First off, a clarification: “Night of the Living Dead” aired on NBC as the Season One finale of Homicide, well out of its intended order. The episode was shot to be the third episode, hence its review now instead of later in the season.
With that out of the way, we can tackle “Night of the Living Dead,” perhaps the most unique and interesting hour a cop drama has ever produced. In just a few short episodes, Homicide has impressed me for being so different from every other show in its genre, and “Night of the Living Dead” reinforced that further, making for a fascinating character study with minimal action and a heavy dose of humor and painfully blunt realism. In a lot of ways, it’s an anomaly of its time. As current cable show like Mad MenH could pull of the same thing now, but as a network show in the 90′s, it seems like Homicide was setting itself apart from the beginning, and I don’t think its impact can be understated.
“Night of the Living Dead” takes place during a miserably hot summer night when the air conditioning is out and the detectives of Baltimore don’t have any calls to look into, save for a man dressed as Santa threatening to shoot people from the roof of a building. The mysteries are either small or stagnant; Felton and Lewis seek to figure out who keeps lighting a candle every night, while Bayliss and Pembleton bicker over the Adena Watson murder, which still has no new leads. Bayliss is embarrased when he insists they bring in a suspect that turns out to be a kid in middle school.
The heat and lack of cases leads to bickering and frustration too. Gee is furious not only that no one will come fix the air conditioning, but that Pembleton refuses to disregard his orders to remove his tie. Munch, furious over getting dumped, yells and screams about how he’s so unlucky in love, while Bolander refuses to call him his partner and frets over asking out Blythe. Crosetti is flummoxed by his daughter’s request to have her boyfriend spend the night with her at his ex-wife’s house. Felton is exhausted after his wife keeps him up night after night trying tips to save their marriage. Howard is distracted by the fact that her sister’s cancer diagnosis came the same day her husband admitted an affair. On a night when there are no murders to go out and solve and no cool air, the detectives are left to their own devices, their problems simmering in the Baltimore heat.
The episode does a great job of glossing over some larger societal problems as well, keeping them significant, but not waving them in your face. First there’s the boy Bayliss mistaken calls in, who when asked what his parents do, replies, “get arrested.” The same boy falls asleep on the interrogation room table, no home to go to, but Bayliss kicks him out anyway, out into the night with no where to go. Later, as Gee attempts to find a way to fix the A/C, he finds a baby in a cage. After calling child services, they discover its the child of the cleaning woman, who can’t afford a babysitter, but didn’t want rats to go after her child, who she now fears she’ll never get back. Both are major social issues being presented, but handled with a certain amount of realistic callousness that the show quickly made its forte. They’re problems, but what can the heat rattled detectives do about it?
The episode ends full of hope, with Bayliss and Pembleton realizing something that could change their investigation into the Watson murder, and the revelation that it was Munch was lighting the candle as a memorial for all the victims, a surprising turn for the guy who was last seen yelling at his again ex-girlfriend. The parting shots of “Night of the Living Dead” are of Gee spraying the rest of the detectives with a garden hose on the roof. It’s a nice image for an episode that plays out like a session in a psychiatrists office.
I have to say, what impressed me most about “Night of the Living Dead” was that it’s the kind of hour you won’t find on network TV these days, let alone in the 90s when it aired. There’s a sense of brutal honesty and concentration on the characters that today is isolated to shows on cable. Even the best network shows these days have avoided focusing on their characters in this manner, instead concentrating on romantic entanglements and forward motion of the plot. “Night of the Living Dead” is funny and bleak, and that the show took a risk so early and tried an episode that doesn’t have their characters out in the field is really impressive. You’re not going to find an episode of CSI: Miami this good, I guarantee it.
Michael’s Score: 98
TUiW Grade: A+
Michael
ulyssesworkman
awarshauer
