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.