Homicide Rewatch: Bad Medicine

 

Written by David Simon ; story by Tom Fontana & Julie Martin

Directed by Kenneth Fink

 

Bad Medicine is the clearest sign yet that Homicide is getting back to its roots in Season 5. It introduces a storyline involving Kellerman that will take up the remaining first half of the season. It officially begins in an ongoing one that will infiltrate much of this season and have repercussions throughout the next one, if not the remainder of the show. It introduces a character who will be vital to Homicide's second half even though she won't officially becoming a series regular until the final season. It officially comes back to drug-related crimes in a way Homicide had increasingly pushed aside in the last season in favor of more sensationalist stories. And it does so in a fashion that is arguably bleaker than it has ever been since the first season and sets the tone for even darker times ahead.

Because so much of the storylines will involve Kellerman, it's best to start with him. At the start of the episode Kellerman is told by Giardello and Gaffney (who for once manages to squash his usual unctuousness) that he is under a grand jury investigation for his time at Arson.

When we first met Kellerman he told us one of the men he was investigating was Matthew Roland, a developer who had a habit of burning down old buildings in arson-for-profit.  The Feds we shall learn have indicted his son Mitch. What's clearly happened is that in order to get a light sentence Roland named some of the other detectives in the Arson Unit for taking bribes, including Kellerman. We meet one of the detectives, Bob Connelly, and from their brief interaction we get the impression that not only is Roland telling the truth about it but he also knew about it at the time. The way Connelly acts when he sees Kellerman has been subpoenaed – "We all figured you were the rat" – would seem to have darker implications but we won't find out the truth of it until a few episodes later.

Kellerman claims his innocence but the writers never give us independent clarification: the viewer is just asked to take his word for it.  And its not like Kellerman's behavior during his first year in the unit has been on the straight and narrow: we'll be reminded of this in the next episode as the investigation begins.

What I find more interesting is that from the start Kellerman truly seems to believe his word should be good enough, not just for his colleagues or Giardello but the FBI. Kellerman is getting better treatment then his fellow detectives in Arson; he's just placed on administrative duty while its assumed the other detectives have been suspended indefinitely. And its not as though the viewer isn't aware that cops don't walk on water on this show; earlier this year Kellerman arrested a detective for murder even though he clearly hated doing it.  We remember that he followed procedure correctly and when Jake Rodzinski tried to push him he was delicate and made it clear how the process worked.  So when Giardello tells him he has to follow the rules because of how the target letter worked and Kellerman says that by doing so everyone will think him guilty he's clearly arguing that he should be above the rules. Due process is for everyone but him.

More to the point he begins to develop increasingly paranoid tendencies that are nasty from the start as is clear when he snaps at Giardello. Considering how short-handed the squad is already (something he will refer to at the end of the episode) you know this is not something Gee is doing voluntarily. This episode reminds in all the ways we need to that as much as he bends the regulations there's only so far he can go without getting in trouble himself. That neither Kellerman nor Pembleton seem willing to acknowledge this point illustrates their own selfishness (though in Frank's case he seems more willing to accommodate it than Mike will be) Even when his union rep tells him what his best course of action is he thinks that because he says he's innocent should be good enough for the Feds, the grand jury and the department.

 No matter how many times the unit tells them they're on his side he refuses to accept it. There's nothing the squad can really do and many of them will make multiple efforts during the process. Its also worth noting as the investigation progresses Kellerman will do everything in his power to make himself worse in the eyes of the investigators yet still demand to be treating above his fellow detectives. We'll see how this behavior manifests as the storyline progresses but it's worth noting with the passage of time my sympathy for Kellerman has gone down immensely and this is clearly the point where he starts becoming less admirable. This is clear when Lewis tells them they're going after Luther Mahoney and he demands to come along even though he's on administrative duty. It is to the credit of Stivers that she's already made it clear that she can stick up for herself. But he also seems more than willing to jeopardize an investigation into two murders which is on shaky ground already because he holds a grudge against Luther. When Lewis – a man who has been guilty of playing fast and loose with procedure before he met Kellerman – gently tells him no Mike takes is as a sign that Meldrick thinks he's guilty even though he's following procedure.

 

During the first act Meldrick Lewis bursts a locker room and demands to know where Stivers is. “I’m gonna smack him,” he shouts. A petite African-American woman looks at him and says: “Take your best shot.” Meldrick blinks: “Terri Stivers. You a woman.” Stivers looks at him: “You Homicide detectives don't miss any details.”

This is our first introduction to Toni Lewis as Stivers and its striking just how quickly she absolutely nails it. While Homicide generally handles female characters exceptionally well, it has a tendency to lean into the idea of them as love interests more than women in a men's profession. The series will hint at it with Meldrick throughout Season Five but it will never rise beyond flirtation and its basically one sided on Lewis's part.

At the start of her introductions Stivers is being set-up as the equivalent of Howard. While Toni Lewis is attractive she doesn't scream sexuality the way Isabella Hoffman (to this point the viewer's only comparison) ever did. She dresses down, has a tough as nails attitude towards her male counterparts and the dealers on the street, knows everything about the drug world in a way we haven't seen another detective be outside of the unit and is clearly more concerned about her territory then Homicide's.  But nor does she display the arrogance we see so often when we've met so many of the other detectives outside of the unit over the years, the surety that they are as good at their jobs if not better.

This is clear as to how the unit is dealing with the bad package that has been causing all of the ODs that we see them investigating in the teaser. We see them looking through crime scenes of dead people but with none of the interest or concern they do when they investigate murders. Twenty people have overdosed in three days and it doesn't raise an eyebrow because they're not murders. Even Brodie doesn't care: "Has everyone in Baltimore forgotten how to shoot dope?" So when Stivers brings in a witness to help bring down BoJack Reed's lieutenant to get the package off the street it's telling that Meldrick thinks one murdered dealer is more important then dozens of those who die from drugs. Stivers response to this is very telling: "You go by the bullet or the blade; you got a chance of being avenged. You go by the blast, you're just gone."

And it's for this reason that the hunt for Luther Mahoney has a different vibe to it. When Lewis and Howard come to the street and learn that their victim is 'BoJack' Reed they're stunned because they thought he was in prison for thirty years. They had no idea he'd been back out for a year and certainly not to the point where he was giving Mahoney a run for his money. We've been reminded multiple times that the detectives aren't interested in the cause of the murders, only having to catch who killed them and given their reactions to all those who have overdosed, black or white, rich or poor, it throws into question so much of what we've heard about them speaking for the dead. They only speak for those who die violently at the hands of another. They're fine if you kill yourself with drugs. The only reason Lewis wants to get Luther is because he's making their job harder. They'd be fine if he just let the good people of Baltimore kill themselves with drugs laced with Scopolamine.

This is made clear in a mesmerizing encounter with Vernon Troy, who has to stuff himself with candy in order 'to keep the snake at bay.' Troy tells us how Reed decided to lace packages with Scopolamine and put them in double star bags (Luther's brand) in order to say Luther was dealing poison and move them to his product. It failed, Troy makes clear, because that just make junkies chase the dragon more.

Troy gives Lewis Reed's killer but when he's found dead with the weapon he used to kill Reed in plain view Lewis wants to go after Mahoney by putting Troy's name on the warrant. This is pretty close to a death sentence and its worth noting the best case scenario doesn't make either Lewis or Stivers look good. They send him back on the street to get a fix, tell him to be back in an hour, and then they'll keep him safe.  Both are negligent here as even now we know junkies have no sense of time or self-protection when they're chasing a high. Even before Luther's brought in we're pretty sure how things are going to end for him.

The scene in the box with Luther is another one of those gems. By this point we've been through so many times that the viewer expects how this is going to end up. This is the only real scene where Erik Todd Dellums has any presence, which is another sign of how well the writers do it: Luther Mahoney is such a presence just by the nature of his name that he only has to show up in one scene an episode for the point to be made.

Luther and Stivers almost seem to be flirting early on: the two have a history given that he's given her his pager number. (That's no doubt why Simon kept to that plot when he did the first season of The Wire.) In four and a half years we've rarely seen a suspect who was up to the manipulations of the detectives: the last time was Gordon Pratt. Lewis and Stivers talk to him in hypotheticals while making it clear they know what he does. Stivers is particularly blunt saying the package kills them fast "as opposed to killing them slow." They walk through Reed's murder and seem to get Luther to admit knowledge of how Phipps was killed. But Luther knows the game well enough to lawyer up at that point.

And because Lewis and Stivers are rarely in this position Danvers actually has to point out that none of this would get past a grand jury, much less lead to a verdict. Phipps' door was unlocked when the cops arrested him and Troy is a junkie reporting secondhand knowledge from a third party who is dead.  Anyone who watched an episode of Law & Order would know this was the case but because this is Homicide it hits the viewer with a gut punch. When Troy ends up 'taking one for the team' in the final moments it's an inevitability.

And as if to drive all of this home we are reminded of what's been going on with Frank. We've seen just how useless he feels and Brodie has in fact confided to Bayliss that Pembleton hasn't been taken his medicine. More to the point Frank is at the hospital with Mary and she has far less patience for what Frank has been doing then Tim is. She makes it clear that if he doesn't take his medicine she will put him back in the hospital himself. It's not clear if he hears given that Bayliss says the same thing hours later.

Because so much else is going on we nearly forget that Frank is taking the firing exam this week. So after all of the dismay that's been going on when Frank comes into Giardello's office saying he didn't pass it might be too much were it not for how Braugher describes why. When he relays the exam in the stammering were used too and tells us how he got hung up on the word 'magazine' the fact that he missed qualifying by four points almost comes as a relief to the viewer. For all the clear frustration Braugher shows and for all the viewer's desire to have the status quo maintained it is clear to the untrained and even the trained eye that Frank has no business being back out on the street right now.  The gun may be the least important thing but the mind and the body are and at this point there's no sign Frank is up to it in either.

Al gives a painful monologue of the status quo of the unit: "Russert's on indefinite leave, you and Kellerman are on administrative duty; Bolander's retired, Felton, I have no idea where he is". (This is the first time Felton's absence has been mentioned at all this season by anyone.) Considering all the problems the unit has been having for the past two years – and they are going to get worse before they get better – its as close to Giardello admitted how precarious he thinks his position is with the bosses right now.  And the fact is Pembleton has rarely looked more pathetic when he says (despite saying he's not begging) that Al can get him back on the street – but he can't say it without stammering.

The final section of the episode is one of the most memorable in the series entire run. When TV Guide ran an article calling Homicide: The Best Show You're Not Watching in the early winter of 1997 they would bring in noted police author Joseph Wambaugh to do a guest column. In his praise of the episode he highlighted the final sequence of the episode as proving "a policeman's lot is not a happy one.'

And it is a bleak one. As anyone who watched The Wire is aware Simon used Tom Waits's 'Way Down in the Hole' as the opening song over the credit of The Wire. (Waits' official recording is heard over Season 2.) His fondness for Waits's is made clear in both the opening and closing of the episode but rarely more powerfully then here. To the sound of Waits's whiskey soaked voice since 'Cold, Cold Ground' we see some of the bleakest moments of the series so far. Luther Mahoney walks out of the squad to his limo. Lewis prepares a martini for Stivers as they discuss what to do next as well as the still shaky state of Meldrick's marriage. Munch and Howard are in an alley and find Vernon Troy with a bullet in his head.  All three murders in this episode are still open one of the few times in the show's entire run we don't even get any relief from the board.

And Pembleton goes home looking lost. He passes over a sandwich and milk Mary has left for him. He goes upstairs and he hugs Oliva for a few moments. And then at the end of the episode we get the faintest glimmer of hope. He goes into the bathroom, looks at his medication. Then he opens the bottle and swallows a pill. It’s the first real sign that Frank has taken his failures to heart. From this point on he'll take his administrative leave more serious and finding his way back to the job the right way.

 

 

NOTES FROM THE BOARD\

 

In his first script for Season Five Simon returns to his journalistic routes. The episode is based on a real problem going on in Baltimore at the time as heroin was being laced with Scopolamine.

'Detective Munch'  While looking for track marks on an OD Munch bemoans the loss of Bolander and Russert "I lose partners faster than any detective on the force. And my marriages? Three. Each one shorter than the last. Then he looks at the OD. "Maybe this guy had the right idea. It didn't end well for him but at least he knew where he stood." Munch is depressed even for him and it actually gets worse because…

Brodie Is On The Move: During the episode Brodie awkwardly walks up to Munch and tells him he wants to move out of Munch's home. Munch takes this badly at first – "I raised you from a pup!" and then becomes cautious. "You looked in the medicine cabinet, didn't you?" Brodie insists he didn't, which means he did. Bayliss agrees to take him in. Munch will later lie and say that he threw Brodie out and take a special pleasure as Brodie continues to wander from detective to detective.

We see Bayliss at home eating pizza and watching Mighty Mouse cartoons when Brodie shows up. Brodie actually wants to watch a retrospective of Frederic Weisman the famous documentarian. (Never let it be said Brodie hasn't studied the masters. His discussion of the landmark Titicut Follies goes completely over Bayliss's head who insists they watch Mighty Mouse. Brodie's not going to be staying here long.

Toni Lewis might have gotten her job through some form of nepotism. Her husband is Chris Tergesen who at the time was Homicide's Music supervisor. Tergesen has had a far longer and more successful career in television then his wife and would work with either Fontana or Simon on almost every show they've done since including OZ, The Corner and COPPER. He was nominated for an Emmy in 2024 for his sound editing for Ahsoka. Lewis, despite being exceptional actress, never had a major role after this, save for recurring roles on OZ and The Wire. That's a huge loss for television.

Get The DVD: The opening scene and closing scene are scored by Tom Waits. 'Till The Money Runs Out' and 'Cold, Cold Ground'