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Homicide: Life on the Street was a highly acclaimed American television police procedural series chronicling the work of a fictional Baltimore Police Department homicide unit. It ran for seven seasons on the NBC network from 1993 to 1999 and then was followed by a 2000 TV-movie. The series was based on David Simon's nonfiction book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, and many characters and stories used throughout the show's seven seasons were based on individuals and events depicted in the book (Simon would also use them in his own series for HBO, The Wire). The bulk of the show's first-run episodes aired on Fridays at 10 PM EST on NBC.
The series
Homicide's purpose was to provide its viewers with a no-nonsense, police procedural-type glimpse into the lives of a squad of inner-city detectives. As opposed to many television shows and movies involving cops, Homicide initially opted for a bleak sort of realism in its depiction of the job, portraying it as repetitive, spiritually draining, an existential threat to one's psyche, often glamor- and glory-free, but a social necessity nonetheless. In its attempt to do so, Homicide developed a trademark feel and look that distinguished itself from its contemporaries. For example, the series was filmed with hand-held 16mm cameras almost entirely on location in Baltimore (making the idiosyncratic city something of a character, itself) and was also notable for its regular use of music montagues, jump-cut editing, and the three-times-in-a-row repetition of a shot when the moment on-screen was particularly crucial. Despite premiering in the coveted post-Super Bowl timeslot, the show opened to lackluster ratings, and cancellation was a an immediate threat. However, the show's winning of two Emmy Awards (for Levinson's direction and Fontana's writing) and the success of another police drama—the much soapier NYPD Blue—helped convince NBC to give it another chance beyond the truncated, nine-episode-long first season. (Incidentally, Homicide's four-episode second-season renewal ties it with Seinfeld as the lowest number of episodes ordered in network history.) In its attempt to improve Homicide's ratings, NBC often insisted on changes, both cosmetic and thematic. For example, by the beginning of the third season, talented but unphotogenic veteran actor Jon Polito had been ordered dropped from the cast. At around this same time, the network also began clamoring for more on-screen romance and violence. In order to have episodes NBC considered more eye-catching air during "sweeps" periods, it sometimes aired them out of order, often to the detriment of story arcs that had developed over several episodes or even entire seasons. Probably the most infamous of such gaffes was NBC's decision to broadcast an episode featuring the program's first sex scene ("A Model Citizen") prior to the airing of the much acclaimed episode, "Crosetti". (The detective, Polito's character, had been in Atlantic City on vacation since the end of the second season's four episodes; for reasons never fully explained—but perhaps not difficult to surmise—he returns to Baltimore and drowns himself rather than return to his job.) As a result of this deviation from the producers' intended order, viewers of "A Model Citizen" found out from a comment made by his ex-partner, Detective Meldrick Lewis, merely that Crosetti had died but not how or when.
The reality of Homicide's negligible Nielsen ratings hovered over all things, however, and always left the show in a precarious position, cancellation-wise. To NBC's credit, though, the network managed to keep what TV Guide referred to as "The Best Show You're Not Watching" on the air for five full seasons and seven seasons in all. Homicide was at one time syndicated on Lifetime and Court TV. While these networks no longer air the program, it is now on the all-crime television cable station Sleuth, and airing weekdays at 11am (EDT) on WGN. Also, all seven seasons are available on DVD. One DVD set combines the first two seasons. Additional sets contain the complete third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh seasons. Significantly, the DVDs contain the episodes in the producers' intended order, not the order in which NBC aired them. TNT has aired some of the episodes which crossover with Law & Order. These were aired immediately following the relevant Law & Order episode. Notable storylines and episodesSpoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
Seasons One and TwoThe series opens with Detective Tim Bayliss being assigned to Lieutenant Al Giardello's unit and partnered with Detective Frank Pembleton. Pembleton resents having his style cramped with a partner, and Tim, nervous and obviously intimidated, isn't sure he's up to the job. As (bad) luck would have it, his first case is the murder of a young girl, Adena Watson, an 11-year-old whose slaying is given full "red ball" treatment (the term "red ball" being Baltimore police slang for a case designated as top-priority by the unit's brass, usually because of the heavy media coverage it garners). The Adena arc culminates with the first-season episode, "Three Men and Adena," in which Detectives Bayliss and Pembleton interrogate their prime suspect for hours on end within the confines of the unit's claustrophobic interview room, "The Box." Bayliss' character would go on to demonstrate a particular sensitivity where child murders were concerned and, in a fifth-season episode, reveals to Pembleton a series of traumas from his own childhood explaining why. "Night of the Dead Living," also from season one, has the unit working the graveyard shift on a hot summer evening. Meanwhile, the squadroom's air-conditioning has broken down and tempers are running as high as the temperature. Remarkably, the episode is little more than characters sitting around talking, complaining, musing. No murders are investigated, and the camera never leaves the squadroom. Season ThreeHomicide saw its cast rotate, as most TV series do, and it dealt with these changes with varying degrees of effectiveness. The first major cast member to leave, Detective Steve Crosetti (Jon Polito), had his character killed off, and the exploration of how his death occurred and how the unit reacted to it is the focus of the above-mentioned season-three episode "Crosetti." The third season also featured a trilogy of episodes ("The City That Bleeds," "Dead End," and "End Game") in which three detectives are seriously wounded as a result of a gunman's ambush, two of them almost fatally; meanwhile, the rest of the unit grapples with this reminder of their own mortality as they hunt for the perpetrator. Homicide often mixed its characters' personal lives with their professional ones, including several affairs among the department's officers. Despite (or perhaps, as a result of) Homicide's uncompromising approach, the series always seemed slightly uncomfortable dealing with romance, and, predictably, the affairs tended to end badly. In addition, Giardello's less-than-stellar relationship with his superiors (who generally regarded him as a "renegade") cost him promotions. Among other things, they took issue with his tendency (albeit unproven) to leak information to the local media when he felt it necessary, as well as his willingness to ignore department protocols in order to get things done. His superiors included Commissioner James Harris and Colonel George Barnfarther (both African-Americans), as well as Captain Roger Gaffney (white). Gaffney was previously a detective, and had been transferred out of homicide (for incompetence) to missing persons by then-lieutenant Megan Russert. Despite his belligerence and ineptitude (not to mention the character's less than subtle racism), he was eventually promoted to shift commander, and soon thereafter to Captain (both positions which, ironically, were once held by Detective Russert before her double-demotion). He was chosen for promotion to Captain over Lieutenant Giardello by Commissioner Harris, in retaliation for Giardello's refusal to "play ball" over a previous case involving a Baltimore congressman. Harris, when he was a training officer in the 1960's, had once helped out a young Giardello when he was assigned a racist partner that made him ride in the back of the squad car. Harris chose Gaffney for retaliatory promotion because he was a "fat, white cop," very similar to the patrolman Giardello was first partnered with. In a later episode, written by Yaphet Kotto, Giardello gets the last word on Harris, whose name resurfaces when Burundi Robinson, a renegade retired African-American Baltimore cop turned local separatist leader, and his group are involved in a confrontation with the police. Giardello, who attempts to negotiate with Robinson, discovers the former cop, Harris's onetime partner, left the force after taking blame for heroin stolen by Harris, who has interfered in the current confrontation trying to protect Robinson, who along with the male members of his group, commits mass suicide at the end. Giardello later formally referred Robinson's accusations against Harris to the Mayor. In a subsequent episode, Capt. Gaffney lectures Giardello for effectively ending Harris's career, given Giardello the last word on his nemesis. Season FourThe fourth season saw the departure of two other cast members but the addition of Mike Kellerman (played by Reed Diamond). By the end of the fourth season's two-part season-premiere, Kellerman leaves arson for the murder police and becomes the central figure in a storyline that spans both the fifth and sixth seasons. This mammoth arc begins with Mike's questionable shooting of prominent drug lord Luther Mahoney, whom he'd cornered when Mahoney had lowered, but not dropped, his weapon. A gang war erupts in its aftermath. One notable change involved Pembleton's character, a high-strung chain smoker, suffering a severe stroke during an intense interrogation. It was at the request of Braugher that his brilliant, quick-minded character be hobbled to give him a greater dramatic context. While Pembleton returned the next season with a cane, his speech stammering and halting, with words not coming quickly, adverse audience feedback led to a quick and full recovery that would not have occurred with a real stroke patient. Soon Pembleton, who referenced the stroke from then on, was back to his pre-stroke intensity and drive. Seasons Five and SixThe sixth season is noted for its three-part opener, "Blood Ties", guest-starring James Earl Jones as a local philanthropist and pillar of the African-American community whose family becomes the focus of a highly sensitive investigation. The sixth also features the plainly titled episode, "The Subway," about a man who has fallen between a subway car and the edge of the platform and becomes crushed in-between the two. Although still alive and without pain due to the spinal severance, he knows he will die from his injuries the moment the car is lifted from his body. Because it's a death literally waiting to happen, the homicide unit is called in to investigate whether the man fell by accident or was deliberately pushed from the platform; at the same time, two detectives attempt to find the victim's girlfriend so they can exchange farewells. Andre Braugher as Detective Frank Pembleton and Vincent D'Onofrio as the doomed victim John Lange would earn Emmy nominations for their performances in this episode. (A similar scenario occurred in the comic book Top 10, which itself is a parody of cop shows like Homicide, but uses superheroes, as well as cop-show clichés like montages set to music.) Another notable episode from this season is the two-part finale, "Fallen Heroes", which concludes the Kellerman/Mahoney storyline begun in season five. Perhaps the program's bloodiest episode, "Fallen"'s focus is a violent firefight that takes place inside the walls of the squadroom itself. The late Luther Mahoney's nephew, Junior Bunk, is arrested in connection to a murder and, left unwatched for a crucial few seconds, swipes a gun from an officer's unlocked desk drawer. After the smoke clears, four are dead (including Junior Bunk), two are wounded, and a retaliatory attack is launched by the remaining detectives against the remnants of the Mahoney drug-cartel. Lives are left in shambles and careers destroyed by episode's end. Bayliss is critically wounded as he takes a bullet for a distracted Pembleton. Kellerman, interrogated by Pembleton at Giardello's order, admits his poor judgment in shooting Mahoney and is forced to resign from the force in order to save Lewis and Stivers. Anguished over his inability to act in the heat of the moment, Bayliss taking the bullet for him and being forced to use his interrogation skills against one of his own, Pembleton turns in his badge. This marked Braugher's departure from the series. Season SevenThe seventh season is widely regarded as the weakest, but stands out for its treatment of Kyle Secor's emotionally fragile Bayliss character. The detective whose arrival made for the subject of the very first episode finally begins to unravel under the stress of the job and the effects it has on his unorthodox personal life. (Near the end of the sixth season, Bayliss had begun experimenting with long-simmering bisexual urges and, after a brush with death, spends part of the seventh as a convert to Buddhism; as one might expect, neither are well regarded by his co-workers.) The season also included the tense and bruising episode "Lines of Fire", in which Agent Michael Giardello (Al's son) winds up his FBI career by negotiating with an armed father holding his children hostage. The episode reunited Giancarlo Esposito with his former Bakersfield, P.D. costar Ron Eldard. "Homicide: Life Everlasting"In the 2000 TV movie filmed after the series ended, Homicide: Life Everlasting, the squad's former lieutenant, Al Giardello, is running for mayor (on a controversial pro-drug-legalization platform, a reference to Baltimore mayor Kurt Schmoke) and is close to victory when he's shot during a campaign speech. The assassination attempt inspires the arrival of the entire unit, past and present, in a joint effort to bring down the gunman. Every regular from the series—including two dead characters who make their appearance in a startling, non-flashback scene near the film's end—returns for this final chapter in the series' seven-year-long story, which ends with Giardello's death and the mourning of his loyal subordinates past and present, as well as his netherworld reunion with Detectives Felton and Crosetti. Crossover episodesHomicide crossed-over four times with Law & Order. In three of these episodes, a case would begin with L&O (the higher-rated show) in New York City for Part One before moving the action to Baltimore for Part Two:
Law & Order producer Dick Wolf is a good friend of Tom Fontana, and named the Law & Order character Joe Fontana after him. Detective John Munch would later move to New York and join the NYPD's SVU (Law & Order: Special Victims Unit). Spoilers end here.
CastOriginal cast
Other regulars
Recurring characters
Notable guest appearancesA number of well-known actors and celebrities appeared on the show, including James Earl Jones, Robin Williams, Steve Buscemi, Marcia Gay Harden, Lily Tomlin, Peter Gallagher, Chris Rock, Wilford Brimley, Steve Allen, Bruno Kirby, Edie Falco, Vincent D'Onofrio, Luis Guzman, Steve Burns, Elijah Wood, Jake Gyllenhaal, Bruce Campbell, Paul Giamatti, David Morse and Jerry Stiller among many others. Typically, well-known actors making guest appearances on Homicide were cast in fully-developed roles central to the episode in which they appeared. Robin Williams's sensitive portrayal of a grieving widower and father in the early episode "Bop Gun" is a notable example, as is Steve Buscemi's role as a suspected gunman in the third-season "End Game." However, some celebrities made essentially cameo appearances which were more lighthearted in nature. Director (and Baltimore native) John Waters appeared twice, once as a nameless bartender listening to a disconsolate Detective Bolander, and another time as a talkative prisoner awaiting transfer from New York to Baltimore (escorted by Detective Mike Logan). Out travelling on his motorcycle, Jay Leno stopped in at the Waterfront to have a beer, quickly departing after finding his bartenders strangely silent. In one particularly self-referential episode, journalist Tim Russert appeared as himself, bickering about Christmas presents with his "cousin," Lieutenant Megan Russert. Episodes
DVD releasesA&E Home Video has released all 7 Seasons of Homicide: Life on the Street on DVD in Region 1 for the very first time. The TV-Movie Homicide: The Movie that was made after the regular series ended, was released on DVD in Region 1 by Trimark Pictures on May 22, 2001.
Homicide: Second ShiftHomicide:LotS was one of the first shows to have a major Internet tie-in, a spin-off series called Homicide: Second Shift. Trivia
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