Homicide Season 6 Rewatch: Prelude

 

In retrospect its astonishing that Homicide made it to Season 6.  During Season 5 the ratings boost it had gotten during its fourth season was all but gone due to the intense competition from CBS's Nash Bridges. And going into the 1997-1998 season Homicide found itself where it had been so many times before: facing cancellation.

But this time there were even bigger obstacles hindering it then it had to deal with before. The most significant was behind the scenes. Tom Fontana had formed his own production company with Barry Levenson and HBO had been willing to greenlight his first original project. The result aired during the summer of 1997 and would help change TV forever.

OZ was set in a fictional prison: the Oswald State Correctional Facility and it was unlike any drama that had ever aired on television before, even within the confines of cable. Dark, unrelenting and graphic in terms of violence, profanity and nudity Fontana was granted a creative freedom that no writer in TV history had ever been given before. He would write eight episodes and cast the series with recurring characters that had played small roles on Homicide in the five previous season and would continue to bring in guest actors in the two seasons that were to follow.

While critical reaction to this incredibly dark series was mixed it signaled that HBO was willing to take creative risks and back its creators in a way that NBC for one just wouldn't do. The result would lead to HBO becoming the wellspring for the new Golden Age of TV, one that David Simon would become a critical part of in the 21^st century.

With Fontana taking a back seat to writing the show Homicide had to deal with what was the usual pattern of cast departures. Between seasons Melissa Leo and Max Perlich would leave the show. Unfortunately NBC handled it clumsily particularly with Leo. She'd been in the tabloids due to battles with her boyfriend John Heard and while she was the victim NBC, who'd never been keen on her character, took the opportunity to argue for her dismissal. Perlich had also been accused of criminally negligent behavior, including the discharge of a firearm. More to the point neither character had been used to their best potential for much of Season 5.

Fontana attempted to cover for the network by saying he was tired of writing for both of their characters. It backfired immediately, creating bad press for all concerned.

 But more than anything else there was news that troubled every single fan of the show at the time myself included. At the start of the season Andre Braugher announced that, even if the show was renewed, he was going to hang up his badge. It was difficult to blame Braugher for wanting to seek greener pastures: he'd been the focus of Homicide for nearly six years and like many leading men he wanted to try his luck on film. We were seeing this trend play out for many dramas during the 1990s: the following year George Clooney would leave ER and David Duchovny would force The X-Files to relocate from Vancouver to Hollywood to suit his increasing demand for film roles.

With all this as well as the fact that Homicide had been sold into syndication the previous April there was no longer much of a reason for NBC to keep Homicide on the air. It just wasn’t make enough of a return on its investment for the network to keep sinking money into a show that could never get above third place in its timeslot. So at the start of the season  the network heads sent the message: get the ratings up or this is it.

Add to this Homicide was engaged in adding the most new cast members to its show in its history. We'd already met Paul Falsone in the season finale and had been reintroduced to Stu Gharty back then. In addition we'd meet newcomer Callie Thorne as Laura Ballard. So there is no reason that Season 6 should have worked at all.

And yet if you ask either critics or fans of the series they will all tell you that Season Six is arguably the best season in Homicide's entire run. The series would by far do the best with the Emmys in terms of nominations during its tenure, with six nominations and 2 awards. (I'll deal with them as we go through the season. The show would win its third Peabody Award for Season 6 win the TCA award for outstanding Achievement in Drama with Andre Braugher winning his second consecutive TCA for Outstanding Achievement in Acting. The series would be nominated for three WGA awards for Best Episodic Drama.

Awards aside Homicide spends the entire season more sure of itself from the first shot to the last. The entire team must have known their jobs were hanging by a thread more then usual but you don't see any of that in any of the actor's performances or any of the writing. Indeed rather then try to make the show more accessible to the new viewer Simon, Yoshimura and the writers basically involve the entire season around a major storyline that looms over the squad in almost every episode, even when its not being talked about directly.  Some series like NYPD Blue and The X-Files had tried these kinds of stories before during their run but we were still several years away from first cable and then network television having an entire season basically devoted to one single plot. Homicide has tried this before as early as the first season but the writers were never nearly as ambitious as they were here and the entire cast shows they're up for the challenge.

If that weren't enough many of the individual investigations tweak the format of how Homicide has been working murders over the last five seasons. More than any other season the show has us looking at violent death from every angle, and more often then not the victims are still alive to tell their stories when we meet them. Throw in a crossover with Law & Order and the sixth season of Homicide stands as one the great triumphs not just in the show's run but arguably all of TV history.