Just had a birthday, and as usual I was fortunate enough to rake in quite a few awesome gifts. One of those (much to my wife's chagrin) was Homicide: Life on the Streets--The Complete Series. Every since I got turned on to David Simon's The Wire, I've been trying to track down anything associated with the man. He's doing journalism as fiction, speaking to today's problems in a way that highlights them through narrative but doesn't provide any answers to questions posed. Homicide is where Simon got his start on TV, and it is an outrageously rich experience, especially when put side by side with other network series, both historically and in the (police procedural) genre.
The best way to describe what makes Homicide such a high quality show is to compare it with standard cop fare like, say, Law and Order. I, like many of you readers, used to watch the absolute hell out of L&O, but as time went by, I found its stale narrative formula never did anything for me. It seems there's a set number of O'Henry-like twists that happen at very specific points of each episode. The characters are never developed well...you know a bit about them, but they're not enough like real people to actually care much about them one way or another (except for Olivia Benson in SVU, who's basically a modern saint, or Robert Goren in Criminal Intent, who is quite animated but too emotionally jacked up to really identify with). The greatest impediment to characterization is the...how can I put it and still be nice?...uh, ruthlessly economical nature of the dialogue. Every line has to be explaining some basic fact--there's no room for anything to breathe. I'm not Shakespeare myself, but I know enough about writing to know that this could be done better and that it's a tell-tale sign that the writers are just doing enough to crank out a show and meet deadlines. You can't argue with its (bland, pedestrian) record of success, but after a while you feel like you've wasted an hour of your life and gotten only just what you expected, which wasn't really much to begin with, and you may be inclined to move on to something else. I was.
Homicide, in contrast, begins with (as all decent cop shows should) the first day of rookie detective Tim Bayliss (played by Kyle Secor). This is cliche, but it's also pretty smart--it puts you right in there with him, learning the ropes, learning about the people that he works with. And the people he works with are all rather interesting. John Munch (Richard Belzer) is a cyncial-on-the-outside/marshmellow-on-the-inside misanthrope/softy that is crusty Walter Matthau-as-a-cop. This character has since appeared on Law and Order and, in a cameo, on The Wire. Kay Howard (Melissa Leo) is a tough-as-nails hypercompetent female cop who takes no crap and stands with the best of them. Al Giordello (Yaphet Kotto), is the seasoned shift commander who is an Italian-American widower. "G," as his subordinates affectionately call him, has seen it all and has still escaped with his integrity in tact. He is exactly the sort of father figure, mentor, and supervisor we all wish we had, but rarely do. Frank Pemberton (played by Andre Braugher) is one of the most dynamic characters I've seen on television. Self-contained, highly intelligent, and capable of razor-sharp disses, Herculean acts of valor, and nuclear bursts of passion, the man is a true individual and hardly ever predictable. Braugher brings just the sort of energy that Brando brought to his roles in his Elia Kazan films (Streetcar's Stanley and Waterfront's Terry Malloy), and you can't take your eyes off of him for a second, no matter what else is going on in the scene. (Fans of The Wire will see heavy shades of McNulty in this character and his outlaw "go-it-alone/win-at-all-costs" attitude.) Rounding out the cast is veteran actor Ned Beatty, who plays Bolander, a late-middle-aged divorcee who, as many others, fends off frustration and defeat each and every day (and doesn't have to squeal like a pig nor bumble around after Gene Hackman).
The show succeeds because all the characters are people, not caricatures or "types." Sure, they're exceptional detectives, but we have met them all at one point or another. Things happen to them and they change as a result. They solve crimes by following up on leads and talking to witnesses, not by camera tricks or special effects (are you listening, CSI?), and there are plenty of "idle" moments where they have a conversation, tell a story, have an argument that shows you how they came to be where they're at and how each character differs from the other. Lots of perspectives are represented, and you can more or less understand even characters you don't really like.
They are also relatable in this: they have a job to do--solving murders--that will eventually destroy them emotionally unless they find some way to become numb to it. And in becoming numb to it, they begin down the slow road of becoming numb to life. How can they win? Who wants to lose themselves to do a job well, even if the job is worth doing? As a result, most of them are divorced, estranged from their children, and have little time for family and friends. None of them is a perfect physical specimen. They don't take fancy vacations. They have money troubles, and they're ill-tempered and tired nearly all the time. Can you relate?
And this is your way in. Have you ever found yourself having to do something, having to work in an environment, where you KNOW you can't be nice? The idea occurs to you that being nice/good and being effective are mutually exclusive. The bad guys will eat you up unless you toss your white hat in the fireplace. Yet, at your core, you value being a good, moral person. What do you do? How long can you hold out? You may even find, to your dismay, that you thrive in such an environment. How long, until it changes you and strips all your good away and leaves you a bitter husk? Do you sacrifice the opportunity all for one act of nobility that, you know when all is said and done, will sink your ship? If you read noir and espionage fiction, this is all "old hat" to you, but you've never dipped into these genres, I've just lain out the welcome mat.
It took me many years, but I prefer these worlds to the spandex, consequenceless fables of infinite (but impossible) virility that super heroes represent. This the real world. These are real people, and they have real problems. What is the solution? Is it one, or are they many? Are there any? I want to see how they handle it. I want to know how they go wrong, or succeed. I want to know if there's a way out with dignity and peace of mind.
Art like this is honest in that it faces up to the fact that every day of your adult life is a Faustian bargain parlayed into tomorrow. Sure, some crime fiction goes too far into the netherworld of despair, but Homicide has just enough hope in it to hold out the possibility, maybe a fact, maybe an illusion, that if you're tough and smart enough and play your cards right, and just a bit lucky, too, even if somewhere down the line you made a deal with the devil, you just may be able to cancel that check mere moments before it bounces, and live happily ever after.
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