Homicide Rewatch: Fire (Part One)

 

Written by Julie Martin; story by Tom Fontana and Henry Bromell

Directed by Don Scardino

 

Perhaps as an in-joke to having relative security for the first time in its run, the writers of Homicide spend the Season 4 premiere poking a lot of fun at 'the bosses' This is clearest in the teaser where Munch and Howard discuss Bolander and Felton's suspension for 22 weeks without pay – which until relatively recently was the average length of a network season. "Twenty two weeks? Who comes up with that number?" Munch asks. "The bosses do," Howard says.

By this point we see that Colonel Barnfather has settled into the position so firmly that he feels free to degrade Giardello's work as a shift commander freely to Russert. Russert spends much of the episode wandering the squad room and there is a scene where she sits in what was her old seat with a sense of reminiscence. Now that she's at the top she's not thrilled with the view – and the fact that Barnfather is now talking about pushing Giardello out is affected her. And in the unit Howard is going to take the sergeant's exam which first irks then seems to inspire Munch to do the same.

But as always the lower you get down the chain of command the less fun being a boss is and its clear the consequences are trickling down. The squad was short-handed all of Season 3 and it starts out Season 4 three detectives down. Everyone is carrying the burden of Bolander and Felton's absence (if one freeze frames the board you can see all of their open cases from last season have been redistributed among all five detectives – and the majority of them are in red) and Giardello is beginning to feel the pressure. There is a fair amount of squabbling among the detectives: when we first see Lewis this episode he and Munch are sniping at each other having been forced to partner together. Giardello says he needs a new detective and while Barnfather chafes at the idea Russert pushes for one.

Because the viewer knows how television works and by this point we've seen the opening credits we have a pretty good idea who this new detective will be. But as always Homicide does its part to delay the inevitable as long as possible. Therefore 'Fire' is essentially our introduction to what will be the first new detective on the squad since the series debuted.

Reed Diamond was only 28 years old when he made his debut as Mike Kellerman on Homicide in September of 1995  and he has the look of wide-eyed innocence to him in a way that Kyle Secor did when we first met him back when the series debuted. There's a certain logic that Bayliss is there with Pembleton on the case that will lead Kellerman to the squad, though I'm sure in this case it was done to have Kellerman immediately clash with Andre Braugher, who by now has officially become the lead of the show in a way that not even Ned Beatty was.

This also gives Homicide a chance to do something it really hasn't done to this point in the series: have the detectives from this unit interact with the other units in the Baltimore PD. To this point, the detectives have interacted entirely with patrolmen and beat cops, who are by definition lower down the food chain. Kellerman is the first character we've met who is an equal to Pembleton by rank. This will open up a new well of talent to tap as over the rest of the series the detectives will interact with their equals in other units, most notably narcotics. (And as we'll see it will play a critical role in introducing many of regulars will see in the later seasons.

As you'd expect Pembleton clashes with Kellerman from the moment they meet and Bayliss spends a lot of the episode being a buffer. Frank notoriously isn't always right but he's never wrong and you almost wonder if he's disagreeing with Kellerman so often just to mark his territory. Kellerman is more experienced in the field of arson so you'd think Frank would be willing to yield to someone else's expertise. And indeed watching Frank trying to investigate the death of the young man who was killed in the fire of the R & W Box factory, you really wonder how much Frank is trying to prove he's right. Kellerman's expertise will turn out to be correct: Mark Landry died in the fire and this was not a pre-meditated homicide. But Frank spends the entire episode unwilling to give an inch on that fact. First he thinks the victim was a bum who was sleeping there and died, he's irritated when Kellerman goes everywhere ahead of him, tries to argue that Landry was killed by the father of the girlfriend he was sleeping with, and seems determined to find out that Mark Landry was guilty of doing something that made him worthy of being killed.

Of course, by the end of the episode we learn there's more to it than that. Frank spends much of the episode reflecting on what its like for a parent to lose a child, freezes at a critical moment and seems determined to focus on the investigation rather than talk. It's only at the end of the episode that he finally confides in Tim that Mary is pregnant. He warns Tim not to tell anyone, and it's not clear if he's happy yet – but considering everything we remember since he first mentioned having a child since Every Mother's Son, it's hard to blame him.

The impression you get of Kellerman is that he is very good at his job in arson. He clearly knows his way around burning buildings, is thorough in tracking down every lead and is willing to talk to informants to try and get information. His theory is that the fire was set by a 'torch' hired by Matthew Roland, a slumlord known for his willing to burn down buildings to build high price tenements across Baltimore. (Ah, the innocence of the 1990s. These days landlords just raise the rent so high and the poor people are thrown out on the street.) Kellerman wants to try and track him down and when Bayliss takes an aggressive approach in Roland's office, he immediately tells Tim it was the wrong cue. He's convinced Roland did it until Russert tells him otherwise and that there was a plan to buy the building. (Rest assured Kellerman will be dealing with the Rolands long after he leaves arson.)

He also has habits that are very admirable. He's currently trying to quit smoking, something that will become almost a running gag for the rest of Diamond's time on the series. (He quits and starts again three separate times in the two-parter.) He knows up front that the woman who called 9-1-1 has nothing to do with the fire even though she's called him three separate times. And when the woman invites him into her house for an 'interview' you get the feeling he knows what's coming and handles it with more dignity then she does.

The episode also deals with what will be a recurring storyline involving Bayliss this season: he throws his back out chasing a suspect and will spend the first half of the season dealing with the consequences of it. We also learn how he managed to finally quit smoking – and it makes perfect sense.

I should mention there are some people who say that Homicide 'sold its soul' with so many of these stories going forward. I don't see it that way. For one thing, even if you want to argue the case involved is sensationalized there will be many touches in it that are very much the old school Homicide. For one thing all of the leads that Kellerman, Pembleton and Bayliss follow keep leading to dead ends. It's not just the Rolands who aren't involved, Pembleton's approach to finding anything else on Mark Landry that could lead to him being murdered keeps turning up goose eggs. When he interviews Landry's friends and they keep telling him what a good kid he is, he keeps thinking they're lying. Finally after talking to one last one who tells him the same story the kid says: "Is that so hard to believe?" When Frank says yes, the kid just says: "You've been a cop way too long" and walks away. An anonymous caller leads them to a gas can that may very well be the key to the arson and they encounter the man who owned the truck who has six previous arrests. When Bayliss and Pembleton encounter him, he runs and when they arrest him they ask him for an explanation and he says: "I could, but I'm not gonna." His alibi checks out and when Giardello asks him why he ran Frank says simply: "He says he likes being arrested." That sounds authentic.

And then there's the way were reminded of the victim. From the moment Scheiner wraps the body in a bag, we have several small sequences where we follow it. From the warehouse to the ME'S room, from the ME's room to the morgue, to the undertaker taking possession of it, to the funeral home and then it finally being placed in a crematorium. All these sequences are subtly done with no dialogue and just music and it’s a touch worthy of the show absent the flashy editing we've come to expect of it.

Then too, the show reveals the pressure the bosses are under. Russert visits Giardello near the end of the episode to ask him why he let Bolander and Felton go to the New York convention that has led to their suspension. (See Notes From the Board.) Giardello says, honestly, he thought the convention would be therapeutic for them and righteously says: "How did I know they would turn into Dumb and Dumber?" (That film had just come out when this episode first aired, if you want to feel old.) Russert points out about Felton's marriage falling apart and then Giardello counters whether it was the right idea to have an affair with him. When Russert asks Giardello if he knew, he responds simply: "Everybody knew." Perhaps its for that reason the two of them get into an argument that is only ended when we hear that another fire has been set.

The detectives arrive at the scene to find that the fire was set by the same man and it looks like there's a body there too. When Kellerman tries to give Pembleton credit about Landry's death being pre-meditated Frank will have none of it: "This may come as a shock to you but I don't always like being right." The viewer – and Kellerman himself could be forgiven for thinking otherwise but there's a certain honesty. The episode is about to close; there's now a second dead body and a serial arsonist in Baltimore.

The thing about the cliff-hangers of all of Homicide's two-parters is that they basically went against the rules of what cliffhangers are supposed to be on network television then and honestly now. The first part of an X-Files two parter always ended with Mulder or Scully in mortal peril. In the next decade Grey's Anatomy, Alias and NCIS would have the same way. Even some prestige cable dramas like Battlestar Galactica and Breaking Bad would have cliffhangers with the lives of characters in danger and not being resolved until the next episode.

This is not the case with the end of part one of 'Fire' and it will basically play out the same way for the overwhelming majority of the two-parters to follow. None of the cast members are in anything resembled mortal danger. There is a chance the killer will get away with murder but that's basically the same as every case they investigate. The only real pressure – and this will be a constant – is the threat the bosses will hold over the individual detectives should they fail. And because that's a more realistic threat it makes it all the more real even if you suspect the detectives will catch the killer in the next episode.

 

NOTES FROM THE BOARD

In order to write Ned Beatty and Daniel Baldwin out of the show the writers chose to have their characters die…from embarrassment. The event that Munch described in the teaser of a hundred New York City cops running wild, getting drunk and mooning tourists actually happened and ended the careers of so many of New York's finest. (Why didn't Law and Order rip that from the headlines?) Bolander and Felton attended this very convention and humiliated themselves. Felton was wearing nothing but his holster and a cap and Bolander had his pants around his ankles.

Notably, however, everyone on the squad is operating on the theory that the detectives will be back when their suspension is over. Munch in particular will cling to this all the way through Season Four.

"Detective Munch?" When Howard is looking out on the roof she tells Munch with certainty that the brewery is burning and she knows because she walked past this neighborhood on patrol. Munch tells her it’s the R and W Box factory…and it is. Maybe he would've made a good sergeant after all.

This is the first episode where Henry Bromell's name appears on the end credits as an executive producer (he'd been a co-executive producer in Season 3.)

Kyle Secor and Yaphet Kotto have cut their hair in the off-season, Secor having cut his bangs, Kotto's haircut is more cleanly shaven. Both will maintain this look until the end of the series (though Bayliss will have some tonsorial changes throughout the rest of the series)

Hey, Isn't That… Stephanie Romanov made her debut as Teri Spencer on Melrose Place and would then be a regular on what would be the failed spin-off Models Inc. She would later start in Spy Hard and play Jackie Kennedy on Thirteen Days. She is best known for playing Lilah Morgan, attorney at Wolfram & Hart on Angel for four seasons. She more or less retired from acting in 2004 after the Robin Williams film The Final Cut, with only three credits since then.

At the time of his being cast in Homicide Reed Diamond had not yet done much as an actor. A freshman at Julliard when Andre Braugher was a senior, they appeared in a production of Othello together (Braugher played Iago and Diamond was a servant.) His official film debut was in Memphis Belle in 1990 which featured many actors who would be forces in the years to come including Matthew Modine, Harry Connick, Jr. Eric Stoltz and Tate Donovan. (Note the last two.) Like so many actors he made an appearance in Law and Order (during Season 2) and had starred in the Jack Ryan film Clear and Present Danger in 1994. Most of his other work during this period involved TV movies. He's done quite a bit of work in TV and films since – but we'll save that for another day.