Homicide Episode Guide: Homicide The Movie

Written by James Yoshimura, Eric Overmeyer & Tom Fontana

Directed by Jean De Segonzac

When the seventh season wrapped, for all intents and purposes, that should have been the final say. Even if Fontana and company had more stories to tell, there were no more options. And the idea of getting any movie to wrap things up should have been a pipe dream. This was 1999. The concept of the reboot was unheard of, and even if it had been, there’s no reason that a series that had barely been a cult classic should’ve managed to get by the NBC executives who had never much cared for the series in the first place.

But maybe there were enough people who had never gotten a chance to say good-bye. Or maybe the executives at NBC figured that they owed to Fontana and the others. Whatever the reason, in February of 2000, Homicide: The Movie aired on NBC. Even then, the networks seemed to be doing their best to keep it away from viewers. It aired on a Sunday night, which HBO, and not long after, the rest of cable was about to turn from a vast wasteland into the most viewed night on television. The Sopranos, which was about to aim for the mantle of greatest television show in history, was in its second season. And The X-Files, though no longer the phenomena it had been, aired that same night the final chapter in the abduction of Samantha Mulder, which had been the backbone of that series the same way Adena Watson had been in the center of Homicide. And in this pre-streaming, pre-DVR world, a lot of fans may have chosen to ignore it for these more popular series.

I was just turning twenty-one when the movie aired. I remember being so thrilled that a lifelong dream was being fulfilled. I remember wondering whether Howard and Bolander would come back, and what had happened to the Waterfront. I forewent a lot of other series that I was involved in, including The X-Files and The Practice, to see the movie. But as Oscar Wilde said, there are two horrible things in the world: not getting what you want and gett9ing it.

Homicide had always been a series that flouted the conventions of network television. Part of that was by design; part of it was by necessity. Homicide: The Movie, unfortunately, plays like a more conventional reunion TV movie. Admittedly, they do it in the darkest possible way. What’s the one thing that would unite the squad? A murder, or maybe a red ball, probably of someone they care about. And what was the one constant in the entire history of the series? Al Giardello. So, in the opening teaser, Al Giardello, now a candidate for Mayor of Baltimore is shot down.

And slowly, the entire squad trickles in. Falsone and Lewis are investigating the murder of a drug dealer, where Officer Mike Giardello is standing over the body. The rest of the squad gets the news in a piecemeal fashion. The squad (now headed by Gharty, of all people) learns about it. Howard, who is still working at fugitive, gets from a radio car. Kellerman hears it on the news. Munch, who by now has relocated to New York, in Law & Order: SVU, gets a phone call. Bolander, who seems to be drinking a beer with breakfast, sees it on TV. Bayliss, who has been AWOL since the last episode, gets a call in the wilderness. And Frank Pembleton, who seems to have now become a teacher at a Catholic high school, hears it from a priest.

In the most realistic vein of the movie, Mike spends almost the entire length of it in the hospital. In his one season, he was always the picture of equilibrium, but he is angry from the moment he gets there, and seems determined to direct at everybody possible. He pushes a reporter into the bushes. He rails at Barnfather and the nurses, and he screams at just about anyone who’ll listen. In fairness, he does have a fair reason to be upset. No one seems willing to telling him, and about halfway through his father’s emergency surgery, a man in a surgical mask comes in, and starts firing on the OR. QRT searches the hospital (no doubt an excuse to have Gary D’Addrio make a cameo) but comes up with nothing. And when Mike finally has an idea as to whom shot his father – a plausible one that has to do with the people who murdered his cousin two years ago – he handles it by acting like a deranged maniac.

Unfortunately, this episode is permeated by bits of unreality that don’t seem to quite gel. I know why they wanted to have Megan Russert here, but last I heard she was in Paris. There’s no way she could’ve gotten to Baltimore in the timeline the movie is operating under. Brodie shows up, apparently busy from a DC film festival, and that’s a little more viable, but it seems unrealistic that Juliana Cox, who left Baltimore for parts unknown in Season 6, could get here that fast. We’re willing to accept this though, because there are bits that work better. Brodie shows up with a giraffe, much like the one Lewis gave to Felton after he was shot. And the discussion between Cox and Griscom about the nature of Al’s wounds is both clinical and very funny, as they try to act like they want to dig out the evidence. It’s also interesting, when we finally have a St. Elsewhere cameo, where Ed Begley, Jr. recreates his role as Victor Ehrlich (though he’s never identified. When Mike unloads on him as to just how badly he’s been treating, Ehrlich returns the rage is spades. Having seen St. Elsewhere since then, it seems that Ehrlich has not only become Mark Craig, he’s passed him.

The actual investigation into Gee’s shooting should be the more interesting sequence. But despite all the good parts in it, there are just two many bits and pieces that seem off. Pembleton and Bayliss were the bedrock of the series for almost all of Homicide’s time on the air, so it seems logical that the writers would put them at the focus. But Bayliss is clearly uneasy from the moment he comes back to the squad. We can guess why, but he managed to subsume it for most of the movie. Fortunately, Pembleton is as ornery as ever. He bitches about the paint job the squad got, and the incredibly low clearance rate of his colleagues, and immediately goes after Bobby Hall, the detective who seems the primary. (Why Jason Priestley is here is anybody’s guess, but I understand he was a big fan of the show) The Pembleton-Bayliss interrogation of the homeless man should feel like coming home for fans, but it just seems off, mainly because it just doesn’t seem like something Homicide the series would ever have done. Similarly, when Gaffney comes into the squad room to castigate Gharty for pulling Hall off the interrogation, and first mocks everybody for showing up, and then yanks Pembleton from the investigation, it seems like its being done arbitrarily. And the fact that Pembleton pulls Bayliss to work the street to find Gee’s shooter also seems very wrong – Gee himself probably would never have gone for it. We don’t care about most of it because we just want to see Braugher and Secor together again, and the writers do seem to realize what they’re doing, by having Bayliss say something sentimental to Frank and having him, in typical Pembleton fashion, not being able to deal with it.

It is telling that the other major reunion of Homicide – that of Munch and Bolander – comes across much better. Munch was always lost as a detective after Ned Beatty left the show, and to see that Bolander hasn’t mellowed with retirement is very refreshing, as is the fact that he still has no patience for his partner’s bullshit. In their few scenes, they bicker like always, and when Stanley finally encounters Billie Lou and Munch asks him whether or not he’s cut out for domestic life, Bolander’s words: “Guys like you and Me. Work is where we shine.” (Fontana also has a cheeky pierce at a ridiculous plot point Dick Wolf made to explain why Munch left Baltimore for New York. Supposedly, Billie Lou cheated on him with a fellow detective the night of their honeymoon, and he vowed to never set foot in Baltimore again. Here, he freely admits he just made it up.)

The actual investigation does, for all intents in purposes, proceed like that of a typical Homicide case. All of the possible leads of old enemies – the wife of Raymond Dessassy, the African Revival Movement, The Aryan Brotherhood – all prove to be dead ends, as does Bayliss and Pembleton’s investigation into the possible suspect. (Even though David Simon isn’t credited as a writer, you can see his influence on Gee’s campaign. The major part of his platform involved the legalization of drugs, and the dealers are openly hostile to it.) Bayliss and Pembleton even encounter a dealer they accidentally locked up in Season 6 back on the street. And after all of the looking is done, solid policework catches Gee’s shooter. The slugs from Gee were found in the murder of the dealer at the beginning of the movie. The footage gives shot of a cameraman, who didn’t report, and who was at the hospital just before the doctor got shot. And they find the man responsible (Eamonn Walker does a memorable stint in his five minutes on screen) because his son OD’d and he wanted to get the people he thought were responsible. The weapon is taped to his camera.

It is telling also that the best moments of the movie are the last half-hour. The killer being caught, Bayliss and Pembleton go to the roof and Tim finally gets to the subject he’s been trying to broach all day – as we suspected in the last scene, he killed Luke Ryland. There’s no evidence linking him to the crime, but he can not carry the guilt. It’s why he left the squad, and it’s why he needs to confess to the man he cares about it. And Frank clearly hates him for it. Even though Tim admits he can’t be a cop anymore, and that he might eat his gun, Frank doesn’t want to accept it. And when Tim asks if Frank absolves him, Pembleton says that he can’t. Yet despite all this, there’s still ambiguity. When Ryland’s name is written up on the board in blue, the man doing so is clearly Bayliss. Did Frank turn him in? We never know.

The last ten minutes are also excellent. Everybody in the squad is celebrating the arrest of Gee’s shooter and Bayliss and Pembleton as heroes. The entire squad, past and present is at the Waterfront, celebrating in a way they never did on the show. (At the opening, Lewis wanted Falsone the buy into the bar, because Munch and Bayliss had opted out; at the end, Falsone considers buying Munch’s third.) But then Brodie walks in, and tells them that Gee died in the hospital of an aneurysm. The bar goes death-still, and Lewis looks out at the squad. Mike Giardello goes to his father’s office. For the first and only time, Frank and Mike shake hands. Mike asks Frank if he misses the job, and he says he couldn’t avoid it. “Death goes on and on,” Frank says. “Because life goes on and on.” Says Mike. They walk out of the squadroom.

And then the series enters the afterlife. Gee walks past them as they go in, and we can see the squad is filled with cops from all different eras. But the main reason we know we’re in the afterlife is because a ten-year old African-American girl skips by happily. Gee says one word: “Adena?” And there in the coffee room are Beau Felton and Steve Crosetti, smoking, playing poker, and looking exactly the same as they did when they died. Al gets nervous when he sees a fourth chair, and instantly worries his son will take. Felton and Crosetti try to reassure him that now everything he went through was over with. “Rest in peace. Means what it says.” And Gee sits down for a hand of cards, even though he’s not in heaven.

This really should’ve been the ending of the movie, but for reasons which defy understanding, Fontana and Yoshimura end the film with a montage of Gee and the squad room in some of the few ‘happier’ moments with upbeat music. (They really had to parse the footage to find them, too.) It’s if they’re trying to either remind us of happier times, or more likely trying to focus on Gee’s memories for the few good times he had. Either way, it just doesn’t play. It seems like it belongs on a more traditional series or movie.

Not surprisingly, most of the better parts of Homicide: The Movie are the smaller moments. In addition to the ones I’ve discussed, there’s Lewis reaction to the passing of Allan Funt, Bolander’s frustration as to how bland life is without salt, and after Bayliss comments on a motivational speech, Pembleton’s simple reaction of “Kiss my ass.” And many of little simple conversations are good ones. It’s just that the movie, for all the strong performances is less than the sum of its parts. Don’t get me wrong. I’m still glad it got made. I just wish that the writers could’ve held true to what the fans liked about the show rather than what the fans got from the film. There are Easter eggs to delight all the fans of the series, but Homicide was never about pleasing the fans. Homicide the show marched to its own drum. Homicide: The Movie marched to a traditional one. It’s a good movie, but it’s not I hoped would be made.

My Score: 3.25 stars