Homicide Rewatch: The Last of the Watermen

 

Written by Henry Bromell & Tom Fontana

Directed by Richard Pearce

 

This is a stumble for Homicide, not just for Season 3 but for much of the series overall. This is unfortunate in some ways, better than others.

This episode might be some combination of one draft or too much network interference from a very good episode and a part of me is inclined to think it’s the latter. Even at this stage in its run Homicide has already proven that it is willing to shake up the format of the procedural. We saw in ‘Night of the Dead Living’ in Season 1 and in Bop Gun in Season 2. Indeed during the third season the writers will do at least two other major shakeups to the formula that will rank among the highpoints of the series. And it’s not like the show hasn’t been hinting at it with every character at some point in the run, wariness with the job has already become second nature to the detectives and you can imagine a moment like this becoming simply too much for one of the detectives and they just decide they need a break from the action.

It also helps that so far in the series we know relatively little about all of the detectives’s personal lives and what we know is fairly depressing. We’ve spent two seasons dealing with the fallout from Bolander’s divorce and his efforts to find love again and we’ve just witnessed how truly toxic Felton’s marriage has been. And considering that too this point we know fairly little about Howard’s personal life despite what she tells us, looking into where she came from might not be the worst idea. It might seem a little cliched by today’s standards -  a female detective so sick of the job she takes personal lime mid-case – but up until this point Kay has been seen basically as the adult in the partnership she has with Felton. And given everything that’s happened to her so far this season: playing a buffer between Beau and his wife, the repercussions of Crosetti’s suicide – it would be normal for anyone to need a break. Besides Howard has prided herself on being one of the boys to this point and there’s something very masculine about how she talks about the neighborhood she’s in involving the smell of crap and urban decay. So there’s merit to taking a break.

There’s also a rough draft of a good idea of Howard’s return to what appears to be the home of oystermen, which seem to be the blue collar routes of where she came from. It’s also clear she hasn’t been back home to her small town in  a long time; she’s stunned to learn that her father has retired from working the oyster boat, meaning she hasn’t even talked to him in a while. (Considering her relationship with her sister seems to be much closer this is telling.) And a lot of the discussion between her and her father Wesley is incredibly awkward. It’s clear he has only the most basic perception of what she does: “I don’t shoot people. I catch people who shoot people” she tells him. It’s clear in their interactions in the episode Wesley has never truly known what to make of his daughter and doesn’t seem able to connect the same way. We see her visit her grave of her mother, who we learned from an early episode died of breast cancer very young.

We also get a glimpse of her personal life in her first love Chick, who’s still on the water and who tells her very bluntly that both his job and the town itself are dying out. (This is a theme that will come into play that will come in Season 2 of The Wire which takes place on Baltimore’s waterfront.) The job of being an oysterman is being regulated to death by environmentalists, represented by Dr. Bradley. Here, perhaps more clearly then any other episode in the career of Simon as a writer, we see the conflict between the death of work and the government regulation. We see the ripple effects on a small town and how there doesn’t seem to be a good answer between environmentalism and blue collar jobs. Bradley has no good answers either and there’s just anger behind.

All of this has the benchmarks of a deep, interesting episode but I get the feeler that either Fontana or NBC wasn’t comfortable enough to see Kay Howard just living out her version of “you can’t go home again.’ So naturally after Howard sees the anger at a local bar, she’s awakened at her house at 2 AM to be called in by the sheriff to tell her that Bradley is dead, clearly murdered. Worse this is the first murder in six years in her town, so naturally the sheriff asks for her help.

All of the trademark naturalism of Homicide – the murder is committed by the most likely suspect and the truth leaves a wreck – can’t hide the fact that this is more the trappings of Murder, She Wrote (which was still on the air in 1994) and Kay Howard is a much younger Jessica Fletcher. The fact that Fontana chooses to do this with his most prominent female character (at this point) also works against it. The show was on stronger ground last season with See No Evil and it dealt with it more directly; the fact that the writers don’t feel confident enough to grant the same grace to Howard shows their own flaw.

And the final minutes really hurt as well as we see Howard return to the office, apparently refreshed and joking around after a vacation where a man was killed, she had to help participate in the arrest of a friend and her own brother was quietly complicit. I have a reason why there might be more to it than that (I’ll get to it at the end) but it doesn’t look particularly good.

What hurts the most is that this is an episode where the ‘B’ story is so much stronger than the one involving Howard as the lead. The episode follows the murder at the start where Felton and Howard have been called into investigate the murder of a seventy year old woman who has been beaten, stabbed to death, and has had her tongue cut out and stuffed back in her mouth. Howard is disgusted by this and cuts out but Felton is the primary and he needs a partner. Gee decided to team with Pembleton.

This leads to a story that is filled both with enormous tension and humor, sometimes interchangeably. We already know how much Felton and Frank despise each other from a distance and now they’re working in close proximity. This leads to some superb moments from both of them. Felton says he wants to close this case because he hasn’t had a murder in some time. Pembleton says he just closed the Griswold case. Felton looks at Frank. That was a killing.

“Kenny Griswold was a smoke hound with a rap sheet as long as your arm. His death, like his life, was meaningless. Audrey Resnick was a sweet old woman who was killed in what should have been the safety of her own home. That’s a waste of life.”

It’s worth noting this is the first time we’ve heard Felton sound passionate about any murder on the job. But Frank takes offense: “Who are we to judge a person’s life?” Felton asks him if the death shocks him. Pembleton acknowledges Resnick’s death does as well as several other horrible ones:

I’m also shocked by the death of Kenny Griswold, a worthless smoke hound. Because Felton where I come from every life has meaning. “

Then as he walks off: “Even yours, Felton.”

We see Frank spend much of the episode trying to focus, to a ridiculous extent as to why Audrey’s tongue was cut out and stuffed in her mouth. This is an oddity for Frank who doesn’t usually focus as much on the why as the who. Felton actually figures out on the basics: he gets evidence that Audrey’s grandson Artie was living with her, they find a knife with blood on it and his fingerprints are on it. All they have to do is find Artie.

This leads to another tension filled and hysterical scene where Felton and Pembleton go to Artie’s hang out on a half court and in the process start playing a pickup basketball game. Very quickly this stops being a team sport and a one-on-one between the two detectives, as the teens increasingly look on in exasperation and leave with the ball – to the irritation of Frank.

Finally they manage to run down Artie Resnick, who confesses immediately. He doesn’t have a reason for doing it and when Frank asks why he cut out his grandmother’s tongue he just says, “She talked too much.” Frank seems almost disappointed; Felton just shoves him in the car. It’s always fun watching Braugher and Baldwin play off each other; it’s more fun to see Felton’s approach more accurate than Pembleton’s.

I’ve always thought it was off when Kay comes back after everything she’s been through on her ‘vacation’ seeming refreshed. Years later I wonder about that moment before she comes back in the door. Kay has a blank look on her face when she enters the room and the moment Gee talks to her, she starts engaging in small talk, bantering with the detectives. When Beau who was annoyed by what happened asks her if her vacation was good she just says: “It was fine” and is non-committal. Perhaps Fontana and Bromell are suggested that there are two Kay Howards, the one with a personal life and the job one and she needs to make clear that the two never mesh. Her experience back home made it clear she belongs in Baltimore but she’ll never admit she’s was wrong either. So she says everything’s fine and catches the next call.

Homicide learns from its mistakes and while it will probe the detectives personal lives repeatedly to better effect, it will never make the same effort to have the two intersect the same way they do in Last of the Watermen. That’s the best you can saw about this flawed but interesting episode. Like the characters they try to learn from their mistakes.

 

NOTES FROM THE BOARD

“Detective Munch’: In a brilliant opening teaser we see Giardello going to the laundromat on a Sunday and finding Munch there. Munch turns out to be just as annoying being friendly as he is at work and Giardello ends up walking away from him to read the paper. We also hear Munch strenuously arguing with Lewis about having a TV at the bar as Lewis and Bayliss argue they need something there to enjoy sports. “Why not just add nock hockey?” Munch said exasperated. Bayliss asks what that is.

FIRST APPEARANCE OF: M.E. Alyssa Dyer, played by Harlee McBride (aka Mrs. Richard Belzer!) McBride was a former Playboy Playmate, known to (ahem) some viewers for her work in the 1970s film Young Lady Chatterley. Her character would appear on a semi-regular basis from this point until the end of the series.

Also in her first speaking role is Kristin Rohde as Officer Sally Rogers. Rohde will appear repeatedly as one of the beat  cops on the scene in many of the murders the squad is called too. By the time Homicide came to an end Fontana had cast her in a larger and more significant role as C.O Claire Howell on OZ. She would go on to start in various roles in Law and Order SVU and Criminal Intent. Tragically she passed away in December of 2016 at the age of 52.

STREAMING NOTE: The Peacock broadcast once again cuts out the music for this episode. The major song that plays in the episode is Counting Crows ‘Raining in Baltimore.” I don’t recognize the song that plays in the Peacock version. This is another major cut that is not present on the DVD and may not be present on Amazon. This time I think it hurts the episode: the melancholy tone of the song as Kay goes back home really does set up what we are about to see.