Homicide Rewatch: Full Moon

 

Written by Eric Overmeyer ; story by Henry Bromell, Tom Fontana & Eric Overmeyer

Directed by Leslie Libman & Larry Williams

 

Author's Note: My decision to review this episode next is based on where the case being investigated appears on the board more than anything else. As I will point out this is not when the episode originally aired nor is it when the episode was originally filmed.

I remember watching this episode when it originally aired in April of 1996. At that point I was relatively knew to the show and still getting used to how Homicide worked. The episode was one of the strangest I'd see to that point and at age 17 I wasn't used to this in any kind of police drama.

Later on I learned that this episode had been scheduled to air immediately following the Sniper two part series (I'll get to that next) but had been pushed back almost until the end of the season. I didn't know until later that this would be a pattern with the show during Season 4 but unlike the majority of the episodes that were moved out of sequence I completely understand why NBC chose to do so.

Considering how much Season 4 was being designed in order to get more eyeballs to a show that had been struggling in the ratings ' Full Moon' would definitely not have done that. Even for a show that was as groundbreaking as Homicide this episode is one of the strangest in the series entire repertoire. In fact you'd have to go back to Night of the Dead Living to think an episode that was as format breaking as 'Full Moon' is. Homicide has done many shifts in the format of the procedural before and will continue to do so but it's hard to think of an episode in the entire run of the series quite like it. It plays very much like an independent film: much of the dialogue and filmmaking reminds you of early Tarantino or Jim Jarmusch.

By this point I was getting used to the kind of cases that Lewis and Kellerman were investigating: they always had more of a lighter tone then the ones Bayliss and Pembleton did, even when they turned to darker subject. But even that doesn't quite prepare you for what you see here. Lewis and Kellerman are called in to investigate aa murder waaay out in the boondocks of Baltimore that takes place as the New Moon motel. Aside from Reed Diamond and Clark Johnson the only other regular we see is Richard Belzer and he's only in two scenes. It's as if for one week Kellerman and Lewis have left the mean streets of Baltimore and are in a bizarre alternate universe which theoretically should be more dangerous than a crack house but somehow seems more like a funhouse.

The victim is Charlie Wells, a former biker who seems to have gone out of his way to resign from the United States. He is the victim of a gunshot that went through him, two other motel rooms and ended up in a third. The ice tray is filled with a bizarre liquid that turns out to be meth, there's a tattoo on his skins that sense 'return to Ida Flood', and what bothers Meldrick the most is that Wells is only wearing one boot. He also had a '39 Indian with no license plates and so ID tags which was driven off when the shot was fired.

Neither detective is taking the case seriously from the start. They wager on just how large a percentage of the denizens of this fine establishment have a criminal record. Kellerman bets 80 %, Lewis bets 90% and the actual percentage pointing out by Munch is 98.9 % and very likely was 100. Most of the criminals are small-timers, a prostitute here, a crystal meth addict there, a wife beater there. The most poignant story comes from Lonnie Askew, the only murderer who was responsible for vehicular manslaughter. The bullet went through his motel room but he claims not to have heard it.

Lewis has a certain suspicion of Askew for good reason but in a painful monologue Askew makes it clear he has been punishing himself for the murder of his friend. He's lived in the pathetic excuse for a motel room because it resembles his cell and he's using a sweat lodge in order to escape from the reality. "The judge gave me ten years, but it wasn't enough," he says to Meldrick sadly. However the episodes ends with a rare speck of light. Askew is moving out of the motel because he knows what he and Charlie had in common and he doesn't want to die like him.

The majority of the episode follows Lewis and Kellerman as they individually interview every one in the motel. We also see a moment of reality when they find a family of illegal immigrants in the motel. Kellerman wants to take them in; Lewis says they're not INS.

For the first time we see a flash of an uglier side of him, though its covered. He argues that because of illegal immigration, his blue collar father might lose his job because the factory might go out of business. Lewis shrugs it off saying: "Everyone was an immigrant once." That's all the episode says about it, not long after they're back to the criminals.

The detectives spend most of the episode trying to track down Mr. and Mrs. Evans, perhaps the only inhabitants of the motel with no obvious brushes with the law. Munch rightfully presumes that they checked in under pseudonyms and they spend the episode with the lights out and 'Mr. Evans' loading a gun and pointing it at the motel door. The two detectives approach the room a couple of times and don't hear anything. Only at the end of the night – when Mrs. Evans wants to get a coke – do Kellerman and Lewis spot them.

Considering all the tension with the gun and the darkness it makes a strange sense that what follows is literally bedroom farces. Mrs. Evans basically warns her boyfriend they're coming, by the time they enter the motel room Mr. Evans is under the covers and the excuses they try to come up with as to why they have no IDs and where they were all night are laughably bad. Eventually Kellerman and Lewis bring them downtown with the .38 they have. Case closed.

Except…it isn't. The gun doesn't match. The motel owner has a gun which they took in earlier that night but they didn't rush it. The owner immediately confesses that the gun was Charlie's and he gave it to him in exchange for rent. He also killed someone – three days ago when he was making the night deposit. The victim, in fitting with the mood of the episode, was another known criminal who will not be missed. "Violent crimes held a moment of silence when he was killed." Kellerman and Lewis have closed a case they didn't mean to and got nowhere on the one they meant to.

This is a summary of the plot of 'Blue Moon' but it doesn't come close to capturing what makes it one of Reed Diamond favorite episode and that's the mood. The music sounds very much discordant and the cinematography seems vaguely askew all the time. Even when we see the familiar shots of the board, they are done at an odd angle to complete the idea that nothing is what it seems. We spent a lot of time following the detectives but the episode keeps giving us what appear to be random shots of so many of the motel inhabitants. And much of the dialogue that goes on even between Kellerman and Lewis seems like the writers have been doing comedy. Even the philosophical dialogue honestly doesn't seem like the same show: Kellerman has a discussion with a prostitute where they discuss if they dream of famous people. (Kellerman asks: Do cartoon characters count?) And its not as if darker subjects aren't being discussed. Kellerman brings up his divorce with the hooker and Lewis talks about his childhood growing up in the projects (see Notes From the Board) but there's a playfulness to all of this we haven't heard in the dialogue for a while, certainly not Fontana.

The murder goes unsolved, as so many on Homicide do, but for once this doesn't seem like cause for despair or a miscarriage of justice but something that basically seems to fit the mood. Charlie Wells was as weird as everyone else in this motel. At the end of the episode his daughter shows up and tells the detectives who Ida Flood is. He left the family years ago and while he's been living within miles of his family she never knew he was there until now. She doesn't seem to be upset that he's dead or even bothered by his quirks.

I suspect even Frank Pembleton (absent from the series entirely for the first time) would have a hard time working up much energy or outrage to avenge the death of Charlie Wells. For all intents and purposes he was just another tenant of a cheap motel where the worst elements of society check in and check out all with the same story to them. Even if they found his killer it might not make much of a difference. Given the way the justice system works, he very well might just end up a resident of this motel someday. Maybe even in the same room Charlie died in. Hell, they're not much better than prison cells and there's far less security.

'Full Moon' rarely makes the list of all-time great episodes of Homicide though it is a favorite of more than a few fans. And it makes sense that NBC chose to move it as close to the end of Season 4: this is not an episode for everybody. But as the last minute spends with shots of the denizens of the New Moon motel, you can see why it's a winner. The one truth of Homicide is one murder is all in a day's work for the citizens and something to be accepted. As we see everybody going back to business with no real changes in their lives given the absence of Charlie Wells, it makes it clear in a way we rarely see that it's often the same for those who live in the same neighborhood as the deceased.

 

Notes From The Board

'Detective Munch' John has somewhat more of an active role than he does in most episode as he's essentially the one voice of the squad room. (The fact that Giardello or Howard don't think to ask about this case make it clear this is low priority.) His best comment comes when he's handed a bag with the gun from the motel and the ice cubes in it. "I know what this is, but this looks like it should have a goldfish floating in it."

During this episode Meldrick tells us he grew up in the Lafayette Courts housing project. At the time this episode was being filmed the project was scheduled to be demolished and the writers used this as a justification to show the filming of it being demolished. Bricks from the projects were sold off at $2 apiece and Lewis eventually buys one, with the decision to build a home.

This episode features the second nude scene of the season and just as in 'Fre, Part One' it involves Kellerman  when the prostitute who's enjoying a nude night swim comes out of the pool. He has more trouble with his composure before. This ongoing theme will be brought up in the episode 'The Damage Done'

Get The DVD: Over the final credits we here The Reverend Horton Heat's In Your Wildest Dreams. And this is actually one of the rare occasions it makes sense to have the DVD because Reverend Horton Heat actually has a cameo in the episode as the Preacher Lemuel Gulliver (the man with the barking dog. An accomplished member of a rockabilly band he's known for providing the soundtrack for films such as Home Fries, Suicide Kings, Varsity Blues, Coyote Ugly and Friday Night Lights. Most recently he wrote and performed 'Baddest of the Bad' for Dexter: New Blood.