Written by Henry Bromell; story
by Henry Bromell & Tom Fontana
Directed by Barry Levenson
In April of 1995 Tom Fontana was
in a place he'd been before.
During the six years St.
Elsewhere was on the air, the show's ratings were always so low that NBC
would frequently wait until the season was over to finally renew it. This would
lead to frequent cast turnover and frustration among almost everyone connected
with it. With each season finale Fontana would reflect this by having the title
hospital in peril for funding, often having the characters themselves wonder if
they'd be back the following year. In that sense the series finale - without question the most divisive in TV
history to that point – may have been in part a middle finger at NBC for all of
the years of frustration Fontana had to have felt for the last six years.
Now it felt very much like déjà
vu all over again. NBC's fortunes had improved immensely - they were now the number one network after
years of struggling – but Homicide's ratings had not improved. Everyone
connected with the show was pretty sure this was going to be the final episode
of the series. Fontana could have reacted with another middle finger to NBC,
but instead he decided to take the show on what he suspected would be the last
hurrah. And so he and Bromell decided to do what was to that point their
wildest tweak on the formula they'd done even after three seasons of twisting
the formula beyond anything the police procedural had been.
Barry Levinson was recruited the
direct the final episode and they decided to tell the kind of story never seen
on the show: it would be ostensibly centered on Frank Pembleton, the character
who had become the breakout character of the show by this point and essentially
have him – and indeed almost all the regulars – in a greatly reduced role.
Instead the show would focus on the story of a man Frank sent to prison six
years ago and follow him on the day of his release. He has one desire: to kill
the man he thinks unfairly put him in jail and stole six years of his life.
Because Levenson was handed to
directed two actors who had worked with him on one of his most famous films to
that point Good Morning Vietnam were cast in the lead roles: Bruno Kirby
as Victor Helms and Richard Edson as Danny. (See Hey Isn't That…for a
more complete roster. Kirby was known primarily as a comic actor from such 80s
and 90s classic as When Harry Met Sally…and City Slickers, Edson
was far of edgier far, most notably Do The Right Thing. One could easily
see the two men cast in the opposite roles and playing it just as easily but
they were rightly cast, particularly because Edson looks like he was flash
frozen and thawed out from the 1970s and that look is essential to the mood.
Danny has come to pick up his
friend Victor after he's spent six years in prison. From the moment we meet
Victor he is angry and on edge and Danny is joking and trying to be funny.
Victor has a chip on his shoulder which Danny wants to deny isn't there and has
a hard time doing so when Victor has him drive to Frank's house and says:
"Today's the last day of his life.'
Danny spend as much of the
episode as he can alternately trying to talk Victor out of what he's planning
and trying to make jokes about everything Victor does. Victor doesn't
appreciate this but watching him throughout the episode its clear Victor doesn't
like anybody. What's fascinating is that we get to see Frank from the outside
for once and given what we already know about him – particularly given the
previous episode- our sympathies are
with Victor much of the way. Victor installed a gas heater that was faulty and
ended up killing a family. Usually this would seem to be little more than
negligence and the remedy would have been civil court. But Frank and the
state's attorney made Victor a test case and he has spent the last six years in
prison (though we never know the nature of the charge). "The Gestapo on
their best day have nothing on Frank Pembleton," Victor says grimly, and
we can't help but be reminded that Bayliss himself had doubts about Frank's
methods of interrogation in the Pilot. Given everything we know about the unit,
both the bosses and the need to clear cases, there's a very good chance Victor
might have gone to prison just to improve the unit's clearance rate.
The fact that Pembleton walks
past Victor with no recognition is symbolic in a different way. To Frank,
Victor was just another lock up who helped him change a name from red to black.
To Victor, his encounter with Frank utterly destroyed his life, his marriage
and his relationship with his son. In a terrible encounter we see that Junior
has no desire to connect with his father and blames him for his mother
committing suicide. Victor blames Frank for that as well and we can see why he
sees it that way even if we don't agree.
In hindsight we wonder if Danny
has it right when he thinks Victor isn't taking it seriously: he could just as
easily have killed him half a dozen times this episode but he says, 'he's
looking for angle'. He claims he wants to destroy Frank's reputation and seizes
on the most recent case. The murder of a Gypsy named Zelda Peters who's been
decapitated. Victor and Danny stumble upon both the murder weapon and the head
and Victor seizes on this as the chance he's been waiting for.
From this point on much of
Danny's humor is of the black variety as Victor insists on putting the head in
the refrigerator. "All my milk's gonna go bad," he says at first.
Danny is determined to ruin Frank's reputation by saying he has the murder
weapon and the head. He doesn't know that at most this would bother the unit
for a few days, and then on to the next dead body. The main problem Frank has
right now is with Bayliss who is still partnering with Frank but is snide to
him at every single opportunity. (As Stan puts it, he hasn't gotten over nearly
sending his cousin to the gas chamber.) As it is Frank and Tim manage to close
the case when the murderer tries to kill himself, believing the Gypsy put a
curse on him. To the unit the case is closed but to Tim he won't let it go.
The bigger insight we get in
this episode is the marriage of Frank and Mary. Earlier this season Frank told
Tim that he and Mary were thinking of having a kid and in a rendezvous in a
motel, we see that Frank has gathered a sample to have studied at a fertility
specialist. A comic highpoint comes when the silver-tongued Frank arrives there
and stands awkwardly unable to say what he has.
Danny spends the episode driving
Victor around and his car is perpetually tuned to 1970s music. As they travel
from place to place, we see Danny is pretty much the John Munch in this
relationship, saying so many of the lines Munch himself would say. "If she
was so good a gypsy, how come she couldn't tell someone was coming to kill
her?" "Do you think a head knows something when it's been cut from
the body?" "How do they get
the caffeine out of the coffee?" Victor does everything he can to ignore
Danny's questions even though he's impatient about everything else. Perhaps its
because he needs Danny to drive and he can't afford to isolate him.
Victor's surveillance becomes
more menacing with each act break. By the second act he's stolen the head and
the knife and is taking pictures of it. At the third he's trying to buy a gun
but his anger about taxes gets in the way. He starts lighting the burners in
the stove in Frank's house, approaches Mary in the supermarket as a detective
who becomes increasingly menacing, follows Mary and Frank to dinner and watches
them with binoculars.
With each act break Danny
becomes increasingly frightened by his friend's behavior and by the final act
he's rebelling. He says that Victor isn't taking responsibility for his actions
then or now, something that so infuriates Victor he nearly crashes the car. Danny
takes this in stride. In the final minutes when Victor asks Danny for help he
tells him: "We've been following Frank for three days and what have we
seen…Frank Pembleton takes responsibility for his actions, with his friends
with his wife, hell, he even takes responsibility for dead people! I'm taking
responsibility myself." He leaves Victor for the final act.
It's worth noting Frank is
increasingly rattled as the threat comes closer to home and he ends up going to
the address where the family Victor helped kill. Victor holds the knife of the
murder to Frank's throat and finally lays his soul bare. It's clear now that
what happened was just a tragic accident and in Victor is taking responsibility
for his failures. He gets to say what so many in the box never get to tell
Frank, though you could say he's gotten another confession. But then Victor
finally realizes the truth: he's not a killer after all and he breaks down.
The final moments of the episode
– which Fontana might have considered a stand-in as a series finale are back in
the squad. Munch and Lewis are dismissive of the final images that we've seen
so much work put into with a mix of dismissive humor and the craziness of the
world. Danny's waiting for Victor, saying he'll be there when he gets out and
Frank dismisses him. Giardello and Russert tell Frank that they will reunite
Zelda Peters head with her body for her final rest.
Bayliss asks Frank if he thinks
they've been partners too long. Frank says he never wanted a partner –
"but in the course of time, I've decided I don't mind having one."
Bayliss accepts this as an apology. "You were lucky," he tells Frank.
And Frank has the final word:
"Luck had nothing to do
with it. God reached down and graced a fool with wisdom."
I will admit the first time I
saw this episode I couldn't understand the appeal of it, why Matt Roush
rejoiced that it would be such a classic. Now given the course of time, like so
many episodes during the course of its run, I can appreciate the experimental
nature of it. And I have to say, even with all the magnificent television I've
seen since then, I've rarely seen an episode quite like anywhere but Homicide
where we look at the perspective of characters familiar from an outside
perspective. The few series that have I tried something like this are usually
genre: The X-Files did it a couple of times in the seventh season (which
its writers thought would be the last one) and Lost did it with more
polarizing episodes. But in a world where the majority of shows are serialized,
to that a look at things this fresh was incredibly daring. To do so in what so
many thought would be the final episode of the series – and to not wrap anything
up in a bow or put up a cliffhanger – may have been Homicide's greatest
trick to this point.
And the best part is, this
wasn't the end. Homicide did come back the following season and for the
next three seasons would be mostly free from the burdens it had faced from the
network. It would continue to break ground with the format and do television
that was unheard of at the time. Of course, some would argue it became more
conventional to do so – but even then, there were radical changes to view.
We'll deal with them in Season 4.
NOTES FROM THE BOARD
The central case was based on an
actual Baltimore murder, the brutal slaughter and decapitation of Sister Myra
in 1994, at the time one of the bloodiest in Baltimore's history. I'm actually
kind of amazing we see so much of the body and even a glimpse of the head in
1995 TV,
Detective Munch: As you'd expect
we don't hear much from him during this episode. Still he is astonished at the
crime scene which involves the head with candles were around it: "Were
there hor d'oeuvres? Was this a Gypsy Buffet?
Also significant: When Bolander
asks if someone sneezes and ten people go crazy, Munch responds 'Gesundheit'.
That's the last exchange that Munch and Bolander will have for the rest of the
series (we'll deal with that at the start of Season 4.)
GET THE DVD: I really hate to
say this but you absolutely need to see this on DVD to get the full effect.
This is an episode where the soundtrack is vital to the atmosphere of the
episode and the streaming version cuts many of the songs that are critical such
as Earth, Wind and Fire's Boogie Wonderland, Blondie's Heart of Glass and Call
Me and Chic's I Want Your Love. They don't cut Kool and The Gang's 'Do A Little
Dance' – they just talk about it. (Much of the soundtrack would appear in
Levenson's Donnie Brasco
Hey, Isn't That… Bruno Kirby was
a constant face in the work of Barry Levenson; in addition to Good Morning
Vietnam, he'd appeared in Tin Man and would later appear in Sleepers and Donnie Brasco. That year he played Swifty in
The Basketball Diaries. He also played Vincent Bugliosi in the 2004 remake of
Helter Skelter. In 2006 he was diagnosed with leukemia and died in August of
that year.
Richard Edson has been one of
the great character actors since his debut in Jim Jarmusch's Stranger Than
Paradise. He starred in such films as Platoon, Eight Men Out and had the role
of Wilmer's in the short-lived series Shannon's Deal. In 1995 he played Tick in
Strange Days and has worked in such Indie films as The Million Dollar Hotel,
Timecode and Southlander and has worked constantly to this day. His most recent
film was 202'4's The Code.
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