Homicide Rewatch: For God And Country

 

(Part 2 of A Law & Order/Homicide Crossover)

Written by Jorge Zamacona & Michael S. Chernuchin

Directed by Ed Sherin

 

To explain this episode I have to go into a brief digression about a subject I really haven't written about in my blog in any great detail: TV crossovers.

In the mid-1990s these events were starting to become part of the network schedule. While some had occurred occasionally in comedies over the decades in terms of dramas they had been relatively rare. David E. Kelley had started them in a major way when in the first season of Chicago Hope he had characters from his other critical sensation Picket Fences pay a visit to that hospital and then have the attorney Douglas Wambaugh come in. Over the next decade he was the major leader in these kinds of shows, frequently even crossing networks to do so as he did with Ally McBeal and The Practice multiple times during their runs.

At the end of the decade Joss Whedon created Angel which was a spinoff of his pop culture sensation Buffy The Vampire Slayer. The two series had their characters cross between Sunnydale and LA multiple times over the first two seasons of Angel and then occasionally in the final season of Buffy. In this case the crossovers were smooth because Whedon and his writers were involving the same characters but in self-contained stories for each series and in both cases, it worked brilliantly.

By the mid-2000s Shonda Rhimes had taken a similar approach when she created Private Practice, a spinoff series of her first hit show Grey's Anatomy. Because the former was about a character from the latter it made sense when Addison Montgomery returned to Seattle Grace and there was logic when some of the other characters (who were either friends or family to some of the staff) showed up. This pattern held in place when Station 19 was created in the 2010s, which also took place in Seattle. By that time these kinds of event series were common across the major networks, and in most cases the show's had a common showrunner. We saw it with Greg Berlanti and his Arrow-verse; the various CSI worlds were freely interacting during the 2000s and Dick Wolf was now capable of crossing over various shows between his Chicago franchise having done so for the past decade in his Law & Order franchise.

What makes a crossover effective, rather than just being a gimmick (I've left out a lot of the ones that clearly were) is that there has to be a common creator and a reason that makes sense. Ally McBeal and Bobby Donnell may have series in thematically different universes but they are both attorneys in Boston so it makes sense that they'd work together. Most of the shows I've listed above involve spin-offs of the same franchise or the same creator at their core.  In theory it made sense for Law & Order and Homicide to crossover: both of them were police procedurals set on the East Coast. But there was far more than geography that divided the two series.

For one thing Law & Order throughout the entirety of its original run (I'm less sure about the current one) was always a drama where story and plot were more important then character development. Ironically what is now considered one of the great strengths of the show – the fact that it managed to become a big hit despite the fact cast members were leaving every season – was one of the reasons many critics didn't appreciate it as much during its first few years on the air.  Back then all dramas were essentially considered more like Homicide in that they were essentially character based and if actors were leaving frequently it was a sign the show was in trouble.

More to the point Homicide was a show that was all about character and how the cast members reacted to the crimes they investigated then whether or not they were solved.  Stories frequently didn't end tidily at the end of an episode and they carried their baggage throughout the series. The characters on Homicide had long memories that were with them every day. And we spent a lot of time getting to know the characters as they talked in the squad. By contrast the characters on Law & Order were all about the job and we saw very little else about them. Jerry Orbach had been on Law & Order for three years by the time of this crossover but by this point (and I've seen most of the episodes during this period, so I know of what I speak) we knew less about Lennie Briscoe's  backstory then we did about Frank Pembleton's during this same period. For that matter we knew more about Mike Kellerman's backstory than Briscoe's after Reed Diamond had been on the show for less than a season.  

And in a sense this plays out throughout the way both crimes at the center of the pieces work. When Briscoe and Curtis see the horrors of what has unfolded on the subway in the teaser to 'Charm City' it's one of the most shocking images we've seen on Law & Order to that point in the series run. But when the investigation begins proper Curtis and Briscoe handle it like they would any other murder of the week. (Briscoe even manages one of his typical wisecracks after seeing the carnage of dozens of bodies on the subway even as his partner crosses himself.) By contrast from the moment we see Pembleton learn that the suspect of the gassing in someone who killed six people in a church five years ago, the show makes it very clear that these images have never left him and it drives him in a way that we just don't see driving the other detectives. This is just as clear throughout 'For God And Country' when the episode makes it very clear how haunted he is by the images of what he saw and the viewer keeps seeing them through his eyes. This is case is personal to Pembleton in a way it just isn't to Briscoe and Curtis and there's something cold in how casually they dismiss him and Bayliss when they come to New York.

 

This trend is clear in the humor to the episode. When we see Munch going on a rant about the fall of the jury system and he makes a joke about the gas attack 'improving the smell', we know its Munch being Munch and when he learns its personal to Frank, he drops the attitude and becomes useful when the two are in New York. Briscoe by contrast, usually the humorous one, really seems tone-deaf initially and he only backs down when Van Buren (his African-American superior) tells him of the consequences when you consider the subway started in Harlem.

The bigger problem, certainly with Law & Order part is the detectives attitude towards Bayliss and Pembleton. They show up having driven three hours with information and Van Buren immediately tells them to get lost, and not very diplomatically. Much of the pursuit of Brian Egan shows both pairs of detectives hunting for the same man, not sharing information, clearly in some kind of race. It's clear both sets of writers were trying an approach of having the two detectives be adversarial based on disputing jurisdictions. But even if you were a more devoted Law & Order fan and knew nothing about Homicide (possible in 1996) its impossible not look at Briscoe and Curtis's approach as if they are two New Yorkers who are looking down at two yokels from Baltimore. (In one of the better scenes of Charm City Frank makes it clear not only that he knows New York as well as they do but also remembers why he left.) When Bayliss and Pembleton begin their interrogation after Briscoe and Curtis get nowhere for hours they are cast as the villains but given how much they preened as they snatched Egan up just as they were getting there, it's hard not to look at it as New York arrogance.  The reactions of Curtis and Briscoe may be meant to be seen as frustrated when Frank and Tim begin their interrogation – and reveal that they've learned more about the suspect then the detectives have while hunting him – is meant to be led as a detective screwing things up for the precinct, but it still seems very much like the detectives and Van Buren are being petty about not being kept in the loop. What should have been a collaboration – generally the purpose of crossovers – very quickly turns into a pissing contest that does much to undercut the power of the drama.

There's more of an issue when the drama moves to the trial phase. Homicide has basically run three and a half seasons and spent very little time in a courtroom and considering that it is where half of Law & Order takes place, you get the feeling that the power of the series is going to be undercut once the trial of Brian Egan begins. And you're basically right. After this Pembleton and Bayliss are more or less shifted completely into the background, aside from a few scenes where Jack McCoy berates Frank for screwing up his case and Bayliss talks and flirts with Claire Kincaid. (The quick cuts between Bayliss and Pembleton talking with the respective ADAs are clearly meant to give us a feel of Homicide. On Law & Order, it gives one the feeling of whiplash and eye strain.) You get the  feeling that all of this is being done for the sole purpose of taking the great character of Homicide and having every single cast member of Law and Order call him an arrogant son of a bitch. That's not great drama and for a crossover its genuinely unpleasant. (To the credit of both shows they would learn from their mistakes going forward and both of the ones that went forward were more of an actual collaboration then being adversarial.)

In truth the only moment that really clicks is after Egan has been convicted and McCoy and Kincaid come to see him in holding. When Egan tells him that the jury's verdict means nothing and that 'his country is growing and you can't stop it" it has a power that is all the more resonating thirty years later. No one could look at the history of so much racial animus that got even worse in this century and say he was wrong.

For God and Country is by far the better episode because it is from beginning to end purely a Homicide story with none of the baggage from Law & Order. We're dealing with a completely different case and a larger manhunt and everything is done on Homicide's turf. This has the effect of making the characters from Law & Order seem more like hangers on in this part of the crossover then they will in future ones but for the sake of the drama, it leads to more powerful moments.

Much of the episode works because the images of the murders in the church five years ago are allowed to be more present on Homicide then they were in Law & Order. The show allows to see them in the hazy sepia tones with gospel music playing over it while Frank discusses his memories of a girl he saw standing over her father's body.

And in keeping with how the show works Brian Egan is allowed to be more than the average killer. He was given very little to say and do in Law & Order and we knew very little of who he was: here he's an out of work truck driver who wanted to keep his wife and son safe. At the end of Charm City he seemed cruel and defiant; when we see him For God And Country he's broken because he knows his wife is dead and that his son is in danger.

Stephanie Egan is ostensibly the victim in this episode but she's just collateral damage from the crimes throughout the two-parter. We see the real wreckage of it in Kendall who is held in juvenile detention, trying to put a brave face on what has happened. In another powerful scene we see the interrogation intercut with Kendall standing over his mother's body in the morgue, saying goodbye and apologizing. Once he's told us who killed his mother he disappears from the episode and from the detectives thought: the last living victim of his father's crimes.

It is telling that up until this point on Law & Order we still know very little about Briscoe and Curtis's personal lives and that it is this episode that's the first one that opens the window a crack into both of their personalities. When the two of them show up in Baltimore Pembleton is just as annoyed but because they're on his turf – and more importantly, he's under the eyes of Gee – he's slightly milder than before. He feels free to open up a little about his wife's pregnancy when he learns about Curtis's children in a way he just hasn't before with Bayliss to this point. It's actually the first sign we've seen so far that he's more relaxed about talking about Mary's pregnancy then he was before.

But of course the real delight comes When Briscoe Meets Munch. The term 'bromance' didn't exist in 1996 but every time Richard Belzer and Jerry Orbach are onscreen together you can't help but think it would have to be coined in order to describe it. They're too alike both in demeanor and wrecked marriage – and in one of the most wonderful gags in the history of Homicide they have more in common than that.  Briscoe tells John that he knew a Gwen Munch when he was in Hell's Kitchen. And we quickly find out 'knew' in the Biblical sense.

It's telling that Munch never really gets mad at Briscoe for sleeping with his ex-wife as he does distracted. We get the feeling that Gwen almost certainly divorced John (it will fit the pattern of what we've already seen and will continue to see) as well as his perpetually lovelorn personality. While this is going on Briscoe hustles Munch at pool (this was already part of his backstory) and almost by accident manages to figure out where to find the killer.

By this time the mastermind behind all of the actions is Alexander Rausch, an ex-government spook who was a veteran from Vietnam, worked in covert Ops (it's implied he was in the CIA) and got hung out to dry after Iran Contra. Rausch is in the process of recruiting white separatists and Tim McVeigh is mentioned as part of it. (The Oklahoma City bombings had taken place not long before this episode was  filmed.)

When Bayliss and Pembleton interrogate Rausch, it is the first time that I had ever seen a man who was about to become one of the greatest actors in history. J.K. Simmons. (See Hey, Isn't That for details).  Simmons has only one big scene in this episode and two small ones but you can tell almost from the start that there's a master craftsman at work. He knows why he's here, he knows what's going on and he's been here frequently. It's clear the only reason he's talking is because  a black man arrested him and we know what he thinks of that.

Simmons plays a prototype of the character audiences would become familiar with not long after this episode. I have no doubt Tom Fontana cast him in OZ precisely in his work here. Rausch is more educated than Vern Schillinger is, has a certain degree of class, but the menace is just as contained. Who will ever forget the exchange between Frank and Raush about whether he's trying to start a fight with black people:

Pembleton: That would be an interesting fight.

Rausch: Detective, it wouldn't take an hour.

There has been some discussion of Frank's plan on how he was going to use Rausch and how he thought this would expose the lies of everything he stood for on live TV. Never mind the world we live in today; while this episode was being shot Pat Buchanan was running for the Republican nomination for the second time and would win the New Hampshire primary not long after this episode aired in February of 1996. The racial fault lines that plague our society today were becoming set in stone by the mid-1990s and Frank's plan to be on Larry King with Rausch to solve it is deluded. One can only assume Frank's pursuit of justice as well as what happened five years ago has blinded him from this reality and given the images we see it is hard to blame him.

When Claire shows up with an extradition request to move Rausch to New York for his role in the murders in Charm City Frank is infuriated. On the plus side it gives us a chance to see Ed Danvers in a judicial proceeding and in front of another familiar face Judge Aandahl. (The next two crossovers will learn from this one and give Zeljko Ivanek a bigger role from the start.)

We get to see all of the detectives (save Kellerman) drinking in celebration and reminiscing at the Waterfront. When we hear the detectives talking about the sorrowful experiences at the end of the day and Briscoe and Curtis added to it, there's a sense of camaraderie we don't get. But its broken up when Danvers comes in and tells them Rausch is going back to New York.

The final scene where the detectives gather on the platform in Baltimore's Penn Station is powerful. It's clear when Rausch speaks to Pembleton that he has manipulated events either by not taking his pills or not telling authorities of the symptoms he's clearly having. The scene where Frank tries frantically to revive Rausch – and fails – is one of Braugher's best because for the first time at a crime scene – really anywhere – we actually see how badly all of this has affected Frank. "No one will know who he was," he says in a heartbroken voice to Bayliss. The killer has beaten Frank in the most final way possible and we know this will haunt him forever.

Perhaps the real reason For God and Country works is in many ways it would work as a standalone. The first time I saw it I actually didn't see Charm City (I didn't start watching Law & Order until it started airing in syndication) but there were enough details in this episode for me to figure out what had happened and for it to work even though I wouldn't see the first part of the episode for another three years. This would not be true of the other two crossovers – but one 'event night' at a time.

 

NOTES FROM THE BOARD

 

Munch The Romantic: The final moments of Munch at the end of the episode are his best. He's so completely hammered that when all the other detectives leave the Waterfront to move Rausch he stays there and goes: "Gwen, I still love you." Gwen Munch will be revisited twice in  Season 6; the second time we'll actually meet her.

Hey, Isn't That… Hard as it may be to believe this is a relatively early acting role by JK Simmons even though he was over forty at the time. He was a Broadway trained actor and had starred as Captain Hook as Peter Pan and Benny Southstreet in Guys and Dolls by 1992. He'd only appeared in small roles in The Ref and The Scout in 1995 and would later appear in small roles in The First Wives Club and Extreme Measures. After this role Tom Fontana cast him as Vern Schillinger in OZ and that same year he took the role of court psychiatrist Emil Skoda in Law & Order. He had roles in both series to the end and he never looked back after this. While he is deservedly known for his Oscar winning role in Whiplash and his movies with Jason Reitman and The Coen Brothers, among many, many others, I'm actually going to focus on his TV work because there's a lot of that.

After OZ came to an end (as we know he survived until the series finale) he did several small roles on shows such on Nip/Tuck, Without a Trace and Arrested Development. However in 2005 he was cast as a series regular as a different law enforcement officer Chief William Pope the man who brings Brenda Leigh Johnson to the LAPD in The Closer. He would star in that series for all seven seasons it was on the air. He was then cast in the short lived comedy series Family Tools in 2013, then as the lead in the NBC comedy Growing up Fisher in 2014 and then was cast in the intriguing sci-fi thriller Starz drama Counterpoint where he played the lead role (several of them) for two seasons until the show was cancelled in 2019. He then played Clyde Pickett in the fourth season of Veronica Mars and Billy Barber in the Apple Series Defending Jacob and played George Zax in the fourth season of Goliath.

And that's just his onscreen work. Simmons has been one of the busy workers in animation for decades, much of it doing work in Animations (J. Jonah Jameson of course but he's also done voices for Justice League Unlimited, Kim Possible, Ben 10 and The Legend of Korra (Tenzin). He's done the voice for Ultimate Spiderman, Archer, all things Seth McFarlane, BoJack Horseman (Lenny Turtletaub) and most recently Omni-Man on Invincible. And if that isn't enough he's the spokesman for two commercials, Farmers and the Yellow M & M.

Continuity Error: We will see footage from this episode in Brodie's documentary in The Documentary but Brodie isn't filming any of the crime scenes. (Max Perhlich isn't even in this episode.)

You actually don't need the DVD: There's a different recording of gospel music over the churches than what we hear on streaming but in this case it doesn't make a difference. The recording of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot actually serves as a superb contrast to so much of the horrors of the church fires and Pembleton and Bayliss walking away from the platform.

I'm not going to bother giving you the rosters of the Law & Order actors because this is about Homicide. They're actually relatively consistent during this period so I think it's less relevant to the show.