Homicide Rewatch: Prison Riot

 

Written by Tom Fontana ; story by Tom Fontana and Henry Bromell

Directed by Kenneth Fink

(Landmark TV Episode 30^th Anniversary)

 

When I was eighteen the idea of being a writer, much less a critic, was not a profession I was seriously considering. My experience in TV was relatively limited and a decidedly mixed bag: I was as much a fan of Melrose Place as Homicide back then. What I was just as much then as today was an obsessive reader and I devouring TV Guide back then.

So in June of 1997 when TV Guide published its first magazine dealing with The 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time I read it but many of the series and episodes were relatively unknown. And in future editions these lists (they'd do a new version in 2009 and again in 2018) the editors would change even some of the episodes of the series they'd listed. Of course I had no idea of that at the time.

What I did know is that when I saw 'Prison Riot' in this list (I think it was in the low thirties) I did a double take. By that point I'd already seen every episode of Homicide in syndication at least twice. (During that period the series had been running on Lifetime.) At that point my judgment on what makes a great episode was to be sure, deeply flawed. It took me a long time to recognize such works as 'Three Men & Adena' or 'A Doll's Eyes were the classics they were and there were several episodes I'd seen such as 'Crosetti' and 'Every Mother's Son that I knew were better than that. So that gave me a reason to wonder just how much to trust these critics. And indeed by 2009 they'd ranked another landmark episode in its place that few fans of the series would argue deserves that note.

This is not to say that this episode is not an incredible work of television, merely to say that even by this point in its run Homicide had raised the standard of excellence so high that an episode that absolutely would have been the greatest of any other series is probably not even the best one of Season 5.  That doesn't make any less a classic or a significant episode. For one thing, it features what is without question the greatest guest acting performance on Homicide this season and one of the best guest roles in the show's outstanding record of guest roles. For another, watching this episode you can clearly see the seeds of inspiration of what would be Fontana's next project – one that would supply the wellspring for how both HBO and television would be forever changed. And it does so every step of the way by avoiding every cliché the viewer expects from stories like this in TV and film before and since.

On its own the episode ties into the institutional memory of Homicide. This is a show that already has a memory of checking in on minor characters after the detectives have dealt with them. This pattern was played out most directly with Chris Thormann: the show visited him in recovery after his shooting and again when Crosetti died (and we'll be dealing with again. Prison Riot gives us a chance to look at so many of the killers the show has locked up over the course of its run, going back as far as Season Three.

Indeed there was a passage in Simon's book when the detectives were called to the state prison after a similar outbreak of violence and one of the killers that they'd locked up called him names. One of the detectives said: "I'm going to an air-conditioned apartment, a woman and a six-pack and you're going to a 90 degree cell of a week of lockup." This plays out with Kellerman talking to Trevor Douglas who he did put in prison back in Autofocus, so the logic holds. (Of course Kellerman lives on a boat and is currently single so it's not accurate but the spirit is true.)

We see the riot in one of three passages in the episode that makes it unique (and honestly you should have the DVD to get the full effect). The episode opens in the prison cafeteria to the sound of Collective Soul's 'Bleed' as we several of the faces of prisoners that we just saw in the "Previously on Homicide" segment. Most prominent is Claude Vetter on one side of the prison and James Douglas on the other.  The two of them are getting breakfast, Vetter bumps into Douglas and knocks over the tray and Trevor stabs in the chest. This triggers members of the cafeteria to go after each other for reasons the viewer doesn't understand at the opening but become clearer as the investigation begins. By the time the violence gets too rowdy the SORT team comes in with tear gas and firing at kneecaps at the cafeteria is clear. We are left with the images of Vetter and Douglas next to each other. Playing with the precision of a segment of a film by Spike Lee or John Singleton it's a standout opening.

This leads to a Signal 13 in which the squad is called into investigate – "Except you, Frank," Gee says before they leave (we'll get to that) – and they recognize Vetter and Douglas almost immediately. Munch is understandably indifferent but for once Giardello himself is the same. They know that Douglas killed Vetter and while Bayliss and Howard want to know who killed Douglas Giardello says they are to spend one day on it and then go back home.

As the investigation unfolds Howard, Kellerman and Lewis find themselves talking to previous felons: Alex Robey, the copycat sniper who killed five people and Tom Marans who suffocated Erika Chilton. Marans has changed the most of all of the characters: his hair is now died red, he is smoking, has Erika's name tattooed on his fingers and admits he has been engaging gay sex. The subject of how a man could change when they come to prison was one Fontana had dealt with during a storyline on St. Elsewhere a decade ago and as we all know he would soon leave Homicide to write OZ on HBO. Marans' character is clearly a prototype of Tobias Beecher, an attorney who's involved in a hit and run while drinking and is sentenced to Oswald. The parallel is different when it comes to the crime – Marans killed the woman he loved out of jealousy; Beecher was intoxicated – but the degeneration is the same. In a very short time (close to Beecher's descent) Marans has become as dead as anyone in the prison.

The episode also deals with the subject of racial relations inside, something that would be at the core of OZ even more then Homicide was. Robey tells us that in prison white people are the minority and that Douglas was the kind of man who made his presence known. Vetter was part of the Aryan brotherhood (another major part of OZ) and attempted to recruit Marans. It's clear there's a cycle of violence in prison and that these things happen all the time: this was just the only one big enough to deal with it.

And of course even more than on the street, no one has any interest in snitching to the cops. This is true of all of the killers we see and is extended to most we don't. The only one who seems different – and is the center of the episode – is Elijah Sanborn.

Charles S. Dutton is arguably one of the greatest character actors in the history of television which is even more remarkable when you learn about how his life began. Dutton was a Baltimore native and in 1968 he stabbed a man in a street fight, serving seven and a half years in prison for it. Dutton had already established himself on Broadway and film (see Hey Isn't That for his television record) and when TV Guide said "There's hard earned truth in his acting" that's true for every performance he gives, not just when he plays a man like Sanborn.

Sanborn was an honor student, family man, and the father of two children when his wife was the victim of a drive-by shooting. He chose to take the law into his own hands and killed the man who did it. He is now serving life without parole. And he has no allusions about who he is.

"You can't stick 900 men in an overcrowded cell with a TV and some weights and say: 'This is it'. You can sit in your living room thinking we're being rehabilitated. But rehabilitated for what? I'm in here forever, Detective. Forever."

So much of OZ is built on the idea of Em City being a form of rehabilitation when its clear almost from the start it's more of a vanity project that is considered with contempt by the warden and the administrators. McManus is frequently mocked for what he's trying to do and in a sense this single speech makes it clear just how futile even the gesture to most prisoners would be.

But Bayliss is convinced that Elijah Sanborn knows what happens and needs to tell him. He is convinced that Sanborn is looking for redemption. It's hard not to look at Bayliss in this episode and not see him as a straw man for Tim McManus the following year: Bayliss believes at some level that he can convince the prisoner to do the right thing and not only does he completely fail at it, a lot of the time you could say he's making things worse.

He learns that Kingston Sandborn has been arrested for armed robbery and convinces the acting ADA Maggie Conroy to give Kingston a deal in exchange for Elijah's testimony. Conroy clearly doesn't want to do this and has to be all but cudgeled in to it by Bayliss. However when Bayliss offers the deal to Elijah he is enraged and has to be hauled off by guards. Bayliss doesn't know the screws do this kind of thing all the time to get prisoners to snitch on each other for lesser crimes and this is just a far less subtle way of doing it.

Bayliss then tracks down Maya Sandborn who only goes along with this because she wants to get Kingston out of lockup and away from her father. Her grandmother is dying of Alzheimer's and she's about to turn eighteen. When Maya goes to see Elijah's there's hope in his eyes which his daughter immediately douses in the worst way possible, making it very clear she's only doing this for her brother. Elijah then agrees to talk but only if he can see Kingston.

Elijah has never seen his children when they were growing up because he wanted to protect them. There has been a hole in their lives and they stopped coming. Now he sees his son for the first time since he went to prison and Kingston is for all intents and purposes just another gangsta who doesn't want to even know him. When Elijah realizes this he tells Bayliss that he killed James Douglas. This is a lie. Elijah has nothing to live for and he wants the state to pay for his suicide.

None of this follows the pattern of how these cases go: in any other show Elijah would have told them who did it. Instead the murderer is caught when there's another prison brouhaha and Trevor Douglas is found beaten into a coma. The man who did was Tom Marans, who cheerfully confesses that he did and is upset he didn't finish the job.

Trevor killed James because he thought he was stealing cigarettes from him. Tom actually did. He killed James because he was Trevor's prison wife (think of Beecher and Keller). Bayliss is baffled: "You killed Erika Chilton because you loved her and you killed Trevor because he killed someone you love." "I guess I'm just a hopeless romantic."

Now if you were a pedant you could argue that Bayliss has basically torn apart the Sandborn's lives for nothing, and if he'd just gone back to work he would have cleared the case anyway. But we all know that Homicide is more than that. To his and the show's credit Bayliss admits that this is far more about him then anything else. He says that he spent two days in lockup protesting human right abuses in El Salvador at nineteen and that his father refused to post bail for him. After Sanborn 'confesses' he admits that he and his father never spoke and when they did they'd argue. When Bayliss says "Kingston Sandborn behind bars is a better father than I ever had," it's telling us what this is really all about. And at the end of the episode when he tells Maya that he would trade everything he has for two minutes more with his father, we get what its about. Maya chooses to brush him off.

The show also gives us an opportunity to see Bayliss and Kellerman interact for the first time since he joined the squad. Kellerman has figured out what Bayliss is up to and he wants to be a good guy. In his case that means being quiet when he needs to and knowing his limitations. When Bayliss finishes he says: "This is probably where Pembleton would say something wise and insightful." (Actually he'd probably have told Tim to leave Sanborn alone but never mind.) But he tries to offer support – and of course Homicide undercuts with a joke.

It's keeping with the kind of series that Homicide is that having spent so much of the first two episodes on Andre Braugher's return, Prison Riot operates almost entirely with him be removed from the action. We see Frank taking target practice and pushing Bayliss away about taking his meds but the only scene of significant comes when Brodie talks to him.

Brodie tells Frank that he's noticed him taking less medication and tells him about when his mother had a stroke and how she stopped it. He makes it clear he knows why Frank has stopped and when he tells him adds that's he's not going to rat him out to anyone here. Its rare for Frank to admit that he's underestimated anybody before but its particularly telling here.

This episode also works on the strength of three extraordinary musical set pieces the opening and two more set to the music of Joan Armatrading. The second is a montage of Sanborn thinking about the circumstances that led to his incarceration to the sound of "Sometimes I Don't Want to Go Home." And the finale is a magnificent bit in which we see the prison is back to normal, Maya visiting her father in prison and Bayliss going to see Kellerman on his boat to 'Down To Zero'.

No this is not one of the greatest episodes in TV history. But it is a masterpiece of television. And I suspect the reason it didn't make the list of fan favorites in that Court TV survey I've talked about is because for Fontana and the entire cast, they did this kind of thing almost every week.

 

NOTES FROM THE BOARD

 

Continuity Errors: There's a flaw in the writing. Elijan Sanborn was convicted of murder in 1982. According to Maryland state law at the time Maryland didn't offer life without parole. There was the death sentence and life sentences, but they include parole. If Sanborn had been a model prisoner as the show claims, then he would have been eligible for parole in six years. Fontana no doubt had to leave that out to make Sanborn's belief that he was in here forever more believable.

The larger issue is Bayliss' time in prison. As we learned when the purchase of the Waterfront took place, the only blemish on Bayliss' record was a youthful conviction for misdemeanor gambling. Kyle Secor himself felt this came out of left field when it came to the problems between Tim and his father and later this scene would come up with a more potent story point that would not only explain their rift but tie in so many other aspects of his character together. We'll see it in later this season.

"Detective Munch": An all time classic at the opening when Munch quizzes the squad on which creature has the biggest sperm and he tells us it’s the itsy-bitsy fruit fly that produces sperm 20 times the size of his own body. "Nature's a mother," he says. This leads to a wonderful conversation of bragging which hushes up when Howard enters the room.

Indeed Howard has the better lines in this conversation. When things go silence she instantly says: "You guys are talking about sperm again."

Kellerman: Bayliss says he has the nads of a fruit fly.

Howard: Tell me something I don't know.

Kay's always been one of the boys even now.

Hey Isn't That… Even by this point Charles S. Dutton already had a significant television career having starred on the acclaimed mini-series The Murder of Mary Phagan, A Man Called Hawk and the title character in Roc, a working class Fox comedy series which was ahead of the curb and starred such talents as Carl Gordon, a very young Rocky Carroll and an even younger Jamie Fox and Tone Loc. He was 46 when he did in his episode the time careers are starting to wind down. On TV his was just about to accelerate.

The following year he received his first Emmy nomination for his guest role as Alvah Case on OZ. This officially began his association with HBO. The following year he would executive produce and direct an adaptation of Simon's second book The Corner which featured in its cast Sean Nelson, TK Carter, Khandi Alexander, Clarke Peters, Reg E. Cathey and Corey Parker Robinson, many of whom would be part of Simon productions for decades to come. The series would win Best Limited Series, Best Writing (to date the only Emmy Simon has won in competition) and Dutton would win for directing.

Dutton would win two more Emmys for Guest Acting in A TV series for The Practice in 2002 and Without a Trace in 2003. He hasn't been nominated for an Emmy since but not for lack of effort. He starred in such critically acclaimed TV movies as The Piano Lesson and 10,000 Black Men Named George and Something the Lord Made. He had roles in The L Word, was a star of the short-lived series Threshold and has appeared in CSI: NY, Law and Order: LA , Criminal Minds, and Longmire. He hasn't acted in TV or film since 2016 when he made the short film Veneration.