A Televisual Feast

It’s probably unfair to judge “Homicide” based on this episode, probably unwise to make a broad statement about the series improving with the third episode… whatever. This episode is one of the finer hours (forty-fives) of television. It’s a slow (dead) night in the squad and the detectives sit around, upset about the heat, upset about their marriages, girlfriends, cases, whatever… It does more work than any other episode could… it makes the detectives human. Not TV human, but human human.

There’s always music playing–Crosetti turns on a radio at the start of the episode–and it’s well chosen music and it’s these utterly revealing moments, whether it’s Gee and Frank arguing about Frank’s tie, Frank and Bayliss arguing about a case, or Bayliss getting busted by the cleaning lady for lusting after her. It’s a beautiful episode… it kind of reminds me of something, some movie, but maybe not (a movie would have to introduce characters while this episode just gets to have them do and say things).

For some reason, I thought either David Mamet or Richard Price wrote this episode. I don’t know why. Neither of them did. Something about it made me think it had to be noisily brilliant, instead of just utterly quiet. Of all the episodes (wow, three) so far, it’s the one I feel Barry Levinson the most during… not anything specific, just that he would have really liked the idea (the Barry Levinson one would want to have like an idea, not the Jimmy Hollywood Levinson).

It’s a beautiful forty-five and those nauseous NBC logos at the end really ruin the mood.

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