Homicide Rewatch: Strangled, Not Stirred

Written by Linda McGibney ; story by Anya Epstein & Julie Martin

Directed by Jay Tobias

 

I personally feel that this episode is the weakest of Season 6 and arguably one of the worst in terms of quality in Homicide's entire run.

I admit part of my bias comes from the way it was advertised at the time. During Homicide's run NBC would promote many episodes the way they did basically every other network did on TV during the 1990s which was to sensationalize and frequently give away many of the critical plot revelations. For Homicide this was less of a problem that other procedurals. This was after all a series built more on how the cases affected the detectives and most of the murders were never built on story but the interrogations.

The problem was, unlike the overwhelming majority of the episodes in the series, 'Strangled, Not Stirred' is essentially built on a twist in the final act and the promos for this episode essentially gave it away with the killers confessing how and why. Furthermore since the episode – almost unheard of for Homicide – not only shows you the actual crime but leads the viewer down a false path until they get to the final act, I watched this episode knowing before the detectives did what the truth was. This made the investigation and how it got there, which is almost always the best part, something of  a chore and by the time the detective get to that confession you really do feel like you've wasted your time.

With that being said even if the promos had been more discreet about the twists and turns this still isn't a very good episode. It should be, as it puts Ballard at the center of the investigation and looks deep into what it's like to be a woman in a frequently sexist world. Callie Thorne has nailed Ballard from the jump and even when Ballard isn't leading an investigation her interactions with Gharty as well as the rest of the unit crackle with energy every time she's onscreen. The problem is she and Gharty are basically nailed with a storyline that seems like it's something more in line with so many of the 1990s sex-driven dramas on basic cable. This really does seem more like a case I'd see on Silk Stalkings or Pacific Blue (or even Law & Order: SVU) then Homicide. It doesn't help matters that the B-storyline, where we see the next stage of what Meldrick has been doing with the Mahoney organization, is far more compelling than the action here.

What's all the more frustrating is that this is one of the rare episodes on Homicide – for that matter 1990s TV – which is entirely written by women and while it does have some insight into the feminine side of Ballard, it's basically buried in a plot that telegraphs every action so that the dumbest viewer could see it coming from Fort McHenry even if they had missed the promos.

It starts very much like one of those shows: couple at a nightclub who've just moved to Baltimore, been married for six years, making friends with a woman we'll learn is Jennifer Gerrick, 26. The wife goes home for an early night, the husband takes Jennifer to her car, leans in for a kiss – and takes out a taser.  It was formulaic then and probably more so today. Ballard and Gharty find her in the alley the next day, strangled with her pantyhose. Her wallet and jewelry are still on her but the twist is there's no sign of sexual trauma. Ballard notes her make-up has barely been smudged. The only sign this crime bothers Laura a little is when Gharty says she looks like a nice girl and Laura doesn't answer immediately, saying she hates working Sundays -  a remark that will turn out to be prescient. We then see the couple – Nick and Helen – acting flirtatious and bantering about to have sex. The viewer naturally assumes Helen has no idea what her husband did last night. When we see Helen and Nick in a nightclub later and she's talking about one of the women, we almost wonder if the couple swings and that's what she's worried about

When the detectives go to Jennifer's address they learn from her great-uncle – who she has lived with – that he honestly expected her to get arrested. Her aunt ends going to the morgue and she says she wants to see Jennifer's body. Her aunt doesn't want to look at her and Ballard tries to argue it looked peaceful. Mrs. Gerrick doesn't believe her but Ballard knows she has to say this to begin the investigation proper. The odd quirk is that Mrs. Gerrick says she was right. She does look pretty.

Dyer tells them that there's no sign of sex of any kind, barely any drinking. There are no skin cells, no fibers, only a single hair that isn't the victims. The only thing the detectives have to go on are contusions on the neck, which come from a stun gun. (Tasers weren't introduced by 1998.) Ballard and Gharty tell them they have no motive, no suspect, and no witnesses. Giardello seems to speak her up, saying she has 'moxie'.

At her place of work her employer tells them that Jennifer didn't have a boyfriend and used to go to a lot of trendy clubs. Ballard actually names one when the owner can't think of it immediately. When they go to the club this is when the case gets personal as the owner dismisses Jennifer Gerrick as a "Saturday Night Hon." (I suspect 'Hon' is a euphemism for something far worse.) "Dressed to the max, no coat, comes in looking for an escort home."  This is clearly the nineties equivalent of slut-shaming and Ballard immediately reacts. 

Munch and Kellerman are recruited to help with the interviews of the customers at the bar that night. When Falsone says there's a rule in Charm City that anyone who goes out to a bar alone is 'looking for a good time' Ballard takes her aggression out on him. "I go out alone. Sometimes I even go out on a Saturday Night."  When Stivers offers support and calls her partner a Neanderthal Falsone doesn't take it well.

Eventually they end of at Nick and Helen's and Helen seems genuinely shocked about what happened to Jennifer. The two of them talk and we every reason to think Helen has no idea what her husband did. That night Helen doesn't seem freaked out by what happened she just doesn't want to go out. Helen notes that Nick is spending too much time looking at other women and the way he calls his wife 'frigid' leads us down the same path. Nick chooses to go out without her, calling her a bitch as she leaves.

Not long after they find Gerrick's car – with her coat in the trunk – Gharty tells them they got a call. Another woman has been found strangled with her pantyhose. The victim is Elaine Berretta and she's been dumped in an alley. The woman has been missing a week and killed around the same time. Naturally, she went missing on a Saturday. And naturally there's now a media frenzy with the reporter asking if the Mayor will close down restaurants on the Charles.

Beretta's roommate is upset that Detective Higby was…Detective Higby, thinking she just ran away from home. Ballard has to tell his roommate that Elaine was almost certainly dead by the time she was reported missing. Talking at the night club they recognize Elaine Beretta and that she met with a guy who is clearly Nick – who wasn't there with his wife. By going through the charge cards Gharty recognizes Nick Montgomery as someone they interviewed who was there the night Elaine was.

Despite them matching Montgomery at two crime scenes both Giardello and Danvers tell them that they don't have enough for a search warrant. Ballard and Gharty go back to the Montgomery home and press him on the fact he bought Gerrick two drinks and didn't tell them. It's when they bring up Elaine Beretta that Helen gets upset and walks away. Nick Montgomery seems incredible slick and meets the metric of a chauvinist pig, circa 1998 when they were still allowed to be more obvious. Helen seems upset about what happened and the way he just bought her a drink.

Then they find out in Dallas where they once lived Helen's sister was found strangled before they left town. Nick Montgomery was the prime suspect but besides phone records there's no evidence to speak of. Then Helen Montgomery shows up with her husband's stun gun. She tells them she always suspected that Nick killed her sister but then they moved to Baltimore to start a new life, then they started fighting again. This doesn't quite square with what we've seen in the previous sequences but we're still inclined to believe her.  When they interview her husband he puts on an act that would completely seal the deal on Mad Men until Gharty pulls out the stun gun. Ballard tells him the prongs on the gun match the ones found on Gerrick and Beretta. He says his prints are on the stun gun but his wife killed the women.

The sequence when Ballard and Gharty confront Helen has some of the elements of the way these sessions work: with Gharty being somewhat of an aggressor and Ballard saying: "He said, she said. She said, he said. So hard to know which to believe. That is…" And then presents a comparison of two hairs on Angela's body and Jennifer's pantyhose are both blonde. They make it clear it's a simple choice: Whoever testifies gets life without parole, whoever doesn't gets the death penalty. It's the way she confesses: that the two of them killed them together as an aphrodisiac. They show the way they took Gerrick to their home, put them on their mattress and then apparently had sex after they killed their victims – with the dead body on the bed. "The moment she died our love was perfect," is honestly a line that's not worthy of being said on this show.

And it's not much better when we learn Helen turned on her husband because he 'cheated on her' – killing Elaine without him.  When Ballard asks the question why she turned him in Helen's response. "He killed without me. If he hadn't betrayed me, we could have gone on happily ever after. I may be a jealous bitch, but my husband's a cheating bastard. And there's no way I was letting him get away with that." It really seems like  a storyline Criminal Minds would be embarrassed by.

He tells them Angela and he were having an affair and that when she found out Nick said he'd end it. She told him that to save their marriage they had to kill her. Helen strangled Angela and he held her down.  Then between Dallas and Baltimore she killed two more women, one in St. Louis, one in Pittsburgh. Ballard refuses to believe Nick. When Gharty tells them they have to look at the other bodies Ballard refuses to initially believe Helen was involved. It's then Ballard erupts: "That man is a pig. He's a misogynist pig bastard and I can see it in his eyes." For once Gharty keeps his mouth shut and Ballard acquiesces. They get to the crime lab and Gharty says that they found hairs on Angela's body: one was Nick's, two were Helen's. Helen's hair matches the one they found on Gerrick's clothing. Gharty says that they should say that hair was found on Gerrick's pantyhose. If Helen is innocent, she'll know they're lying. If she's guilty, she won’t.

The meat of this episode comes when Stivers finds a little blue envelope in her mailbox with all the information needing to find who committed the triple homicide, the wheelman, the weapon we saw last week, along with a witness. Kellerman and Falsone received similar envelopes that basically have given them everything they need to close the murders involving the Mahoney crew.

Drug murders, as we know full well, are notoriously difficult to solve so you'd think the detectives and Giardello would be thrilled that they were able to change names from red to black with so little work. But there's a distinct lack of delight in Stivers' voice as she reads through the details and a lack of enthusiasm as she and Frank start doing the work to close her triple.

As I mentioned in the previous episode much of this part of the Mahoney storyline steers as close to 'copaganda' as Homicide ever got. What manages to redeem it – at least in this episode – is that none of the actors seem thrilled about what is going on. They're going to do their jobs and close the cases – they'd be guilty of malpractice if they didn't – but the implications are becoming harder to ignore for the unit.

Falsone immediately goes to Meldrick to assure him everyone got 'their little white envelopes'. He then informs Meldrick that everyone in the unit knows whose behind this. When he asks Meldrick how long it will be until Gee figures out, Meldrick seems unconcerned. He shouldn't be.

The interrogation of the witness which Frank and Stivers lead is fascinating. As it goes on unfolds the witness makes it very clear that he's not worried about blowback – the Mahoney crew is too busy fighting each other to come back on him. However Frank  - who is on the outside of whatever's going on and unlike Stivers doesn't know what's happens – asks the question half the unit doesn't want asked: "What started this war?" According to Antoine, the Mahoney machine choked on its money…and a little dirt. Frank seems a little nonplussed on the explanation: "The Mahoney crew was never that calm on things to begin with." But when Frank and Stivers ask: "Who's winning this war?" The witness's answer is more on point then he knows: "Ain't it you?" Stivers is clearly startled. Frank chuckles, clearly thinking this is just bluster.  When Frank and Stivers arrest the shooter he immediately knows who put him in for the murder.

 Even Giardello, who will turn a blind eye to his detectives actions in the unit, is clearly aware of what is happening and he doesn't believe Bayliss when he says whoever it is has a gift for this sort of thing. Then Giardello asks Falsone: "Any idea who it might be?" And when Falsone tries to say the cases are down who cares, Al doesn't believe it and he clearly knows exactly who's doing this – because he immediately pulls Falsone aside and tells him he wants to meet with Meldrick.

The trial board involving Lewis' suspension is coming up the following week. Giardello tells him that if he doesn't contest the findings he would get off with a reprimand, stress counseling and 5 days lost vacation. (This is for an assault of a woman who named the department in a civil suit. Naturally if it had been a civilian Meldrick would have lost ten days of vacation. I threw that in to appease certain people.)  However when Giardello makes it clear that Bonfather wants him to transfer out of Homicide Meldrick actually gets nervous and Giardello lets him twist in the wind, saying it might be better for him. He's willing to talk to Bonfather. Then he lays down the law. "But whatever's going on between you and the Luther Mahoney people, it ends right now." Then he walks away, refusing to give Meldrick a chance to dig himself in deeper.

The one redeeming aspect of it is Thorne's performance throughout. Her rage against the all-too casual sexism, and the way Nick's obvious chauvinism blinds her to the truth is a refreshing reversal of gender norms. It also fits the pattern of Ballard not wanting to believe the worst in women much like her as established in 'All is Bright'. And the way she confides in Falsone about why she ended up in Seattle in the first place. She said she left her job in Seattle and for the first time how she really thought she was going to find someone to share her life with, someone to take her to all the nice restaurants. Then she decided if no one would take her she'd go alone and that she could have been Gerrick or Beretta.  It's a sign of openness we don't see that often. (Of course there's the very real possibility this may have led the writers to create the worst storyline in the show's history…but like all fans, I'm not talking about this until I have too.)

As I've said the worst episode of Homicide was still better than 90 percent of everything else on TV and honestly this is the weakest episode we've had since probably Thrill of The Kill nearly three years ago. That's a pretty good track record for any TV show – and fortunately we've got some good stuff the rest of the way.

 

NOTES FROM THE BOARD

When Giardello tells Ballard she has moxie, Gharty says: "I thought what you had was spunk." Ballard with a straight face says: "I hate spunk." Ten years after it closed down Tom Fontana is keeping the memory of MTM productions alive.

'Detective Munch': John is really sorry when he refers to Jennifer as another 'Saturday Night Hon'. Asked by Stivers what's wrong with a woman who goes out by herself, "Oh nothing. Absolutely nothing." (And they thought Munch would be a good fit for SVU?) He makes his principles more clear when the press shows up. "Two dead white girls in two days, that's their kind of case."  He comes up the title of the episode and tells Ballard: "Keep that for your scrapbook."

The day before this episode aired NBC officially announced that Reed Diamond would not becoming back for Season 7.  Says something that I couldn't figure out that meant Kellerman and Pembleton's departure were going to be tied together…but one thing at a time.