Homicide Rewatch: Bop Gun

 

Written by David Simon & David Mills; Story by Tom Fontana

Directed by Stephen Gyllenhaal

 

In the 1990s the only reason a great movie star appeared on television was because their career had gone horribly wrong.  To be sure film stars of some magnitude would soon be taking major roles on TV series within the next few years: Sam Waterston would officially end any concept of a movie star to take on the role of Jack McCoy on Law & Order within months of Bop Gun airing and Mandy Patinkin would take on the lead of Chicago Hope that same year but the rules were generally fixed.

So the fact that Homicide was able to land Robin Williams, one of the biggest box office stars of all time for even one episode was extremely notable in 1994. NBC spent a lot of the time promoting it and moved it to the first of the four episodes of Season 2. It worked ‘Bop Gun’ had the highest ratings of any episode (33 million viewers) of Homicide and it carried over long enough for the series to get a renewal for a third season. (Eventually…I’ll get to that. Of course Williams had connections to Barry Levenson, one of the show’s producers: he had famously become a film star with Good Morning, Vietnam and the two of them would collaborate several times Williams committed suicide in 2014.

 In order to emphasize Williams’ presence,  Fontana and Simon would fundamentally change what Homicide had been to this point in a critical way. Bop Gun changes the nature of the ‘red ball’. Before it would be business as usual even while a major case was going on; after this when one came up the entire squad would stop to work the entire case, sometimes over multiple episodes. This would lead to grousing that Homicide would essentially have traded away much of the realism of the first season.  There’s a certain truth to that but the reality is if the series hadn’t changed in some way it would have likely become even less popular than it was at the time and it would have likely not lasted as long as it did.

But there were advantages to this as Bop Gun makes clear. By changing the focus of the series from the squad to that of those around the victim Fontana would open up an untapped reservoir that few dramas had explored before and few procedurals have as well since.  By necessity the squad has to remain detached from its investigations in order to function; it’s a necessity for all cops really. Bop Gun is the first episode of Homicide to look at the wreckage of what having a name written in red can be to those left behind. The show would come back to it at least once a season for the remainder of its run and it led some of the greatest moments in the series history.

In that sense they couldn’t be better served by having an actor like Williams in the role of Robert Ellison, the husband of a tourist who comes in from Iowa and whose wife becomes the victim of a murder when a robbery goes horribly wrong.  We see the lead-up of it in the opening; three kids playing basketball; the Ellison family walking through Baltimore; the squad going out. The Ellison family is walking by the newly completed Camden Yards when the three teenagers see them. One of them pulls a gun and the three of them head out. Felton and Howard arrive in the aftermath and they already know this is going to be a red ball: white tourists have been shot in from of a new attraction which is not the image the city of Baltimore needs. The mayor and the governor have already called Giardello and he calls in the entire squad, demanding Crosetti come in from vacation.

It is a measure of how badly Baltimore handles things that Ellison and his two children are labeled witnesses to the crime before everyone realizes they’re the family of the victims. Ellison tells Gee this and Giardello’s tone instantly changes. It should be noted that going forward that, with the notable exception of Bayliss, none of the other detectives handle the experience with anything resembling tact.

And the fact that Felton, both the sloppiest and the most tactless of all detectives, is the primary on this investigation does nothing to help anybody. During the episode we hear Munch and Felton joking about how clueless Ellison is – and worse, how they are planning to wrack up the overtime on the wives murder. This is a standard behavior for all detectives but this time they have the bad fortune to be heard by Ellison who emerges from his shock to be infuriated  and demands Felton be removed. Giardello responds with tact – he knows what a lousy detective Felton is –  and he is very diplomatic but we also know this is part of the job and he has no intention of undermining Felton.

When I first saw this episode in 1997 most of my experience with Robin Williams was through his incredible comedy, both stand up and his best work like Mrs. Doubtfire and Aladdin.  Williams had done serious work before – he’d actually debuted in the mostly serious The World According to Garp and Awakenings had already happened -  but by and large even his more serious roles such as The Fisher King showed the presence of the great comic force. So seeing him in this episode was for me a revelation and I can’t imagine what it was like a few years earlier. This is the first role I remember watching and not seeing a trace of the Robin Williams persona. He plays the role of Ellison completely straight and he goes through an incredible range. For the first act he's essentially in shock, still wearing the clothes with his wife’s blood on him. In the second act he tries his hardest to comfort his children – his daughter doesn’t believe her mother is dead and his older son is incredibly angry. In the scenes that follow he is angry at everything – the fact that his wife is naked in the morgue, that her wedding ring is missing, that he can’t remember the stick-up men’s faces, and himself for not doing anything when his wife was killed.

Later in the episode Bayliss comes to Ellison with his wife’s ring and tries to comfort him about what happened. Ellison refuses to let himself off the hook, still convinced he should have done something. The end of his role comes when Ellison has finished watching the last of the three robbers be sentenced. He has a conversation with Howard, who is still pursuing the case.

He keeps thinking that all of this would bring him peace or closure and it doesn’t. When Howard tries to comfort him saying, he’s not alone Ellison answers in one of the series most painful monologues to date:

“I lost my wife but I joined a club. But the funny thing is none of the members want to belong. It’s the kind of club where only those newly initiated can recognize the other members…There are thousands of us. And it’s growing every year. You know, all this time I’ve been trying to figure out: ‘Why me?’ But it’s not ‘Why me?’ “It’s when me.”

And the sad truth of Homicide is that we will hear variations on this in so many episodes over the next several seasons and none of the detectives can find a rational answer or one at all.

Were it just because of Williams’ work as Ellison, this would be a masterpiece. But even if the series had cast an actor of lesser stature that Williams, it would still be one of Homicide’s best. Because while the perspective of looking at the victim is new, the investigation brings up all of the best parts of the show.

The detectives eventually figure out one of the killers is a stick up artist named Kid Funkadelic. They find his riding buddy Tweety. The detectives cross up, each trying to confess one suspect to give up the other as the shooter. It’s a rare opportunity to see Felton in the box and it gives Daniel Baldwin the chance to show his deceptive pattern as he and Lewis take one suspect and Howard and Bolander take the other. By using the death penalty as a cudgel Bolander and Howard get Tweety to give up the third man who they claim is the shooter: Vaughn Perkins. But Vaughn’s sheet is basically empty compared to the other two and Felton doesn’t quite buy it.

But Kid Funkadelic is adamant and knows what coming. “You know the two of us are going to get thirty years just for being there and the other one’s probably going to see Death Row.” However he gives a hint that maybe things aren’t what they seem.

Howard, Pembleton and Crosetti go to Vaughn’s home and learn he’s being raised by his aunt. His mother is addicted to heroin and they took over raising him after his father was killed. They put him in a good school and seemed to be about to get him out – and it’s telling that Vaughn has gone back to his mother’s after the shooting. His mother is willing to alibi her son – until she’s told by Crosetti that if she lies to the grand jury she’ll be charged with perjury.

Howard and Felton spent four hours trying to get Vaughn to say anything. Finally he asks for pen and paper. Felton comes out furious: “He says he’s sorry!” he yells knocking a chair over. He’s written a letter to Ellison that is basically an apology for what happened. One line sticks with Howard: “I had the power but forgot who I was.”

Bolander mocks this: “Well, he seems to have learned his lesson. What do you say we let him go?” Crosetti is more philosophical: “When’s the last time we had a suspect say they were sorry for what they did? They’re sorry they got charged!” Felton doesn’t care. Howard does. “he’s covering up for his buddies!” she implores Felton. “Why would he do that?” We’ve already been told by Felton that the why doesn’t matter in a killing and the fact is most of the squad wants to move on. In a dark but accurate tone Felton says: “I’m on to the next dead body. In case you haven’t noticed, they’re kind of piling up.”

Later on we learn Vaughn has pled out and insisted he get life in prison. Howard still doesn’t buy it and goes to Giardello to talk about. Giardello is willing but not for the reason Howard is willing to say. “A tourist gets shot in Baltimore in front of the new stadium, I get calls from the Commissioner, the Mayor and the governor…but if her name had been Louella Jones and she’d been from Baltimore, would Felton still have gotten all that overtime?”

Howard gets conflicting reports from Vaughn’s aunt and his mother. His aunt tells her what a soulful boy Vaughn was but also he called her and told her he did it. His mother is just as sure he didn’t do it no matter what he says. One wonders if his aunt cares for the right reason; she cares about his soul, his mother cares about her son.

Finally Howard goes to Jessup, against Felton’s warnings. “What can he tell you that he hasn’t had 20 chances to do already?” he asks her. By this point (there’s been a time compression) Vaughn has converted to Islam, doesn’t seem to care about his aunt and is more interested in his mother. And he does tell Howard the truth: he’d taken the gun because he didn’t want anyone to get hurt but when Katherine resisted, he shot her anyway. The shooting was unintentional but he still pulled the trigger.

It’s not the answer Kay wanted and she knows it; in the last scene Felton tells her she should have left it alone and she agrees. The investigation and everything we see with Homicide makes it very clear the kind of series it is: you should let things go when you write the name in black on the board. That’s the only closure you’re going to get. Katherine Ellison is still dead, her husband has no wife, her children have no mother. Vaughn will die in prison and is already hard when we last see him.  And Felton, for all his roughness, has the right idea: you just have to move on to the next dead body. That’s the one thing both he and Ellison agree on; there are always going to be more.

 

NOTES FROM THE BOARD

Williams was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama. It would be the only nomination Homicide received in 1994 – and the last for two years. ‘Bop Gun’ also won the 1995 Award from the WGA for Episodic Drama, the second consecutive year that Homicide won in this category.

Hey, Isn’t That…  Jake Gyllenhaal was only thirteen when he made what would be his fourth screen appearance as Matt Ellison in Bop Gun. His father Stephen Gyllenhaal was already an acclaimed director and had used his son in a brief role in A Dangerous Woman earlier that year. Jake had appeared in small roles over the last few years starting with his debut in City Slickers but this would be the last screen role had until 1998’s Homegrown. His work as an indie darling wouldn’t begin until 1999 when he appeared in October Sky and he officially achieved cult status in Donnie Darko two years later. The rest we all know.

At this point Jake and his sister Maggie  are the more famous members of the Gyllenhaal clan but its worth noting the father is good in his field. Much of his best work is in television: he’s directed episodes of Twin Peaks, Felicity. The Shield, Everwood, Army Wives, Numbers and most notably Rectify. He would also direct the critically acclaimed film Losing Isaiah.

Incidentally there’s an argument to seeing the DVD version of this as opposed to that on streaming. Much of the rights for music for Homicide are still problematic and as a result viewers on Peacock miss Chris Tergesen’s first contribution. On the DVD we hear him score the episode to Seal’s Killer and it plays like a music video. That’s not present on the one I saw on Peacock. Purists can argue but I suggest one get the DVD for the full experience. (I may note this in future episodes if this continues.)