"Homicide: Life on the Street" An Essay

Episode: "The Subway"

The subway.  Mass transit.  Millions of people use this mode of transportation each day.  It’s quite simple really.  You pay your fare, maneuver yourself through a maze of tunnels, people, and panhandlers, wait for your train, and let someone else do the driving for you.  It’s a simple mindless act, for a simple, mindless morning commute.  I used to work in NYC, and let me tell you, mass transit is the way to go.  It’s cheaper and less stressful, plus it affords you the opportunity of my favorite pastime: people watching.  You’ll see all sorts of characters on the subway.  Sometimes, you’ll see incredibly heinous acts...

When this episode of “Homicide: LOTS” opens up, it seems like a traditional story.  We see the average Baltimore morning, attention focused on the Inner Harbor and a couple saying goodbye for the day.  John Lange is a guy that we all know.  He’s brash and important, at least, he likes to think he is, his peers probably think he’s an asshole.  When you take the subway, you become accustom to the routine of waiting your turn, it’s an unspoken social rule.  Unless your John Lange.  You push your way through people and don’t look back.  After all, you don’t normally take mass transit, you drive, except on Friday’s, on Friday’s, you take mass transit because you “work the phones, talking wholesalers”.  Pretty average Friday, except for that time someone pushed you into an oncoming train, remember that?  Of course you do, because you’re still alive, for the next forty-five minutes or so.

Since I’ve never seen an episode of “Homicide: LOTS” prior to “The Subway”, I’m going to
assume that they follow the same formula that most prime-time dramas follow (and sitcoms for that matter): It’s a police drama and the title is “Homicide”, it’s a pretty safe bet that someone is going to die within the first five minutes (that is, if they aren’t already dead, also, this probably doesn’t happen in sitcoms, although, if it did, I’d certainly watch them).  The rest of the episode will then focus on detectives interviewing potential suspects, motives, conflict, and finally, resolution.  Unless it’s a multiple episode story arch, then add some more intense drama and call it a day.  

So generally speaking, if there’s a victim that requires a homicide detective, chances are, that one hundred percent of the time, that victim is dead.  John Lange didn’t die, so why call homicide?  This is what makes this story arch so incredible.  What if the deceased victim of a crime you’re investigating had a voice?  Would they be mad?  Sad?  Apologetic?  Remorseful?  Put yourself in the shoes of these officers.  Yes, they’re trained to deal with intense, deadly situations, but they’ve probably gotten used to the redundancies of police work.  This is obvious in the banter between the two other detectives searching for Sarah, Johns girlfriend, so the couple can have that one last goodbye.  Detective Pembleton and his partner, Detective Bayliss, are left to interview the victim and the suspect, with Pembleton going to the former.  He’s essentially speaking to a dead man.  How do you break the news to someone that they’re going to die?  Considering this is Baltimore, and you’re a homicide detective, you’ve experienced death, you’ve seen it, up close, daily.  You probably have a stack of unsolved cases in your office, but this time, you’ve got the chance to speak with a victim directly, this is unheard of in homicide work.  

Vincent D’Onofrio (John Lange) and Andre Braugher (Detective Pembleton) smack this out of the ball park.  D’Onofrio portrays his character like someone who doesn’t quite understand the gravity of the situation.  He’s incredibly hostile, and at one point compares himself to that of a death row inmate, he doesn’t even get a last meal.  He displays that he wasn’t an easy person to get along with, so this is his execution.  While at the same time, expresses shock when the firemen go through “a feat of engineering, for me”.  Again, he knows he’s a bit of a jerk, but surprised at whats being done at attempts to save him.  He continues taking out his frustrations on Pembleton the entire time, along with the EMS medic, all the while, he had no one to blame but himself, and the guy who pushed him, but seriously, situational awareness buddy, you’re asking for trouble when you’re too close to the tracks like that.  He’s going through the grieving process.  Pembleton doesn’t know what to do.  At a few points, he stands up and backs away, surprised by Lange’s hostility. 

He’s confronted with the fear of his own mortality. 

Eventually, Lange dies.  The climax leading up to his death is intense.  Every official on the scene is scrambling to prepare for this, Pembleton and Lange lock eyes and Lange says something about sugar maple trees and how they turn their leaves over when a storm is approaching to suck in the rain.  When you’re about to die, your mind goes haywire.  I like to think that this is a place your consciousness goes as a way to cope with impending doom.  You’ll hear stories from the battlefield about soldiers who were mortally wounded making jokes before dying.  It’s a coping mechanism.  No one wants to die, but it’s a sad fact that we all do.  If you had forty-five minutes to live, how would you act?  Angry?  Sad?  Apologetic?  Remorseful?

In the closing scene, Pembleton regurgitates the sugar maple fact to his partner as they’re
leaving the scene.  He says, “You learn something new everyday”.  I think he learned a lot more that day.  Then again, it’s just another day in the city.