Homicide Episode Guide: The Why Chromosome

Written by Anya Epstein

Directed by Kyle Secor

The second episode postponed because of the shootings at Columbine, and for an equally justifiable reason. This story deals with the shooting deaths of not one but two teenage girls, deals with gang violence in every imaginable way, and shows some of the most brutal criminals ever shown in Homicide’s run. Still, it’s a shame The Why Chromosome ended up being the penultimate episode aired of the series (though even then the producers weren’t sure) because it meshes old and new school Homicide in a way that the series almost never did.

In Homicide’s entire run, two female detectives had never gone out on a case together. This was hardly unusual because we didn’t have two female detectives on the squad until halfway through Season 4, and Russert didn’t stay around that long. It is a little strange, considering that there were three female detectives in the unit this season that Fontana and company didn’t even consider it, given all the other changes that were in the mix. Perhaps its fitting that Anya Epstein, one of the unsung heroines of the writing staff, chose in her final script for the series to not only put two of the female detectives at the forefront, but also make this one of the most female driven episodes the series would ever do.

Ballard and Sheppard are called out to investigate the murder of Jackie ‘Destiny’ Keib, a fifteen year girl found shot at a high school. It becomes clear very quickly that she was part of a gang, which is something that the series hasn’t dealt with in a very long time. What makes it more unusual is that the we look at this from the perspective of a female gang, mainly through her older sister Crystal. We’ve seen some stone cold teens and pre-teens on the series before, so it’s kind of amazing that the show still has the capacity to shock by showing us Crystal, a sixteen year old girl, who seems to be as hard as the boys. Ballard spends most of the episode thinking that Crystal and the other Terrace girls are just posturing, but its very clear that Crystal, at least, is not. In perhaps the most stunning scene of the entire seventh season, Crystal reveals that she was nearly died from a stab wound to the heart, kicked a pregnant teen so hard she lost her child, and was burned by her father as an infant. Sandra Brown, a woman who David Simon would utilize in several of his HBO series, gives another in a long line of young adult performances in this series, not showing any humanity until the end, and even then it’s a flicker.

From the beginning, it’s clear that the girls in gangs are trying to be as tough as boys, to the point of being boys in one of the more stunning final scenes. Ballard doesn’t want to accept, and from the few scenes we see of the male detectives, they think its unlikely as well. Epstein also makes it very clear that the sexism that permeates much of the real world also fills that of the criminal underbelly. When they interview their main suspect Casper (JD Williams, halfway through his stunning stint on Oz and just a few years away from beginning an unforgettable stint on The Wire), makes it clear when Sheppard and Ballard pull him in for interrogation that thinks little of women, even when they have the power to put him prison. He openly mocks Sheppard’s idea of rough stuff, talks with no trouble about the idea of getting ‘rolled into a gang’ (you roll dice, and sleep with one of the male gang members) uses his baby mama as an alibi even though he was out screwing another woman at the time, and finishes up with a misogynistic rant about what women’s roles in the world is. He actually seems hurt by Sheppard’s suggestion that his girlfriend murdered Destiny (even though that’s exactly what happened).

The brutal cycle of gang violence ends up playing out the same for girls as it does for boys. Denise Raeburn learned that Destiny had sex with ‘her man’, dressed up a guy to throw suspicion off, and shot her. Crystal finds out about this, and kills out of revenge, and is caught by Sheppard and Ballard before she tries to run. Danvers will make a deal for manslaughter in this case, but Crystal seems just as certain she will end up dead in prison as on the street. And when it’s all over Ballard admits that she didn’t want to believe that women could be as brutal as men.

In addition to its many other virtues, this episode gives the most accurate look as to what gangs are like on Baltimore than we’ve had in the series in a very long time. The female juveniles are just as dismissive of the police as the boys are. There’s a lot of tags in the series, one commemorate Destiny’s death, the other saying that Crystal is done on the street. And the shots of children laying flowers as the pictures of another dead teenager is an image we have become all too familiar with these past few years.

Callie Thorne gives one of her best performances in quite sometime, and Michael Michelle, who has been noticeably absent the last few weeks, demonstrates that she has real presence in this series. (Also of note is Sarita Choudhury, one of the new additions to the medical examiners, who has done more than capable work all season.)

If there are flaws in The Why Chromosome, it’s the lack of decent support we get from most of the male detectives. Lewis and Falsone, who are working a case together, start acting like children over the virtue of New Jersey over Maryland, and openly seem to doubt that Ballard and Sheppard can handle actual gangbangers. And the storyline with Munch, who is now on the verge of his wedding to Billie Lou, and for some reason has agreed to a vow of celibacy until the wedding, seems amateurish, as is the story where he tries to talk to her neighbor for beating on his girl. Yet I think there’s a method to this childishness, as Epstein probably trying to show the comic side of testosterone in the workplace. And the final moments, where it shows that Lewis still has problems when Sheppard even considers making overtures to him about their feud, does seem to play into that idea as well.

All in all, this episode reveals that there are still new ideas to be mined from Homicide even this late into the series run, which makes you feel all the more regretful that the end was fast approaching. One would like to see more cases where the two female detectives weren’t Cagney and Lacey.

My score:4.75 stars.