Homicide Rewatch: Hate Crimes

 

Written by James Yoshimura and Tom Fontana

Directed by Peter Weller

 

I need to briefly bring my personal beliefs into this.

I know there are horrible things about America and the world particularly when it comes to bigotry. Homicide was one of the first television shows that made this abundantly clear, mostly on issues involving race. However looking at an episode like 'Hate Crimes' thirty years later I can't help but think of it as a sign as to how much our country has improved even if some of us don't want to acknowledge it.

To be sure the issues in this episode will almost sadly always be evergreen – a young man is the victim of a gay bashing crime, is killed by skinheads (in the 1990s the most overt version of white supremacy in America) and when the detectives reveal why the victim was killed his father's reaction is still something you can imagine happening in our society with easy. There's also the fact that everyone dismisses the nature of the victim's homosexuality with a kind of heteronormative terms (though in the case of this show its accurate) and Bayliss acts with clear homophobia in every time he's talking. But it's a lot harder to imagine this kind of episode being made today considering how much society has become more accepting of homosexuality as a whole. It's not impossible of course but within just a few years of this episode's airing celebrities would no longer have to hide in the closet their entire careers, gay and lesbian characters would become regulars and eventual leads on network television shows and gay men and women could hold public office and few would blink an eye. I suspect the reaction of so many of Zeke's friends if the episode was shot even a few years later would not be blanket denial but more like: "Why did he feel he had to hide it?" To be clear, however, that's not what this episode is about – and that's kind of what makes it brilliant.

Hate Crimes aired just before Thanksgiving of 1995 and the episode acknowledges this in a way Homicide rarely is faithful to the calendar. Thanksgiving as Kellerman acknowledges at the end of the episode, is a time when you're supposed to gather with the ones you love and celebrate togetherness. For most of us it's a long weekend when we take time off from our endless job and given everything that murder police must deal with you can understand why they'd all want to just go home and not think about dead bodies for a day. But as both the main investigation and the subplot make it very clear that's usually something we just do to paper over the rest of our lives.

Bayliss and Pembleton are called to yet another murder (this is the fifth episode so far this season where the main plot has centered on them) but this one is more painful than usual. For one thing Zeke Lafeld the victim isn't dead when the cops show up: he's been beaten to death and the paramedics are on their way. Pembleton tries to get information from the victim and as in keeping with the show, his last words mean nothing. Bayliss will later say he's shaken up because he had to see a man die but far more important is where Lafeld died and how. He was murdered in a predominantly gay section of Baltimore by neo-Nazis. One of the witnesses makes this very clear and that this is far from an infrequent occurrence. It's worth noting that the dialogue makes it clear that the witness thinks as little of the skinheads as they do of him and are just as free with using a bigoted term as they will be.

Bayliss starts getting odd from the beginning of this investigation, asking Frank when a guy knows he's gay and that he doesn't care as much about this investigation as others. Pembleton knows immediately that his partner is acting incredibly homophobic and he takes this more personally. This becomes clear when the detectives roust a group of neo-Nazis and Tim takes on a particularly vengeful streak, saying that they're going to have no problem framing this particular man for the crime if he doesn't tell them who did it. All of this is a façade. The part that seems genuine is when the skinhead says, "Don't let that n---er touch me". This is one of the only times in Homicide's history where the detectives engage in brutal behavior and I suspect that it would be accepted even today. "All they're doing is beating up some Nazis," the most enlightened progressive viewer might say approvingly.

This is also another episode where we see another familiar and legendary actor. Terry O'Quinn (who still has some of his hair in 1995) has two brilliant scenes as Bailey Lafeld. O'Quinn was basically still relatively little-known at this point (see 'Hey Isn't That…") but you get a sense of the great actor he is when Pembleton tells him what happened to his son. Bailey's been drinking heavily and he seems understandably despairing. Then he asks about why his son was killed. Pembleton tells him this was a hate crime. "I thought those things happened to people like you," he says casually, and you can see where this is going even before Frank tells him his son was homosexual. O'Quinn's change is remarkable; in an instant he's angry, saying the detectives came here like a thief in the night and that his son 'was not queer' which in 1995 was still basically an obscenity. He demands they get out and he says if this is true: "It's better Zeke's dead." Frank leaves silently and Bayliss stays for a moment – before the father throws the drink at him.

Bailey Lafeld hangs over the entire episode even though we don't see him again until the final scenes. Eventually Tim brings up Mary's pregnancy and asks Frank what if his son said he was in love with a man. Frank says he doesn't want to speculate but he makes it clear: "I hope, unlike Zeke's father, I would not be glad to learn my son was dead."

The case, I should mention, is going to stay open and the unit knows it. Even though the skinheads are identified its clear that they've fled the state and that there's no real chance of finding them. I should mention that Gee doesn't seem that bother about having an open case. He tells the detectives to file the paperwork and go home for a Thanksgiving weekend. This is the only implication we get in the episode that maybe Giardello – and the Baltimore PD overall – don't really consider Zeke Lafeld's death with the same urgency they would other murders. That I should mention is another sing of progress. If a gay man were murdered on the streets of Baltimore in the sight of witnesses, the feds would be called in, press conferences would be held and the bosses would go out of their way to reassure the gay community. (The show will actually address how much things change in another storyline in a little more than two years' time.) But in Hate Crimes, no one calls for a red ball, there are no reporters on site, and even Frank for all his passion, doesn't seem upset that there's no real manpower to find the killers. No procedural worth its salt would dare write a storyline like this today in contemporary America and have the entire unit treat it with indifference. That Homicide could and did in 1995 shows how much our society has progressed even if individual prejudices don't go away that easily.

But again that's not why Zeke died. Later on Zeke's friends from college show up and they tell Bayliss and Pembleton  that Zeke was straight and they all knew it. The detectives tell them that people change and you don't know somebody. Then they tell him to go and see someone – Zeke's fiancé. She tells them that Zeke and she had been on and off again since high school and that Zeke was a compulsive womanizer. She said that a woman knows when her significant other is gay. (I'm not sure the term 'gay-dar existed in 1995 but this is a clear implication of it.) Then they go through his address book and find that Zeke had come to visit an old family friend who lives in that neighborhood – a lesbian in what appears to be a monogamous relationship. She tells them that Bailey cut her off when she came out but Zeke never did. He went to see her to buy a present for his girlfriend.

Finally Bayliss goes to see his father and tells him that they know who killed his son – and more importantly that he wasn't gay. Bailey breaks down in tears – but the first words out of his mouth are: "Thank God." He tries to cover his bigotry as a loving father – "I just wanted what's best for him" – but when Bayliss walks away he knows the truth and implies as much to Frank.

There are no easy answer at the end of this episode. Frank's angry at himself because he made the same snap judgment about the victim that people have been making about him his whole life. When Tim says its human nature Frank makes it clear that bigotry is one of those things that we have to be carefully taught. He thinks it shouldn't matter that Zeke was gay or not. And Tim points out it shouldn't but it does. Yet another sad commentary on human nature.

If it were just for this storyline Hate Crimes would be required viewing. But in a call back to old school Homicide the show does something it hasn't yet done since Season 1. It revisits an old storyline. Lewis and Kellerman meet a second grader whose teacher tells them that one of her old students is playing murder. In a moment that is truly powerful the child looks at the board (where she's been innocently drawing before) and says: "this is the same last name as me, right?" She's pointing to Erica Chilton.

This is a personal case to Lewis who interviewed her with Crosetti back in 1994 but she doesn't remember it. Then Howard comes storming in and she is angry in a way we've never seen her before. She gets into the kind of knock-down drag-em out argument with Lewis that at this point we've only seen Bayliss and Pembleton get into. Howard yells at Meldrick for being sloppy with procedure both now and with the investigation. She has no interest in hearing Lewis's excuses – which honestly make sense given the circumstances. Howard accuses Lewis of not being respectful of her being sergeant. Lewis, for once, has the high ground when Howard says this was her case. He rightfully points out that she never wanted the Chilton case and that this has more to do with her streak then anything else. Howard will later tell Kellerman that she wanted to solve Erica Chilton's murder for herself but that doesn't track one bit with what we saw in Nothing Personal. The Chilton case is personal because in her mind it reflects badly on her and she feels letting anyone else do the work undercuts her. Giardello intervenes and tries to get Howard to back down. Instead she storms after Lewis and demands to be kept in the loop,

To be fair to Howard Lewis doesn't cover himself with glory either. It's worth remembering he wanted to take all of Crosetti's old cases and he may very well see this as personal for him. When they bring Tom Marans in for question Kellerman goes to get Howard and Meldrick deliberately says: "We don't need her." When the case is closed he seems to take relish in the fact that Howard missed something in the investigation and shrugs it off. "You should be thanking me." Meldrick isn't a good loser but he's often an insufferable winner.

The actual interrogation is classic Homicide and what makes it work is that for all the ugliness between Lewis and Howard it is Kellerman who actually does much of the work. It's he who's takes the time with Catherine while Lewis and Howard are snapping at each other to get the information that she saw Tom smother Cathy. It's he who pokes holes in Tom's story while walking him to the box. And it's he who gently points out that Tom might have killed Erica while Catherine was in the room but there must be something good in him because he didn't kill the daughter. It's that quiet maneuvering that gets Marans over the edge and he admits why he did it.

We're reminded of the letters that Felton lost in Nothing Personal and they were key – just not how we thought. Marans couldn't deal with how detailed the sexual descriptions were and how much it hurt him to think that Cathy never loved him as deeply as this man. She never got rid of the letters and he was terrified of losing her. So he killed her. Dean Winters, back for his second stint, gets to show a despair he rarely does in so much of his later work as we see a man fundamentally broken by what he's done, gasping for the fact there must be something good in him for not killing Catherine.

It's fascinating that when all this is over Kellerman, still the new guy, is dealing with the darkness of how Tom Marans could do something like this and the only thing he has to be thankful for is how he didn't kill the daughter. Rewatching this episode I'm once again impressed by Reed Diamond's fresh-faced look to him, his innocence still not gone. And I can't help but think that so much of the subplot is Kellerman trying to find something to do for Thanksgiving and being drawn into Lewis' idea of being spontaneous. There's something haunting about that last image where Kellerman's in the squad room alone, picking apart the turkey he made of an apple at the start of the episode and biting into it.

We also get a follow up to the storyline I don't like. Russert and Giardello call Brodie into their office and make it clear that he's been freelancing and being a pain in the ass. They hire him to film their crime scenes not so much as a good deed or even for the purposes of policework but most likely he'll stop popping up and being a problem. When Brodie says, "You won't regret this" Giardello says: "I already do."

Brodie will be a recurring character for the rest of Season 4 and will be promoted to series regular for Season 5 but the writers never really have much use for him besides everyone in the offices choosing to belittle him and him making a fool of himself at every opportunity. Of all the characters on Homicide over the years he's the only one who the show could have done without and most fans would neither have complained or even noticed. Indeed his video camera is the biggest sign of how dated this show really is – these days every detective would just use their phone.

 

NOTES FROM THE BOARD

This episode is the first mention of Kay Howard's sister Carrie is now living in Florence. We've heard her mentioned a few times but didn't see her when Kay went back to visit her family in Last of the Watermen. We'll meet her in Season 4.

'Detective Munch': Munch is spending his Thanksgiving in Killington, shushing down the slopes and then he'll be getting sloshed. He makes his hippie presence known by pointing out that Thanksgiving celebrates "the genocide of American Indians and the birth of European colonialism."  In the final flashes we see him drinking with a woman. It's not clear who it is.

Hey Isn't That… At the time of this episode Terry O'Quinn already had a long track record in TV and film, most notably in the B-Movie horror franchise The Stepfather in which he played the title role. He was presence in many made for TV movies and that year had already made appearances in The X-Files and the series Earth 2. The following year he took on the recurring role of Peter Watts in the Fox series Millennium which he stayed in for all three seasons. He also would have recurring roles in JAG. However in 2002 his career began to take an upward trajectory when he got the recurring role of Assistant director Kendall in Alias for the first two seasons. As a result of his work, when J.J Abrams worked on the Pilot for Lost O'Quinn didn't even have to audition for the role of John Locke which finally turned him into a superstar. He would win an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama in 2007 and be nominated for two more during the six years the show aired.

He has worked consistently in television ever since with roles in short lived series such as 666 Park Avenue, Gang Related and the second season of Secrets and Lies. He played the role of Tom Tavner in all three seasons of Amazon's Patriot, played Wesley Walker in Perpetual Grace Ltd on Epix, had lead roles on Pieces of Her and played Peter Bach on Resident Alien until the show was cancelled this year.

Alison Smith, who plays Debbie Haskell, made her television debut at 9 when she played Evita Peron as a girl on a TV movie. She starred as Jennie on Kate & Allie for five seasons and then played Sara Pratt on Sweet Justice. Though she worked in many series before that she is best known for her semi-regular role as Mallory, Leo's daughter on The West Wing. While she has appeared in many other TV series since then it is usually just as a guest star and in recent years she has acted less and less. Her last role was in the revival of Will and Grace in 2020.

Peter Weller is far more known as an actor, most famous for Robocop. In truth his career had already spanned fifteen years before he took his most famous role and he'd played Peter Niles in the televised version of Mourning Becomes Electra. I'll limit myself to his television work which is considerable. Mostly appearing in TV movies, he eventually took on the role of Chuck Taggart in the Showtime drama Odyssey 5 which aired for two seasons. He played Christopher Henderson one of the critical characters on the Emmy winning fifth season of 24. He then played former Miami Metro Detective Stan Liddy in Season 5 of Dexter and would play Charlie on Sons of Anarchy. He's also had roles of significance on The Last Ship, Longmire and the revival of MacGyver. He's directed episodes of all of these series as well as Las Vegas, The Strain, House, Justified, Tyrant and the revival of Magnum P.I.

Get The DVD: Trust me, the final scenes of this episode don't have the same effect if you're not hearing the Bare Naked Ladies recording of "When You Were Born'. Particularly given the theme of the episode it registers in a way the replacement doesn't.