Homicide: Life on the Street: classic or the best show ever created?

Why did Channel Four fuck with it so much? We never got to see the end.

I think the reason why I love it so much were the details they got so right. There was an episode where a kid gets shot dead in a mall, the parents are called into a room, completely numb from what's just happened. Then someone pops their head round the door and says "Does anyone here own a black buick, reg no. whatever" and the father looks round, distracted from his thoughts and goes "Huh, oh yes that's mine, I'll move it" and goes out to move the car. It was the contrast between the sheer ordinariness of having to shift his car with the trauma of what had just happened to him, and the fact that he just switched into auto-pilot and did it, that made the moment ten times more poignant than it would have been. I'm probably not capturing it very well but the show was full of situations like that - just written and acted with that bit more imagination.

And it's hard to think of a show making better use of a telephone ringtone and a board with marker pens.

Favourite character - Munch because of the way he revels in his unpopularity.

i find it hard to remember the details about homicide, i just remmeber growing up with it and loving it

ilx regulars will know about my love for oz

One thing I didn't realize when I was watching the show was that the guy who played Meldrick had actually spent a lot of time in Canada, and spent half his time living here. I found that out when I was in the Chapters on Bloor street, walked around a corner into (I think) the photography aisle, and there he was flipping through something. Also found out that he's Molly Johnson's brother. Neat!

All the characters on HLOTS (except for those brutal last few seasons, only brutal in comparison to the sheer genius of the first five or six) were SO complete.

I know so many damn extras in episodes of HLOTS that it's silly.

The only show i've ever felt emotionally attached to - reading the description upthread about the finales made me sad all over again.

andy

btw, i meant the 3rd when i said the 5th. it's saturday.

andy

http://www.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/9711/12/law.order/

quote...
NEW YORK (CNN) -- The last time "Law & Order" joined forces with its NBC partner "Homicide" to solve a case, the shows' detectives were looking for a suicide bomber. The crossover episode proved popular with viewers from both shows, and gave each drama a Nielsens infusion.

So it only makes sense that the two programs' producers would seek out another joint venture. This year, crossover director Ed Sherin says, the teams are trying to solve "the mysterious death of a beautiful model, who happens to be 14 years old."
end quote...

that said, this was posted in 1997 so...

and here (http://www.lawandorder-fr.com/guide_episodes/crossovers.php3) it says (in french no less) that this is actually the third:

A ce jour, Law & Order (New York District) compte quatre cross-overs répartis comme suit :

one i didn't know about:
6.13 - Charm City 1/2 (Panique dans le métro) dans L&O (NYD).
4.12 - For God and Country 2/2 (Pour le bien du pays) dans Homicide.

this was the last one:
8.06 - Baby, It's You 1/2 (Mon enfant) dans L&O (NYD).
6.05 - Baby It's You 2/2 dans Homicide.

this one on saturday:
9.14 - Sideshow 1/2 (Querelles de clochers) dans L&O (NYD).
7.15 - Sideshow 2/2 (Dans les hautes sphères) dans Homicide.

isn't google a wonderful thing. 8)

andy

Of course they could be showing them the other way round and putting on one of the earlier ones. Either way I'll definitely watch it.

My favourite character arc has to be Kellerman. The handling of Bayliss' character always seemed forced to me, especially towards the end.

And Meldrick Lewis was the best character.

bringing good looking people on to the show was stupid AND dumb.

also appreciate that it only took 1.5 episodes for me to *hate* that uniformed superior guy who shits on G

i don't even know his name, i just know i'm gonna spend like 100 episodes hating him

so punchable

haven’t even mentioned meldrick or munch

i should make a clip of ned beatty, in the premiere, declaiming ‘Detective Munch’ over and over again

Streaming release borked the music synchs: https://www.reddit.com/r/Homicide_LOTS/comments/1evyokj/well_the_original_music_is_not_intact_on_the/

the music replacements are very bummertown & it kinda pisses me off

but i still am rewatching because i am kind of hypnotized by how nice it looks?

and i still marvel that all these incredible actors were all together in this fucking show in MY LIFETIME and i saw it happen on regular-ass normcore network tv (with
original music ~sob~)

the change in aspect ratio means sometimes you see additional weird/funny unintentional stuff in
the frsm (like a crew member crabwalking the floor of the interrogation room to get out of a shot)

*frame

just finished s3

s3e20 Gas Man w Bruno Kirby & Richard Edson is still pretty godamn great, kinda like a morbid Rosencrantz & Guildenstern episode in a way, the ending w Kirby & Braugher doesn’t ~quite~ land but it’s good regardless.

the music replacements though, gah, soul-crushing. terrible. at least they didn’t sub out the Spinners ffs

fuck, i could just watch yaphet kotto randomly move about the room

― mookieproof, Sunday, 7 January 2024 06:22 (eight months ago) bookmarkflaglink

i love how he delivers his lines, it’s like watching free jazz or something

― werewolves of laudanum (VegemiteGrrl), Sunday, 7 January 2024 06:35 (eight months ago) bookmarkflaglink

^^^^^^

Homicide coming to streaming has finally convinced my housemate to watch it with me, but after giving the streaming a try for a few episodes we got out my DVDs and switched to those. It was nice to see everyone all crisp and clear for once, but we decided that they are supposed to be grainy and that the shaky camerawork looks better in the original square frame. Plus it's nice not having to worry about the music.

i love how he delivers his lines, it’s like watching free jazz or something

There are so many different kinds of great acting in this show. From Braugher who is mesmerizing in this Great Actor way where you never forget you are watching a brilliant performance, to Clark Johnson who makes Meldrick seem like someone you've known your whole life, to Kotto who is exactly as you describe. Free jazz is the perfect phrase for it.

i heard an old interview w Braugher where he said tbat they would film the episodes all the way through start to finish, maybe up to 3 times fpr different angles etc

so it was at times like performing a play on stage

i dont think i ever knew that but it accounts for a lot of the uh, honesty?, in the acting performsnces? A certain mood in a character carries through a whole episode & comes through so clearly

but omg to work that way in tv seems like highwire tightrope walking. wild stuff

yeah the music is an essential part of that show. removing "no self control"? man fuck that

A classmate of mine behind-the-scenes in the film/TV world got to work on a show that had Braugher in the cast, and he said Braugher used to sing to himself in-between takes up to the point where the director yells "action." I wish there was an interview where he talked about that - I imagine every actor has their own approach to getting in the zone, but it's pretty awesome how that was Braugher's. He was supposed to be a really great guy on-set as well as wonderful to watch take after take, which made his death all the more sad.

I made it to about season 4 or so on the dads (or dvd rips) a while ago and kind of tapered off. I've been watching the whole thing through on Peacock and there's a little bit of malaise that creeps in by the last couple seasons. All of the cast swapping and such couldn't have helped.

Just started the movie/finale, and... damn, we've got almost all of the heavy hitters back in here!

i hope you are not questioning medical examiner julianna cox here

absolutely not

yeah i’m about ready to drop it - we are cycling through the dumb S4 sniper storyline & it’s so average, everything just feels so smoothed over, the stories, dialogue… aside from the actors themselves there’s so little left of what made the first couple of seasons so great

more of what they lost. some momentum, a little more reticence on making the characters be a bit obnoxious. feel like they toned down Munch a bit (I am not into the conspiracy shit, it was just a character aspect) and instead of ongoing bits like the bar having a new problem, we end up with the tepid bartender relationship triangle -- despite the actors portraying all the roles being great -- lighter stakes character drama

Giancarlo Esposito was great but also underserved!

VG otm

VG, just jump to the movie if you get bored. There's a time jump and, as far as I can tell so far, there's nothing essential in the last few seasons that's needed to watch it

i was sort of interested in seeing Pembleton’s stroke but i just dont wanna watch any of this anymore

honestly losing Beatty was where the drop off the cliff really happened. s3 still had good eps but s4 starts with dull and gets worse. i’m sorry if anyone is a fan but Reed Diamond is this show’s Poochie. Like that feels like such a network hire, even if its not. They turned on the soft-serve machine starting w s4 episode 1 and its spoon-fed, basic plot, no pop culture, no intellect, no dry wit, no sarcasm, no “alienating” content, just boring primetime tv zzz-town

Pembleton's stroke and the later episodes are good, not great. but that seems relatively early! Reed Diamond is a menace but they just sideline him for a long-ass time because he's introduced to pin shit on him imo, perhaps a writer's revenge. you're overall otm

which is sad, I would heretically say those first few seasons rival or outpace all of The Wire

xp no one is a fan of reed diamond

you may well be correct but also you are bringing me down : /

I should read the source book someday to see if they just ran out of adaptation

honestly it goes actually wrong after they finally, sorry for not using spoiler tags but it's been decades, take out Luther Mahoney. he's the big bad and their big idea was whether the shooting was clean, and then absolutely fumbled the bag trying to make his sister a nemesis while barely showing her and making it about detective in-fighting around a detective we never cared about. argh!

The last season has that great Esposito/Ron Eldard Hollis Brown/Frankie Teardrop episode tho.

^^Directed by Kathryn Bigelow!

I really love that Steve Allen & Jayne Meadows so from S6 too. An example of a lighter episode done right.

Great episodes directed by Jim McBride and Keith Gordon (who, like Bigelow, worked on the glorious Wild Palms), too. The producers enjoyed hiring indie film directors

Whit Stillman even squeezed Chris Eigeman into his episode.

S6 also has Subway which is one of the all-time great episodes.

the only time i've ever enjoyed reed diamond is when he gets shot in the face in the first episode of the shield

(spoilers for the very first episode of a 22-year-old show i guess)