What made "Homicide: Life on the Street" so special, and so different from the regular 'cop show', was its emphasis not on "whodunit", but on the impact of crime - the impact on the victims, the detectives, the families, even on the perpetrators. Imagine if your job was dealing with murder and murderers all day every day. How would that change you?
This episode is about hope and faith - both losing and regaining them. The crime victim in this case is a high-school friend of one of the most cynical detectives. Via flashbacks, we see how much naiveté and hope he used to have. In one particularly poignant scene, he himself ruminates on this: "What happens to us that we forget how wonderful it is just to hold another human being's hand?".
In parallel, we see another detective going through a religious crisis. Recent crimes, and recent events in his family, are causing him to lose faith. Finally, in the last scene one of the detectives ever-so- tentatively gives hope and faith another chance.
A beautiful episode. However, I wouldn't recommend it as an introduction to the series, as without knowing the back story of the two main detectives involved, it's not nearly as compelling.
This episode is about hope and faith - both losing and regaining them. The crime victim in this case is a high-school friend of one of the most cynical detectives. Via flashbacks, we see how much naiveté and hope he used to have. In one particularly poignant scene, he himself ruminates on this: "What happens to us that we forget how wonderful it is just to hold another human being's hand?".
In parallel, we see another detective going through a religious crisis. Recent crimes, and recent events in his family, are causing him to lose faith. Finally, in the last scene one of the detectives ever-so- tentatively gives hope and faith another chance.
A beautiful episode. However, I wouldn't recommend it as an introduction to the series, as without knowing the back story of the two main detectives involved, it's not nearly as compelling.
