Homicide: Life on the Streets - Season 3
I am starting my list of the 15 greatest television series with #10 in drama Homicide: Life on the Streets. This might be considered my indoctrination to adult television. This series unlike others that will be higher on the list did not depend on serialized story telling, but stories continued over multiple episodes. While some murders were solved on the week they were introduced, cases often took multiple episodes, and the effects of those cases on the homicide detectives and the department as a whole were felt from episode to episode and built a complete view of the family that was the murder po-lice of Baltimore.
There was no one single story line that dominated the series, but multiple threads that changed the relationships of the detectives. They ranged from the trivial, Munch, Bayliss, and Lewis trying to buy a bar, to the professional, Pembleton at odds with the department and the commissioner, to the overarching, Crosetti's suicide casting a blanket of despair over the entire department.
Ironically for this list, this season was the most disjointed and aired out of order. There was reference to Crosetti's death before that episode aired. Later there was an episode that involved the on the job shooting of Bolander, Felton and Howard, that was followed by an episode where they were not shot and dealing with case load that Crosetti left behind. All that said, this season had some of the best of the series and created a universe where despite the dire nature of the job of the principles, you were invested in every aspect of these people's lives week to week.
Pembleton had a crisis of personal faith that challenged his partner ship with Bayliss, affected how he investigated cases, placed him at odds with the very department that defined him. Giardello was shunned for promotion by the department that he had done nothing but give all of himself to for years. Bayliss, Munch, and Lewis went through a number of trials dealing with the city in the process of buying a bar. A process that took great pleasure in having city employees express the greatest frustration in dealing with the city and it's peculiar bureaucracy. Felton and Russert have an affair that has an incredible impact both personally and professionally, all of which is played against the constant danger that the job itself brings. The danger of the job was shown in two distinct ways. Homicide prided itself on showing how boring murder investigation could be, how slow and taxing the process could be and the walls the detectives build to deal with the job. Most the time it is gallows humor, or a hobby, but Crosetti's suicide showed every detective, especially his partner, Lewis, that the job can be more then a facination with conspiracy theories can handle. The second way the job is dangerous is that the job is physically dangerous when a routine siezure can turn into a shootout and put three people into the ICU.
This season did not build to one big conclusion but had so many threads that had significant payoffs (even out of order) for the characters, and on a personal note introduced me to a higher level of story telling on TV. This season also had one my favorite moments on TV of all time.
It is all good, but from 8:25 on, well the room very often seems to get dusty in that time.
Defining Episodes: Extreme Unction, Crosetti, End Game, The Old and the Dead
