Homicide Appreciation Series: Giancarlo Before He Was Gustavo

If you have been a fan of Peak TV over the past fifteen years then you have been, quite naturally, fallen in awe of Giancarlo Esposito.

It’s not like Esposito had been invisible before that. He has been acting practically since he was out of the womb. He worked in Children’s TV like Sesame Street and The Electric Company. He had roles in Miami Vice and then was launched into notoriety for his work with Spike Lee from School Daze, Do the Right Thing and Malcolm X. He made his mark in independent films such as Fresh, The Usual Suspects and the Paul Newman version of Twilight (no sparkling vampires but a lot of immortals).

But much like Bryan Cranston and Bob Odenkirk he did not find superstardom until his path crossed with Vince Gilligan on Breaking Bad and he became Gustavo Fring, the owner of the Los Pollos Hermanos franchise who just happened to be the biggest drug kingpin in the Southwest. And from the moment we saw him button his suit, Esposito has never left the stage.

He has never stopped working in television since then. After his character met the most memorable demise in history, he moved on to the undervalued Revolution. He had a recurring role on Once Upon A Time before Gilligan brought him back to Albuquerque in Better Call Saul. Despite his recurring role he was everywhere, narrating Dear White People, staring in the Cinemax series Jett, playing Adam Clayton Powell on Godfather of Harlem having critical roles in The Mandalorian and The Boys. He has been nominated for five Emmys for three different series but has never won once. My fellow Critics have been kinder to him. The Critics Choice Awards have given him two prizes for Best Supporting Actor, one for Breaking Bad, one a decade later for Better Call Saul. The HCA gave him the Best Supporting Actor prize for the final season of Saul as well. The previous year he competed against himself for Best Supporting Actor in a Streaming Drama for both The Mandalorian and The Boys. And as he enters his sixties there is no sign of him slowing down. Next week he will take on the title role of Parish a getaway driver in New Orleans while this month he is taking the role of Mr. Johnston in the Netflix series based on Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen.

I could not be more thrilled for Esposito because I have marveled at his work for decades. But because his career has lasted for so long and had so many varied roles that some have forgotten that his first debut as a series regular came more than a decade before he was cast as Gustavo Fring.

When Andre Braugher departed Homicide, it left a huge void. Frank Pembleton had been the center of the show for more than four seasons and it left a gap in it that it would have taken a huge actor to fulfill. Esposito at that point in his career was nearly as talented a performer as Braugher, if not nearly as significant a name. Unfortunately because the seventh season of Homicide was the final one and because it dropped immensely in fans estimation, Esposito’s role has been forgotten. This is understandable if unfair because while there were many flaws in the final season, none of them could be laid at the feet of Esposito or the character he played.

So before we get to see him take the driver’s seat in Parish, let’s talk about Esposito’s work on Homicide, how it was a vastly different role that most of the ones he played on television as well as one of the most human. And to do that we have to begin with his character’s origin.

Back in the 1990s one of the sloppier aspects of network procedurals was to make their token African-American character the lieutenant running the unit. Significant examples were Anita Van Buren on Law & Order and Lieutenant Arthur Fancy (James McDaniel) on NYPD Blue. While on many occasions their characters would be developed over time it was noted, not kindly by critics, that they were essentially the ‘affirmative action character’ there to fill quotas and deal with the white detectives bigotries. Fancy’s sole purpose for much of his tenure on Blue seemed to be to get into clashes with the bigoted Andy Sipowicz.

Al Giardello actually proceeded both characters (Homicide debuted in January of 1993; months before either character made their original appearances) but even from the start it was clear Giardello was not going to fit in any mold. This was actually clear when we first met him. Tim Bayliss is looking for Lieutenant Giardello walks over to two men in suits and talks to the white one. It is the African-American who tells Bayliss gently: “I’m Al Giardello.”

Giardello was as much an iconic character of Homicide as Frank Pembleton or John Munch, the show’s greatest legacies were. Played memorably by the great character actor Yaphet Kotto (in what would end up being the last major role he ever played before retiring) Al was not like any police boss we’d seen before – and in a way, very few have been like him since. Kotto was tall and imposing – one man he interviewed said benignly: “You know you’re very frightening.” And he could be. We got the sense of it in the second episode. Tim Bayliss is investigating his first case as a primary. That case is the murder of eleven year old Adena Watson and will be the foundation of both Bayliss’ character arc and the Rosetta Stone of Homicide.

Giardello spends much of the episode gently guided the overwhelmed Bayliss from scene to scene. He defends him to his fellow detectives – most notably Pembleton – and to the bosses in private who doubt a case of such importance should be assigned to a rookie. “That rookie’s going to surprise us all,” he tells them. However he has little patience for some of the problems. When Bayliss who is drowning from the pressure practically shouts: “I’m trying to solve a murder and I don’t even have a desk!” Giardello looks at him. He silently walks to a nearby desk and in swift motion knocks all of the bric-a-brac off it. “There’s your desk,” he says simply.

Al Giardello was the radiation shield between his detectives and the bosses. He would always stand up for them and he would always do anything for them. But despite his great presence and the clear layers he had Kotto would complain that his character had never been fully explored the same way the other characters had been. Perhaps that the reason that when Giancarlo Esposito was cast, the writers chose the role they did.

We knew that Al Giardello had been married but his wife had died years ago. We knew that he had three children who he loved very much but that the job had come first. His favorite child was his daughter Charisse and by the end of Season 6 she was the only family member we had met. In that episode, however, there was clearly awkwardness between them and it did not change when Charisse told him that she was getting married to a man he’d never met and that she was moving to Los Angeles. He was clearly hurt that he was learning about this now and more so when she told him that he had always been distant. In an episode that same season Al was planning to go to his daughter’s wedding in LA but another investigation kept him in the office. At one point he was at a stakeout with Frank, who at the time was waiting for his child to be born and he expressed his own frustration. “Parenting is a pain in the ass. It is a pain in the heart.” He told Frank that even though his entire family would be there, part of him didn’t want to go. Frank persuaded him to leave for the airport to catch the noon flight. Never outwardly demonstrative Al actually hugged Frank before leaving. But once he got to the airport he learned his flight had been delayed due to inclement weather and the episode ended with us uncertain he’d actually gone.

That was the last we heard of Al’s family in any detail until the seventh season premiere La Famiglia. A series of what amount to eviscerations take place in Little Italy and Al knows the first two victims. He goes to visit his cousin Mario, who knew both men and walks into his home to find his cousin dead in a pool of bloody water.

It is the funeral for Mario that Bayliss mentions to Munch that Al had a son named Michael Giardello who he had not talked to in years. Munch looks up and says: “Here comes the son.” That’s our introduction to Esposito’s character.

Mike is an FBI agent who has been stationed in New Mexico for a long time and it’s clear that not only are he and Al estranged but that he was closer to Mario growing up then his own father. The scenes between Kotto and Esposito are emotionally fraught as they will be for pretty much the entire series. You get the feeling that Mike hasn’t even talked to his father for years before this and honestly wants to get home as quickly as possible.

As the investigation unfolds we learn the murders were part of a vendetta by the family of a man all three men knew Carlo Roletta. All of them worked on the waterfront, there was union corruption involves, and eventual all of the men ratted Rolette out. We also learn in the final scenes that Al was the one who persuaded Mario to come forward. Mike is instrumental in helping the Baltimore P.D. catch the victims but because they can only find the blood of two of the victims in their homes Danvers will only try them on two of the three murders. Al and Mike must accept that their cousin’s name will be on the board in red forever.

At the end of the episode Mike decides that he’s not going to go back to Arizona immediately. He has decided to try and heal old wounds between him and his father and applies for a job. He decides to work as FBI agent liaison for the department in Baltimore. The problem is Captain Gaffney (the gadfly of the show) tells Al before Mike can and this leads to a bitter argument. Sadly the tone for their relationship on the job has been set almost from the start.

Homicide had a terrible track record when it came to dealing with cast members who were not assigned to the squad. Megan Russert (Isabella Hoffman) Al’s counterpart as shift lieutenant was never well defined and spent the next two seasons, first being promoted to captain and then double demoted back to homicide. J.H. Brodie (Max Perlich) was a videographer who the squad hires to shoot crime scenes but he never fit in with the squad at all and over two years he always seemed extraneous to the action. And Chief M.E. Juliana Cox (Michelle Forbes) was always showing up at crime scenes and places she shouldn’t be. All of these characters were written out within two seasons.

Mike Giardello was probably the closest they came to the gimmick working, mainly because the other detectives were willing to accommodate him but his immediate superior never was. The fact that the two of them were father and son added a level of tension that had been absent from Homicide in a while. What’s worth noting is that Al fundamentally thought that the idea of having an outsider who was, in his words, serving two masters was going to end up hurting the squad. As was the case so much of the time, Al was proven right.

This came to a head in what ended up being the Law and Order/Homicide crossover ‘Sideshow’. While investigating the murder of Janine McBride, a government employee who had been hiding her sexuality,  ADA Jack McCoy eventually came on the radar of William Dell, the independent council (George Hearn, leaning into Roy Cohn with all his might) McCoy was eventually held in contempt of a grand jury because he refused to give up the name of a witness in the investigation. The police eventually managed to catch the killer of McBride but before they could prosecute her, Dell gave an order of extradition. Reading that order, the prosecutors learned that Dell actually knew everything about the case – because Mike Giardello had informed them.

At the start of the second part Al calls Mike into his office and is infuriated. “You pimped us,” he snarls at his son. Mike had given his information to his superior. Even though he tells his father he had no idea this would happen, Al is infuriated beyond words. A few episodes later he makes it very clear he wants Mike out of the unit.

Near the end of the series, Mike is betrayed again by his bosses when in order to learn if Witness Protection has a fugitive living in Baltimore he contacts his superiors. The detectives arrive on scene just moments before the Feds arrive determined to roll their witness up. The suspect confesses to the murder but the Baltimore feds make the decision to sentence him to thirty years, all but three suspended. He will serve at most a year. Mike tries to convince the lawyer not to do so but he is interrupted by his superior. That day, he decides to resign from the FBI before he is shifted to billing.

But there are also moments throughout the final season when Mike makes it clear he wants to help his father. In ‘Self-Defense’, an episode authored by Kotto,  Mike is trying see that his father finally receives his long overdue promotion to captain. When it seems that the promotion is condition on the squad letting the daughter of a councilman walk on what is clearly cold-blooded murder, Al interferes in the investigation. When Mike tries to lay off Al asks why are you hiding something. Mike says simply: “Because you’re my father and I love you.” It’s the first time all season he’s gone that far.

Aside from the interactions with his father, the writers were willing to give Esposito more than his chances the shine. In my opinion the two best moments he had on the show occurred in the second half of the series.

The first came in ‘Shades of Grey’ which is one of the angriest – and after a quarter of a century, most relevant episodes Homicide ever did. In it we witness a fight break out on a Baltimore bus and by the time Homicide is called on the scene, a riot has started. Mike and Stu Gharty (Peter Gerety) far from the most enlightened cop, investigate the murder of Patrick McCusker, a white bus driver who his regular passengers all considered a bully and monster. Most of the passengers are African-American; the driver is white.

Like most times Homicide dealt with race, it flipped the script. Mike Giardello didn’t believe the murder was racially motivated; Gharty was certain it was. The two men bicker throughout the episode and it explodes when Gharty points out some of the riots in Baltimore, including one in April of 1968. Mike says quietly but coldly: “As I recall, that started in a motel room in Memphis.” Gharty snarls that maybe black people are just angrier then others. And then Mike snaps: “What do white people have to be angry about…are the mortgage rates too high?” They nearly come to blows themselves.

As the investigation unfolds, we learn of the subtleties. McCusker had hit a Jamaican immigrant who had been in the country little more than a week and didn’t know she was walking on the wrong side of the road. He had received dozens of complaints over the years from other passengers. And when we learn the cause of the fighting – a Jamaican who played his radio too loud – he tells both men that the riot is his fault. “Over a radio, a man is dead.” When the episode ends both Mike and Gharty admit their mistakes. And Mike acknowledges that this city has become more ‘subtle since I left. Not different, subtle” and that all of this is just waiting below the surface. Not even writer David Simon could have known just how he was presaging 21^st century America – or indeed later incident in Baltimore itself.

Esposito’s other great moment comes near the end of the season in ‘Lines of Fire’ (directed by Kathryn Bigelow) Mike and Gharty are called in because of a police shooting, albeit a non-lethal one. The cop who is wounded is joking about the benefits he will get. However the shooter Emmett Carey (a brilliant Ron Eldard) is holding his stepdaughter and son hostage and refusing to come out. He sees Mike on TV and says he will talk to him. QRT (the Baltimore equivalent of SWAT) says to Mike that they have to get him out of his apartment or they will put him down.

The episode is essentially a series of conversations between Mike and Carey. Mike is trying to talk Emmett into letting his children go and is willing to get them breakfast if Emmett will give up his gun. Then Emmett’s wife shows up and begins to scream derivatives at her husband, causing him to retreat.

The detectives try to convince his ex-wife not to make things worse but she remains hostile. She wants her kids back and she doesn’t believe Emmett capable of violence. She breaks past QRT twice to call him names and the second time, to shut her up, Emmett fires wildly – and ends up killing her. (Bayliss and Lewis, who are called in, are astounded he was able to hit him from so far away.)

Even at that point, Emmett Carey’s fate is not yet sealed. Though the negotiation team is pissed at hell at what has happened, Mike still thinks there’s a chance to get the hostages out alive. When he goes back in for the second time, he now has to keep telling Carey that his wife his alive in order to get him out. Emmett knows that things are bad – he’s not educated, but he’s no fool – but he wants to believe Mike. So he agrees to hand over his gun for a pizza. Mike agrees.

Mike comes in with a pizza, a soda and a candy bar. The situation ekes along slowly. Emmett is still resistant. Then he needs a stiff drink. He walks towards Mike, QRT prepares to deliver the kill shot – and Mike gets in their way, handing him a Coke. This may be Mike Giardiello’s defining moment with the squad, and like so many on this series, it doesn’t end well. The two of them manage to keep up their conversation, and Carey agrees to surrender his stepdaughter – whom he has made very clear in the episode isn’t really his child. The second the girl is clear of the gun, Mike turns around, and three shots ring out – two killing the younger boy, one killing Carey. Mike’s immediate reaction is one of sure hatred – “Kill yourself fine, but you don’t kill your kid, you son of a bitch!” and then quiet despair. He knows there was a moment, and the fact that he let it pass will probably haunt him for the rest of his life.

The final episode of the series ‘Forgive Us Our Trespasses’ shows the visit of the second Giardello daughter (Audra McDonald). She is there to see her father receive his promotion to captain which, in an unrealistic manner, Al refuses to accept. The last scene between the two men on the series deals with Mike trying to figure out his next steps. “I’ve spent my entire life not trying to be like you. And here I am. You say that you belong to the streets. So do I. Now I just have to find a way to get back there.” Al says: “Let me know if I can help.”

In February of 2000 Homicide: The Movie debuted on NBC. In it Mike has become a Baltimore police office “bottom of the totem pole’, he tells Russert. While reporting on a murder he learns that his father, while campaigning for Mayor, has been shot.

While the movie is flawed, one of the things it gets absolutely right is Esposito’s performance as Mike. He spends the entire movie waiting for his father to come out of the OR. He drives to the hospital, doesn’t bother to mark and knocks a reporter asking questions ‘ass over teakettle” This footage plays over and over on the news.

He spends the entire episode angry and trying to get answers from the doctor about his father’s surgery. In the midst of the operation someone comes into the OR and fires shots at the doctor operating on him. QRT has to clear the hospital and while they are doing so Mike berates everybody – including Colonel Barnfather for even suggesting the killer had nothing to do the attempt on his father’s life.

Eventually when the surgery is over, the second doctor gives him a status report. (Though his name is never mentioned, he is Victor Ehrlich, played by Ed Begley Jr on St. Elsewhere, the show written by Tom Fontana before he wrote Homicide).After Ehrlich tells him everything calmly Mike snaps at him and the horrible treatment he has received form this entire hospital.

Ehrlich listens and then coolly gives one of the highpoints of the film. “I’m two under par with a four foot put about to go three under when my beeper goes off. I drop the club; I don’t even take the shot. I get there, the OR’s a war zone, Kosovo on ice. You want us to hold your hand or do you want us to save your father’s life?” He doesn’t even stop to see if Mike apologizes before walking away. Mike is left speechless for the first time all day.

Esposito spends the entire episode in the hospital, trying to deal with everything that has happened. When his father comes out of surgery all right, we really think there might be a happy ending. So in typical fashion in the final act, the writers pull the rug out from under us when Brodie comes to the bar when the entire squad, past and present is celebrating  to tell them that Al has died of an aneurysm. As the squad mourns, Meldrick walks out of the Waterfront and sees Mike standing on the balcony, looking despondent. He gives a signal of respect. Al’s name is the last one to ever go up in black on the board.

Mike is walking through the squad into his father’s old office and stops by the board. Frank walks up to him. In typical fashion the man who solved his father’s murder has had nothing to do with the action in the hospital. Frank introduces himself to Mike, who thanks him for catching the man who killed his father. “I’m good at catching the bad guys,” Frank says. “Caught me a couple tonight.” There is a significance to this (I won’t spoil it) but Mike doesn’t ask. Mike asks Frank, who retired a couple years back, if he misses it. “It’s not like you can avoid it,” Frank says. “Death goes on and on and on.” Mike interrupts: “Because life goes on and on and on.”

Now I must reveal the ending. Mike and Frank walk out of the squad room…and Al walks in. But it’s not the same squad room. There are cops from different eras walking by and as Al walks into the coffee room, an eleven year African-American girl skips past him. Al pauses: “Adena?” he says in surprise. And in the coffee room are Beau Felton (Daniel Baldwin) and Steve Crosetti (Jon Polito), the two men who Frank told Mike were dead – Felton in the line of duty, Crosetti by his own hand.

Crosetti is dealing poker to the three of them but Al notices that there’s a fourth chair empty. “Who’s that for?” he asks. “It’s not carved in stone,” Steve says. Al suddenly says that he’s worried about his son. “You taught him well,” Beau tells him. “The thing about this is, once you’re dead, you’re long time dead,” Crosetti says. “All the old worries don’t matter.” “Rest in peace. Means what it says.” Felton adds. Al is clearly afraid about his son but he knows that he has to let go. The final images are flashes of the squad from previous episodes – including one with Mike and Al together.

Esposito had to do the impossible when he joined the case of Homicide and while he never quite filled Andre Braugher’s shoes (who could?) he gave a demonstration of a great nuanced character. He’s rarely gotten a chance to play that type of character on TV in the past fifteen years – most of his characters are generally evil, though they do have layers. Now, as his face graces the cover of TV Guide this week, he is about to take on the role of someone more heroic than he’s gotten the chance to in nearly a quarter of a century. I look forward to seeing him play it as brilliantly as all the others he has played in his great career.