Homicide Rewatch: Thrill of the Kill

 

Written by Jorge Zamacona ; story by Tom Fonatana & Henry Bromell

Directed by Tim Hunter

 

This may be the first episode in the series entire run that could be considering polarizing by fans. David P. Kalat, author of the series first unofficial episode guide, calls it 'possibly the series lowest point'. Tod Hoffman the author of the more critical guide Homicide: Life on The Screen refers to it as 'an exciting, cinematic episode with a surprising twist at the end." Having watched the episode multiple times over the years I can see both points of view.

I don't think this episode would have happened had not been made for NBC's demand for Fontana to bring higher ratings in Season 4. We've seen other episodes over the last season that seem like they're trying to make the show more audience friendly and we'll see more in the weeks and months to come. 'Thrill of the Kill', however, is the first episode that really seems like it belongs to another series altogether, the kind of thing you could see Criminal Minds or NCIS dealing with in subsequent years.

It's not so much the camera work in the scenes of the killings or even the way the show spends relatively little time with the detectives themselves: it's that this is first time the show has ever spent so much time with the actual killer. You could argue that Fontana is trying to experiment with the formula the way the show has done as recently as the previous episode. (Thrill in the Kill was originally aired before 'A Doll's Eyes no doubt because the network heads thought this episode would draw more eyeballs.) But 'A Doll's Eyes' worked because it spent so much time dealing with the family of the victim and seeing just how the trauma of murder affected those around it. Thrill of the Kill, by contrast, only seems tangentially attached to Homicide at all. Bayliss and Pembleton are called in to help the FBI, only because the killer is headed in their direction after a spree of other murders which goes against the rules of how the detectives have done their jobs for the last three seasons.

And even if you buy this as a concept and go along for the ride (heh heh) the plotting of the episode makes no sense. As Kalat himself argues:

"The story has a geographical problem. Bayliss and Pembleton are warned that the killer is on his way north and that he is on a drug-addled speed trip (in both senses of the word) Dell continue northward at a relentless pace, yet the detectives manage to go south to the scene of one crime, investigate their for several hours, and still return to Baltimore north ahead of Dell. What shortcut did they take to set up a roadblock in front of him. Unless Dell stopped to take a nap along the way, he would have blazed through Baltimore while they were still returning from crime scene number one. To help explain his lack of speed, the script has Dell stop for gas at an alarmingly frequent rate. No reasons are given for his stops. Perhaps he has a hole in his tank?"

This is the kind of sloppy writing that you would expect of a lesser procedural, not from a man who's already won an Emmy for writing. And that's before you get to the twist at the end where the detective catch the man they think is the killer and only after they've locked him up to they catch the real killer, who is his identical twin brother. I'll admit the Baltimore PD is sloppy with its research but they're being assisted by the FBI. How is it possible that no one notices that the Dells are twin brothers? They might very well have grown up in a small town in Florida but you'd think that when they looked for birth certificates they'd have found two filed by the same day.

I can't deny the affect of the cinematography, the suspense in some of the crime scenes and a brilliant performance by Jeffrey Donovan both onscreen and narration. But all of this would be more suited to a show like Millennium or Profiler both of which would debut on television the following year. And it's not like there haven't been better examples of serial killers on TV to deal with by now: even at this point in its run Law & Order had dealt with the subject of spree killers multiple times and with better results. (The most famous example to that point was 'Mayhem' in 1994, which follows the detectives over a shift that involves six murders over twenty-four hours.)  I get the feeling watching this episode that the writers are trying to experiment with the format and they clearly found it wanting. The next time they deal with a serial killer of this magnitude they will have figured out what works and what doesn't and it will be much truer to what we get here.

What works in 'Thrill of the Kill' are, unsurprisingly, the smaller deals. By this point in the show's run Andre Braugher and Kyle Secor were strong enough that they could carry lesser storylines. We see Pembleton being snappish at Tim for practicing Spanish, Frank being annoyed that they have to be toyed from crime scene to crime scene, and in what may be the most interesting part so far we see the detectives having to get certified on the range. This is the first time in the show's history we've seen any of the detectives firing their service weapons, and as in keeping with reality, its purely to qualify on the range.

We also finally see Frank's weakness: he's a lousy shot. He admits he's never much liked guns as part of the job and we see he barely manages to hit the target. This is the first time we've seen Bayliss actually better at Frank then something: he hits the target far more cleanly then him. By this point they're searching for the killer and they know what he's capable of.

The contrast between Frank and Tim with guns in their hands and Dell killing a man in a rest stop bathroom is one of the only times the conceit works and that's because we here Bayliss' voice over the killing, not Dell's. Bayliss has always been the more philosophical and even as he fires the gun he wonders what it must be like to deal death. "No fear of hell. No fear of lethal injection. No fear at all." It's a brilliant contrast, particularly because at no point during the investigation to we get any explanation as to why the brother who was considered harmless all this time finally snapped and went on this killing spree. You can argue Homicide has never cared about the why before but considering we're hearing so much of the killer's thoughts this time, it seems like a fly in the ointment.

It would be easy to dismiss this episode from the canon of Homicide altogether but that would be a mistake. Because the one genuine virtue of this episode is that for the first time in the show's history we get a look at the other side of Al Giardello. We've heard about his children before and we've known that he has a special fondness for Charisse, his eldest. Now for the first time in a long time Charisse is driving down from Richmond to see Al and he wants to cook for her.

The episode goes out of its way to draw as much suspense from Charisse being delayed as possible: she's late for lunch, she won't call and we see Newton Dell pick up a young African-American female hitchhiking. When we learn that there's another body, we're given to expect the worst – and then before we cut to commercia Charisse shows up safe and sound at Al's.

In truth if Charisse had been a victim of the serial killer the squad was chasing it would have gone against the rules Homicide has established so far and be closer in formula to NYPD Blue where this kind of thing happened more often to the regulars. The show is almost always upfront when someone the viewer cares about is in danger and that will be the trend. The truth is, Fontana has something far colder in mind.

We've been given reason to believe that Al was a good husband and a good father. But when Charisse tells him that she's getting married and moving to California, for the first time that image is cut. And when Al tries to talk with Charisse, we see her turn on him with a rage we've never seen the usually powerful lieutenant deal with. She tells him that whenever he's confronted with something he doesn't like, he turns into a bully. When Al hears this he starts getting angry – actually proving his daughter's point. We've gotten hints in previous seasons of the toll the job takes on the detectives in their personal relationships but this is the first time we've actually seen the long term damage. (The final season of the show will actually have one of the major storylines confront it directly.)

When everything is over and the killer is caught (the viewer assumes) we see Gee more glum than usual. In the course of less than a day he's had to deal with the worst aspects of the job and a blow to his personal life. He tells Megan at the end of the episode: "My family's my life savings" and while he know this is a sincere wish, we also know that Gee will never be able to fully separate the two lives. Tellingly while Charisse will be mentioned multiple times in the remainder of the series and we will eventually see much of the other members of Giardello's family, this is the only time we ever see Charisse in Homicide. We'll deal with her again later this season and it's telling that we're never sure how its resolved.

At the end of the day 'Thrill of the Kill' is a very good hour of television by any normal standard. But it's also very poor by the standards of Homicide. One gets the feeling that Fontana did this episode for the network more than anything else and spend the next few episodes doing shows that the real fans signed up for.

 

 

 

NOTES FROM THE BOARD

"Detective Munch"  While he's listed the rap sheet of Newton Dell, he refers to his beating of his mother as 'the son who violated the Fourth commandment." Frank says: "That's the Fifth Commandment."  Munch says: "Maybe in your church." He also ends his run by saying 'Page 2' and when Frank asks for more he adds: "No, that's just a Paul Harvey thing I've always wanted to do.

Frank's proficiency with a firearm will become a vital storyline in Season 5 though I'll spare the details.

Continuity Error: Charisse refers to Al's other children as Teresa and Al Jr. Clearly the writers forgot this little part by the time we got to Season 7 as you'll see.

Hey, Isn't That… This was one of the first roles of any significance Jeffrey Donovan ever had. He would slowly break into significance playing Kyle on The Pretender then star in The Beat, Fontana's next network series after Homicide came to an end. He was then given the lead in Touching Evil an NBC drama that only ran one season despite the presence of such talent as future TV stalwarts Zach Grenier, Kevin Durand, Vera Farmiga and a very young Bradley Cooper. He finally achieved national prominence for his role in USA's Burn Notice where he played the title role of Michael Weston for six seasons. Since then he played Dodd Gerhardt in the second season of Fargo and played Detective Frank Cosgrove WHEN Law and Order was revived in 2021 for two seasons. His most famous film role was in Sicario as Steve Forsing, a role he replayed in Day of the Soldado.