Homicide Rewatch: The Wedding

 

21. The Wedding

Written by Henry Bromell

Directed by Alan Taylor

 

So much of The Wedding has such very clear soap opera qualities that they almost cry out for parody. Meldrick Lewis has announced he is getting married that day to a woman that no one, not even Kellerman, has heard of until now. He then hijacks the entire unit to help him by the flowers and meals for the wedding, promising to pay them later. Understandably most of the unit thinks that this is a joke.

One of the guest is a very pregnant Mary Pembleton and at the climax of the wedding she goes into labor, scaring the hell out of the usually unflappable Frank. (Andre Braugher gets to demonstrate his gift for comedy in most of the episode which is a nice change of pace.)

And in the one investigation that the episode deals with because the squad has been hijacked into planning Meldrick's impromptu wedding Al is forced to go out on the street with Kay Howard as secondary. (Though Giardello is the primary, the name will go under Howard's on the board.) In the course of it he will shoot and kill an innocent man he believes is a suspect.

I can understand why Kalat in his book tried to describe as "Welcome to All My Children: Life on the Street!"  And yet I remain fond of this episode for many reasons. One of them I can't reveal just yet because it has to do with the season finale but I can work around it. What I can say is that these kinds of events – weddings, birth, celebrations – were not uncommon themes at the center of season finales both at the time and now, certainly on network television. The idea of the cliffhanger was not carved in stone for television in the 1990s, save for genre TV, and most season finales brought a sense of closure for the year gone by with some kind of celebration. ER's first season had ended with Carol Hathaway's wedding and even though it didn't end in a marriage, there was still a sense of celebration. NYPD Blue had ended its second season with Sipowicz marrying Sylvia so even the most watched police procedural would keep to this.  The only difference between this every other series is that The Wedding is the penultimate episode of Season 4 – and that I can say makes me think it was a great trick

Next there's that The Wedding is one of the most playful episodes in Homicide's history. This was always a dark show with what humor it provided of the very black variety. The show would occasionally ease off the tension for a while in its early seasons, first with 'Night of the Dead Living' in Season One and to a different extent in The Gas Man last year. (It would do so again in another episode the following season.) But its rarely done an episode that would not be out of place on a workplace comedy during this era or later ones, where almost one in the case spends most of the episode dealing with relatively light-hearted things. Pembleton is not angry because a confrontation in the Box is going poorly but because he has to figure out what kind of flowers to buy, there's tension between two detectives not because of how an investigation is going but because they're openly flirting with a beautiful woman. Even in the wedding itself is hysterical as we see Scheiner being his thoroughly cranky self not even wanting to dance with Russert's grade school daughter – and then kvetching when she dances with other people instead of him.

But as always the humor carries a darker edge even there. Meldrick announces that he's getting married in the teaser and immediately throws up into his desk drawer. Kellerman doesn't take him seriously for many reasons, not the least of which that Meldrick has apparently been dating this woman for months and has not felt sure to tell anyone least of all its partner who has been incredibly open about the things he cares about. We're reminded about Lewis wondering why people don't open up to him and tell them their life stories in Stakeout and there's a clear hint here: its always been a one-way street. He didn't tell Mike about his brother Anthony or about living in Lafayette Terrace and now he seems fit to spring a surprise wedding on the entire unit without thinking of their feelings or thoughts. The fact that he's essentially basically causing the entire squad not to work a murder is another sign, albeit a subtle one. One almost wonders if Lewis is 'lucky' that this was apparently one of the few days in Baltimore history only one person got murdered; would he have felt compelled to do this had a red ball started?

And critically it's only after he has gotten married (not exactly a spoiler) that Lewis finally spills his guts to Kellerman.  He has spent the entire episode saying that he is love with Barbara beyond compare, has truly been devoted to her for seven months, is incredibly grateful to everyone and even tells Giardello that this will be the happiest day of his life. But only after he is officially married does he confess that he threw everything together at the last moment so he wouldn't have a chance to talk himself out of it.

Because Meldrick has basically held the details of his life so close that we never know them unless he tells we know nothing about his courtship with Barbara before or even after.  She seems to be a symbol of something to him, something that he claims that he wants. And the moment he gets he starts to spin out about the decision he's made. Near the end of the episode he asks Mike in the openness that he hasn't shown before: "I'm doing the right thing?" And Mike can only shrug because he knows all too well where this ends. It's possible Lewis never confided in his partner because he didn't want his cynicism to rain on his parade. As we shall see in the very next episode, a little bit of reality might have been welcome.

Another reason this episode registered is that for really the first time in Season 4 the writers give Melissa Leo something to do. And I mean a lot.  We heard a few times in Season One that Kay had a sister named Carrie that she was very close to. When she visited her family on the bay her father talked about her but she wasn't there and Carrie was the only Howard relation that didn't show up when she was shot last season. Now it turns out she's been in Florence all this time and she's flown 4000 miles to visit her sister. And its clear from the start that Kay found it easier to love Carrie when she was across the ocean because she's grumbling from the moment she and Carrie walk in the precinct.

Now Carrie is listed in the credits as being played by 'Margaret May'. In fact this is actually Melissa Leo in a dual role. And she is so good at it that it wasn't until I got the guides to the series two years after witnessing the episode that I realized this fact!  (The NBC press team admitted it but I didn't know that.) The disjointed camera work does much to hide the fact that Kay and Carrie are never in the same scene at the same time but honestly even if they were I might very well not have known.

It's clear that the two sisters are related in appearance and I can tell with the benefit of hindsight how alike they look. But it is how different Carrie is from Kay that the viewer is truly fooled. By this point Leo has completely established the professional Kay Howard, who doesn't wear make up and dresses in men's attire far more then women's. (There were very homophobic suggestions about Leo during this period because of it.) And we get just as clear a picture of it in The Wedding: Kay is just as professional as ever, has the complete hard edge as before, has no patience in the interrogation room or the squad.

Contrast that with her work as Carrie who from the start seems naïve, selfish, flirtatious and perfectly aware of the havoc she's wreaking on the squad room.  Its hysterical to watch Kyle Secor and Reed Diamond who have played such hard edged and steely detectives during this period basically turn themselves into Jell-O as Carrie flirts with them, these detectives who are laser focused in interrogations reduced into asking Carrie about the sandals she makes. Its understandable why Kay spends the entire episode terrified of what happens with her sister among her colleagues – as well as the fact that she never seems to blame either Mike or Tim for their actions. Late in the episode she tells Tim that her sister's crazy: 'Carrie sees a life as a game. She who has the most fun wins." Understandably Tim immediately goes after her and eventually she has to pull him off Mike.

That the two of them end up in what amounts to a dick-measuring contest on the dance floor is far from shocking and naturally Carrie is upset after spending the entire episode happily leading both men on that they take it seriously. "I don't want to dance with either one of you!" she shouts in tears. I am not the type of person to blame women for certain actions but in this case I agree with Kay: they're better off without her.

And this is matched by the fact that the episode also puts Howard on the street for the first time in a while, partnered with Giardello as he investigates the shooting of radio shock jock Kevin Lugo. We hear a bit of Lugo's broadcast and we quickly realize that he is very much of the Howard Stern-Don Imus type of broadcaster: "He liked to spice up his opinions with opinions." That's putting it mildly. We hear him saying he believes at the age of 20 one out of every five people should voluntarily kill themselves for population control and that abortion should be not merely legal but mandatory for all parents with an IQ of less than 100. (Looking from today I'm not sure whether today's progressives would want his support on this issue even though I know damn well they agree with it even though they'd never say so.)

Yaphet Kotto gets to give his best single performance of the season as we see him genuinely testing his ability as an investigator on what appears to be a stone cold whodunit. Half of Baltimore and much of the nation well could have wanted him dead (there's no way in 1996 the writers could have foreseen how much this would play out in today's America) and they get what appears to be a lead when a local sleaze says that a guy named Raymond Desassy was paid to kill Lugo. He's vague on details and he clearly wants the reward offered. Giardello and Howard go to check it out.

The scene that follows is one of the signature pieces of Homicide. We follow Gee and Howard through the halls of a decaying building. We see children playing, a bouncing ball go buy. They go to his apartment and when they see Desassy he pulls a gun and fires on them. Both Howard and Gee return fire, Al's shot kills him. We see Giardello enraged.

Then they learn Desassy was in jail that night for trying to rob a 7-11 and they didn't find out because of a computer glitch. They bring the informant into the squad (critically this unfolds as Meldrick is getting married) and he's shocked to learn this. He called it in as a practical joke – and seems hurt that Al shot his friend, even though he had to know this was a possible consequence.

Al is not in a mood for partying but he goes to the reception anyway. He spends much of it drinking in a corner with Kay thinking about the only time he shot a man. He looks at Meldrick and says only: "I miss my wife."

And then of course Mary, who is very pregnant, starts to go into labor. It's been hysterical watching Braugher throughout this episode. When he thinks that this is a joke he calls Meldrick scum and says: "I'm going to take my wife home. Then I'm going to find Lewis. And when I find him, I'm going to kill him. I'm  a very clever detective and I will find a way to kill him that I will not be caught. He will simply disappear and like all sphincters before him, he will not be missed." He actually gets up just as Lewis gets into the hotel ballroom and then helps lead the cheers.

He gets nervous the more Mary dances certain that she will give birth on the dance floor despite Mary's reassurances. When she starts going into labor he shouts for a doctor and when Scheiner says so, the look of clear horror on his face is wonderful. Then we see a panicked Frank leading his wife into the ambulance and its both funny and sweet to see the strong, hard Pembleton whose been so ambivalent about his child's potential birth much of the season turn to basically every panicky father when Mary goes into labor.

And a wonderful moment comes when everyone goes back into the ballroom. Brodie yells at Giardello. He pauses. Then a honest, open smile – one of the first purely happy ones we've seen him give all series appears – and he walks back in. He knows he'll have to deal with the consequences of the murder tomorrow but for now, he's going to eat, drink and be merry.

This is a sweet, brilliant episode that for another show then or now could have been a perfect season finale. The reason that Homicide is a masterpiece is because next week is the season finale – and its only after its done that you realize just how brilliantly the writers have done their job.

 

Notes From The Board

"Detective Munch" Munch is the most committed to the idea that this is a practical joke and even after the wedding takes place tells Megan: "What if this Barbara Shivers is in on this?" Russert's only response is: "How paranoid are you?" He's actually one-upped in this episode when he meets Lewis' mother and she says: "Oh you're the guy who took all those drugs in the sixties and damaged his mind. I'm sorry." Munch is actually struck dumb as Russert chuckles at him.

At some point between now and the season finale the killer of Kevin Lugo will be caught; his name is written up in black. As with so many cases that change from red to black over the course of the season that are just on the board, we never find out why.

The murder of Raymond Desassy will come again in Homicide: The Movie. Note that during this episode we never hear anything about him having a wife.

Foreshadowing? : During this episode Russert tells Munch that this is the first wedding she's been too since her husband died. She tells him she's been shy ever since everything with Felton and now she's beginning to think her daughter needs a father. This may be an explanation to Russert's character next season.

On The Soundtrack: The real life band Lazy Boy plays much of the music for the Wedding at the Belvedere hotel. Listed among their songs are 'Club Urchin, Latin Quarter, The Mole and Junction City."