem unwilling to open themselves up emotionally. Paradoxically, this seems to draw him to liking her even more, and everyone can tell it. And the women in the story are well drawn as well. Regina, Rome's wife, is not just an appendage. She had a failed restaurant earlier in her career, and wanted to try again. When she learns that John's last deal was to make sure that she had her own restaurant, she's overjoyed - but puzzled when she learns that Delilah is the co-owner, and is enraged when she learns that Delilah was having an affair with Eddie. Maggie clearly has an emotional bond, and while she is a therapist, the series doesn't do the obvious and make her open to helping Rome. She makes the conflict very clear, and has been very reluctant to help him, and its clear that she has secrets that she doesn't want to share.

The writers have tried to open the possibility of a mystery by having John's secretary appear to be this secretive woman who is hiding information from the group of friends. Paradoxically, I hope they stay away from this storyline. A Million Little Things works more when it deals with the friendships and interrelationships between all of the regulars. To turn it into a mystery would add a soap opera element that I just don't think is worthy of the series.

A Million Little Things will not be for everybody. Some have already said this is a This is Us clone; I think Things is the kind of series that would give a fan of the former series as too much to take. Death stalks this series, not just that of John, but Rome's depression and Gary's knowledge that remission is only successful until the cancer comes back. I'm not surprising the ratings have been low initially, this is not a cheerful series. But it's not a pessimistic one, either - there's a desire for friendship and life that permeates this show in a way that is uncommon for television these days.  ABC's had a lot of trouble finding hit series that aren't connected to Shonda Rhimes, and with her gone, that well may be drying up. I hope they have the fortitude to stay with A Million Little Things. It deserves to live.

My score: 4.25 stars.

9-1-1: Worth Responding Too

One of the bigger surprise hits of last season was Ryan Murphy's 9-1-1. It sounded pretty pedestrian when I heard about it -  a series about LA's first responders, the police, firefighters, and operators who handle emergency cases. It sounded like a variation on Third Watch, a modestly successful but creatively unimaginative NBC series of the 2000s, and even though it had better actors and better writers than that series, I just decided to let it pass, even though the numbers were exceptional for Fox in its dour days. Then I had some free time around the second season premiere, and decided "What the hell." And found myself more engaged then I thought I'd be.

I've never been wild about the 'emergency response' drama as a genre. ER  never particularly worked for me, and most of the medical dramas that have followed stick to that formula with little creative imagination. 9-1-1  tries a bit harder then most of the series that have stuck to that formula. It helps a great deal that it has two of my favorite actors as the leads: Peter Krause, an actor who is to television what Tom Hanks is to film, as Bobby Nash, the head of the firefighters, and Angela Bassett, yet another in the long line of talented African-American actresses who've found more success on film then TV, as Officer Athena Massey. It's also rare to see two actors fast approaching fifty as the leads of any network series, much less as romantic leads. (Apparently, they starting hooking up in the gap between seasons)  Admittedly, both roles are slightly below the standards of so much the work they've done on this medium, but both have the ability and command to rise about it. Both were more than up to the task in the multi-part season premiere in which a 7.1 earthquake hit, and both of them had to deal with the overflow of emergency response. Bassett actually had a fairly light story in which she responded to a riot at a grocery store, which she realized quickly had started after the owner had starting gauging the shoppers. It was an authoritative scene with rare comedy that ended with a purchase of a Hershey that was funnier than a lot of comedy scenes I've seen.

But then Athena isn't on the front lines as often. We more frequently see the firefighters at work, and they've gone to rather high levels to give characterization to almost everybody. The biggest lead is Kenneth Choi as 'Chimney', a firefighter who had a rebar stuck through his skull last season, and seemed to have a remarkable physical recovery. But last night's episode dealt with the possible of PTSD, in which we realized that none of the trauma had left him, and that he was actually beginning to feel appalled that his life hadn't changed as a result of something so horrible. Other firefighters are also well drawn, including Michael Grant, a widow with a son with cerebral palsy, trying to negotiate the world of home health care.

And perhaps the most remarkable thing about this series is how normal everything seems. If its a Ryan Murphy series on broadcast, you expect the camp level to me turned up to nine at least. But much of the histrionics that plagued Scream Queens or the later seasons of Glee are absent. Murphy and his staff seem to hold most of their writing for human drama, and the characters are among the most realistic I've ever seen from him, which is astounding in itself.

It's not a perfect series, by any means. Jennifer Love Hewitt joined the cast this season as Maddie, the call operator/former nurse who replaced Connie Britton. Hewitt is good - better and more down to earth, in fact, then she's been in nearly twenty years - but the series still has yet to give her much to work with. And the emergencies themselves all seem to have a level of ridiculousness when so many happen, that the switch to tragedy doesn't always work.  But for a genre that has been growing increasingly stale thanks to Shonda Rhimes and Dick Wolf, 9-1-1 (ahem) does more to resuscitate it than I've seen in awhile.

My score: 3.75 stars.

Homicide Episode Guide: Bones of Contention

Teleplay by Jason Yoshimura, Story by Eric Overmeyer

Directed by Brad Anderson

The investigation of cold cases is not one that Homicide went into that frequently, which considering how often the Law & Order, CSI et al would go into it, is actually rather refreshing. Indeed, paradoxically, the few times that they went into it, they mostly seemed to involve Munch, a fact he makes clear as the episode opens. It's actually rather good that they have done so; we've seen precious little of the already underused Belzer this season, and to see him actually work a case with his trademark wit is actually a good sign.

Partnering with Meldrick because Sheppard has only recently returned from the hospital (we'll get to that in a bit) is also encouraging. We've had so much focus on the newer faces of the show the last couple of years that to do an episode where two first season detectives work a case together shows that the writers are willing to get back to basics. And the case is an intriguing one - a construction job unearths the skeletal remains of a Jane Doe, so the detectives have to work in order just to find out who their victim is. This involves the new Chief ME Grissom, who actually gets irritated when Munch picks on him for the lack of evidence he seems able to unearth. But after a bit of work they manage to find out that there dead body came from the mid 80s, and was involved in a bank robbery. Mike Giardello earns his keep in this episode by helping them narrow the field still further to come up with the name of Carrie Reeves.

It becomes clear that Carrie was a bad girl. In addition to being part of a bank robbing gang, she also had convictions for prostitution and drugs. When Lewis and Munch present her mug shot to her mother, she can't even say with certainty that its her daughter, and neither can the detectives. They also find out that Carrie had a child of her own, who used to meet with her many times after leaving her with grandmother, and Kara never got over having this gap. It quickly becomes clear that she was better off not knowing.

Carrie was part of a gang of four who was responsible for robbing the Pimloco S & L in 1987. Of the others, one man is dead, another is in a Williamsburg Penitentiary serving consecutive life sentences, and the third is out on parole.  Sykes, the federal prisoner is incredibly creepy, and has no problem saying he was involved in the robbery or that the dead man was responsible for killing Carrie Reeves. They end up arresting Mancini, the parolee, and it becomes clear that there's a deeper meaning to it. Carrie stole the money from them, and Sykes beat her to death to get the location of the money out of her. Mancini, who had been clean for five years, had a steady job, and a girlfriend who wasn't in the life, is nevertheless going back to prison. There's a certain sadness to this, but when Munch tries to philosophize on it, Meldrick, who probably takes enough of his crap on a regular basis, just doesn't have the patience. It also becomes clear that Carrie used the money to set up a trust fund for her daughter, but rather than chase down the funds, they shrug it off, reflecting that the bank itself folded during the corporate raiding days of the eighties.

It's a satisfying and very simple investigation, and its good to see Belzer back into the spotlight, reminding us what a good actor he can be, and how solid a detective Munch is. God knows the man did comedy so well for Homicide, its always a good reminder to see how good Belzer can be.

The two minor stories floating around the episode will carry over the rest of the season. The more interesting one is that of Sheppard. Pissed that she's been handed back to desk duty, she's also despairing about the incident that landed her in the hospital and nearly got her and Meldrick killed. The episode flits back to a line Lewis had last week in the idea that female police go to their guns too fast because they're too small to tackle the perp. She's aggravated at becoming 'a secretary with a gun', and she's beginning to think no one in the unit will want to partner with her again. Tellingly, Lewis doesn't even talk to her until the end of the episode. When he does, things suddenly get very dark fast. He hands her bag which he says "is a welcome back... present" And in it, is the hat that got shot off his head. Meldrick has always had a quietly vindictive streak in him that has been present throughout the series. It turns out that Sheppard is right when she says that Meldrick won't want to partner with her again, at least for the rest of the series. Michael Michelle starts to demonstrate that she is far more than just a pretty face.

Unfortunately, the other major storyline is still going on, and its about to get worse. Falsone and Ballard's relationship has clearly been heating up, and despite the warnings from Gharty and Stivers about this kind of fraternization (which considering that they both pushed for this kind of relationship earlier in the season is ironic) they continue to show it. Gee finally calls them on it,  and tells the two detectives that they either have to end their relationship or one of them has to transfer to the other shift. They agree to break it off in front of Gee, he tells them point blank "no second chance"... and then, in one of the last scene, they engage in a clandestine rendezvous, which they will continue to do for much of the rest of the season. Even now, I can't understand why Simon and company would allow this to happen. Bad enough to allow the relationship in the first place, but then to have the bosses find out about it, and then flaunt it?  While I'll admit that it's something that Jimmy McNulty might do, I just don't think it something that fits in with the tenor of Homicide, especially because there's no really chemistry here.

This mess aside, Bones of Contention is basically a solid episode in the old school style. From the flashback to Higby, stuck in Missing Persons and trying desperately to get back to Homicide, a cameo from the commissioner of Prison - authentic, because Homicide always used really cops in unbilled cameos, and (mostly) good performances from everybody, this is what the series should have been doing all season.

My score: 4.5 stars.

This is Still A Triumph: This is Us Season 3

After last year's Super Bowl, one of the great mysteries on television was revealed on This is Us. We finally learned how Jack Pearson (Milo Ventimigilia) died. When the Pearson family home burned to the ground, he managed to rescue his family. But just a few hours later, smoke inhalation caused his heart to give out, and he passed away in the hospital. I considered it one of the fifty greatest episodes of the last century, in that it revealed in full context, just how much the death of the beloved patriarch affected every member of the family.

Things seem to have gotten better for the Big Three as they all turned 38 as Season 3 opened.  Kate (Chrissy Metz had finally gotten married to Toby, after a rocky courtship. Kevin (Justin Hartley) had finally achieved sobriety, was about to become a genuine movie star, and seemed to be having a good relationship with Beth's cousin. And Randall (the incomparable Sterling Brown) was finally ready to adopt the troubled Deja, who spent most of last year, struggling to deal with her mother's abandonment. But, as is inevitably the case with the Pearson clan, nothing is going to come easy.

Kate's desire to have a child is still at her core, and even though she managed to convince a fertility doctor to begin a troublesome process of artificial insemination, we know there will be repercussion. Toby, who was told that his anti-depressants could have led to a low sperm count, stopped taking them in the premiere, and the effects are coming rapidly. Randall is still struggling with his desire to make the block where his late birth father William (Ron Cephas Jones) lived habitable, but is still having trouble letting his desire to fix things stop him from being a good person. Kevin is actually in a good place, compared to the last couple of seasons,  but was warned off by Beth when the relationship with her cousin came to light. Not because she thought he was bad for her, but because she thought she would 'chew Kevin up.'

As always with this series, there are still poignant flashbacks to be had. In the season premiere, we saw the very first date between Jack and Rebecca, and how it was something of a disaster. We also have seen the Pearsons trying to keep going after Jack's death, and this is painful, even for This is Us.  Kevin has become a veritable drunk, Kate has started the overeating that will make her life so much more difficult in the future, Randall is sacrificing his own future for the good of the family, and Rebecca barely seems able to stay in the room. However, there is a new wrinkle to this season - the flashforwards that we got at the end of Season 2. We know that Toby will be bedridden by his depression, that Kevin will fly to Vietnam to try and learn the history of his father, and that way in the future, Randall and his grown up daughter will be saying: "It's time to see her." Who is this unnamed woman, and what relationship does she have to the Pearsons?

It can often be agonizing to watch This is Us - it's almost become a recurring joke about the series. But the show would be a mawkish melodrama without the light humor that does seem to filter through it.  Brown and Hartley in particular have a great gift for comedy in addition to their fine dramatic skills, and Brown has great chemistry with Susan Kalechi Watson, who, like Jack and Rebecca, have one of the most marvelous marriages on television. And its because we care so much about the Pearsons that we're willing to go along with the twists and turns about the mythology that the writers seem willing to put together, usually because the payoffs are so much better than the ones we get for oh-so many mythology series these days.

As This is Us enters its third season, the writers led by Dan Fogelman claim that they have put together, with the flashforwards, an end-time for the series. I really hope that they don't have an exit strategy planned for the show any time soon. It has one of the greatest mixtures of tears, laughs, and  anguish that no series has managed to accomplish since Parenthood was at its peak. Broadcast TV needs series like these. TV needs series like these.

My score: 5 stars,

Is Manifest Your Destiny, Or Should It Stay Lost?

Ever since its stunning debut nearly fifteen years ago, network television has constantly been trying to match the perfect storm that was ABC's Lost. I've written an entire episode guide regarding the phenomena over the years that I have little new to say about that series. What I can say is that over a similar period of time, I have watched the networks try, usually futilely, to match the lightning in a bottle that was that extraordinary series. Such a thing might be possible on the cable or streaming services that now dominate, but even that's unlikely given that one needed a network to get so much of the brilliance of that series to work the way it did.

NBC seems to be trying to match a similar tone in its new series Manifest. Hell, it even starts out with an incident on an airplane, Flight 828. This time, though, it takes it from an admittedly different perspective. Michaela Stone (Melissa Roxburgh) and her brother Ben (Josh Dallas) are taking a earlier flight from a vacation in Jamaica in May of 2013. Michaela is a New York cop recovering from a drunk driving accident and a troubled relationship with her boyfriend. Ben has a happy marriage but his son Cal has leukemia and his fate look likes its terminal. While they are in the air, they briefly hit turbulence for a couple of minutes. Then when the pilot gets them to New York, things start to go weird. When they do land, they find out its November of 2018, and the plane has been reported missing for five and a half years. None of the passengers have aged a day.

This is right out of the Lost playbook, though admittedly its dealing more with the Seasons 4 and 5 bit, when the Oceanic 6 returned to civilization. Where Manifest works the best  is when it tries to look at the passengers in the sense of real world consequences. When the series focuses on Michaela and Ben, it sings. Michaela returns home to find that her boyfriend has married her best friend, her apartment is gone, and that her mother, who she saw just a few days ago in her timeline, has died. Ben has more of a life to return to - even though his wife and daughter are five years older, they still love him. But even there, there are problems - it's clear his wife has had an affair, his eleven year old daughter is now a teenager, and he's trying to figure whether his son can still recover. There's also a sense that the rest of the world is not necessarily thrilled that they've come back  - the NTSB doesn't accept their explanations, and the rest of the government is inclined to consider them more of a security threat than a joyous reason for return.

This is actually more interesting then the sci-fi bit that we know has to be attached.  Part of the reason Lost inspired such devotion in the early seasons was because we never got a clear picture of what genre the series was. It didn't plant its flag in the sci-fi realm until Season 4, and by then, it had gotten us so invested in the characters that even non-sci-fi freaks didn't care. But Manifest shows its cards very early. Both Michaela and Ben start hearing things - voices, music, suggestions that seem to be giving them the gift of foresight. Nor is this something limited strictly to them - at least eighteen other passengers, including the Pilot, all seemed to be drawn to the airport just moments before the plane mysteriously explodes. Now, I realize that by necessity Manifest has to be a series about unexplained events. But Jeff Rake and Matthew Fernandez are not J.J. Abrams, Carlton Cuse, and Damon Lindelof.  They seem less interested in character development than the mystery, and the only characters that seem to matter are the Stone family. While Roxburgh and Dallas do their level best, they don't seem nearly as well drawn as anyone of the fourteen character we met in the first few episodes of Lost.

Now, I'm not saying this series won't end up working. The early numbers has averaged ten million viewers, and the notices have been positive.  But Manifest has yet to clearly demonstrate that it can be anything other than a Lost knock-off. I'm not going to say its completely uninteresting, and to be honest, Lost didn't hit cruising altitude until episode 4, so it might yet get there. But NBC has had these kind of quasi-successes before. I'm just not sure this is a series that deserves it.

My score: 2.75 stars.