Homicide Rewatch: A Doll's Eyes

 

Written by James Yoshimura; story by Tom Fontana & Henry Bromell

Directed by Ken Fink

(30^th Anniversary)

 

In an effort to make so many of their episodes available for sweeps the NBC executives spent much of Season 4 moving episodes out of chronological order. This was a measure that would be unthinkable in a few years' time even on network television as even shows that were ostensibly procedurals were increasingly serialized.

As I've mentioned before NBC would this with all but one season during the show's run and it is a credit to both the era and the writers that only the hardcore fans would notice the difference. It's somewhat more obvious with 'A Doll's Eyes', mainly because this episode the squad is still out of the office, conducting interrogations in a vault. But all of the other changes in order were mostly subtle and unless you were a true nitpicker it didn't matter.

The effect was in this case to cause an odd kind of synchronicity. The first episode that aired in 1995 was 'Every Mother's Son', a show that dealt with the death of a child that was investigated by Bayliss and Pembleton and spent a significant amount of its run time  on how it affected his family and the family of the shooter. Now twelve months later, one of the last episodes Homicide that aired in 1995 also deals with the death of a young child and spends a significant amount of its run time seeing how it affects the family of the victim. In both cases, the victim is not the intended target, the victim of the random violence that plagues the street's of Baltimore. In 'A Doll's Eyes', the family is white and working class as opposed to the more typical African-American family of Baltimore. However we soon learn the shooters are white themselves and also teenagers.

But of course the most significant difference is that for the overwhelming majority of this episode the victim Patrick Garabek is technically still alive. In a way 'A Doll's Eyes' will open a new well of drama for Fontana and his writers to tap both this season and in the future. Until this point the detectives have been dealing with bodies that are long cold. After this episode they will increasingly encounter victims of violence who either aren't dead yet or that in some cases don't meet the standards of what murder police investigate. Frequently this will lead to some of the best drama in the show's history but only occasionally would it be more painful than it is here.

The title of the episode refers to a medical term that is stated by his treating physician, played yet again by Sean Whitesell who we last saw way back in Season One. His character (now given the name Eli Devilbess) is given more screentime then usual, not just with the detectives but in the final scene with the parents. He is the one who has to tell them that their son is brain dead, something he's already told the detectives when they come to the hospital.

It's worth noting that from the start neither Bayliss nor Pembleton really wants this case. Bayliss tries to argue that this is a shooting and it should be handed off to violent crimes and cites his backlog of open cases. Howard and Giardello say that since that the victim is brain dead, they'll have to deal with the case eventually. (This is not the kind of paper shuffling that Simon would illustrate later on The Wire, though you could see Rawls looking the other way if they got the guy immediately. On that show he'd probably order they hand it off.)

We know upfront there's more to it then just that as we see the two detectives sniping at each other over far more trivial matters than usual. Frank is pissed that Bayliss left him behind at the hospital asking him for carfare, then snipes at him again for not giving him coffee. And Bayliss, usually the more restrained one when it comes to potential suspects, is a lot angrier when he's interrogating a potential witness who he knows is hiding something from him. And it's because, like 'Every Mother's Son', this is an episode where neither detective can escape the nature of the loss as easily as they do with most of their cases.

In a sense we know we're getting a different episode then usual when the teaser starts not in the squad room or at a crime scene but in a shopping mall. We see a ten-year old looking at an exhibit of dinosaurs, like most ten years old do. His mother comes up with a muffin, his father with some videos and they joke in a familiar way. They want to leave but Patrick wants another minute with the dinosaurs. Then we see in quicks cuts several people running by. We here several cracks that we think are gunshots but we will later learn most of the onlookers and likely the Garabeks themselves think are fireworks. We cut back between the mother and Patrick and then we see Patrick's expression change and then he falls to the ground. We then see the Garabeks being rushed to Johns Hopkins.

The detectives go to the crime scene, have their usual discussions with the investigative unit, talk with some of the potential witnesses who are their usual helpful selves. Eventually they go to the hospital to talk with the parents who are basically sleepwalking as Paul leaves to park the car and comes back. Then when Bayliss and Pembleton show up and announce their homicide detectives it takes a moment for this register. It's the father who erupts first, saying that his son is alive that he is in surgery and they have to find who shot him. That's when they learn Patrick Garabek is brain dead.

We're never sure after this how many days are going by between the initial shooting and when the name finally goes to black on the board. It's clearly longer than the usual time it takes for an investigation to play out, perhaps a week. We see the Garabeks go home to find that the table is still dirty with the breakfast dishes and Patrick's Game Boy on the table. That shocks Joan into making breakfast against Paul's wishes and when she opens a bag to find her son's bloody clothes, her immediate reaction is to wash them.

Now I must tell you that Joan is played by Marcia Gay Harden. At that point in her career she was more known for her work on Broadway then anything else. (Famously she originated the role of Harper in Angels of America.) But she had no major film credits and was still doing guest roles on TV. I had heard of her when I first saw this episode in 1997 but not for much. I can't say I knew she was going to become one of the greatest character actresses of all time when I saw this episode but you could definitely tell that it was there.

I don't know if there's a single scene in this episode that demonstrates the individual power of Harden's performance the way you might get with other future stars you see on Homicide. But it is a tribute to how good Harden's work is that even at this point in her career she matches the ability of previous gold standard for guest performances: Robin Williams in Bop Gun. Like Robert Ellison you see moments where Harden spends much of the episode in a sleepwalking state, but where as the few outbursts of Williams' performance were angry rage, in Harden you see it in an overwhelming despair and grief. This is clear when Pembleton comes to get the clothes for the investigation and Frank tries to say he needs them.

Joan unravels at this in a teary monologue in which she what she wants, what the doctors and the detectives and everyone else keeps asking of her and how she just wants her son to get better. Finally she breaks down in tears and Paul just tells him to get the clothes later. We rarely see Frank unsettled by anyone's behavior and it's a little unnerving to see him just back off. You get the feeling he's relieved when he has to deal with a potential suspect in 'the box' to get the truth; this may be a horrible thing but at least it's something he has an element of control of.

And this is made clearer when Pembleton and Bayliss later go to pick up the clothes and find themselves witness to the levels of despair both Joan and Paul are going through about facing the reality of their son's condition. Joan wants to consider long term care even if this ends up eating through all their savings, if it gives them hope that it will get better. Paul has at least at some level accepted reality and is willing to entertain the possibility of donating Patrick's organs and how it could help people. Joan clearly thinks there's something wrong about it, almost unnatural, though how much of this is grief is not clear. Paul is more worried about what happens if they take Patrick off life support and someday they find a way to 'fix their son'. At one point he asks Frank: "Do you believe in God?" Frank tells him with honesty he rarely shares: "You're asking the wrong guy." He also doesn't know how to deal with the fact that Paul clearly wants violent revenge on the man who killed his son – understandable but incongruent without Frank sees the world.

But it's after this all ends that we truly see how much this has hit Frank where he is religiously. He mentions Lourdes and Fatima to Tim, even after he tells him that there's no cure for brain dead. It's never stated directly in this episode but we are reminded that Mary is pregnant and this case has no doubt hit home much like the events in Every Mother's Son for Frank. He had doubts about bringing a child into the world and now he has firsthand evidence of what can go wrong. The Garabeks have done everything right for their son and he's just as much a victim of random violence as the streets of Baltimore as Ronnie Sayers was. Only there's no advice he can give to make his conscience to feel better about it.

The scene in the hospital room is one of the most emotionally powerful in the entire history of the show. And I have to tell you seeing this episode I would have expected the same kind of superstardom for Gary Barasba who plays Paul then I did for Harden. This is demonstrated the most in that scene. You get the feeling to this point that Paul has been the strong one, guiding Joan to this decision and he allows Joan to say the final goodbye to her son and says that she has loved him 'every minute of your ten years, three months and eighteen days on Earth.' That will break every parents heart. But just as powerful is when Paul says the only way he can say goodbye to his son is for them to turn off life support in their presence rather than the OR. The way he tells Devilbiss that he's never asked anyone for a favor is gutting as is the way he picks up his son and says, finally breaking with emotion, "I'm going to give to your mother now."

In an era of medical shows we're now used to flatlines and machines being turned off, we've gotten numb to it. So it says a lot thirty years later my eyes still tear up in that final moment. Maybe it's the show, for all the bodies that fall on Homicide, there's rarely been anything so final about a person's death as this moment. (Though there will be contenders.)

Even the one part of the plot that might have made this age poorly adds context. In the fall of 1995 Pope John Paul II was touring America and visited Baltimore. Russert has been given a ticket to sit with him but she thinks about giving it to Frank because he's Catholic. It's telling where Frank is right now that at this point he dismisses the whole event as "60,000 people in a stadium, looking for a miracle'. That said, when the episode ends we actually see Frank watching footage of his holiness landing in Baltimore, the faithful cheering. As is often the case Frank gives nothing away in these moments and as of course, it's interrupted by another call, another body.

It's telling that even for this horrible case, there's nothing at all remarkable about what leads to Patrick's death. As Frank says it's nothing more than 'variations on a theme'. Two brothers were fighting over a girl, one of the brothers decided to carry a gun and a stray bullet hits Patrick. This isn't a banality of evil card, it's the casualness of violence, and that cuts deeper.

For all that the final scene of the episode makes all of this somehow worse. We've been told that there was a kid in the hospital who'd been on the waiting list for a kidney for over a year and that Patrick might be able to save his life. At the end of the episode we meet the father of the boy who Patrick saved. And yet as the father tells us he's tried to get in touch with the family, rambling about how what might have happened if the Garabeks hadn't gone to the mall, if the shooter haven't left the house, we feel neither closure nor catharsis. In fact the viewers actually a little pissed at the father, even though he can't possibly know any better. It's only at the end when he says: "For my kid to live another kid had to die," that we realize he knows the truth. And the worst part is Bayliss and Pembleton won't even be able to think about it long. The phone's rung again; they're back to the next dead body. You almost wonder if they're thinking whether this time it'll be better if the victim doesn't have any family. It's cold, but after this episode you could hardly blame them.

 

 

 

 

Notes From The Board

This episode was ranked 15^th by viewers in a poll of the greatest episode in the series history. It would be nominated for the Humanitas Prize for television, an annual award group which gives prizes for film and television that 'explore the human condition in a nuanced and meaningful manner'. Hard to argue this episode doesn't qualify.

It Was The 1990s: Believe it or not this is a crossover episode far more subtle and in a way more daring than the one they will do with Law & Order later this year. When Patrick's organs are being sent out to various hospitals we see that Patrick's heart is being directed to Chicago Hope. That is the title of the 'other' Chicago Medical drama that debuted the same year as ER. And though he doesn't say a word of dialogue the man who accepts the heart when it is delivered to the hospital is Mandy Patinkin, who earlier that year had won an Emmy for playing Dr. Jeffrey Geiger on that very show. Patinkin would leave the series less than halfway through the second season, so I have no idea if he was still working for the show and by definition CBS at the time the episode was filmed. Still I have to say I was a fan of that show and I did a double take when I first saw in the episode. Back then, crossovers were rare and crossovers that crossed network lines, nearly non-existent. (They're not that common now.)

Detective Munch: His one real scene comes when he talks to Russert about her ticket to see the pope and tells her how much money she could make scalping the ticket. "That would be heresy," she says. "Well, I'm pretty sure Sony will be covering the apocalypse live," he says casually. (Not even Munch would have thought to think of streaming back then, but otherwise…)

Hey, Isn't That… Harden has already won an Academy Award and has become a constant presence in movies ever since her appearance in Homicide, so I'll stick to TV which is considerable.

She would later play Susan Silverman in a series of Spenser: For Hire TV movies. In 2001, immediately after her Oscar win for Pollock she was cast in Richard Dreyfuss's attempt to star in television The Education of Max Bickford. The show only lasted one season despite the presence of Helen Shaver, Regina Taylor and Katee Sackhoff's first major TV regular role. She appeared in several more TV movies and a recurring role on Law & Order: SVU before landing the role of Claire Maddox in the second season of Damages. It was a role more than worthy of an Emmy nomination but she didn't get one. She then landed the role of Diane Buckley in the one season comedy Trophy Wife, played the recurring role of Rebecca Halliday in the last two seasons of The Newsroom, Viola Davis's sister in-law on the first season of How To Get Away With Murder. Then she landed the lead role of Dr. Leanne Rorish on the CBS medical drama Code Black. Deeply admired by critics and a relatively successful show for a while, it was nevertheless cancelled in 2018. In recent years she has received much acclaim and to date her only Emmy nomination for her work on The Morning Show. Her last major role was playing Margaret in the hysterical dramedy So Help Me Todd. She's currently in post-production for the limited series Margo's Got money Troubles and is set to play Mayor Christie Holman in the second season of Murder in a Small Town.

Gary Barasba never achieved the popular acclaim of his co-star but he'd already been more prolific. He'd already played Andrew in The Last Temptation of Christ and starred in such films as Fried Green Tomatoes and Mrs. Parker & The Vicious Circle. After this he would have a starring role in Steven Bochco Brooklyn South which lasted just one season and would later have his biggest role in Boomtown the critically acclaimed NBC series that unfortunately was cancelled after a collapse in Season 2. (I'm still pissed about it actually.) He starred in the Canadian comedy series Mixed Blessing which aired three seasons and even though it's last episode was in 2010 doesn't seem to have been cancelled yet, according to imdb.com. (Don't ask.) he has had roles in such shows as Mad Men, Person of Interest, The Leftovers and Justified and most recently played Clarence Strider in the ABC miniseries Women of the Movemeent. His last major role as Detective Burns in KILLERS OF THE Flower Moon.