Homicide Rewatch: Kaddish

 

Teleplay by Linda McGibney; story by Julie Martin, James Yoshimura & Ron Goldstein

Directed by Jean De Segonzac

 

It might be an exaggeration to call this episode Richard Belzer's finest hour on Homicide. What is fair is to call 'Kaddish' the show that makes us realize perhaps more than episode to this point just how much potential Belzer had as a dramatic actor as well as Munch being more than just comic relief.

Considering how much Munch has implied about his younger days as part of the counterculture and the bits we've seen over the years its radical for Homicide to look at John Munch before he'd even gotten that far. It's not that surprising that when we flashback to John's childhood and see that he was pretty much what you'd expected he was -  a gawky, awkward adolescent who was perpetually bullied growing up – but it deals with something the show has never truly dealt with in nearly five seasons: Munch's religion. We've been aware since the pilot that Munch, like Belzer himself, is Jewish but we've never seen that part of his faith the way that Pembleton's Catholicism was clearly central to who he once was and how much that loss of his faith has cost him. We know that Munch is antiestablishment so we've assumed he never had any faith or that it was never that important to him. 'Kaddish' actually explores Munch's Judaism in a way that it never has before and makes it central to his character.

The episode is also a portent of the future as Munch takes Kellerman with him as his secondary. This is a daring move because the two have barely interacted on a professional level since the show began. They've talked in the squad more than once and there's been the occasional comic storyline involving them but this is the first time they've partnered. Munch actually gets to act like the senior detective, giving advice that is almost fatherly: telling Kellerman that when you go out in the winter you have to wear a hat. And then John learns the deceased is Helen Rosenthal.

And he's struck in a way we just haven't seen in five seasons: he takes his hat off in something close to mourning. He knows the address even before its in the wallet and he tells Mike – and therefore the viewer that he used to deliver the paper. We then see a flashback with music that is from the other end of the 1960s and we see John as a teenager, looking at the door of Helen with something close to awe. When he tells Mike he used to go to high school with her, we already know this death cuts close to home. There's a patience to him that we've rarely seen when he talks about Helen to her daughter.

But he's stunned to see that so much of Helen's life never ended well. He's struck that the marriage to her high school sweetheart ended in divorce fifteen years ago and the daughter hasn't talked to him in a while. It's not until he talks to him in high school we learn that her husband was drunk and in an accident that killed their fifteen year old son. Munch understands why and when a detective from Violent Crimes tells them about a serial rapist who's already attacked three women, he lets Kellerman do it and wants to talk with her daughter. He asks Julie about her past relationship and focuses on someone she'd started dating recently: George Young, another student from Pikesville and apparently the high school bully. (In a superb gag we see John is being trailed by his younger brother Bernard who clearly idolizes him. Knowing how the two of them barely talk as adults its fun to see this.) In one of those twists George has proposed to Helen multiple times but she's always turned him down.

We see how John tries to work up the courage to ask Helen to prom and how she turns him down cracking his heart in two. She talks about how she and Joe are meant to be and it cuts us in many ways because we know how badly it will go for everybody. We can see that George knows this when they bring him in for questioning and while he calls him out for being lovestruck around her, George quickly pulls back and says he doesn't judge. He tells her to think about Helen and John does.

Munch's faith comes about slowly in this episode: when Cox talks about the tradition for burial he seemed bemused by the fact she knows more about Jewish law then he does.  There's a lot of humor as Kellerman tries to figure out Jewish law and confuses shiksa and shiva, something that Brodie seems to understand. "Boy you live in a big Irish cocoon," Munch says. He tells Julie the only thing he has in common with Judaism is that we both don't like to work on Saturdays. But he's clearly more annoyed with Kellerman with his gauche behavior at the funeral that goes beyond something we've seen before .We learn that Helen wasn't religious but after they moved back in with her mother they began attending synagogue for holidays and then she started going on her own. "She said liked the routine. I didn't understand it until now."

Helen's death, like almost every major one on this show, has nothing to do with any of the people in her (and John's past). It is a random killing and the suspect is caught with Helen's jewelry. When John tries to get the suspect to tell him why he never so much as says a word even after John looses his cool and practically throws him against the cell bars.

And its clear that this episode is very much the most openly religious one in Homicide's entire run because at the exact same time Munch is revisiting his faith, Frank is at rock bottom. We see him interrogating a suspect he's certain is guilty in the murder of John Abernagi. He's in the midst of one of his classic interrogations the one he's known for, his sweet spot. And when Howard comes in telling him that someone else has confessed and has the murder weapon. Kay tells Frank something we don't know if he's heard once in all his years in the unit: "You were wrong." And she doesn't know that in those three words she's basically taken out the final pillar of everything Frank's believed he was.  He uncuffs the suspect and tells him to go home so neutrally that you can't tell he's shaken by it. So he does something that his partner accused him of not doing last season: he invites Tim over for dinner. Bayliss is stunned  by this – perhaps thinking this is a joke – but he agrees. And then Frank tells him Mary left him.

When Frank reaches out to Bayliss he admits he doesn't know who he is anymore: every part of his identity has been taken from him and he feels lost. The one thing he's clung to ever since Season Five is being a Homicide detective again and having gotten such tunnel vision that he screwed up on a case has forced him to question even that. He doesn't know who he is anymore. "I used to be so sure," he tells Tim over an increasingly sad dinner. "I used to be your partner, Mary's husband, Livvy's father." When Tim tells him that a Homicide detective is who he is Frank goes further than we've ever seen. "I used to believe in my instincts. I don't even believe in them anymore." When Tim tries to return the favor, yet again he misjudges where his partner is

  For that reason he's so lost that we see him in a place we haven't seen him since he told us he and God were not a first name basis – and in fact when he tells Tim that's where he's going his partner thinks he's lying to him. We're stunned to realize that this is the truth. We're just kind of shocked as to who.

The scene at church is painful because as the mass is said and the parishioners say the prayers we see Frank standing out of deference but not repeated the words, nor taking in communion. He's come to see Sister Magdalena who we remember (and thankfully the episode flashbacks to it) from the murder of Catherine Goodrich. She surprised to see him and he admits he's not coming back. He tells her that Mary has left him and that there's no God for him there. He says there's no God for him at his job. She ask him: "Are you sure? Open your eyes a little wider." When Frank walks out instead of taking the wafer and the sounds of sirens (from a fire engine) go as he leaves the writers seem to be sending a message. But it turns out this is a misdirection.

The scene where Frank asks Tim to partner with him in a small gems. Howard basically has to act as the mother of the squad pushing them. Frank plies, Tim pushes back, and finally Frank comes in Pembleton terms to beg. Tim agrees in a passive aggressive way we associate more with Frank.  And they're called to the scene of the rarest of things. A natural death in which an eighty year old woman has peacefully died in her sleep. Ravel's Premade for Dead Princess is playing on the radio. In the context of Homicide it is a beautiful aberration and for Frank it is a sign, particularly when he finds the woman's crucifix by her bed.

The scene between Munch and Kellerman is beautiful as the two men talk about what adolescent love is like before sex gets in the way, becoming tongue tied in front of a girl, just wanting to hold her hand being enough for you. The final sequence is one of the most moving ones in Homicide history.

We see John at home, looking at his yearbook and the book of Jewish Prayer. We cut to the two other men who loves Helen in their own mourning. John likes a prayer candle and walks to Helen's home. We see him remember the past as music plays. We hear the Kaddish being said. We watch John don a Yamaoka and enter the home – and his voice being added to the prayer. It's an ending of beauty and faith for a show that rarely has much.

 

NOTES FROM THE BOARD

 

St Elsewhere callback: Helen Rosenthal is a familiar name to fans of Tom Fontana. On St Elsewhere it was the name of the charge nurse played for six seasons by Christina Pickles. On that series Rosenthal was almost a Munch prototype: she'd already been married four times by the time we met her with several children and her marriage was breaking up at the start of the series. In later seasons she had battles with many of her colleagues and developed an addiction to painkillers that led her to make a mistake that led to a patient getting the wrong amount of medication and dying. She would go to rehab in the final season. Pickles would be nominated for Best Supporting Actress five times while the show was on the air, though she never won.

There's no chance that she and this character are the same one: Pickles was already in her forties when she played Helen and the former show had her relocating to Boston after this. Besides the backstory doesn't come close to meshing the way other links to between both of Fontana's series will become clear in later seasons. (Although there is a striking resemblance between adult Helen and Christina Pickles from St. Elsewhere…)

The X-Files also aired an episode called Kaddish in February of 1997. In fact because of scheduling it ended up airing the Sunday before this episode originally aired.  This is just a coincidence in scheduling; no one suspects a Golem was responsible for killing Helen Rosenthal.

From Simon's Book: The sequence where Bayliss and Pembleton see the elderly women who dies in bed is taken from the book, right down to Ravel playing on the radio.

Foreshadowing: I know that it's probably a coincidence considering how much the show would wreck his backstory but a better motivation for Munch going to work at Law & Order: SVU might have been the impact of Helen Rosenthal being the victim of a serial rapist. 'Violent Crimes' in Baltimore would seem to be the equivalent of that in New York.

Apparently George works for Cooder Plumbing, the organization that Colonel Granger used in the double billing scandal that Giardello revealed to the press and forced him to retire. Either the operation is under new ownership or no one went to prison after the media exposure (both are likely in Baltimore.)

Munch was Nostradamus! Remember that monologue at the start of Season Three where Munch told Bolander and Lewis that "Soon, very soon, everything you want you'll find on TV without having to rise from your Sealy Posturepedic." A monologue which was prescient in 1994. We see a flashback of him talking to one of his classmates at the end of that exact monologue in 1960. John missed his calling. He should have traded in futures.

Rabbi Munch: The comic highpoint: Munch egging Kellerman to say: "Oy vey mer. I'm so meshuga I could plotz." Munch has the biggest smile all episode and he deserves it given what's he going through.

On the Soundtrack: We're going back to the 50s and 60s. We hear Little Anthony's Shimmy, Shimmy Koko Bop as young Munch delivers the paper to Helen and The Shirelle's ' Dedicated to the One I Love' quite a few times.

Pamela Peyton-Wright returned to play Sister Magdalena in this episode.

It's the 1990s: Homicide bites the hand that feeds it by having Bayliss say he might watch some Must See TV, the catchphrase for NBC during this period.

Hey, Isn't That… Joe Perrino who seems to be channeling John Munch as a teenage boy had worked with Barry Levinson as Young Shakes in Sleepers. He would work in several small films as a teenager before taking a break. He would then play Jason Gervasi in the final season of The Sopranos and took the role of Joseph Perrino then. He'd later play Pal Scaramucci on the sci-fi satire Happy!. But he eventually would attain a sort of celebrity when he played Vincent Ragni on the Starz gangster series Power. He can currently be seen playing Brian Mott on The Night Agent. He's also done work in podcasting as the voice of Tony Kiritis on American Hostage and Josiah Bissell on The Foxes of Hydesville.