Customer Reviews

Homicide Life on the Street - The Complete Season 3

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The first two seasons of Homicide were great television. The third season surpassed the first two and cemented this police drama as one of the best ever on network television. Although NBC buried it in the Friday night graveyard and ratings were always low, we were still given superior writing, acting and production quality on a consistent basis. This dvd set contains a season of the same character-driven stories that makes Homicide what it is, but the plotting became a bit more tightly woven as compared to the previous seasons. The show starts out with the addition of LT. Megan Russert (Isabella Hofmann) as a new shift commander who must deal with a series of murders after only a week on the job. The White Glove Murders would be the first of two three-part stories during the season. They would also test Frank Pembleton's faith in God and humanity; a theme that would recur throughout the rest of his time on the series. We're treated to some touching and heartbreaking moments as well in such episodes as "Every Mother's Son," and "All Through the House." Racial tensions flair in, "Colors," as Pembleton and Bayliss clash when Tim's cousin shoots a Turkish exchange student on his front porch. The best example comes when we watch Meldrick Lewis struggle to accept the death of his partner in, "Crosetti." Many fans note the final scene of this episode as their all-time favorite from the series. The other major three-part story involves the shooting of Kay Howard, Beau Felton and Stan Bolander. The chase to track down the shooter is riveting and the final confrontation between Pembleton and a suspect in The Box is classic Homicide at its best. Other story lines running throughout the season include Beau Felton's troubled marriage and the efforts of three of the detectives to buy and open the Waterfront Bar. The original cast remains intact for this season, except for the departure of Jon Polito (Crosetti.) Unfortunately, this would be the last season for Ned Beatty (Bolander) and Daniel Baldwin (Beau Felton) until their reappearance in the Homicide movie.

As is the case with the previous dvd set, the sound is superior to that of the TV reruns and the picture quality is excellent. The commentary on the episode, "The Gas Man," is interesting and the bonus documentary was fun to watch for those of us who are diehard fans. The music lists and visuals of the board are also nice bonuses. One gets the feeling that the people putting this package together did some internet research along the way. Its nice to see that the episodes are placed in the correct story order so that events would flow smoothly. NBC wasn't so considerate when they aired the original series. I was disappointed to find no "play all" feature and unlike the last season, chapter breaks are not available between episodes. I'm also disappointed to find that A&E didn't include the previouslies at the beginning of each episode. Still, this is an excellent package and well worth the price.

Episode List:
*Nearer My God to Thee 1
*Fits Like a Glove 2
*Extreme Unction 3
*Crosetti
*The Last of the Watermen
*A Model Citizen
*Happy to be Here
*All Through the House
*Nothing Personal
*Every Mother's Son
*Cradle to Grave
*Partners
*The City That Bleeds 1
*Dead End 2
*End Game 3 (Guest star Steve Buscemi
*Law and Disorder
*The Old and the Dead
*In Search of Crimes Past
*Colors
*The Gas Man (Guest star Bruno Kirby)

A full season of "Homicide" must have seemed strange in the fall of 1994. In the previous 18 months, NBC aired just 13 episodes of the show, in what seemed to be 13 different time slots. Oddly enough, even though I lived in Baltimore at the time, I didn't watch a single moment of the series -- I didn't come to it until years later, when nearly half the original cast was gone, and when I had long since forsaken Charm City for the American gothic of Toledo, Ohio.

It's an absolute treasure having this show on DVD now, available at my beck and call. While the Seasons 1/2 box set did not last very long, I worked my way methodically through the 20 episodes of Season 3. What was so important about my senior year of college that I was not watching this show on Friday nights?

The producers put their agenda right on the table in the season premiere. "Homicide" in its earlier episodes established itself as the cop show with no gunfights and no car chases. The character with the most active social life in those years was rotund Stan Bolander (Ned Beatty). The teaser for the Season 3 premiere (which, as was the norm, featured some of the detectives' best bickering and bantering) features Munch (Richard Belzer) ridiculing a TV soap opera. The episode then ends with the revelation that Detective Felton (Daniel Baldwin) has been carrying on a torrid affair with newly-appointed Lieutenant Russert (Isabella Hoffmann).

However, even that change in the show's game plan was not a brain-dead concession to network standards. The opening three-episode arc also features infrequent glimpses of Felton's weird, child-like wife, and pulls the plug on the affair. Center stage in these three episodes is Frank Pembleton (Emmy-winning Andre Braugher) and his crisis of faith after a series of religious-inspired murders.

The cast change for Season 3 featured the unfortunate exit of Jon Polito, whose Detective Crosetti (the Lincoln assassination conspiracy theorist) was a signature character the first two years. However, he's not just pushed aside without explanation. Crosetti's suicide lingers over the squadroom for half the year, with two entire episodes devoted to the aftermath of his death. "Crosetti", the episode where Bolander and Munch fish his body from the Chesapeake, features a tour-de-force performance by Clark Johnson as Detective Lewis, Crosetti's partner, trying to come to grips with the news.

Yaphet Kotto replaces Crosetti as the show's signature character -- someone you wouldn't find anywhere else on television. The African-American police lieutenant who played by the book was already an ancient TV cliche by the time "Homicide" came along. Kotto (and the writers) actually did something with this stereotype. Here we see Kotto not just threatening his detectives (Felton), but laughing at them, too (Bayliss and Munch). He plays politics with his superiors, and loses his cool when he's a victim of skin-tone racism. And, best of all, on one Sunday morning ("Last of the Watermen"), he runs into Munch in a city laundromat. And ignores him.

Other notable episodes:
-"Every Mother's Son", where Pembleton investigates the death of a teen at the hands of another teen. Never a show to settle for typical right-wing cop show sentiment, "Homicide" instead shows how the mothers (accidentally) befriend each other.
-"The City that Bleeds", the start of a three-episode run detailing the shootings of Bolander, Felton and Howard.
-"End Game", or The One with Steve Buscemi. Second only to "Three Men and Adena" (Season 1) for Pembleton's best interrogation in The Box.
-"All Through the House". It's Christmas in Baltimore. Bolander gets overly pious over the squadroom tree, Bayliss tries to hustle Giardello at a game of hearts, and Munch has to babysit with the precocious son of a slain street-corner Santa Claus.
-"A Model Citizen". Everyone gets something to do, from Bayliss's creepy romance with crime-scene artist Emma Zoole, to Munch's efforts at taking an alcohol-awareness class, to Felton receiving more bad news about his marrage. "Homicide" was always noteworthy for its use of alternative and hip-hop music on the soundtrack. This one ends with "Hurt", years before Johnny Cash made it cool again.
-"The Gas Man". The season (and, at the time, nearly the series) finale, focusses entirely on Bruno Kirby as a released convict stalking Pembleton. The DVD also features commentary by writer Henry Bromell and director Barry Levinson. Together with the Season 3 featurette, narrated by Daniel Baldwin, these DVD extras give you all the behind-the-scenes dirt. It's a shame that we only got one commentary track, but it is a good one.

The police drama has always depended on the solve-the-story-in-a-hour formula. With the rise of CSI and Law & Order, the characters have faded even more in favor of the plot. Cable series, such as The Shield and The Wire, try to fill that void by rubbing our face in the seedy underbelly of the cop world. During the nineties, though, Homicide: Life on the Street struck a balance between the law enforcement process and the human aftermath of vicious crimes. Rarely were cops dirty; instead the detectives lived full lives within their little universe, struggling daily against rage and sorrow and apathy. This series includes some of the greatest TV ever made.
The show is set in Baltimore, during a time when herion and drug gangs hit the city hard. Unsolved murders and stray bullets hitting children are common. Sometimes, the detectives get the murderer. Just as often, they don't, or they find him but don't have enough to charge the guy. Intense interrogation sessions in "the box" top anything NYPD Blue gives you, and on Homicide they are much less likely to resort to physical force. When Pembelton and Bayliss team up on a suspect, it's all psychological.
The directing in this series broke new ground in television at the time: use of handheld cameras, obvious and jarring editing, lighting that flattered a brick wall more than a star's face. The casting is revolutionary even, due to the lack of any actor there simply for looks. No one could be faulted for mistaking them for really Baltimore Police. (And that IS Baltimore in the background- everything is shot on location, even the soundstage scenes.) But their lack of traditional Hollywood glamour shouldn't detract from the talent this cast exudes, including Andre Braughner, Ned Beatty, Melissa Leo, Yaphet Kotto, and Richard Beltzer.
NBC didn't promote the series so well, and stuck it on Friday night, so most people have never even heard of Homicide. But cops say it's the most realistic police drama they've ever seen. So spring for the DVD set, any season. It's worth it.

In my opinion, season three, the first full season of Homicide, was the best. The ratings had been anemic in seasons one and two, so that it was often called during that time "the best TV show you're not watching". Hoping to improve ratings, NBC insisted on a number of changes, both cosmetic and thematic. Unfortunately, talented but unphotogenic veteran actor Jon Polito was ordered dropped from the cast as the network clamored for more on-screen romance and violence. In order to have episodes the network considered more sensational air during "sweeps" periods, NBC sometimes aired episodes out of order, often to the detriment of story arcs that had developed over several episodes. Probably the most infamous of such gaffes during this season 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"; it was in this latter hour that the death of Detective Steve Crosetti, Jon Polito's character, was revealed and explained. The detective had been in Atlantic City on vacation since the end of the second season's four episodes. For reasons never fully explained or understood, especially considering Crosetti's deep religious beliefs mentioned on the show during the first two seasons, he returns to Baltimore and kills 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. Fortunately, the DVD set remedies this and has the episodes in the order they were intended to be aired.
This 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. What makes it even worse - if that is possible - is that the detectives were at a completely wrong address at the time of the shooting due to an administrative typo on the arrest warrant. These "cliffhanger" episodes were intended to cause the network execs to decide to let Homicide finish out its season, in spite of its ratings, and they did the trick.
Isabella Hoffmann is added to the cast this year as the new night shift commander, Megan Russert. Although she was added by the network for all the wrong reasons - to "pretty up" the cast - she is an outstanding actress and a welcome addition throughout her tenure. Russert misses detective work, though, and in the Christmas episode "All Through the House" she joins Meldrick on an investigation into the murder of a material witness when she discovers she knows something about the victim's case. During this same episode Munch and Bolander investigate the death of a man in a Santa Claus suit and Munch spends the evening with a child they believe is the victim's son. Munch is trying to hide from the boy what he believes is his father's fate, but is finally about to tell him what he thinks has happened when Bolander returns with the boy's father, bruised but OK. It turns out that the murder victim had mugged the boy's father and stolen his Santa suit only to be mugged and murdered himself later that night.
In one of the series' best season finales, "Gas Man", Bruno Kirby stars as a recently released ex-con who is out to kill detective Frank Pembleton (Andre Braugher) because he had helped lock him up years ago. Kirby plays a loser who, years ago, had falsely claimed to be a qualified repairman so that he could earn a few quick bucks by repairing a gas heater. His faulty repair work causes an explosion and the death of the family whose heater he repaired, and he is angry that he was made a "test case" and tried and convicted of the family's deaths. At the end of the show his plan of revenge has seemed to work out, and he is ready to murder Frank, but ultimately he is all talk and cannot go through with it. The final line of the episode, delivered by Pembleton, is typical of his Shakespearean musings. He is told that he is lucky that the ex-con did not kill him. He responds by saying "Luck had nothing to do with it. God reached down and graced a fool with wisdom." Ultimately, we never know if Frank is talking about himself-for how he handles himself in the situation, or the ex-con for realizing that killing Frank will solve nothing.
These episodes are typical of the high quality drama, often with a sense of irony, you'll experience in this third season of Homicide. So, if you liked seasons one and two, I know you'll love this one too. Highly recommended.
P.S. I am reviewing season three here because I have the room to go into details. However, if you already know you like the entire series, seasons 1-7 are now selling as a package set on Amazon for about $350. This will give you considerable savings over buying the seasons one at a time.

"Homicide: Life on the Street" is by far the greatest show the world has ever been exposed to. The writing, casting, and acting are all second to none! The fact that the show was shot and produced in Baltimore gives it the unique and unparalled touch that makes this show so special. There has been no characters on television to date that can match that of Andre Braugher's character of Frank Pembleton. The man is a genius. Richard Belzer makes John Munch a very special character that makes you cynical just listening to him. All of the characters are unique and very, very special to the show...more so in the earlier seasons where the emotion and drama were less "televisionized" and real-to-life. This is a show that captures the human condition in the frame of homicide detectives and leaves you feeling the precious nature of life.

I really don't have terms glowing enough to describe this season of Homicide. Smart, funny, heartwrenching and thought-provoking, this season is television at its absolute best. Of all the shows I've seen over the years, nothing is better than this.

After a bumpy two seasons, "Homicide" was given a whole season of episodes (as opposed to the four or five episodes that made up season two) to play with. The results are still interesting to watch in this DVD set. From the introduction of new shift commander Russert (Isabella Hoffman) to the unexpected loss of one of their own (done in a truly powerful way in one of the best episodes of that season), the third season had some major upheavals and even tighter storylines for its main characters. And the stories were crisp and powerful, ranging from the intense manhunt for a serial killer in the season premiere; the chilling "Every Mother's Son", in which a young boy is the suspect in another boy's death; and the season ender, "The Gas Man", as a released convict seeks revenge against the detective who put him away. As usual, the cast is exceptional, mangaing to ellicit heartwrenching emotion and even gallows humor out of the most bizarre situations. If you course loved the previous release of the first two seasons, this one should be a no-brainer. Highly recommended.

When I first caught the season 3 episodes of Homicide: Life on the Street, I thought it was the second coming of the drama series, unlike anything I'd seen. Now, more than a decade after its airing, I'm not so sure that's true - it's far more conventional than I ever gave it credit for. Plotlines like Russert's discovery of her ex-partner's spousal abuse ("Partners"), the watering-down of dark/light-skinned African American racism a la Spike Lee's School Daze ("Nothing Personal") or the lame Frank-vs.-beauracracy plotline ("Cradle to Grave") all seem to come out of the affecting-social-melodrama handbook. It means, I think, that Homicide hadn't quite come into its own yet, not in the sure and galvanizing way it did in seasons 4-6. Perhaps it was still unsure of what to do with the fact that it had accidnetally stumbled onto one of the best performances in the history of television in Andre Braugher, and felt the need to set him off as much as possible. Or perhaps it was a need to give their most recognizable face, Daniel Baldwin, more screentime (who could care about the Beth-kids debacle plotline?). Some episodes are rightly considered classics - like the devastating "Every Mother's Son" and the gorgeous send-off "Crosseti," which features work of magestic grief and strength by both Ned Beatty and Clark Johnson. Those episodes prove that Homicide was on the right track, but I disagree with most fans that think it had already entered its glory days - the best were ahead.

I say maybe because I'm only now, in 2005, discovering this show and going through, season by season. Seasons 1 and 2 were obviously amazing, but I had a sense watching Season 3 that the creators and cast had hit their stride and I was probably watching the show's peak. I'm now on Season 4 and there was a noticible lag (though by midseason I would say it picked back up to Season 3's level).
I can't add much to some of the excellent consumer reviews in terms of detail. I can just say that I rarely like a television show. I can count them on one hand: NYPD BLUE, Twin Peaks, The Guardian, The Wire... and now I'm discovering this amazing TV series. I got into it through becoming a fan of the Wire and looking for past work of the show's creators. I thought NYPD Blue was the apex of the cop drama done artfully. And now I'm discovering that there was ANOTHER Cop drama airing COCURRENTLY that I had no idea of, that was actually BETTER. Why better? It simply reaches further. Blue's strength was its realism via understatement. Homicide LOTS could not be more different. There is nothing understated about this show. There is great overacting. Some of the moments from Pembleton, Giordello and Bayliss are so over the top in a wonderful way. This isn't realism to be illustrative of humanity. It's more like a play where the characters deliver wonderfully scripted lines that are ILLUMINATIVE of humanity in the way that few examples of this kind of writing do. It's also more creatively experimental. Blue found a look and a feel that was groundbreaking and fresh and stuck with it. On this show, though, I like that you can feel the constant change in directors and the non-stop tinkering with the form. And one thing that can't be overstated is how FUNNY this show is. The characters are all really grouchy and the interactions make some of the best dry humor I've ever seen.
This is a truly brilliant series and one of its best seasons.

I won't get many this review was helpfuls because I'm not going into any detail of plot and characters etc.. I'm simply saying for any fan of drama, comedy and pathos - this is simpley the best tv drama ever produced. I followed its' journey from beginning to end during its original broadcast - despite the time changes and interuptions in scheduling. You cannot buy better television at any price - buy them all and enjoy.