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Baltimore's finest 'Homicide' celebrates 100th episode with party and parting shots Friday, May 08, 1998 Tony Norman, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
BALTIMORE - Try as hard as they could, the real cops couldn't get in. The 100th episode celebration for "Homicide: Life on the Street" was the hottest ticket in Maryland that night, bringing the upper-crust of entertainment and political royalty for hundreds of miles to the Globe Brewing Company.
The television show's security staff, a grim-faced crew of body builders partial to gold crucifixes and wearing shades even at night, inspected everyone's badges. If you were wearing a laminated pass with yellow crime scene tape cutting across a faux police badge, you got in.
If you were wearing a real police badge, shining silver in the rays of the spotlight, you didn't. A couple of burly cops who drove up on motorcycles tried to talk their way in, mixing appeals to the supervising guard's conscience with joking threats, but he wasn't budging.
"If I let you in," the security guard said glancing at his watch, "that'll be my ass. I can't let anybody in who don't have a pass, period."
But the officers were equally insistent that "Homicide," which is about to finish its sixth season at NBC against all odds, was about the struggle of real cops like them on Baltimore's mean streets. Why shouldn't they, the warriors on the front lines of "Charm City" bask in the reflected glory of their fictional counterparts at a waterfront mecca?
The doorman seemed to consider this as he stepped aside to allow a DJ carrying a carton full of vinyl records into the club. A group of elegantly dressed women and an elderly man followed, badges flashing and laughing among themselves. Closing up the rear behind them with his date was actor Peter Gerety, better known to millions of television viewers as Det. Stuart Gharty, the show's Irish-Catholic sage.
After stepping back in front of the entrance, the doorman placed his hand over his heart apologetically. "I'm sorry," he said to the two police officers. "Without a badge, I can't let you in."
Former Baltimore Sun reporter David Simon, whose book "Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets" formed the basis for the series, arrived looking ill at ease in his tuxedo. The spotlights rotating in front of the brewery and cutting the starry night imparted a surreal quality to the usual blue collar normalcy of the area.
Across the street, beer parties erupted on front steps as "Homicide" fans in the neighborhood cheered the actors whose faces they knew, but whose real names escaped them. The blue light of several television screens flickered on porches behind them and shouts of recognition punctuated the night.
"The characters continue to evolve and we have some big surprises in store for them," the show's co-executive producer Barry Levinson told a reporter from the NBC affiliate. The excitement over Levinson's arrival had barely subsided when a limo bearing a newly shorn Kyle Secor (Det. Tim Bayliss), Reed Diamond (Det. Mike Kellerman) and Clark Johnson (Det. Meldrick Lewis) deposited the three stars on the sidewalk in front of the press gantlet crowding the entrance.
The trio was soon joined by Richard Belzer (Det. John Munch), who cut a flamboyant, if gangly figure in his black suit.
"What about what you people did to Princess Di, you bastards," Johnson shouted in mock anger as the bulbs flashed. The appreciative press corps had its first big laugh of the evening. Accompanied by a beautiful woman, Johnson hammed it up for the cameras.
"This is the best show on television," Diamond said exuding some of his character's former enthusiasm. "A show like this literally forces you to do your best work."
The cheering across the street reached a crescendo when Andre Braugher (Det. Frank Pembleton) and his wife Ami Brabson (Mary Pembleton) drove up in their own car with Braugher at the wheel.
As the show's moral center, Braugher is considered by most critics, if not Emmy voters, to be television's finest actor. Braugher waded slowly up the walkway with Brabson serenely in tow, as questions about his leaving the show he once carried on his shoulders rained down on him.
"I'm not happy and I'm not unhappy," Braugher said with a smile that looked forced and unnatural on a face viewers have long identified with the soul of skepticism. "It's just time to move on and do other things. 'Homicide' was an incredibly good run for me, but I have to stretch as an actor and find new challenges."
Braugher has given this same answer to every interviewer since announcing he was leaving the show to concentrate on movies and theater. Tonight's 100th episode will be his last, but the door is open for guest shots, which effectively put to death rumors his character would be killed off.
With Braugher's arrival, followed shortly by Yaphet Kotto (Lt. Al Giardello), Toni Lewis (Det. Terri Stivers) and Callie Thorne (Det. Laura Ballard), the party moved into full swing inside the club.
Hundreds of people crowded the cavernous room and dance floor and it was difficult to hear what the person standing next to you was saying, but the mad dash for interviews was on. Waiters bearing trays loaded with gourmet sea food and hors d'oeuvres patrolled the floor while Parliament and James Brown dictated the evening's beat.
"The main focus of the show is on the individual officers and not the city's problems," Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke said when asked if he ever feared for Baltimore's image as a result of the show's body count.
"It generates millions of dollars for the city every year. It humanizes police and the work they do. There's no downside to 'Homicide,' " Schmoke said. Still, he admitted that the episode starring Robin Williams that ran during the show's second season caused a bit of a stir when it aired.
"Some viewers called City Hall because they were upset that Williams' wife on the show was killed near Camden Yards, which is very safe," the mayor said. "People wanted to be assured it hasn't become a 'bad' area. The incident on the show confused them."
Clayton Le Bouef, the Washington, D.C.-based actor who plays Colonel George Barnfather, the squad's commander, wandered the floor looking far more casual than he does on television.
"I personally don't feel [my character] is as bad as people make him," Le Bouef said with a laugh. "Bosses are in a funny predicament. I hope the writers return to the story line that explored the politics of Giardello's relationship with the precinct's command structure."
Le Bouef spent much of last summer in Pittsburgh starring in August Wilson's "Seven Guitars" and spoke warmly of the city and the people he met. He said he wanted to return to Pittsburgh with one of his own productions.
Gerety raved about his first full season as a "Homicide" regular and was full of praise for what the writers were doing with his character. Kotto said he also considered himself blessed, but looked forward to another season as the squad's benevolent dictator. With Braugher's departure, look for Kotto's Giardello character to loom larger than he ever has.
One character viewers won't be seeing, though his presence has loomed large in the background of the series for the last couple of years is Luther Mahoney, played with Luciferean guile by Erik Todd Dellums.
Dellums' drug lord character was killed off at the end of season five, a victim of a questionable shoot by Kellerman, but the legal and psychic ramifications of his death have rocked the homicide unit ever since, leading to last week's dramatic shootout that resulted in the death and wounding of several cops and detectives.
"I came here tonight to lobby [co-executive producer] Tom Fontana about being in 'Oz,' " Dellums said about the HBO series the "Homicide" creative team works on.
As the most popular villain in "Homicide's" history, Dellums, the son of California Democratic congressman Ron Dellums, was startled when he learned he'd been written out, but respects the writers' judgments.
"As an actor, the most important thing is to be working," he said. "The writing on this show is so superb that you can't help wanting to be a part of it in some way, even if it's a three-second flashback."
Dellums was so popular with the viewers that the writers contemplated bringing the actor back to play his evil sister Georgia Rae, but NBC put the kibosh on that idea and cast Hazelle Goodman in the role as the woman whose murderous schemes nearly brings the squad down.
Working the crowd with his mother, who made sure he never missed an opportunity to be interviewed, Dellums managed to charm everyone from cast members like Seda ("you're my man,") to fans who claimed to be in awe of his "superb rendition of evil."
"We're amazed how we got here," Levinson said sipping a drink near the shrimp bar. "We found a place that worked for an audience that was economically good for the network." Levinson refused to speculate beyond that why "Homicide," which regularly loses its time slot to such lame fare as "Nash Bridges," is going into its seventh season, but he was clearly grateful and relieved.
"There's still a lot of work to be done with my character, a lot to be revealed," Secor said when asked how he felt about standing in the spotlight without his onscreen partner Braugher for the first time since the series debuted.
"Bayliss is going through a lot and his character keeps shifting. The mysteries of his sexual identity are a big part of this, which makes the role both challenging and fun. The writers have been good to me."
But uncertainty about whether "Homicide" would get picked up for a seventh season led to creative decisions that put some characters in a story arc that couldn't be forestalled another season and retain any realism.
"This whole Luther story line ends [tonight]," Johnson said. "It won't go beyond this season. We're going to have our hands full dealing with the aftermath next season. Whatever the writers come up with, we're ready for it."
Diamond is the most prominent casualty of the current story arc. It was his character's questionable shooting of Luther Mahoney that led to last week's bloody shootout at the precinct house. Tonight, Pembleton finally confronts him and the show will never be the same.
"I couldn't see how we could pick the character and move on as if nothing had happened," Diamond said. "But Tom [Fontana] and I worked it out. Kellerman goes out in a way that's not predictable and does honor to the show and the character."
"I think the great thing about 'Homicide' is that we reinvent the show every week," Fontana said. "As much as we're going to miss Andre and Reed, we still have a lot of stories to tell. I want to keep doing the show for as long as NBC will have us."
TELEVISION PREVIEW
'Homicide: Life on the Street'
When: It airs tonight at 10 on NBC.
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