Homicide Rewatch: Control

 

Written by Les Carter & Susan Sisko ; story by Tom Fontana & Julie Martin

Directed by Jean De Segonzac

 

For the first time in perhaps the entire history of the series the denizens of Baltimore have stopped killing each other. Meldrick tells us that its been an entire week since a murder was reported. (Technically that's not true; see Inconsistencies) When Munch tells Frank to enjoy the peace and quiet Frank mutters in the most menacing way possible: "I hate peace and quiet."

At the end of The True Test Frank said he was going out on the 'first death tomorrow'. There are conditions, Gee makes it clear Bayliss will be the primary but Frank has been itching to get back on the street. Now its been a week and not a single murder has happened. Then, we get four in two minutes: Bayliss gets a triple murder on Bolton Hill, Lewis gets a call that turns out to be a drug related murder.  Both cases are essentially to plot developments that will continue to unfold this week but like Frank, let's start with his case.

Bayliss has reason to be unsettled. Frank may have passed his firearms exam but he's still stumbling over words – he doesn't want the fate of driving the car to be determined by a 'toin coss' as he puts it – and he's carrying a miniature tape recorder to recap the details of the murder as they unfold.  (Looking back on this with more thirty years of hindsight I'm now impressed that ABC's Will Trent uses the same old school methods albeit for a different disorder.) But Frank's instincts are there the moment they enter the victim's house. The mother Cathy Clifton has been stabbed 20 times; the two children each got a bullet behind the head. "Mother killed with rage; children killed with efficiency". Bayliss thinks its two different killers; Frank one killer with two different weapons and eventually they agree on that.

For much of the episode it seems like old times. Frank chafes at following Tim's lead when he's the primary. He wants to focus on Clifton's boyfriend Jimmy Sutter, who's already been arrested for assault and doesn't want to go to Annapolis to talk to the husband. Giardello pretty much has to order Frank to do it. "Teamwork, gentlemen," he says with a smile.

Our roving reporter Dawn Daniels beat the detectives to Annapolis and they broke the news to the husband about his family's murder before the detectives did. Frank and Tim are pissed at Daniels, though Frank is subtler about it. (He asks Daniels if she thought the husband might have been shaken up to learn his family was dead from a reporter.) The commander seems a little too calm in his attitude, almost as if he's just shaken enough. Bayliss thinks it’s a performance; Frank thinks it’s a wild goose chase.

The opening interrogation with Frank dealing with Sutter shows that he's starting to find his sea legs again. He handles Sutter with calm aplomb, talks about his record, argues about his temper. When Bayliss walks out of the box and starts chasing down the recorded footage of Commander Clifton being informed and its clear that he's performing a reaction for the sake of the cameras. Pembleton doesn't buy it and tells us so.

Just before the third act ends while they are interrogating Clifton Tim pulls Frank out of the box and the acrimony that's been simmering all episode seems to come to a head. We feel for the moment that Bayliss is just worried about his partner's wellbeing, and that would be completely understandable. Similarly Frank's reaction about Tim being a worry wart seems natural too. And because this is Homicide and because of how the interrogation goes we naturally assume that this is a bump in the road and we'll be back to normal starting next week. We have no idea that Fontana is lulling us into a false sense of security.

Yet the final interrogation involving Bayliss and Pembleton ranks with some of the best in the entire series. In the previous scene they've established that the heat is on far too high and Clifton is clearly nervous. By the time they get back in the box everybody takes their jackets off with Clifton being the most reluctant. Bayliss and Pembleton lay out the Clifton marriage as being stormy, Cathy being a wild woman Alex the bastion of control. It's been established that Cathy chose to have an extramarital affair with Sutter and while its not clear if that was the real reason for the end of their marriage, it’s the one Cathy gave. Cathy moved to Baltimore to be with her boyfriend and has been being paid alimony which is used to buy the house and bed that she's been having the affair in.  The husband has been living in Annapolis alone for the last six months, away from his children.

All while this is being related either Frank or Tim keep touching the dress blues that Clifton took off even though it clearly unsettles him. Finally Frank knocks a glass of water over it, the two of them start cleaning it up and tugging it back and forth and then Clifton finally reacts: "Give me the damn jacket!" Frank tells them "This is the rage you felt." It's clear that Clifton has been carrying a lot of anger at how Cathy did everything she wanted with no regard for anyone's feelings, not her children, not her boyfriends, and certainly not her ex-husband.  Its clear the Commander has done everything he could to put his life back together after his ex-wife left him emotionally bereft. When she calls and tells him she wants to reconcile, we will never know if it was made out of good faith or if it was yet another in a long line of impulsive decision she's made all her life.  What's clear is that this was the final straw and Clifton lost control and couldn't take it anymore.

When Munch and Lewis catch the murder of Reg Copeland they honestly don't expect this case to go anywhere when Lewis asks for a witness he doesn't think he'll get one. He's genuinely surprised when a corner boy actively calls him a name. Lewis knows that this is an act for the block and when he pushes him away with some feinted rage, he gets the rarest things: an answer.  Copeland was shorting the count for Junior Bunk. Then Meldrick hears the sweetest two words in the English language to him: Luther Mahoney.

Lewis pays another visit to Terri Stivers, who is not thrilled with him considering how everything ended with Vernon Troy just over a month ago. And she seems a little amazed at the idea of Junior Bunk being a gangsta. He's Luther's nephew and she never thought much of him. This is made clear in one of the funniest rousts of a suspect. When the cops come Junior peeks out the window and tries to run out the back door where Stivers hogties him. And when Junior learns he's about to be charged with felony murder he starts crying. "You have the right to remain silent," Munch says. "But I have to say a good cry can do a man a world of good." (Not his best line in this episode but still pretty good.)

The interrogation with Bunk is equal part hysterical and shows just how twisted the Mahoney family is. Junior makes it clear that he'll rat on Luther but he has to remain 'monogamous'. (You see in the Mahoney family if you only see one partner you're in an anonymous relationship.) Junior says he told Luther that they were short money and he didn't know who was responsible. He seems stunned they know Mahoney's his uncle. Mahoney is upset about being shorted of $300 in heroin and demands a name. Junior genuinely doesn't know because of the amount he's moving and just picks Copeland out of a hat. And then we get the punchline: He calls a hit man to come down and pays him $5000 in heroin to commit a murder because he was shorted out of $300 in heroin. "Luther's big on principle," Junior tells us. (This is the kind of ruthlessness we will come to think more of Marlo Stanfield than Avon Barksdale in a decade's time.)

In his previous encounters Luther Mahoney has been smug and smarmy, almost always vested in denial. We know the case is more solid than the last two but Mahoney's no less smug. He knows the witness against him and as the cuffs are put on him he seems even more arrogant. "You can lock me up today, but you know me detective. By tonight I'll be buying you a drink."

The scene with Luther in lockup is the first time the veneer of the community organizer he shows the world is completely down and we see the cold-blooded drug dealer. The moment he walks in the cell everybody clears a path so he can sit on a bunk alone. Someone in the cell he knows tells him everything he needs to know about Junior and that he needs to get a message to him. "Not a problem."

We have no idea yet how Luther demonstrates the ability to get a double star bag in the room service at the protective custody hotel. It's not really stunning Russom is on Luther's payroll but this is the first time we wonder about Luther's reach. Does he have cops on his payroll? Does he have someone in the States Attorney's office? (The following season we'll get positive answers to those questions but the viewer doesn't know it yet. ) But that's irrelevant: Junior himself must have some awareness of it and of his uncle's capacity. When he recants in Danvers's office under penalty of perjury it doesn't shock us because we know Junior Bunk has a yellow streak down his back

I think the moment Luther seals his fate in the eyes of Lewis at least is when he shows up at the Waterfront with Bunk in tow, mocking the establishment as quaint and insisting that he buy a drink for the house.  To this point Mahoney has never blatantly rubbed his nose in the face of the Baltimore PD.  It's bad enough that the way he got to Junior seems to illustrate a near superhuman level of power; for him to essentially say he is bulletproof in front of the officer's who arrested him that day is the kind of thing that just a few years earlier he very likely would have met the same end as any of the dealers he's laid out, with no questions asked.  Johnson is superb in this scene: you can tell its taking every measure of restraint not to take out his service piece and shoot Luther down like a dog but he mostly keeps it inside and lays out the line Luther's crossed entirely in metaphor.  Even then Luther either doesn't know or doesn't care how far he's gone: he still mocks being scared before he walks out the door with his posse.

But tellingly the last bit of official police business has to due not with Luther but with Frank. Pembleton has prided himself on being almighty and infallible his entire career in the box. But for his first case back we see him in a place we've never seen him: going to the killer trying to get answers. He confides in all but catatonic Clifton that Bayliss figured it out right away but Frank was blocked. He couldn't get over the idea of a father killing his own children. Once again he goes back to the murders and reminds us just how much rage was expressed in stabbing her. But he shot both his sons behind the ear. "Why?" he asks, using the question he plagued Bayliss for always needing. "Was it mercy? Were you merciful?"

And then Clifton stirs. "Was I?" he asks dully. "Did I show them mercy?" And Frank clearly can't get out of there fast enough. He shakes his head and walks out.

And let's not forget the reminder of the criminal investigation. Kellerman has been spending the last few weeks waiting for the other shoe to drop and at the end of the episode he gets "just what he always wanted". A subpoena to appear before a grand jury. Critically the only detective around is Munch, the only member of the squad who hasn't officially weighed in on the charges facing Mike.

His reaction is not helpful. "So what? Worst case scenario, you'll take the Fifth." He has no idea of the personal agony Kellerman is going on because he knows he may very well have to do just that in a few weeks' time, and that if he does just that, it may end up costing him his job. It's clear that this finally gets to Kellerman and he walks out of the squad without another word.

But Cox has been there for it and she ends up going to the marina and finding Kellerman's boat. She realizes that Mike doesn't want to be alone that night and the episode's final shot ends with her climbing aboard. In hindsight it's hard to imagine a more perfect metaphor for what's going to follow between Mike and Juliana. Mike thinks Juliana is offering him a lifeboat. Juliana doesn't know she's getting on a sinking ship.

 

 

NOTES FROM THE BOARD

 

Inconsistencies: According to the story, there hasn't been a murder between the end of last week's episode and the start of this one. But when we scroll down Bayliss's name on the board as the Clifton families name is written down we see three more names. Considering that the last recorded case was 197 we see case numbers 199,200 and 204.

Also it appears the murder of Amy Introcaso (which we saw discussing in ME, Myself and I) has officially been written under Bayliss' name on the board.

Brodie is On The Move! The episode begins with Kellerman kicking Brodie out of his boat because Brodie has spent too much time trying to cheer Mike up. No matter what Brodie does he just seems to piss off everybody.  He tries to hit up Giardello but the lieutenant would even hear him out. "The day I ever get that lonely I'll get myself a dog." As if to rub his nose in it he then tells Brodie he can't sleep in the squad room anymore because he's stinking up the joint. At this point he becomes so desperate he calls Russert in Paris to ask if she would be willing to sublet her home ("Did Munch put you up to this?" she asks before hanging up). By the way that is Isabella Hoffman doing a voice cameo on the show.

'Detective Munch: Upon observing Reggie Copeland: "From the track marks on his arms, the large caliber wounds, the proximity to a heroin market, I'd say it was a heated dispute about the symbolism of red and blue in 18^th Century French Romantic poetry." Of course then Scheiner has to rain on everyone's parade: "Either that or a drug murder." (I mean, come on. If there was a murder like that it would be right of Munch's alley.)

Hey, Isn't That…Mekhi Phifer had made his film debut in Clockers in the role of Strike in 1995. He was still mostly known for small roles in music videos including the Braxton's and En Vogue at the time of this film. He would play Tyrell in I Still Know What You Did Last Summer and play Trey Howard in the John Singleton version of Shaft. He had played Odin James in the reimagined version of Othello O in 2001.

But it was in 2002 that he was officially put on the map. First it was when he played Future in 8 Mile and then as Dr. Greg Pratt in ER a role that would become one of the more critical characters in the shows second half. From that point on he never left the limelight. In 2009 he played Ben Reynolds in the Tim Roth drama Lie to Me for two seasons and would play Rex in Torchwood. He would play Max in the Divergent series and has been a constant figure in many critically acclaimed TV shows during the 2020s from Harold Brooks in Netflix's Love Victor to Markus in Apple TV's Truth Be Told. He can currently be seen as Arthur Ellis, an ex-con who has a knowledge of Morgan's family's past on High Potential.

Get The DVD?  As Munch and Lewis go to Philadelphia to track down Franklin Chubb, the shooter of Reggie Copeland, there's a recording of James Brown' iconic Night Train as we watch the process come together. But if I'm honest the track they got in its place is clearly another Motown track and it kind of works better then the original one. It's not enough of a difference to make this sequence any less effective.