Homicide Rewatch: Every Mother's Son

 

30^TH ANNIVERSARY NOTES

 

A little more personal discussion before we get started,

Several years ago I began the habit of purchasing from eBay DVD collections of series that bore the label For Your Consideration. (I had difficulty getting some streaming services online and I’ve always preferred hard copies to digital.) In recent years I’ve begun to extend my search for older series and last year I actually decided to see what was available on VHS.

In the winter of 2025 I found something I hadn’t been looking for but was to glad to find: an NBC Emmy VHS For Your Consideration for Homicide. I bought it more or less sight unseen. I had all the DVDs for the series and the show was streaming on Peacock and Amazon. But I had my reasons. When I got the VHS, there were two episodes that NBC submitted for consideration in all categories. One of them was ‘Every Mother’s Son.’

Here's the thing. Everyone who saw this episode at the time and years afterwards knows that this is one of the great episodes in the history of Homicide. As you will see in the notes section fans ranked it among the fifteen greatest episodes of all time. But in some ways it’s not the kind of episode you’d think even an ensemble series would submit for consideration. Only two of its leads, Andre Braugher and Kyle Secor are fundamentally front and center for the majority of the episodes. The remaining seven actors have small roles with many basically insignificant. The most significant acting in the show is done by the guest cast. It doesn’t have the standards for direction or camerawork we traditionally associate with the series. And even for a show that was one of the darkest series on network television this is one of the bleakest episodes in the show’s entire history that leaves you emotionally raw by the end of it.

But that’s the kind of thing that also makes it the perfect episode to demonstrate what Homicide was capable of as a drama. At least two or three times a season the writers would break the already flexible rules of the procedural they’d set at the start to go beyond its boundaries and turn it on its head. This was radical in the 1990s and even in the era of Peak TV that followed few shows would dare to make similar changes. In later seasons ER would be more than willing to flaunt the formula and occasionally shows like The Practice and The X-Files would do the same. But with the increasingly serialized nature of television that was to come, these kinds of radical experimentations with the format  - to show basically an entire episode where the regulars were far less of a presence than usual -  was not the kind of experimentation that even Fontana and Simon would do in their own incredible follow-ups on cable. Only network television was willing to try these kinds of things and only a handful of series – The Good Wife and This is Us were the most obvious examples – were willing to do so on a regular basis. (Comedy is a different story as we’ve seen over in the 21^st century to this day,)

I suspect that this willingness to flaunt the format was part of the reason Homicide regularly struggled for ratings in its original run. Homicide was never user-friendly by the standards of the 1990s and even now I wonder what today’s audience would think watching it. We basically spend an entire episode where Pembleton and Bayliss are investigating the murder of a fourteen-year old boy, learn he’s been killed by another fourteen year old boy who shot him by accident, then arrest him and take him into custody. Then we have to deal with one of the most unrepentant and cold murderers (who is fourteen years old, remember) who thinks that because he shot the wrong kid, he shouldn’t be punished for what he’s done.

This is bleak by any standard. Now imagine that we now spend the majority of the episode, not with Pembleton as he deals with this, but with two mothers. One Patrice Sayers is the mother of the shooter. One is the mother of the murdered boy. And the centerpiece of this episode is a ten minute sequence where these two women wait in the aquarium, talking to each other about why their here, neither knowing that their lives are about to be destroyed forever. It’s easier to watch Walter White or Tony Soprano destroy the lives of everyone they touch unrepentantly.

It doesn’t get any easier to watch, no matter how many times I’ve seen it over the years. But that’s exactly what made Homicide one of the greatest shows in history. Both Fontana and Simon would ask a lot of difficult questions in their respective groundbreaking HBO dramas over the years and they were equally brave in refusing to answer them. You can see the foundation of so much of both dramas in Homicide and OZ honestly came closer to trying to answer them than The Wire would.

One of the tried-but-true attacks on so many dramas of this century is that they go out of their way to glamorize killers and not deal with the victims of the crime. Law & Order tried to reverse that trope in its early years before eventually becoming fixated on the procedural and essentially almost every network drama that followed did the same. ‘Every Mother’s Son’ was one of the first times that Homicide pushed back against this idea and it does so in many ways.

The first is that the murder is the shooting of a thirteen year old boy Daryl Nawls. Homicide rarely flinched from the idea of children being the victims of violence, though it never went out of its way to exploit it. With Adena Watson it took five episodes before a suspect was in custody. In Every Mother’s Son, we know before the credits of the guest cast roll.

The episode spends longer that it usually does tracking down the family of the victim, something that usually takes place quickly but can often be horrendous. Bayliss and Pembleton go to the Nawls’ household, find out that Darryl’s brothers there, introduce themselves to him, ask politely to go to where his mother works. Then we see Mary Nawls, and she goes through every possible permutation of denial before Pembleton tells her what happened. We watch her breakdown; we go with her to the morgue where she identifies the body of her son. The writers make it quick but don’t spare the details. Finally they go to the home of Ronnie Sayers who multiple witnesses identified as the shooter. The cops raid the house, they present a warrant and Bayliss is so nervous he points his gun and Ronnie’s brother. Pembleton and Bayliss tell them what happened and are stunned to learn Ronnie’s only 14.

They find Ronnie who is trying to be brave and points a gun at Frank. Then he tells them he didn’t know what this is about – and then we learn the truly tragic nature of it: he shot the wrong kid. Pembleton and Bayliss know they have to go by the book and they’re in the process of getting a juvenile attorney for Ronnie.

Then Patrice Sayers shows up and she tries to do everything she can to protect her son. By this point Ronnie has made an admission and Frank is about to read him his rights but when Patrice shows up Ronnie makes it clear he doesn’t want her here. He tells her he’ll admit to it if she leaves. It’s only now we start to realize just how detached from reality Ronnie is. He truly believes that because he shot Darryl by mistake he should get to home, comparing it to a car crash. When Frank says he killed an innocent kid, Ronnie doesn’t car: “Car accidents kill innocent kids too?”

Frank now tells Ronnie to get his feet off the table. When the attorneys show up, he calls Ronnie: “Mr. Bad Ass Hard Core.” Ronnie remains unrepentant both in front of the states attorney and his own attorney, trying to get them both to leave. We now learn that in Baltimore fourteen is just old enough to get you tried and sentenced as an adult. None of them this makes anybody happy but as Gee points out: “So what do we do? Let him go? Then next week, next month, he kills someone else?” There are no good answers.

It's while this is going on that Mary ends up looking for Pembleton and Bolander asks her to go wait in the aquarium. Showing his usual charm he offers to get her son a soda and walks off with her. While this is going on Patrice ends up wandering in. That’s when the episode goes to a new level.

Lee, with the aid of Yoshimura and Fontana, go out of their way to make it clear that both of these women are the same. Both of them have lost children forever. Both of them know the comic books their children read. Both of them know just how few men there are in this world. And both of them know how horrible the city is. In one of the saddest remarks ever said on the show Mary  tells us she’s been to the funerals of three of Darryl’s classmates this year. “It’s almost how we plan our social,” she says sadly. “ Patrice says she wants to save her money and get out of Baltimore, maybe go to Canada. The only thing she knows about it is that there’s a lot of snow. “Maybe that keeps the lid on things,” Mary says sadly.

During this Bayliss walks by, sees them talking but does nothing to disturb them. Then Frank takes Ronnie to booking and the realization hits both women in a matter of seconds. Gay Thomas and Rhonda Stubbins-White are extraordinary as the two mothers but Thomas is incredible as she suddenly turns from sympathy to out and out rage at the same time. It is a rage borne in grief, of course, but it is anger, nonetheless.

You’d have to have a heart of stone not to be moved by this and it seems all episode that Frank has that heart. Then he comes back from booking Ronnie for a moment and Howard, who’s trying to bounce the idea of a case of Frank asks him for help. Frank talks about coffee and that he drinks three or four pots a day. Howard asks for help and Braugher delivers one of the monologues that made him such a great actor (and is a good reason why this episode could work for Emmy consideration)

“Every day I get out of bed and I drag myself to the next cup of coffee. I  take a sip and the caffeine kicks in, I can focus my eyes again, my brain starts to order the day. I’m up, I’m alive, I’m ready to rock…The time is coming when I wake up and decide I’m not getting out of bed. I’m not getting up for coffee or food or sex. If it comes to me, fine, if it won’t fine. No more expectations.

The longer I live the less I know. I should know more. I should know coffee’s killing me. (This is a kind of prophecy.) You’re suspicious of your suspicions? I’m jealous, I’m so jealous. You still have the heart to have doubts? Me, I’m going to lock up a fourteen-year old kid for what could be the rest of his natural life. This is the deal, this is the law, this is my day. I have no doubts or suspicions about it. Heart has nothing to do with it anymore. It’s all in the caffeine.”

Frank then walks Ronnie into booking and tries his hardest to break the kids bravado. “If they charge you as an adult, you’re probably gonna die in a cell just like this one.” Ronnie just says: “Better than on the street.”

Frank spends the night driving recklessly, clearly bothered by the case but refusing to even engage with Tim when he tries to talk about it. It is here Frank says the words that could so easily serve as a mission statement for the reality of Homicide: “One time, one time I’d like to hear about a murder that makes any sense. One time, for any reason.” And it is a tribute to Homicide that it never backs away from that idea, not even to put the murder police themselves in a good light.

The final scenes are just as devastating. Ronnie has just been remanded to custody without bail. Frank tells Ronnie that he kept him up last night and he needs his sleep. “I don’t usually give advice, not to fourteen year old killers,” he says. “Keep your ass to the wall. Don’t trust anybody. Don’t believe anybody. Don’t help anybody. Don’t ask anybody for anything.” He knows what prisoners will do to this. He knows his life is over. He talks with Tim about how he and Mary are thinking of having children but how can he bring a child into a world like this? Tim tries to make him feel better and Frank is not having it, and in the midst of his bitter mockery, he gets a glimpse of Ronny being thrown into lockup.

The final scene shows Patrice going with her young son to give condolence to Mary who doesn’t really want it. While its going on their two remaining children play together. Patrice tries to say: “Maybe they could get to know each other.” Mary says coldly: “And what if they learn about their brothers?” Patrice’s faces goes slack. She yells for his son and pulls him out of there as fast as she can. We know without having to hear that she will do everything in her power to keep the knowledge away about what happened but she also knows Baltimore. She knows how this story ends. We all do.

At least once a season Homicide would try to flip the script and show the real consequences of the names on the board that once written in black are forgotten by the detectives and by the viewer. They wouldn’t do it that often because otherwise it would be exploitive but they didn’t look away from it either. ‘Every Mother’s Son’ represents the best of what television can be. We cannot look away.

 

 

Notes From the Board

In a ranking by Court TV of the greatest episodes in Homicide history, fans ranked this episode 9^th all time.

“Detective Munch”  The few comic moments of this episode have to do with Meldrick and Munch moving forward with ownership of the Waterfront. Much of it deals with waitresses, an interior designer and the fact that there’s no back taxes to be paid. But the high point comes when someone from the Historical Landmark Society wants their bathroom preserved because of its significance to George Washington. No he didn’t sleep there or eat there, but in 1793 having consumed a lot of wine at a dinner, he could not find a public chamber pot:

Munch: We can’t tear down our bathroom because George Washingtoon took a whiz there?”

Lewis: “Well, if you gotta go, you gotta go. Even if you are the father of our country.

 

The Opening Teaser takes place at a Canadian Football League Game in Baltimore in 1994 between the Baltimore team and the Las Vegas Posse. It was filmed at Baltimore Memorial Stadium (which Meldrick had famously wanted to flood and turn into an aquatic theme park) Clark Johnson, incidentally, briefly played in the CFL in 1979 before turning to acting. “If they said suit up, I would.” We also see Bolander grouse about the old time Baltimore Colts including Johnny Unitas.

It is here we see the first of several cameos  by then real-life mayor Kurt Schmoke as he honors the detectives for Homicide. Schmoke would serve three terms as Baltimore City Mayor and was prominently known for his opposition to the War on Drugs. He famously made a speech in which he criticized drug criminalization, which after it was published led him to widespread bipartisan criticism. Not just the Reagan administration but Baltimore’s own congressman came out against him. New York’s Charlie Range called him the most dangerous man in America. This was his second most notable appearance in public in 1995; later that year he spoke at the Million Man March.

Hey, Isn’t That…Yes that is Howie Mandel in a brief cameo as the interior decorator and yes he had hair once. Mandel is known both as a comedian and for his voice work but that’s not why he’s here. His big break on television came as Dr. Wayne Fiscus on St. Elsewhere, where despite being used for comic relief he was frequently involved in very dark and serious storylines. He was on the show from the pilot to the series finale and believe it or not, he could the bleak. In a famous episode he’s shot in the chest, hovers between life and death and ends up face to face with many of the people who’ve died in St. Elsewhere over the years. One can hardly blame him for doing standup and reality TV ever since.

Sean Nelson was only fourteen when he made his chilling appearance as Ronnie in this episode. The previous year he had electrified audience by playing the title role in Fresh, a twelve year old drug-courier who sets his employees against each other. Boaz Yakin directed and features memorable stints by Giancarlo Esposito and Samuel L. Jackson, neither of whom was the celebrity they would be a few years later. Nelson worked slowly and in intriguing projects over the next several years, from American Buffalo, alongside Dustin Hoffman and Dennis Franz but his greatest role afterwards to make his mark when he played DeAndre in the HBO Limited series The Corner in 2000 (we’ll get to that). He's acted occasionally ever since, most notably in Power Book 2.