Homicide Rewatch: A Dog and Pony Show

 

Written by James Yoshimura; story by Tom Fontana

Directed by Alan Taylor

 

The episode’s title is, like so many we will see, to be taken literally. And as is frequently the case for Homicide it shows what you’re going to get comedy and tragedy, served with a heaping side of melancholy.

The comedy, in what will be a rarity for Homicide, mostly focuses on the two characters who provide the most drama: Bayliss and Pembleton.  Bayliss as Giardello makes very clear is still hung up on trying to close the Adena Watson case. Gee has been patient with this for the last two weeks but now its wearing thin and he chooses to take it out on Pembleton. Frank, in an effort to get ‘my esteemed Lieutenant’ off his back, picks up the phone the moment it rings.

Only to find he and Bayliss are investigation the death of a police dog. Bayliss, for a change, is beyond annoyed: this is clearly not the way he wants to move forward, especially when he’s told that the murder of any city animal is entitled to the same investigation as any city employee. “So if one of those ceremonial Clydesdales drops dead he deserves the same attention as an officer down?” he says in  frustration. Pembleton, however, in his usual stubbornness is determined to investigate and close this case which infuriates Bayliss. “Homicide, Frank. From the Latin ‘homos’. Homos meaning human!” And then his human partner shows up and he's slightly bereaved – though to be fair, he is a pet owner.

And so the viewer is treated to Pembleton and Bayliss interviewing the next of kin with the complete solemnity of any other investigation. “Did you dog have any enemies?” Bayliss says straight-faced, and takes in the fact that Jake – as it goes up on the board – might have had a problem with the Pekinese next door.

The thing is when the autopsy is done it becomes clear that Jake was poisoned. In the midst of a discussion of the dogs they owned as children – in typical fashion the two of them get on each other’s cases about who had the better pet – Pembleton realizes what city agency wasn’t on the scene: Animal Control, which famously still uses the carbon monoxide that was used to put down strays. Bayliss and Pembleton then encounter yet another haggard, underpaid city employee who clearly didn’t see the tags when Jake got out – on the prowl as dogs do – and then panicked and disposed of the body in Druitt Hill. In typical fashion the female employee is given away when two fellow city employees behave, very much like males have done when they see females since time began, and the woman in question gives, to quote Pembleton “an emphatic middle-finger salute.” It is a misdemeanor (though I’m somewhat horrified to learn that this action was once called manslaughter in Baltimore) and at the end of the episode, his partner takes the dogs ashes and scatters them over the water. Bayliss can’t help but be reminded of Adena and in a rare moment of empathy Pembleton says: “The world would be a better place if it was only kids and dogs.”

While this is going on Howard and Felton are handling a far-darker matter and one that has implications beyond the usual. We’ve had our share of references to the drug war that has been the cause of so many murders in Baltimore and across the country but in this episode we get the first drug related homicide on the show. And it follows pretty much verbatim Simon’s book.

Howard and Felton go to the house of Ida Mae Keene and find her shot and tortured. There’s an odd kind of bullet left behind with a wad cutter. Keene took her clothes off and folded them, which implies she knew her attacker. Much of what we see initially involves a certain amount of comedy – the patrol officer is a woman and Howard, of all people, calls her a secretary with a gun. Then Ida Mae’s friends descend on the house to get everything of value out of it – as Felton points out, this is common sense. Once they know the victim is dead, every burglar in a five mile radius will descend on it. But then her daughter shows up after being interviewed and collapses in grief when she sees her mother’s body.

In our interview with Pony Johnson Ida Mae’s boyfriend, we also see a measure of comedy. He’s married but he also has a mistress and he’s clearly trying to chat up Howard during this. But he makes it very clear that he has no shame about being a drug dealer, considering how high unemployment is among white collar in the 1990s and that he doesn’t have a lot of options. “Jail doesn’t scare me,” he tells Felton in a moment of brutal honesty. It’s in that moment we see the monster behind the charming façade.

The episode then flows back to comedy as Felton and Howard chat up Pony’s mistress, who is clearly pretending that she is high society when she’s little more than a drug dealer’s third choice. She also shows know shame about her life; when Howard asks her if she’s sure about Pony’s alibi she tells her: “I should know whether or not I had sex.” Here Felton tries to be charming and Howard pries her for information.

For the first time on the show there is a clear intersection between two investigations. Lewis (on his own for reasons that I will reveal soon) caught murder with a similar MO, tortured victim, bullet with wad cutter. The victim, one Mary Lyness. Mother of William Lyness an associate of Pony Johnson. In the search of the Lyness home they find drugs and the same kind of bullet. Howard thinks Johnson killed both women because she believes William would have to have ice water in his veins to do what he did to his own mother.

The interrogation that closes the investigation shows Melissa Leo at her finest. Felton and Lewis are showing William the evidence of what happened to his mother and to Ida Mae and then Howard comes in. We rarely on the show will get to see Howard interrogate a suspect with rage – she will usually exercise restraint – but in this case she has no patience for William’s denial. And when she learns that he drove Pony to his house with the gun and bullets and just waited outside while he came out, she unloads on him with both barrels. “She was your mother, William!” she shouts. “The bullet in her brain must have come as a relief.” And she shows no remorse when William breaks down. “You’re not entitled to those tears,” as she stamps out of the room.

The episode also makes it clear that it has no intention of forgetting past personal storylines. Crosetti has gone to visit Chris Thormann after he has been transferred out of the hospital. He’s clearly doing better – they’ve just taken the catheter out – but as is to be expected, he’s dealing with enormous PTSD. We see one of these examples take place when he ends up shitting himself in front of Steve and in another when Eva tells Steve that she’s pregnant after three years of trying – and how Chris was just as angry then. “I should have died on the table!” he shouts at Steve. “I’m not a man anymore!”

In what is Jon Polito’s finest work (sadly he won’t have much to choose from) he treats his fallen comrade with compassion and respect. On the first occasion, he goes out of his way to change his friends sheets despite his embarrassment. “You’d do the same for me?” he said calmly. On the second he tells Chris he will be a great father and that all a baby needs is for you to hold him and you figure out the rest. And throughout both scenes he continues to talk to his old friend as if nothing has changed as if the two of them are still in a squad car, shooting the shit.

Bolander is still seeing Dr. Blythe and is even more nervous because he’s about to meet her teenage son for the first time. It is this episode – indeed almost every scene he’s in during Homicide – that causes me to question the argument that some critics and fans would later say about how Ned Beatty’s work on the series was one-note. Because this is definitely not the case here.

Bolander is incredibly nervous waiting for Carol and Danny to show up and is distracted when Munch goes on one of his tangents. He’s actually asking Munch why he agreed to take her son on a ride-along and Munch gives a straight answer. “You’re snorkeling his mom,” he reminds Stanley.

When Danny shows up he’s clearly a juvenile delinquent in the making and Bolander is in over his head from the start. He has no idea how to deal with Danny’s main character energy, doesn’t know what ‘fresh’ means, ends up taking Danny on a ride along and is baffled when he learns Danny’s career choice seems to be Secretary of Interior. Then at dinner Danny begins to interrogate Stan and the hardened detective doesn’t know how to respond. (In one of Yoshimura’s brilliant decisions, Munch is there but is mostly silent, clearly enjoying every moment of this.) Bolander keeps getting more and more flummoxed, and when Danny brings up his mother’s sex life he finally freaks out. It’s not clear whether it was a decision on the writer’s part or a necessity of how the show dealt with being renewed but after this point we never see Wendy Hughes again and Blythe is written out of the series starting in Season 2. It’s not, however, the end of Bolander’s love life.

And in a story that has an added poignancy the episode begins with Giardello attending the retirement party of Jim Scinta, the commander of the other shift. That night Gee brings his old friend home but while his friend is drunk he is not a fool. He didn’t want to retire; he was clearly pushed out by Bonfather. Before he staggers up to bed he points at Giardello and says: “You’re next. He’s gonna stick it to you like he stuck it to me.” Giardello doesn’t blink. “Probably.”

A truer exchange was never spoken. Giardello never leaves the job but the bosses do keep sticking it to him time and again. We’ll get the first clear example how in the next episode and another sign of how he pushes back in the season finale. So much of what happens to Giardello throughout the series makes me wonder, in retrospect, whether the bosses have been trying an endless series of microaggression to get rid of Giardello and put in one of their own to make their lives easier. You suspect that Gee knows this and has made it his mission to never give them the satisfaction.

The episode ends with Scinta coming in after cleaning out his office. Gee promises he’ll call you tomorrow. Scinta says: “No you won’t. You’ll mean too, but you’ll keep putting it off.” Scinta knows of what he speaks. Though the two go out to dinner for one last hurrah Scinta is never seen again in the series and you get a feeling that Giardello is doing so purposefully. He has to keep moving forward to do his job – everyone in Homicide does – and that means whether you like it or not, you have to move on.

 

 

NOTES FROM THE BOARD

 

Detective Munch: In what will become one of the show’s best running gags Munch is seen reading the newspaper and reporting random anecdotes that would no doubt strike the actual Richard Belzer as hysterical. The first story he bothers a weary Bolander with is the story of a man arrested for drunk driving in Kentucky – riding a horse. He then tells Bolander about in addition under the new laws the police have arrested two bicycle riders and – wait for it – a guy in a wheelchair. “You’re under arrest, drunk and disabled,” he says cheerfully.

Of course it’s not all fun Munch leads off by relating that a 71-year old nun won a million dollars in the lottery and gave the winnings to her convent. “Nuns can do a lot of good with that money” he says as he tears up his ticket. “I’m happy for her.”

Hey, Isn’t That…?: Quite a few of them this time. The brilliant character actor Michael Constantine appears as Jin Scinta. At the time this episode was filmed he’d already been acting for nearly thirty years and he would end up acting for another twenty-five before he finally hung it up. Stretching back to the early days of television when it was mostly live theater, he appeared in everything from Naked City to Dr. Kildare to The Twilight Zone. He was basically every series of note from 1959 to 1970 but didn’t land his first series regular role until he played Principal Kauffman on Room 222. After that he went back to starring in one shot roles for the next twenty years. After his role in Homicide he began to work in films more often but didn’t find his role of a lifetime until he played Gus the patriarch in the box office hit My Big Fate Greek Wedding, a role he recreated on TV and film.

Larry Gillard had just started acting when he was cast as William Lyness (imdb.com lists it has his third role) but it made an impression on the viewer and more importantly David Simon. While he appeared in some roles of significance over the next decade, he officially broke out when he was cast in a similar role as D’Angelo Barksdale on The Wire. He’s never slowed down since then, appearing in such brilliant shows as Friday Night Lights, starring along Patrick Swayze in what would be last major role in the series The Beast and appearing for three seasons as Bob on The Walking Dead. After that Simon called on him yet again to play Chris Alston in 1970s and 80s New York in The Deuce. His last major role on television was playing Deen on Raising Kanan the third series in Starz’s landmark Power franchise.

I almost didn’t recognize Lisa Gay Hamilton in one of her earliest roles as her flamboyance as Latoya goes against the kind of work she’s done her entire career. She would work slowly in TV and film before landing her breakout role as Rebecca, the secretary turned attorney at the title law firm in The Practice. (Somehow she was the only performer who never got an Emmy.) She has worked in film and TV ever since, eventually getting married to Andre Braugher’s character in the underrated series Men of a Certain Age. She had a one season role on House of Cards, appeared as a regular in the first season of the Hugh Laurie series Chance and has starred as Judith Baker on The Dropout. She has not slowed down in recent years with recurring roles on Will Trent, Winning Time and the most recent season of Genius where she played Alberta King.

Last Call: Final appearance of Wendy Hughes as Dr. Blythe.