Homicide Rewatch: Heartbeat

 

Written by Kevin Arkadie ; story by Henry Bromell & Tom Fontana

Directed by Bruno Kirby

Considering that John Munch is by far Homicide's greatest legacy to the world of pop culture and television, it's odd how relatively small Richard Belzer's role on the series was. While the show was on the air Belzer never complained about relatively minor the role was and would repeatedly say how proud he was to be a part of such a quality production and to work with so many great actors.

It would have been easy once Ned Beatty was written out of the show for the writers to reduce Belzer's role still further: he'd had relatively few stories centered on him ever since the first season and his biggest contribution had been to serve as a foil of frustration to Bolander during the first three years. Instead Fontana and the staff decided to expand Munch's role slightly more (though never at the level it should have been). In Heartbeat they find a note that would work brilliantly for Munch and in the same manner introduce a new kind of investigation while paying tribute to the most famous literary denizen of Baltimore.

The teaser basically deals with Kellerman and Lewis at what is a drug related murder: the death of a student at the hands of one Boomer Mason. This in itself is a throwback to Simon's book where most of the murders in Baltimore were drug related. The victim sells her body for sex because she can't afford the money to score and Mason rapes and murders her. Kellerman almost immediately gets Mason jammed up (incidentally this is the first case he solves as primary) and desperate to trade Mason tells them about a murder that happened ten years ago. Of course he doesn't know the suspect's name, the killer's name or anything else, just a location. Munch is handed this case and Howard is there to back him up.

In a way the pairing of Munch and Howard is a stroke of genius, It's not just that both detectives are partnerless: it's another paring of the sloppy Munch with a distinct professional. It will be something of a running gag for the remainder of the series run as to How Munch can't keep a partner for long so it's fascinating that in what is one of their few times working together that they actually investigate and interact well.

Howard is the one who figures out where the body is buried – in the walls. In a show not known for gory or gruesomeness this is one of the most unsettling crime scenes the show will ever do. The victim, Eugene Elwin, was buried alive and spent the last of his energy trying to claw his way out. Munch is known for his dark nature but the way Elwin dies clearly unnerves him.

It doesn't take much work to figure out what this episode will be about but to their credit the writers let the detectives work their way on their own. There are signs from the start this won't be business as usual as we see Howard react in horror when she finds a black cat running through the squad. (Judy found it under Gee's car.) In a wonderful reversal of the norms Howard is the one who is superstitious the moment she sees the black cat while Munch mocks her for acting like that. "We're not in the Dark Ages, we're actually well into the Fluorescent era," he tells Kay at one point, ironic considering where we're going.

Eventually they get enough of a description to find out that they're looking for a dealer with red hair, pale white with guilty blue eyes known as Joseph Cordero. He has been arrested multiple times for drug dealing over the years and eventually it turns out he's an amateur poet. Cordero is played by that greatly versatile character actor Kevin Conway (see Future Inmates to know more about him) in one of the very best guest roles we will see in Season 4.

Cordero clearly has literary allusions but no talent to speak of: Munch and Howard read one of his poems and its terrible and he clearly acts more intelligent than he is. This is something Munch can recognize; we already know he's more equipped for this than Howard.

From the start of the series Munch has always been viewed as a lazy or sloppy detective so its impressive to see how much effort he puts into this case. Giardello himself says he can't remember the last time Munch was this energized about something. Munch has realized the connection between Cordero and Edgar Allan Poe which is deeper than the Easter eggs the show gives us. Cordero has been stealing lines and stanzas from Poe in his own work and sells his dope in front of the cemetery where Poe is buried. And it is Munch who puts it together that Elwin was murdered just like the victim in the classic story 'A Cask of Amontillado'.

Belzer does some of the best dramatic work he will do in all of Homicide when he goes after Cordero as he begins to push him as to what it might be like to be buried alive. Under other circumstances we'd consider it harassment but Munch never says anything threatening, only describing what he thinks Elwin's last moments were like in scene after scene in quick succession. Then he goes back to the crime scene and  works his way through the bricks until he finds what he's been looking for.

It says something that the interrogation scene that follows is one we've really never seen before on the show and never really do again: Munch tells Giardello to put a recording of a heartbeat on while he and Howard interrogate Cordero. Conway starts out calm but becomes more visibly nervous as the heartbeat keeps occurring (at one juncture they speed up the recording) and Munch decides to start using every bit of Poe he can. This is of course right out of Tell-Tale Heart; he brings in the black cat which scares Cordero still more and there's dialogue out of the Premature Burial as well. Cordero does his best to keep it together but you can see him unravel more and more. He keeps telling Howard "That guy is weird" (which might be the most accurate description we've ever heard.

One of the bricks has Cordero's name written on, Eugene Elwin's last words as he died. It's clear that Cordero and Elwin knew each other and it is likely the reason for the murder was the fact that Elwin stole Cordero's first edition of Edgar Allan Poe and wouldn't give it back. But through it all Cordero refuses to give anything up and they have to let him go and the detectives just accept there is no justice. (Only there is. But we'll get to that.)

This brilliant dark story is perfectly framed with the more farcical side of John Munch. Yes, our boy is in love again this time with ME Alyssa Dyer (who as you might remember is played by Mrs. Richard Belzer) We're reminded of how many times Munch has previous been married and we remember just how badly everything with the unseen Felicia went over the first two seasons. So when Munch tells Howard that he considers Alyssa "his Penelope, his Josephine"  she manages considerable restraint because we have heard this with Felicia so many times before. We also know by now that Munch is by far the biggest obstacle to his own happiness.

Rarely, however, do we actually witness it in such gory detail. Munch arrives at Alyssa's apartment only to find a woman in uniform there, Alyssa's brand new roommate who just moved in today. Alyssa's late, she needs help moving in, they need to move the mattress…cut to Munch standing up in his underwear going: "What have I done? I am a weak, weak man." The officer seems perfectly fine with this.

Munch is usually detached from everything so its hysterical seeing him actually feeling guilty for a change and afraid to talk and say the wrong thing in front of Alyssa. This leads to some hysterical exchanges in the aftermath when he confesses to Howard and he looks for absolution. "A man would talk about these things, even brag about it but women are nicer, more gentle? They wouldn't tell this to hurt people."  "I would," Howard says bluntly.

Its wonderful watching Munch doing everything in his power to avoid talking to Dyer and even more to not tell her the truth. Still at the end of the episode he does so – and the result is the best joke of all. We see Munch walking away with a beauty of a shiner, having confessed to Alyssa his wrong-doing. Howard is hurt but Munch is exhilarated. Now he can pursue her with a clear conscience.

Oddly enough much of the real humor this episode surrounds Pembleton, who for the first time all season is essentially regulated to a background role. He still hasn't told anybody about Mary's pregnancy and Bayliss is desperately trying to tell him to share. Bayliss then ends up trying to find out what the say to Russert, who figures it out and ends up telling everybody in the squad. We then cut to a series of hysterical reactions as everyone tells Frank how good a father he's going to be and how happy they are and Pembleton keeps trying to find Bayliss with an increasingly ominous tone. The fact that everyone is being nice to him and is actually telling him what he needs to hear doesn't matter. In fact when Giardello tells him that the things that make him a great detective cause him to worry about the wrong things and that he has nothing to fear from fatherhood, Pembleton's only reaction is: "Where's Bayliss?"

When Frank confronts Tim on telling everybody there's clear anger. And when Tim tries to make up for it we actually get to see a side of Frank we almost never see: when he's honest about himself. "I don't have a lot of friends," he tells Tim at the end of the episode. "Not a lot of people I trust with secrets. Mary and…you. That's about it." He says he's learned from his mistake and he won't be sharing with Bayliss again any time soon. The thing is by this time on Homicide we actually know that this is Frank putting up a brave face more than anything: within a few episodes he and Tim will be back to their relationship and this time Tim will be the put-upon one.

But all of that's lost by the final images. It's rare that we are party to something the detectives will never know and rarer still to see justice carried out. Cordero goes home but he starts hearing the beating of Elwin's heart everywhere. We see him rattling through his cupboards, ripping up the floorboards, tearing through the plaster shouting "Stop it!" But it doesn't go away.

The final image shows Cordero walling himself back in the very same wall he left Elwin in ten years ago, completely insane. We hear him utter some lines of Poe (I don't know the source) with only a wavering candle for company and it flickering though not going out as we fade to black. It's a fitting end to an episode that has more touches of horror than usual.

 

NOTES FROM THE BOARD

For the first time we see a new color on the board as Elwin's name is written in blue to signify a case from a previous year. We'll see cases written in blue again in future seasons but in a different context from Heartbeat: in those cases it will be there to signify a closed case. Elwin's name will appear in blue under Munch's name in 1996 as an open case.

Crooner Munch: To signify his bliss over being love with Alyssa Dyer we hear Munch singing Cole Porter's standard 'You're The Top' at the start of the episode and at the end, the latter when he is sporting that horrific shiner.

Future Inmate: Kevin Conway would have a recurring role on OZ as Seamus O'Reilly, the horrendous father of Ryan and Cyril. His character was merely a visitor the first several appearance, his character was locked up in the final season.

With his striking red hair and formidable personality Conway was a force in acting for nearly half a century, known for appearing in some of the more interesting adaptations from his debut in the film versions of Slaughterhouse Five and Portnoy's Complaint in 1972 to his work as Curtis LeMay in Thirteen Days. His resume in television is quite remarkable with appearance in such TV movies as Something About Amelia, adaptations of The Elephant Man and The Scarlet Letter. He starred in almost every TV series imaginable and he did the marvelous voiceover work for the 1990s version of The Outer Limits. His biggest roles on television were Ian Reilly in the critically acclaimed but short-lived series The Black Donnellys, Gabe Paul in the miniseries The Bronx is Burning and Jonas Stern in the first season of The Good Wife. He died on February 5, 2020 at age 77.

GET THE DVD or don't: I'm not sure if the same song but you can definitely hear Munch listening to Leonard Cohen when he's back in his apartment. The guide says it's Cohen's Suzanne but I'm not sure if that's what I'm hearing on Peacock.