Homicide Rewatch: From Cradle to Grave

 

Written by David Mills; story by Tom Fontana & Jorge Zamacona

Directed by Myles Connell

 

This will be the first time I will be arguing the only reason Homicide loses something in streaming. Don’t get me wrong; both Amazon and Peacock are doing the world a great service by finally making this series available to a new generation of viewers. But the one holdup seems to have been rights over the songs that were played.

Again you can appreciate nearly 95 percent of the drama on streaming. But one critical part of how Homicide was special was how recording engineer Chris Tergesen was able to interweave music with the cinematography. In order to finally get Homicide put on streaming much of that music had to be cut out.

Most of the time that doesn’t matter but sometimes it does. The final scene of ‘A Model Citizen’ is one of the most wrenching to watch but if you see it on Peacock it loses something because we don’t hear Trent Reznor’s version of ‘Hurt’ playing over Felton looking over his empty home. Episodes like ‘Bop Gun’ are missing much of the score that made the show seem like a music video. It’s not as critical for an episode like ‘From Cradle to Grave but…I’ll get there.

This episode is the first in Season 3 to truly seem like a first season episode. The central plot of the story – Lewis and Munch’s investigation into the murder of a biker – is originally scripted for the show. But the other two investigations are ripped from the pages of Simon’s book.

Lewis is working with his third partner in as many investigations: this week it’s Munch. Yes they talk about the Waterfront in the cold open but its all business from there. The victim is Monk Whetherly, member of a bikers’ group. Tom Fontana would be fascinated by this kind of organization; two years later when he wrote the first season of OZ,  bikers would be a  critical part of the prison gangs that were part of Em City’s population. Of course when you’re in jail you don’t really get a sense of the bikers’ aura that has been prevalent in pop culture for decades and has in recent years become a central part of so much of Peak TV. One could, in  a narrow sense, see much of the storyline and the character of Preacher as sort of a foreshadowing of what we’d see in shows like Sons of Anarchy in the 2000s and beyond.

Mills with Fontana and Zamacona’s help has a pretty good handle of every aspect of the culture. Its never stated directly but a look at the membership of the Deacons shows that they are entirely white. Munch, who has an anti-establishment streak (I can’t imagine how many times he saw Easy Rider) has no sympathy for the Deacons, he calls them ‘rednecks’ argues persuasively they ripped a man to shreds and is far less inclined that Lewis to become enamored of the culture.

Meldrick goes on a similar journey going forward. At first he is equally scornful of their practices. He can’t understand why anyone would tattoo themselves (“When white people mess up their bodies they do it in the weirdest ways) and is not particularly thrilled when he learns the Deacons own a strip club.

Watching one bump and grind he gives his opinion to Munch in a memorable exchange:

Lewis: I see these women and I just get this urge to take them home, try to talk some sense into them.

Munch: No sex?

Lewis: “Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, a couple of beers, couple of shots, plenty of sex. But I still want to help them out.”

At least he’s honest.

While talking with the warlord “Preacher” and dealing with his koan-like statements Lewis reveals a ‘Chuck Norris streak’ as Munch puts it before they bring Preacher in. Munch finds out that Preacher went to college, went to prep school ‘probably summered on the cape’. This causes Munch to feel more contempt but Lewis wants to understand him and Preacher’s statement “he died because he loved his daughter. Lewis makes a genuine attempt to understand the culture of motorcycle gangs, even willing to call them the last symbols of the American West. It’s clear that Preacher has a similar code of honor, using terms of Ancient Rome and living by the sword. (Very much Sons of Anarchy.)

An FBI undercover later tells Lewis which Deacon was responsible for Monk’s murder, but his death was ordered by the club president because of the fact that his wife Bree was an informant. Monk took the death for Bree to guarantee that she and her daughter would not be touched by the Deacons as retribution.

This is the main reason you should see the episode on DVD. The final sequence of the episode takes place as Monk’s funeral. We see the Harley’s drive bearing Monk’s coffin into the cemetery. Lewis has been asked by Bree, who can’t come to the funeral, to bring a picture of his daughter to the cemetery. “I don’t want him to be alone down there,” she says simply. With no dialogue we see Lewis edge his way through a crowd of leather-clad bikers (all with neutral expressions on their faces) to leave a picture of his daughter on the casket. This sort of works in streaming but if you don’t hear The Pretenders’ ‘I’ll Stand by You’ as he does so, you’re not getting the full impact.

You don’t need the music for the other two storylines: one low comedy, one tragic farce and both from Simon’s book. First Howard and Felton are called to investigate the murder of a homeless man with no identifying marks. Unfortunately the rookie officer has let the paramedics take the body to the hospital before the medical examiner could pronounce it. “They really seemed to know what they were doing.” He then tries to assume the position of the corpse for the detectives before they head out to St. Agnes.

Howard and Felton then spend about an hour working their way through the Bureaucracy of the hospital before they reach the front desk who tells them what happened. The clerk says they don’t have him “He was dead. In order to gain admittance you must at least be clinging to live.” The ambulance set him back. Howard and Felton return to the crime scene. (“It’s a treasure hunt,” Felton jokes.) Sure enough the body is at the crime scene and there’s a loyal officer, putting it back exactly the way he found it. Howard then puts the poor man on report. And yes all of this actually happened: it’s taken in real-life detail from Simon’s book.

But the next storyline is more serious. Deputy Commissioner Harris has been mentioned a few times in passing over the first couple of seasons but now he makes his official debut on the screen. He walks through the squad (there’s whispering like a movie star is there) and shakes Pembleton’s hand. He says he wants to buy Frank lunch, and Frank for the first time on the show, seems a little starstruck.

Harris does much to flatter him, saying that he broke his heart when he turned down the job of shift commander last year. He says he respected his decision then and does now. He wants Frank’s help to deal with a troubling matter. Congressman Wade was the victim of an attempted kidnapping by a former aide who warned him to stay away from his girlfriend. He wants Frank to look into it. Frank does.

Very quickly he finds out every aspect of the story Wade said was completely made up and there was no kidnapping. Bayliss figures it out quickly but Frank is still trying to do the job. This leads him to the aide, who has a broken arm. It doesn’t take long for the aide to tell the truth: he and the Congressman were in a personal relationship which he broke off. Wade got upset and broke the mans arm but he didn’t report it. Wade then filed the report as perhaps a preemptive strike.

When Frank goes to Harris to report this, he makes it clear that there is no crime but because the Congressman filed a false police report, he owes the city of Baltimore six months in jail. Harris doesn’t want this to happen, he’s clearly more concerned about the politics then the crime. He tells Frank to go see Wade with the implication that he will not be charged and that Harris has his back. Frank goes to the Congressman, says that this is a closed matter and that nothing will happen.

But nothing stays a secret in Baltimore or DC and the next day the news reporters are surrounding the station with the news about every detail of it.

All of this played out pretty much as Simon wrote it in his book, with the sole major difference that Don Worden, who is Bolander’s inspiration on the series, did in it instead of the Pembleton character. Worden was suspended briefly. However Homicide handles it differently and in a very special way – one that might not seem obvious on first notice and one that struck Braugher in particular much later.

Pembleton is called into Gee’s office and is read the riot act by Bonfather and Harris is also present. All four actors are African-American. It took Braugher a minute to realize it, though because the scene had nothing to do with race.

“I realized for the first time I’d ever been in a room with three other African-American actors and the scene wasn’t about us,” Braugher said. “It’s a long time.”

Fontana had a similar reaction. “It was one of those happy accidents that occurred naturally because of the way the show has evolved. What they were doing was acting the same way Caucasians were allowed to act.”

Homicide may have been the first show in history where a scene like that was possible. It was, in a sense, the wellspring from where so much of the great shows of Peak TV from OZ and The Wire and later series that Shonda Rhimes and Lena Waithe could run with. There’s an argument that any scene like that – where all minorities are in a room and race doesn’t come up –  passes the Homicide test.

Because to be clear Harris leaves Frank to twist in the wind. He tells Bonfather that Frank went to Wade on his own initiative and Bonfather immediately places Frank on administrative leave. Frank goes to Gee for help but for once Al doesn’t bother to help. “You told me this was about parking tickets, Frank,” he says. Gee did try to warn him and now he can’t do anything.

So Frank decides to quit. Now anyone who knows how network television works in the 1990s knows this was purely for show; even a series as realistic as this was not about to let a character who was rapidly becoming its biggest draw exit the series this way. Under other circumstances – particularly given how exhausted the previous investigation left him emotionally – you might be willing to be buy it. His attitude towards Tim in the aftermath is keeping with the Pembleton we know. He pushes away Tim’s overtures that he’s his best friend, says he is pissed at how he was treated and that it violated his moral code, and says he’s actually looking forward to the day when the clock strikes ‘quitting time and I haven’t seen one dead body.” A decade later we might buy it on network television; in 1995 it wasn’t remotely plausible.

What’s critical is what happens next. Wade has just been charged by Bonfather and Frank has been suspended. There’s going to have to be a trial and Frank is clearly not in the mood to be forgiving to the department right now. Will Frank decide to compromise in line for the greater good? Or will his arrogance choose to let him bring the department down? That’s the cliffhanger that hangs over the episode.

During all of this I should mention there’s one more thing. Felton has hired a PI to find his wife and he’s finally located her in Jersey. He goes out there to try and hash it out with Beth but it’s clear what he cares about more is his kids. (Howard reminds him of the Christmas presents in his desk.) That part of the story is resolved. But Felton’s problems have only just begun.

 

NOTES FROM THE BOARD

‘Detective Munch’ The best line comes after Lewis drags Preacher into the squad clearly worse for wear.

Munch: He got into a ‘mine is bigger than yours’

Giardello: I guess his (Preacher’s) was bigger.

Munch: Much.

Hey, Isn’t That… Deputy Commissioner Harris is played by Al Freeman, Jr. the first African-American actor to win a Daytime Emmy for his work as Captain Ed Hall on One Life to Live. He was a regular on that show from 1972-1987 and appeared on and off from 1988-2000. He began his career in The Edge of Night and worked on and off in television for much of the first decade of his career. He appeared as Damon Lockwood in the NBC miniseries King and Malcolm X in Roots the Next Generation. His first major film appearance was in Francis Ford Coppola’s Finian’s Rainbow and is known to modern audiences for playing Elijah Muhammed in Malcolm X. He also starred in such prominent African-American directed and written films as Once Upon a Time…When We Were Colored and Maya Angelou’s Down in the Delta. He passed away in August of 2012 at the age of 78.

Jason Kavits, who would later change his name to Jason Kravitz played the police office in what was his first major role since appearing as a child actor in the series Powerhouse. Afterwards he began a slow but steady career as a character actor in TV, finally achieving recognition for his work as Richard Bey in The Practice from 1999-2001, when his character was memorably killed off. He had worked constantly in television since then in both comedy and drama in everything from The Good Wife to Friends to Grey’s Anatomy. One of the major roles he had was Frank Avellino in the mini-series Madoff, Gary in the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and Rabbi Grossman in the first season of Hunters. His last major role was playing Big Mike on the most recent season of Only Murders in the Building