Homicide Rewatch: Saigon Rose

 

Teleplay by Anya Epstein & David Simon ; story by David Overmeyer

Directed by Nick Gomez

 

was groundbreaking in the ways it dealt with racial issues, even though many of the African-American actors at the time complained it never went as deep as it could have.  This changed immensely in the last two seasons when the writers seemed more willing to look at controversial racial issues in a way it hadn't done before. It started the season taking an uncomfortable look at how the power structure look in a predominantly black city and showing that rich African-Americans could be, at their core, as good at manipulating it as rich white people could.

Now it takes on what was already one of the most polarizing issues in American discourse: affirmative action. And in what is an incredible twist a show that involves so many African-Americans at every level of the police force makes a convincing argument that there are very good reasons against it. That the case at the center of Saigon Rose  is being investigated by the two African-American detectives who've been on the show since the series debuted is all the more daring. They must be confronted with the fact that the system that almost certainly aided in their rise in the department also allowed an officer unfit for the job to get into a position where she would be able to kill a family who trusted her to protect them.

Saigon Rose also shows variations on how Homicide is evolving. The opening moments get us closer to the actual crime then we've been in a long time, perhaps since 'A Doll's Eyes' back in Season Four. We see the Nguyen family and Larry Jones about to sit down for dinner at the title restaurant after they close for the night. The two children Tom and Lucy go back to wash up. Then they hear a sound which sounds like a bang. Then we hear gunshots that seem to go on forever.

Halfway through the episode Lucy and Tom will describe what they remember hearing and just how horrible it was and then we will see the two of them in the immediate aftermath despairing as they try desperately to wake their family from their final repose. It's one of the most devastating scenes in Homicide's entire run and its followed by shots off all the members of the family on slabs in the morgue. Rarely have we seen the reality of what being written up on the board means.

Back in the squad the phone starts ringing. Pembleton picks up the phone. With Bayliss with stomach pain,  Frank asks Meldrick: "In the mood for a multiple homicide?" Interestingly the two previous times Pembleton and Lewis partner the two spent most of the investigation at each other's throats. This time there's none of the combativeness we associate with Frank every time he has to partner with another detective. This isn't an outlier. In another twist during Season Six Frank will work with more different detectives then in any previous season and he's more mellow than we're used to with him. That combativeness is still present on every other level of the job, as we'll see in this episode. (The way he mocks Tim when he comes back to the squad is classic.)

Of course there's mockery. Lewis calls Frank scary as they go into the interrogation room. "I'm the friendly affable type  and you're the terrifying intimidating type." (Frank seems to take that as a compliment.)

The crime scene is one of the bleakest in the show's entire history: we've seen multiple serial killers during the show's run but rarely so many bodies in the same place at once. What's more, it's clear from the start what happened. The Nguyen family were sitting down to dinner and someone broke in to rob the place. Robbery gone wrong is not a crime that we saw very often on procedurals: it's really too simple and its just a matter of finding who pulled the trigger. Even for a show that shows how simple murder is, we've rarely seen one that is just about a robbery. But like 'Bop Gun' which was capable of mining all the drama out of a crime that what at its core, so simple, Saigon Rose manages the same thing albeit a much more frightening scale in terms of the details.

The first detail is that Larry Jones, the one stranger at the table, is  a cop. Immediately afterword Toinette Perry shows up, saying she moonlit as a security guard. Then we hear the fact that in addition to killing the entire family and Larry, the robbers took all the jewelry off the dead bodies along with their wallets and purses, along with emptying the cash register. At some level we know this is how robbers can be but it doesn't make it any less ghoulish. Tom and Lucy are the only ones still alive. Officer Perry says all the right things and does all the right things. Then she starts saying the Nguyen's had a lot of money around the store – 'for the Vietnamese.'

Now it's one thing to have a white detective making racial slurs on anybody, but when Perry starts making references about how 'those people are', we're in uncomfortable territory. When she starts called them 'tight-lipped secretive' and mocking 'their language' it is going to make the most liberal viewer uncomfortable. Lewis plays along and Frank keeps a stoneface.  They're mostly deflected about Perry's offers to help, no doubt because they have notified Larry Jones wife – and we see very quickly he has a toddler and his wife is pregnant.

The truth comes out before the first act is over. During the initial interview Tom and Lucy clearly have talked and neither Frank nor Meldrick can penetrate their fear until Frank says: "if you're scared we can protect you." Lucy tells them that there were two of them. Black. Meldrick assumes that because the two detectives are black they're afraid they'll protect them.  They deflect at first saying they sounded black even though they didn't see them. More importantly they recognized the voice of one: Toinette Perry.

It's not like Homicide is a stranger to cases of cops abusing the badge; that's the overarching storyline of Season Six. But there's a difference between killing a man in the heat of the moment and the cold-blooded execution of five people in the process of robbing a restaurant.  It makes a horrible amount of sense. Jones's gun was not fired, so he recognized Perry let her in, then the other shooter enters and kills everyone. They know this will be a media firestorm: cop killing cop as well as the racial angle not to mention the morale of the department.

Larry Jones moonlighted the last six months to earn extra money for his new family. He and Perry weren't friends: she was complaining about the Nguyens, how prejudiced they were. Its then they learn she was hired because of affirmative action. Mrs. Jones tells them that she had a big chip on her shoulder and for once its not racial. Larry says she was a lousy cop and lazy and her record confirms it.  Excessive absenteeism, handful of complaints, excessive force, insubordination and she failed her initial psych screening. "Unstable, paranoid, borderline personality." Someone from the mayor's office overruled the psych consult.

Pembleton and Lewis instantly argue that this is affirmative action. "We're playing the game," Frank jokes. In addition she has no immediate family, her father has been missing for a year. And to prove the point she has cousin named Curtis paroled after serving for armed robbery. They decide to bring Perry in for an interview, saying the kids said something.

The irony is that Perry is no better at being a suspect in a crime then she is a cop. She walks right into the box not suspecting anything and within a few minutes Frank and Meldrick start picking apart all the flaws in her story, which she can't even really keep straight as she's telling it.  They remind her they said: "Did they ID the shooters?" Then they start making it clear: one of the shooter was a woman, he sounded a lot like Toinette. She keeps trying to deflect, blaming the local crackhead, then Tommy. They point out she rolled up in a squad car despite telling them she was off duty. She says she heard the call but she wasn't in a squad car at  the time. Then she heard the call but then rather than drive down to help the family, she got into uniform and then got the squad car.

By that point Falsone and Bayliss have brought Curtis in and they find a nine millimeter. And now they know all the bullets came from the same gun. Lewis takes a swing at Curtis and Pembleton hangs with Toinette. So for a change it is Lewis who gets to the truth first – and its somehow more horrifying then you'd think.

Toinette came to Curtis. It was going to be on his own. There was to be no shooting, he was just supposed to rob the restaurant and she'd come back later and coverup for him, allowing them to get away with a robbery no violence.  He knocks come in and asks for brown rice. And then Perry comes in takes the gun out, shoots her partner and then everyone else.  And what did they get for their trouble? "Two grand, including the tip jar."

We've seen serial killers and stone cold felons; we've dealt with Luther Mahoney. But there's still something unsettling about how Frank just sits there as Toinette casually tells him the shrink didn't think she looked like a cop but she was clearly jealous of her looks.  Now we learn the truth of how she got on the force. Her daddy made a few calls and got him to call a judge, to get them to overrule the report.

Immediately afterwards Lewis and Pembleton pin her down. Her reaction: "Punk? Always was weak." Watching from the observation room Al looks like he's going to vomit and Frank and Meldrick don't look much better. She instantly tries to pin it on Curtis and Meldrick goes back to him.

The final confrontation between Frank and Toinette is bleak. Toinette knew the Nguyen's. They didn't treat her badly. She was supposed to protect them. And when he she says that even though Curtis killed them she doesn't feel the least bit bad about it. And just to make it clear the depths of her evil, in the basement of her father's house is the father who cleared her to work as a cop in the first place.

Cox watches the whole ordeal in something close to shock. We know that she's used to death but to see an entirely family killed at once has affected her in a way we've never seen to this point. She actually seems upset when Lewis and Pembleton come to her for the autopsy report and seems more upset about the guns that are available in this city then usual. Cox apologizes saying she gets giddy doing an entirely family and gets fixated on the resemblances. For that reason she's getting stewed at the Waterfront which brings us to old business

 Giardello tells Falsone that the state's attorney can't make a case on Georgia Rae for her role in the murders of Molly Bowman or the Collins'.  Paul is understandably pissed as he was on both cases. The real news is that he assumed that after charges were dropped she split to Caymans but he isn't surprised to know she's staying in Baltimore. 'Unfinished business', he says but doesn't elaborate with Gee. Instead he goes to the source.

That leads to one of the most repeated scenes in Homicide history in the clips of "Previously On…" Falsone confronting Kellerman on how Georgia Rae's going to skate who seems not to give a damn about Junior Bunk beating the rap of killing Molly Bowman. Kellerman's casualness is the first sign he really doesn't care about his job anymore. Falsone is pissed that an innocent woman got killed because someone was taking shots at Stivers and he missed. And he's just as pissed that Kellerman really doesn't think he bears any responsible for it because he killed Luther and he doesn't seem disturbed that as a result three kids don't have a mother.

Falsone says he's got two choices. "Spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder or do Georgia Rae like you did her brother." I don't think Falsone has anyway of knowing that's exactly where Kellerman is right now and I honestly don't think it would make a difference. The scene where Kellerman and Falsone come to blows in the hall to the point of pulling their guns on each other may seem over the top in hindsight but it’s the fact that the two of them immediately try to play normal the second they see someone passing that sells it. Their feud is so intense they've forgotten that they were cops and where they are – and that Falsone can immediately pretend everything's fine – is a subtle way of showing they are two sides of the same coin.

It's worth noting Falsone actually tries his theory out on Bayliss when they're trying to pick up Curtis Lambright and Bayliss, who has arrested his share of killer cops, says he doesn't believe it. He tells Falsone that it's over and he should just let it go.  Falsone says it will come back and bite everybody in the ass. Unfortunately Falsone's right.

And its worth noting Kellerman's in agreement with him. When Cox shows up at the Waterfront telling Mike she's thinking of getting out of the profession he says almost casually so is he. Earlier this year when Cox confronted him about the Mahoney shooting he told her to go to hell. Now that he's in a spot he can't find a way out of Juliana is the first person he tells the truth to about everything. Her reaction is he can't do this alone. Kellerman actually seems human, it's clear he wants to take the weight himself. She points out Lewis and Stivers signed off – and so did she. When Kellerman tries to deflect she makes it blunt: "I really hope the grand jury would see it the same way." She pushes him to do the right thin and tell them about the tape.  In the next few episodes we will see him trying to do the right thing. It goes as well as doing the wrong thing does.

Thank God for Gharty and Ballard who spend the day talking about the merits of Baltimore crab. Gharty talking about the primordial desire to eating a crab and Ballard  talking about the merits of Louisiana blue and Alaskan and Puget Sound. This leads to Ballard saying: "These aren't bad." Gharty: "Blasphemy."

Nice to see partners bickering about unimportant stuff and having fun. Which means in typical Homicide fashion something's gonna go wrong. And sure enough while Ballard is looking over some cold case she starts getting dizzy. She nearly died from anaphylactic shock which came from an allergic reaction to shellfish. (You should see Notes for this.) When Gharty learns this he's horrified. When told lots of people live perfectly happy normal lives his reaction makes perfect sense from a Baltimorean. "Define normal!" Ballard is sanguine and takes her partner off the hook. 'Laura Ballard fought felons but was done in by a bad prawn!'

At the end of the episode Frank is sanguine and reflecting on guardian angels and realizing that Toinette Perry was supposed to be the Nguyen's. He has no doubt she is the killer and he can't understand why. And while he never says it he must wonder about a system that would allow a woman with so many pieces missing was allowed to serve alongside him for so long and making everyone who looks like him look bad.

Few shows would go so far in the 1990s. No show would dare go so far now. It's not just because we live in a world where any reasonable discussion about DEI has been labeled racist (and that so many conservatives have managed to roll it back on that guise) but because in 21^st century TV its considered an unqualified good. I don't think anyone outside the people who wrote for Homicide would ever go out of their way in the show's they wrote subsequently to deflect the narrative that racial diversity is anything but a universal good and those who oppose our bigots. There's a certain truth to the nature of the opposition but its because of the biggest critics that civilized debate is impossible.

And I can't help but thing of Shonda Rhimes work in this century in comparison. Olivia Pope would devote herself to dealing with some of the worst people in Washington but the system she thrives in was built on one that allowed a monster like Toinette Perry to slaughter an innocent family. Annalyse Keating might help people get away with murder but she would still be unable to look at a woman who by her actions proves all the worst things about women like her and is as monstrous as any of the rich defendants she helped escaped justice.  The rules of affirmative action are by and large good but as a result of them being bent a woman of one color was allowed to murder a family of a different color and two children will live without parents.

Toinette Perry was black and young…but the only thing she was gifted in was psychopathy.

 

 

 

NOTES FROM THE BOARD

Eric Overmeyer based this on a violent incident that took place in his home city of New Orleans.

This episode would receive a nomination for Episodic Drama by the WGA in 1999.

This episode marks the first appearance of Ellen McElduff as Billie Lou, the new bartender at The Waterfront. She's a performance artist who plays double bass topless. In a dark reference to the events, she's moonlighting to make ends meet. We learn in passing that Munch hired her but we won't figure out why until…well, you'll see.

Detective Munch: Gharty brings up Jets quarterback Vinny Testaverde and asks if he thinks he took stuff for his last name. "Take it from Mrs. Munch's little boy, he did!" As he starts giving a debate about how Ballard is a Seattle neighborhood Ballard starts getting dizzy and she collapses soon afterward, in what is a near death experience. Now I know the diagnosis is the shellfish allergy, but wouldn't be funny if someone died listening to Munch's rambles?

The shellfish allergy that brings Ballard to the hospital was inspired by Callie Thorne's own food allergies. Once the writers learned that the frail Thorne couldn't eat a lot of very ordinary foods, they decided to rib her about it. And she was comfortable about it not to sue for a hostile work environment. I know, it was a different time.

On The Soundtrack: On the DVD but not the streaming or cable you will hear Charley Miller's Lullaby Peace Dreams when Bayliss and Falsone pick up Curtis Lambright and The Subdudes 'All The Time in the World' in the final minutes of the episode. It makes less of a difference for this episode then others. For what it's worth David Simon would use much of The Subdudes' music when he was scoring Treme.