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.