Homicide Rewatch: Betrayal

 

Written by Gay Walsh ; story by Tom Fontana & Julie Martin

Directed by Clark Johnson

 

One of the things that made Homicide one of the greatest shows of all time is the exact same thing that stopped it from being a huge hit.  Network dramas to this point (and to an extent, today) is based very much on the idea of a formula. Some shows were picking at changes to it during this period but never as much as you'd think: there might be different doctors working at Cook County from season to season or different police and prosecutors working in Law & Order but the formula was pretty much the same episode to episode with variations rare and only happening once or twice a season at most.

Homicide was many things but the one thing it wasn't was complacent. This was true even with the basic idea of the partnership.  Some of that was necessitated by the actors who left each season but even within that structure we've already seen it keep shifting it throughout. The only real constant since the pilot has been the partnership of Bayliss and Pembleton.

When Frank had his stroke at the end of last season the very thing that thrilled Braugher about the arc was the same thing that isolated so many long-time viewers. While Braugher has done some of the best acting in his career during the first half of Season 5 the viewers have been nearly as impatient as Pembleton was for him to get back on the street. And by the end of 1996 enough pressure had come from on high (and more importantly the ratings had begun to stagnate) that reluctantly Fontana would agree to leave this storyline behind. For the rest of Season 5 Pembleton will struggle less and less with speech and the issues he's had all year: Homicide won't forget Pembleton had a stroke but by the time we reach the end of the year it'll be hard to notice the difference.

However it's almost as if Fontana has anticipated Braugher's frustration with this and has decided to put Pembleton off-kilter in a different way. We've seen it ever since Pembleton went back to the street in Control. Bayliss and Pembleton are still bickering about everything but now it has an edge. Bayliss has been questioning Frank's methods more and more in the first two cases they've worked together and while he's always pushed back against his partner, there's a meanness to this that we haven't seen in four and a half seasons.  Indeed we've been sensing more of an edge to Bayliss as Season 5 has progressed. At first the viewer might think its his trying to prove himself but he's been getting angrier in multiple cases, particularly against McPhee Broadman in his last case before Frank returned to the street.  We've known Bayliss to take cases more personally then any other detective since the series began but with every case this season he's been going into darker territory and in this episode he explodes. Not just at Pembleton but everyone he encounters.

The viewer knows right from the teaser that this case will be a trigger for him: Bayliss and Pembleton are called to the scene of another clearly abused African-American adolescent who has been killed and mutilated.  The 'Previously On' sequence makes it clear what we're going to get when it flashes back to Requiem for Adena where we saw the murder of Janelle Parsons in exactly the same way.  So when Tanya Thomson is found on the street the viewer thinks they know what they're going to get. Certainly I did when the teaser aired. I couldn't have been more wrong.

We can tell when Bayliss says: "Murdered little girl? Call Bayliss and Pembleton! We've got lots of experience!" Pembleton actually asks Bayliss if he'll be okay. "People do not change. Especially not you." Frank's both right and wrong today.

By any standard this case is one of the worst for any the show has dealt with when it comes to a dead child. Tanya Thomson died of blunt force trauma but as Cox grimly reports she's essentially been using for a punching bag for months, if not years by the time she ended up being dumped on the highway like she was a piece of trash. Even by this point Homicide has dealt with nearly every permutation of the horror of a child being killed (and so many of those times, they have met that death at the hands of another child) but this one is worse than usual. But when Bayliss basically tells Al that no one's going to report her missing he does so with a snideness to his lieutenant that is becoming frequent with him. Al actually gets up and is gentler than usual but then actually tells Frank and Howard that maybe they should take the case with him given his history. Frank says he knows his partner. He thinks its about Adena Watson. Again he's right and wrong.

This becomes clear when he starts going after Lynette Thomson the moment they see her. He's sure that she knows who beat her daughter to death, and while he's right he's actually going further. He starts pushing Frank and making it clear that he will not be satisfied until Lynette Thomson goes to jail as an accessory. When Frank says its their job to get the boyfriend and that the punishment for Lynette is "she'll have to live with her daughter being beaten to death," Bayliss says: "That's not good enough."

Giardello is right that Tim is too angry about this case and he starts venting on everybody who might help him, including the child services coordinator who he basically wants to lock up as an accessory and scares her off before she could help them. And in his first interrogation he basically accuses Lynette of being the one who beat her to death, eventually shouting: "You were the one who was supposed to help her!" by the time she's in the corner of the box.

At one point Bayliss has yelled at everybody and is planning to get a confession from Lynette Thomson if he has to reach down her throat. Frank responds sensibly and Bayliss's reaction is to talk to her boyfriend alone saying: "You and I aren't working well together." After a brilliant scene in which Al circles Frank in his most predatory fashion and gets him to acknowledge how badly the case is going Frank basically chooses to take his own approach. For the first time in the box he takes the approach of the loving parent. He shows a picture of Olivia which gets Lynette smiling and tells a story about him being upset with his daughter and shaking her to quiet her down and talks about the difference between men and woman with children.

The monologue Lynette delivers is one of the most unsettling of Season 5 as she begins to relate exactly how things involving Nelson unfolded. Its so matter of fact how things play out, the way she starts talking about how he wants things a certain way and how she starts defending her boyfriend instead of her daughter. Her justification for what she did is horrifying: "I had to keep my family together. Tanya was dead and wasn't nothing I could do about that." It's never clear if Lynette has been abused herself (though watching her its impossible not to think of so many battered women over the years) but the way she's so willing to defend what she did is frightening – and all the more so with the denouement when she announces she's pregnant at the end. "They'll be no problems with this one. This one's his." She assures him with.

 

 

It's telling how Homicide works that the other major storyline that has been going on practically since the season began – Kellerman being called before a grand jury – unfolds almost as an anticlimax. Kellerman's  far from thrilled that no matter what he's asked his attorney has advised him to take the Fifth. Kellerman is upset because he wants it on the record he's innocent. The fact that his attorney has told him that he didn't cop a plea means he's innocent isn't good enough for him.

Kellerman watches the process unfold with increasing rage. Mitch Roland, a man who has been responsible for burning down countless buildings, has been given a deal that is so sweetheart even the judge who has to do it all but degrades the attorneys who gave it. The fact that Roland practically gloats at having got away with so many horrible thinks with barely a year and a half in a jail couldn't be a bigger sign as to how little interest Gail Ingram has in justice.  She got her headlines when the grand jury indicted and now she's fine sending all of those involved to prison with what are, let's be honest, slaps on the wrist. Goodman, Connally and Perez sold out their badges and she's taking them away and putting them in jail for two or three years at the most. If the viewer wasn't so invested in Kellerman's fate, we'd be inflamed – or perhaps amused  - by how the federal justice system pretty much works as the criminal justice system does.  Ingram is no more interested in taking her case to court than Danvers or any other prosecutors are when it comes to murderers; all she wants to do is get indictments that will get her picture in the paper and then plea out the criminals to time that barely counts as punishment compared to the betrayals to the public that both Roland and Goodman, Connelly and Perez are guilty of.  There's an argument she cares about the public good or justice even less than any of the detectives we've met: all she wants is her name in the papers.

This is true even in her final interaction with Kellerman to an extent. After months of pushing him of squeezing him demanding he bend the knee and make her life easier, she stops short of asking him a question.  Supposedly it's because she's impressed by his integrity but the truth is she doesn't need him anymore. It has been framed as a convenient out but there's just as much a chance she would have done the same thing no matter what Kellerman did.  Three arson detectives, four arson detectives, what's the difference really? (And as we'll see in the next episode, that generosity only goes so far.) Perhaps Ingram's afraid that if he tells the truth – and reveals that one of her key witnesses perjured himself – it will undo every bit of work she's done building up this case. There's an implication she's moved by his monologue of being willing to give everything he believes in so that he can be a good cop but we also know the last thing an attorney wants is a surprise in court that might lead to her long-term plans being derailed and delayed.  Even if that's not the case maybe she has a full docket and she doesn't want to spend any more time on this. Her statement could be considered moving but it could just be smoke and mirrors. Given what we see of her in later episodes, I'm inclined to think it’s the latter.

The problem comes when the writers try to measure what Ingram is doing with Kellerman's scenario. He's convinced the other detectives will invoke the blue wall. As he puts it:

So I tell the grand jury that I knew detectives in my unit were dirty. What happens to me then? I'm gonna be brought up on charges for failing to report the graft. If I manage to keep my badge after that, what then? I gotta walk back in that building. Everybody's gonna look at me and know I gave up other cops."

It's that part – particularly after so many years of police involved shootings – that has aged the poorest. The show really wants to equate knowing that cops violated the badge and keeping silent about it is a virtue.  This strikes against the entire argument of Kellerman proclaiming his innocence this whole time. Failure to report graft is a crime the same way taking a bribe is.  Kellerman wants thinks that because he isn't guilty of the crime he's accused of is the same of being completely innocent.  He's a cop. He knows the difference between the two but in his case he sees no difference.

And it is worth noting his doing so is only at the last minute.  It's a noble gesture and it would be good but the thing is this storyline has been going on for three months and it has to have an ending. There was never going to be one that didn't end with Kellerman back on the street – the show's called Homicide after all – and there really wasn't a good way out.

To be clear Mike's self-righteous attitude at the Waterfront is the definition of hypocrisy. It's not enough that he hasn't been indicted and that they're not curious about how he got out from under it. His attitude of saying: "I might as well have taken his money" is self-righteous. He was guilty of a crime this whole period – he admitted as much to Cox this very episode. And Lewis and Giardello have spent an enormous amount of time and energy supporting him and trying to help him. What more does Mike want?  The best case scenario for Kellerman's behavior is that he's pissed about having been pushed through the entire system. But even that falls apart when you consider the next major storyline that's going to befall him this season. With the benefit of thirty years of hindsight it really seems Mike Kellerman was never a good cop at any point in his career.

It's harder to blame Bayliss for his attitude. A man has beaten a child to death and a woman has been an accessory to it and the murderer gets three years and the woman a suspended sentence and probation.  We've seen just how little justice there is in the world but this really seems like the worst miscarriage since Annabella Wilgus killed eight women and went to an asylum by pretending to have DID.

However it’s the final scene of the episode that brings Betrayal into classic status. Pembleton goes to find Bayliss who is drowning his sorrows and again he thinks he knows why. Bayliss looks at him. "Every murdered child, every abused child, I understand. Because all those children are me."

"See my father's brother – I was five years old – and he would follow me into the bathroom and he would lock the door and he would take my hand in his. When he was finished he would smile and say, 'what a good boy was', and Oh yeah ---Shhh! And this went on for years. And my parents couldn't understand why I'd cry every holiday, every time there's a family gathering."

"So when I was eight years old, I'd tell my father what had been going on. And it was a struggle to get those words out. And he just stared at me. And he asked me why I was lying. And he was my father and he was my father and he was supposed to protect me but he didn't Frank! I mean for him, whatever was happening it was an inconvenience! I wasn't real, Frank. I wasn't a real person! And he never saw me! He never looked at me ever!"

This episode has been a standout for Secor, but the final monologue makes it arguably his finest hour and it stuns me as to why he didn't even get nominated for an Emmy for this episode. This basically ties in almost everything we know about Bayliss together so brilliantly its even more astonishing to learn that Secor himself came up with the storyline this season rather than Fontana or any of his writers.

Pembleton who always knows the right thing to say is struck dumb. In another show this would be the moment that makes the partners closer, particularly these two have always feuded. But when Frank moves to Tim to try and hug him Bayliss pushes him away: "That's not why I told you." Why did he? Was it to prove that for once Frank wasn't as smart as he said he was?

The final line is the most stunning because its so casual. "By the way Frank. I don't want to be partners anymore." And a drunken Tim gets in a car and drives off, having gotten the last word for once.

So what is the betrayal that the title refers to? Connelly's betrayal of Kellerman at the grand jury? The way Lynette Thomson betrayed her daughter? The way Tim thinks Frank has betrayed him? All we know is that Frank may have recovered from his stroke but he's just had another set of legs cut out from under him. And things are going to get even worse.

 

 

 

NOTES FROM THE BOARD

 

Detective Munch': When Mrs. Thomson says she's looking for missing persons, Munch with his usually sensitivity says: "They're usually the hardest to find." Not aware of the hornet's nest he's stepping he walks in and asks Brodie who came up with the term 'missing persons'. "If you're a person, you know exactly where you are. You're only missing from someone else's point of view." I think we can all be grateful Munch has been working in Homicide all this time; if he actually was in Missing Persons he would be the worst person to help people.

Brodie Has Found A Home! The storyline of Brodie being moving ends this episode with him moving in with a blond woman who calls him "J.H." When Lewis sees her, he says the only reasonable thing: "You're kidding?"

Hey, Isn't That… Latanya Richardson (now Latanya Richardson Jackson) had already appeared in such films as Fried Green Tomatoes, Malcolm X, Sleepless in Seattle and Lone Star by the time she appeared as Lynette Thompson in Homicide. She's become one of the more prominent character actresses in TV and film ever since. She played Atallah Sims in the A & E courtrooms series 100 Centre Street and has since starred in such films as Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, The Fighting Temptations and Mother and Child. Her most notable role in TV was as Norma O'Neal on the acclaimed HBO series Show Me A Hero written by David Simon. Her husband, Samuel L. Jackson, is somewhat prominent in films and TV himself.