Homicide Life on the Street - The Complete Season 3
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DVD Cover Information
Primary Contributor: BraugherDVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
Format: Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Full Screen, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 1000 minutes
Published: 2003
DVD Release Date: 2003-10-28
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: A&E Home Video
Movie Reviews of Homicide Life on the Street - The Complete Season 3
Movie Review: It's good but it's no Wire
Summary: 3 Stars
According to many, this is the season when the show came into its own. However, when I watch it, I just think of the source material and how it became The Wire: The Complete Series and I weep for the missed opportunity. This is when the show takes its steps toward becoming Law & Order - The Seventh Year, a better version of Law & Order, but still Law & Order. With all of its earnestness and MURDER IS BAD speechifying.
For the most part, it's pretty good. Andre Braugher is intense. Belzer is funny and cranky. The rest of the squad have their individual stories. The murder cases stay away from the cliches of the master criminal and the Ripped from the Headlines (and spindled and mutilated and spit out). But there's no humor. There's no levity. Everyone becomes deadly serious. And while this is a show about Homicide Detectives, the fact that everyone is SO SERIOUS all the time makes for some tedious viewing.
Of course, if you watch it in small doses, it's still brilliant. But watching it all at once and you get into these horrible loops where the detectives have to stop to talk about racism. Or the horribleness of murder. It's like that Robin Williams episode decided to cast a long dark shadow over the proceedings and everyone has to be as dour as a mortician. The show gets a little better towards the end and shows signs of experimentation (particularly the Bruno Kirby episode where it's all from his perspective) but it's still on its downward slide toward earnest seriousness.
Now this would be a four star review, except I have The Wire for comparison. And when comparing a cop show to The Wire, there is never any comparison.
Summary of Homicide Life on the Street - The Complete Season 3
If the first two seasons introduced one of the great television crime dramas, Homicide really came into its own during the third. Instead of the mere 13 episodes scattered between 1993 and 1994, NBC ordered up a full 20 for the 1994-1995 season. The entire terrific cast is back, with the exception of Jon Polito, whose absence is explained in the fourth episode ("Crosetti"). There are other changes, like the addition of Megan Russert (Isabella Hofmann) as shift commander. Aside from the fact that the mostly male staff now has a woman to report to (alongside Yaphet Kotto's Lt. Giardello), it turns out that Russert has a "history" with one of the detectives. Homicide always excelled in its exploration of racial and office politics; now sexual politics would become a bigger issue. Religion also comes to the fore as Pembleton (Andre Braugher) is finally forced to confront the loss of his faith while working on a case ("The White Glove Murders") involving several aid workers (episodes 1-3). Meanwhile, his partner, Bayliss (Kyle Secor), is coming to resemble the naive young rookie of the first two seasons less and less by the second... while getting to enjoy a little more romance than the rest of the squad--especially the hapless Meldrick (Clark Johnson). But all is not sturm and drang. Humor still finds a place in each episode and Munch (Richard Belzer) still gets many of the best lines. In the season premiere ("Nearer My God to Thee"), for instance, he tells Bolander (Ned Beatty), "There is no such thing as gratuitous sex. Gratuitous violence, yes... Sex cannot and will not ever be gratuitous." He could be describing Homicide itself, in which nothing is ever gratuitous, especially the sudden loss of human life, which is never--and should never be--treated lightly. --Kathleen C. FennessyDrama DVD Video
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