Homicide Rewatch: The True Test

 

Written by Noel Behn ; story by Tom Fontana & Noel Behn

Directed by Alan Taylor

 

It's keeping with how Homicide has always operated that what is arguably the most anticipated the moment of Season Five – Frank finally passing the firearms exam and being able to return to active duty – is essentially moved to the background for what is the main plot. Indeed, the moment Frank learns about only happens at the end of the third act and our attention has to go back to the real climax of the episode.

Not that we don't get a good hint at what the stakes are in the first act. We see Al go to pick Frank up at the Pembleton home. This is the first time in the show's run we've seen Giardello visit the household of any of his detectives. We cut to Frank watching Al show up but Fontana and Behn make it clear the stakes are by having Al talk to Mary. The usually calm Mary is more nervous around Frank's boss when it comes to making small talk. When Al says he’ll be fine Mary tells us that Frank can't keep going through this limbo. There's something so subtle you might not see it. Mary asks what happens if Frank doesn't pass the test. When Al says he'll take it again Mary says: "In another month. Another long thirty days." Because our focus is on Frank the viewer might miss this but that's because we get a sense as to just how nervous he is. The fallen Catholic kneels down and holds his hands in silent prayer. That's how desperate he is to return to the street. He's willing to get back on first name basis with God.

We then spend the episode after it happened with Frank unsettled and unaware of the result. "The system is designed to torture me," he tells Munch. And when he learns the truth we find him in the most undignified place: on the john. "This isn't the right time," he tells Gee. But when Al tells him he passed, he lifts his head over the men's room door, confirms its true and lets out a cry of sheer joy that we've rarely heard him say. (Typically when a hungover Kellerman passes bye he looks around as if he's baffled.)

This is one of the subtlest episode in the show's history of dealing with race as it is set an exclusive prep school in Baltimore. Yet this episode demonstrates in the most brilliant way possible the difference between how society views African-American children. Marshall Buchanan has managed to find his way into what should be a path forward and finds himself the victim of an upper class white student. Marshall is very much the model student who represents the best of what America should represent; McPhee Broadman is clearly the ultimate problem child whose is nevertheless protected both by his white privilege and his powerful mother. What makes this the most striking is that the woman protecting him is there to uphold the law.

Homicide doesn't look away from this: we've actually met Judge Susan Aandahl a couple of times in Season 4 and she seems very much a stickler for procedure. The True Test reveals yet another subtle way the justice system works in favor of white people more than African-Americans. Aandahl knows just how dangerous her son even before she put him in prep school, has clearly been covering for his pranks and behavior long before the murder of Marshall and knows full well just how dangerous her son is.  She even knows to an extent how McPhee is using his mother to protect him from the consequences of his actions. The final horror at the climax of the episode is not merely that Aandahl knows the true nature of her son's darkness but that even then she's determined to keep him safe. This is a future serial killer in the making and Aandahl seems fine letting him get away with murder.

This is a contrast between our brief scene with the Buchanan family. Marshall couldn't afford to attend the school but he won a scholarship. He didn't want to go to Larchfield Prep but his mother, desperate to protect him from the violence of the streets, forced him to go. Heartbroken she tells Bayliss and Lewis that she cried when he got there: "Our child is safe."

Larchfield Prep is, as we are told by Bayliss, a prep school for 'the finest blue bloods in the South'. He holds both it and the headmaster in contempt from the start. In another part of Bayliss' back story we learn that he and his cousin Jim (who we met back in Season 3) used to live right around the corner. Jim wanted to get into Larchfield more than life and he was smart and from money. "But he wasn’t the right kind of WASP for Larchfield." The implication is that Jim Bayliss was from 'new money', the kind that prep schools then and sadly now still hold dear too. Tim argues that Jim changed significantly after he was rejected.

It's not that Larchfield is that admirable to begin with. Marshall is one of only three African-American students in the entire school ("Congratulations. Now you've only got two," Bayliss digs in.) And its clear the headmaster, for all his overtures of cooperation, cares far about the reputation of his school far more then helping the investigation. He clearly doesn't think much of Marshall and only reveals that he knows who 'Cheeks' is when Lewis forces his hand.

I should mention that while Bayliss spends most of the case acting as though he's in charge, it's clear his contempt for the school clouds his judgment and his attitude. Meldrick, not having that same baggage, spends most of the episode with a cooler head and does a better job investigating. (He is the primary, after all.) Secor is superb throughout but this is the first episode all season where Johnson really gets to show his mettle and its refreshing. It's really the first time since Scene of the Crime – another episode that dealt with race – that we get to see the good detective Lewis is.

And that's before we get to the draw for this episode. 'The True Test' originally aired on November 22^nd 1996, then and now sweeps month. NBC managed yet again to get a major film star though back then no one could have predicted how big Elijah Wood would become. Wood had made his film debut in Barry Levenson's Avalon and was already a prominent child star. He'd already starred in North, one of the worst movies ever made and was about to appear in the remake of Flipper. Even while he was making this episode he was about to appear in Ang Lee's prestige drama The Ice Storm. But even those of you who know him from playing Frodo Baggins will be hard pressed to see his work as McPhee.

At the time I was very familiar with Wood's work and I was stunned by the way he radiated smugness and arrogance in every scene. We first see him looking inside Bayliss and Lewis's squad car before they know who he is and there stunned by how smug he is. When Aandahl makes it clear that she doesn't want anyone looking at her 'baby boy' Bayliss makes it clear he doesn't care. He actually oversteps his bounds, something Meldrick doesn't appreciate. And even when he's warned by Gee to watch his step, he nevertheless feels the need to needle him while Meldrick remains calm throughout. Bayliss is more than prepared to get at him, and while his instincts are right his approach is all wrong and he ends up in Aandahl's office the next morning.

By this point we know that McPhee is responsible for multiple pranks, the firebombing of the headmaster's car. When he confronts Aandahl about what happened he doesn't back down and she seems to respect it. She tells him her son is a clever and cruel child. "I'm a mother but I'm also a judge. I make impartial rules." McPhee went to live with his father after a divorce and Aandahl admits she was glad when he left.  She knows McPhee is capable of 'reciting endless formulas for blowing up the world. What would you do with a child like that?" But then she says: "I'm a judge but I'm also a mother." She makes it clear that her son might be one of the most dangerous and broken person she knows but she has every indication of keeping him safe from the criminal justice system.

McPhee is very much a bully and a racist. We learn that Derek who actually killed Marshall did so after two days of hazing on a forced march, which McPhee more or less did. We also he manages self-defense class, which we assume is just a way for him to beat up students and get course credit for it. And he ordered Kemp to throw Marshall into the lake even though he couldn't swim. He has no problem when his lies are called and is certain his mother will protect him.

In the final interrogation sequence Bayliss and Meldrick run a bluff.  And again we get to see Meldrick in the box we haven't before. He plays on McPhee's racism and wheedles him using the words he wants to hear about 'knowing your place' and using that word uppity when referring to Marshall. He goes out of his way to say he's in awe of McPhee – and maybe he even is, McPhee does seem to have the ability to convince everybody to follow him.

The truth comes out: McPhee wanted Marshall to kill someone. He asked him five times and on the last occasion actually had him bound and whipped in an effort to do so but Marshall refused. And it is then we learn the truth: the person McPhee wanted dead was his mother.

Sagan Lewis has two incredible moments: when we see through the observation room that her son has confessed to wanting her dead and when he talks to her son's attorney and tries to find ways to make sure he can't be charged with it. Wood's performance is terrifying throughout and watching it again, I have one question I don't know how to answer: is the only reason he confessed was because he knew his mother would be there and he wanted her to know just how much he hated her? That's the reason Bayliss is right: Judge Aandahl lost.

Of course for all of this the other storylines are followed up on. The episode features the first meeting of Kellerman with Juliana Cox. Its worth noting that maybe one of the things that draws Mike to Juliana is not only doesn't she know about the grand jury subpoena but that when he tells her he's not guilty she just lets it go. "You have that kind of face," This is the first time since the ordeal started that someone just blanketly accepts his declaration of innocence.

And he has reason to. In this episode he learns his colleagues at arson Goodman, Connelly and Perez have all copped pleas for reduced sentences. Kellerman is understandably shocked: Roland has pled out to testify against Goodman, Connelly and Perez and now that they've pled out, the only one left is Mike, who's the only innocent one in the bunch. When he confronts his attorney she tells him the one thing he doesn't want to hear: take a plea. Kellerman and Juliana then indulge in a flirtation at the Waterfront where he tells her he's afraid of not being a cop. Juliana's reaction is telling: "So you're one of those people who think their job is their life." We've been told for four and a half seasons that homicide is the highest of callings; there's something refreshing about someone who can just let her work go at the end of the day in a way that we rarely see the other cops do.

The episode ends with Frank getting his weapon back and being assured by Giardello that he knew he'd pass the test. Its then we hear him show none of the bravado he showed to Tim when he said he'd be out on the 'first death tomorrow'. "The true test is in there." He's looking at the box. He denies it he said anything but we know he's thinking it.

And there's one last foreshadowing. Bayliss says he's glad to have Frank back but Pembleton says: "The easy days are over…I'm meaner then ever." We think the status quo has been restored. It turns out Fontana and company are almost immediately going to shake it up far worse.

And we're not just talking about on the job.

 

AUTHOR'S NOTE

'Detective Munch' A much smaller role then usual save to try and reassure Frank that he passed his firearm exam. Except when Kellerman asks to find Brodie. "Look under a rock. He'll be there." That's because….

Brodie is On the Move! Kellerman learns Brodie is homeless and offers to put him up on his boat. "It's a big boat," "The Queen Mary wouldn't be big enough," Munch says. "How bad could he be?" "Well, I threw him out, Bayliss threw him out, then Lewis, the three of us don't agree on much." Then Kellerman says: "My life's already in the toilet. How bad could it be?" (Cut to next week's episode.)

Hey Isn't That… I assume that are a few of you who saw Elijah Wood in that small, low budget arthouse trilogy shot in New Zealand where he played a dwarf or something. So let's talk about what he did before and after all things connected to Peter Jackson.

Wood had a very successful career as a child actor actually playing Huck Finn even before he played Frodo Baggins. I myself had seen him in such films as Radio Flyer, Forever Young and The Good Son before this episode and he started in Deep Impact after it. He played the monstrous killer in Sin City and has done a lot of voice work whether it is video games such as the voice of Spyro in those video game series, Kratos's brother in God of War III and Mumble in Happy Feet.

His television debut came in the TV movie Day-O and he later played the Artful Dodger in the 1997 TV version of Oliver Twist. He played Ben Gunn in a miniseries of Treasure Island in 2012 and the voice of Sigma in the TV series Red Vs. Blue. His live-action series debut came in Wilfred, the FX comedy series where he played Ryan, the man who owns a dog who only he sees as human. The show ran for four seasons. After that he played Todd Brotzman in the BBC America adaptation of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, based on the classic Douglas Adams novels. He can currently be seen as Walter, the fellow citizen detective and possible love interest for the grown up Misty on Yellowjackets. He and Christina Ricci played boyfriend and girlfriend 25 years earlier in The Ice Storm.

On the Soundtrack: The hymn that the choir at Larchfield is singing at the start and end of the episode is Jerusalem, an old English spiritual.