Written by Edward Gold ; story by Henry Bromell
and Tom Fontana
Directed by Darnell Martin
One of the source materials I have for Homicide
was The Unofficial Companion. It came out in March of 1998. I need you to
keep all of this in mind when I quote the following section:
After solving a copycat crime Detective Pembleton
grumbles at the lack of originality in modern society. He might as well be
complaining about the increasingly formulaic plots of Homicide. This
unrealistic symmetry is blatantly displayed as the first days of 1996 bring
sixteen murders (sic), every single one of which is part of a single case (if
you include Mariner and his copycat together).
If the reader looking at this thirty years on
wonders "What alternate universe was the writer living in?" I don't
blame them. Unfortunately this is the
first (and even sadder, far from the last time) that Homicide will,
however inadvertently, have foreseen what is becoming an everyday circumstance
in American life. The fact that our schools now have active shooter drills
makes us almost wonder if the author was smoking the kind of dope Munch did in
his youth.
Because of course every single element that I
suspect the author finds formulaic has basically become part of our life.
Active shootings becoming a media circus? Check. The reporters surrounding the family of the
deceased shooter and trying to find out what caused this to happen not hours
after the man killed himself? Check. An
entire city on alert out of terror of an active shooter striking. Check. A
copycat decided to play the exact methods of the original assassin for media
attention. Double check.
And to be clear all of this was becoming part of
the national discourse even while Homicide was still on the air: by the
time this episode aired so much of American culture had become obsessed with
serial killers and what made them tick. Indeed in the following season NBC
itself would air its first drama centered around this kind of thinking Profiler
as part of the slew of imitations that still fill our landscape and that by
the middle of the 2000s would actually have the viewer root for the serial
killer himself. So much of film and TV has an almost formulaic model when it
comes to hunting fictional killers and there are movies that do the same with
real life ones looking from their perspective.
It could be argued that David Kalat was
complaining more about Homicide selling its artistic merit to become
more palatable to the masses which is understandable. That the show got millions of new viewers for
doing so (and I was one of them) is part of the age old debate between art and
commerce that will never truly be resolved. That said what strikes me as
incredible then as today is that for all of this 'Sniper' is thematically not
that different from the show that debuted three seasons earlier in a critical
way.
The detectives are running on empty when they are
called back in but they know they don't have a choice. They spend much of the
first part doing everything they normally do: blowing up their old theories,
trying to figure out how the pattern has changed, then being forced to blow it
up again. And when they finally meet the killer and interrogate him – to this
point the most brutal killer Bayliss and Pembleton have ever had in the box
- he's not really that interesting.
We're not talking about the banality of evil, a card that the show can play
well when it has to, but more the idea of a little man who wants to be big.
Hard as it may be for today's viewer to grasp
1990s TV had a tendency to make serial killers not masterminds or butchers but
rather nebbishes and non-entities. Law & Order would do this a few
times in its early seasons; The X-Files would do so with supernatural
killers and ordinary ones and Millennium, which would debut this same
year would do so quite a few times throughout its run. By this point in its run
Homicide has already established that the overwhelming majority of its
killers are not particularly interesting human beings once you get them in the
box. 'Sniper' is the first story that argues that there really isn't much
difference between a guy like Alex Robey and the smoke-hounds and skells
they've arrested before: the only real difference is the number of the people
they kill before their caught. It's a bold statement to make and you almost
wonder why so many of the procedurals that followed chose to ignore it and go
out of their way to glamorize the serial killer rather than picture them as something
of a void not worth thinking about after he's locked up.
This is made all the more clear when you consider
how the first half of this episode plays out. We see all the detectives,
exhausted after twenty-four plus hours on the job, being called back in after
three more shootings. The sense of exhaustion does much to demonstrate how the
entire squad is running on adrenaline and not much else.
Giardello, who always seems defiant, is angrier
in this episode than he was last time.
When Bonfather and the PR rep show up (and if she looks familiar see the
Notes) more concerned about the media circus that's coming then their own
safety he erupts at Bonfather in a way we've rarely seen when it comes to them
wearing a vest. He yells at D'Addario to shoot down a helicopter if it gets in
his way and has no patience for anything Bonfather says.
This is particularly clear when he calls in the
freshly demoted Russert to help him in a crisis. Megan is uneasy about what
happens and he tells her that if asked he'll do what he always does and ignore
him.
It's actually worth considering: Bonfather is
still more concerned with how the shootings look and considering he just made
Russert the department scapegoat for what happened to Mariner he now knows that
whatever else goes wrong the buck is going to stop with him. He doesn't want
Russert anywhere near this case even though he now has less authority to order
her than he did just hours ago.
No doubt because of the enormous exhaustion as
well as the fact that they still haven't caught the killer everybody is at a
raw nerve. This is particularly true with Pembleton, who's now the primary and
has to follow up on the murders. Usually he's better at keeping his emotions in
reserve but from almost the moment he's called back in his emotions are on high
alert. Usually he's the kind of person who thinks everyone belongs to God (as
Bayliss quotes him) but he has no regard for Mariner's life against nine
innocent people. He can barely manage a
level conversation with Mariner's widow (who to be clear has every reason to be
hostile) and eventually gives into the panic the city is feeling when he goes
to visit Mary at work.
This is the first time in a long time we actually
see beneath the armor Frank puts up even with his wife most of the time as he
marches into her office and demands she comes home with. Brabson demonstrates
her normal compassion in the scene but for the first time we get a sense of the
steel beneath as she tells her husband about how he has no right to bring her
home when she has to do this every day. Pembleton for once gives in as much as
he can, and when we see him put his Kevlar around her – and then hold her in an
embrace - its as close we've seen him to
wearing his heart on his sleeve on the show to this point.
Though his role in the episode is relatively
small Richard Belzer gives one of the most emotional performances so far in his
scene with Howard. For the first time we realize just how triggering this case
might very well be with him and when he unravels at Howard as to just how much
seeing her, Bolander and Felton destroyed him when it happened and makes it
clear that will not happen again, it's a high point in the series.
(On a side note I'd argue his emotional reaction
here makes it difficult for me to believe he could have killed Gordon Pratt.
Munch is so genuinely shattered about his inability to do anything in the
aftermath in the shooting I just can't see him being able to kill someone in
cold blood as a result.)
After the second set of shootings take place, in
a riveting scene of quick cuts that is brilliantly directed, Lewis and
Kellerman see a familiar face: Alex Robey. To be clear this is the third time
they've seen him: he was at the first shooting and then showed up at the
precinct giving an interview to the press before Lewis hauled him off and they
are too smart not to make the connection. Kellerman calls him over to Frank.
The interrogation that follows then shifts the
episode from tragedy to near farce.
Bayliss and Pembleton know that Robey is connected to the shootings (he
has press clippings of it in his bathroom) but they are understandably
convinced he has a connection to William Mariner. Secor and Braugher are superb
as they seem more than willing to give Robey a chance to incriminate himself
but he utterly refuses to take the bait. I suspect it is as a combination of
frustration and exhaustion that causes the two of them to rant and them and
Pembleton is wonderful as he calls Robey "probably the most boring person
we've ever come across." The two
detectives then relate no doubt every kind of killer they've interrogated and
every kind of method they've used as long as any kind of motive. And they make
it clear that of all of them Robey is the most pathetic. I'll say it again:
this is a man who's killed five people in eight hours' time and as far as
Bayliss and Pembleton are concerned, he's a joke.
And its worth noting that when they realize that
Alex Robey has no connection to Mariner but is simply a copycat they think even
less of him them before. They can hold him for 48 hours so both
detectives can go home and get some rest, but Pembleton wants to get back in
the box. I'm not entirely convinced this is Frank being Frank; Robey's actions
are clearly offensive to him and he just wants to get the confession so he can
go home, get a good night's sleep and not have to deal with this idiot. That
Russert chooses to babysit is territorial to be sure, but he doesn't complain
that much.
(And that seen where Frank just stands there and
silently takes Robey and Russert's beverage order with a straight face?
Hysterical.)
Now I will acknowledge that it might seem
formulaic to have the twice demoted Russert, back in the interrogation room for
the first time in who knows how long, manage to flawless manipulate the suspect
into a confession her first day back. The thing is watching Hoffman in this
scene, for the first time almost since the series began it seems like the
writers have a grip on her character.
We've seen Russert play a politician and a commander multiple times, but
we've never really seen her do anything to make us believe anything she's
gotten has been but a political appointment. Watching her in this episode you
see the detective she once was. She is not the kind of inquisitor Frank was or
even the sensitive soul Bayliss is you see someone that you can confide in,
someone your sympathetic too. This is not a note we saw Howard take (and future
female detectives mostly won't) but in the case of Robey it's perfect because
she gives him what's he wants: a sympathetic ear. That it is very close to how
she might be feeling right now is almost incidental: she knows the job.
And it's telling that after his momentary
frustration Pembleton and Bayliss come back in and follow her lead. They
realize their aggressive approach has failed and that Robey wants to take
credit for what he's done. And if anything when he finally confesses he
actually seems more of a loser than before, more desperate for
validation that will not come from these detectives.
In a way Bayliss gives the greatest tribute
possible to Russert, even though it seems like a back-handed compliment. He
says she was a lousy captain because instead of 'being one of the bosses, you
fought for us. You took our side." It makes us wonder if Giardello would
have made a good captain were he promoted. (Of course that question will become
pertinent in the very next episode – and in a way, eventually be answered by
who is promoted.)
In the final scene Pembleton, rarely given to
philosophizing, talks about how the world is afraid of the new and how we keep
reinventing new ideas every few years. (In a weird way Homicide is
foreseeing the era of the reboot that we now live in.) Kalat says this is a
sign of how formulaic the show was becoming. Thirty years later with nothing
close to Homicide in either approach when it comes to police procedurals
or how they handle serial killers, I'd say looking back its more prove than
ever. Homicide never got reinvented because it was too much of an
original.
NOTES FROM THE BOARD
Hey Isn't That… I won't lie. The first time I saw
David Eigenberg appear as the bartender on S ex
and the City I almost shouted at the screen: "Don't trust him, Miranda!
He's a serial killer!"
This was a very early role for Eigenberg and the
following year he appeared in the first season of The Practice. He also was a
regular on the syndicated series Soldier of Fortune, Inc in 1998-1999. Then he
played Steve Brady on Sex and the City every season until it was cancelled and
both films. His most significant role after that was playing Christopher Herman
on Chicago Fire for the last twelve seasons and he has also crossed on all the
other series in Dick Wolf's Chicago world. He has not starred on Law and
Order but did on Law & Order: SVU.
J. Smith Cameron, who plays Avis Griffin was best
known to TV audiences in 1996 for her work as Ramona in The Days and Nights of
Molly Dodd, a well loved soap-opera parody. She had appeared in six movies in
1995 and would appear in The First Wives Club and Harriet the Spy in 1996. She appeared in Kenneth Lonergan's first two
films You Can Count on Me and Margaret.
Starting in 2010 her career began to get
momentum. She played Melinda in True Blood and then reached critical notice for
played Janet Talbot, the mother of the recently exonerated convict William in
the Sundance drama Rectify, a role which earned her an Outstanding Supporting
Actress in a Drama from the Critics Choice Awards. She also had a recurring
role as Mary Ferguson across four seasons of Search Party. But the role that
finally brought the recognition her and
appreciation she deserved was as Gerri Kellman, the lead council at Waystar
Royco on four seasons of Succession for which she deservedly received two Emmy
nominations. She is currently playing Kathy Vance, Deb's sister on Hacks.
We'll learn more about the fate of Alex Robey in
the fifth season episode Riot.
Darnell Martin who directed this episode was the
first African-American woman to direct a Hollywood feature when she directed I
Like It Like That in 1994. Since then she has worked almost exclusive in
television, and has credits for three episodes of OZ, ER, Life on Mars as well
as five episodes of Law & Order and Ten of Criminal Intent. The series that
used her the most was New Amsterdam and she has currently directed multiple
episodes of Outer Banks and Ginny & Georgia. Her most prominent film was
Cadillac Records for which she was nominated for Directing and Writing by the
Image Awards in 2009
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