Television Review: Double Blind (Homicide: Life on the Street, S5X18, 1997)

Double Blind (S05E18)

Airdate: 11 April 1997

Written by: Jeanne Blake & Lee Blessing
Directed by: Uli Edel

Running Time: 46 minutes

Homicide: Life on the Street, a series once lauded for its unflinching commitment to gritty realism and moral introspection, arrived at a crossroads in its fifth season. By that time, the show—initially a beacon of televisual authenticity, mirroring the complexities of urban policing and systemic injustice—had begun to succumb to the gravitational pull of network demands. The latter seasons, increasingly shaped by a hunger for mainstream appeal, often prioritized sensationalism and melodrama over the nuanced, documentary-style storytelling that defined its early years. Yet amid this creative drift, the episode Double Blind emerges as a rare and welcome anomaly. Directed with understated precision and written with a return to the series’ philosophical core, this installment stands out as a testament to the show’s enduring capacity to interrogate the murky ethical terrain of law enforcement and human behavior. Through its dual narratives—one rooted in the series’ sprawling mythology, the other a self-contained exploration of domestic violence—the episode recaptures the moral gravity that once made Homicide a benchmark for procedural drama.

The title “Double Blind” proves apt, encapsulating the episode’s bifurcated structure while alluding to its thematic preoccupation with obscured truths and moral ambiguity. The first storyline resurrects a narrative thread from the show’s inception, weaving a poignant tapestry of loss, resilience, and unresolved trauma. Four years prior, as depicted in Season 1’s episode A Shot in the Dark, Officer Chris Thormann (Lee Tergesen) was left blind after being shot by career criminal Charles Flavin (Larry Hull). Thormann’s subsequent conviction of Flavin, supported by his colleagues, seemed to offer a semblance of closure. Yet in Double Blind, this closure unravels: Flavin, now hailed as a hero for saving a correctional officer during a prison riot, petitions for parole. Thormann, still adapting to the life of a blind man with the support of his wife Eva (Edie Falco), faces the agonizing prospect of Flavin’s release. The emotional weight of this subplot is carried by Detective Lewis (Clark Johnson), who stands in for the late Detective Crosetti—Thormann’s best friend and former partner—offering both professional and personal solace. Their dynamic becomes a microcosm of the show’s thematic DNA: loyalty, duty, and the collision of institutional justice with personal anguish.

The second storyline, though ostensibly simpler, delves into the cyclical brutality of domestic abuse, framing it as a societal failing rather than a private tragedy. The murder of Franz Rader, a German immigrant and restaurant worker, leads Detectives Bayliss (Kyle Secor) and Pembleton (Andre Braugher) to his wife Lucille (Maureen Kerrigan), hospitalised for injuries sustained in an abusive marriage. Lucille accuses her teenage daughter Billie (Monica Keena) of the killing, a claim Billie initially confesses to. The central tension here hinges on motive: was this an act of self-defense or a calculated expression of vengeance? Pembleton, typically the embodiment of prosecutorial rigor, surprises both his partner and viewers by adopting an almost paternal stance toward Billie, guiding her responses to secure a lesser charge. His uncharacteristic empathy, later contextualized by a fleeting admission of his own family problems, underscores the episode’s refusal to reduce moral dilemmas to binary judgments.

The script, written by husband-and-wife duo Jeanne Blake and Lee Blessing, masterfully interlaces these narratives to interrogate the fluidity of right and wrong. In the Flavin-Thormann arc, the redemption of a violent criminal through a single heroic act is neither sanctified nor dismissed outright. A standout scene sees the correctional officer saved by Flavin approach Thormann, acknowledging the impossibility of reconciling their conflicting perspectives. Thormann’s quiet resignation—followed by palpable relief when Flavin’s parole is denied—captures the show’s signature realism: justice, here, is neither poetic nor pure, but a fragile compromise shaped by human frailty.

The Rader case similarly resists easy moralising. The episode lays bare the systemic neglect that enables domestic violence to fester, from the coworkers who feign ignorance to the legal system’s impotence in the face of a victim’s refusal to testify. This latter point is starkly illustrated in the cold open, where Billie pleads with a desk sergeant to intervene before her mother is killed, only to be met with bureaucratic helplessness. By the time she pulls the trigger, the act feels less like a crime and more like an inevitable collapse of societal safeguards. Yet the writers refuse to absolve Billie entirely; her admission that she was never attacked or abused herself complicates the narrative, ensuring the episode avoids didacticism.

Uli Edel’s direction, while generally taut, occasionally falters under the weight of extraneous subplots. The recurring thread involving Kellerman (Reed Diamond) and Dr. Cox (Michelle Forbes) feels shoehorned in, a nod to season-long arcs that distracts from the central themes. More problematic is the episode’s closing moments, in which Bayliss visits his abusive uncle George (Robert Bonarth). Framed as a cliffhanger for the season finale, the scene—though emotionally charged—leans on cliché, its dramatic payoff feeling contrived compared to the organic complexity of the main plots.

Yet these quibbles pale beside the episode’s triumphs. “Double Blind” succeeds not merely as a standalone story but as a reclamation of Homicide’s original ethos. In an era when the show was increasingly pressured to conform to primetime tropes, this installment dared to confront the messy, unresolved realities of justice and human behavior. It acknowledges that victims are not always blameless, that perpetrators can wear the masks of heroes, and that the line between crime and survival often dissolves under scrutiny.

The episode also serves as a quiet elegy for the series’ earlier, more audacious self. The Flavin-Thormann storyline, with its long-term consequences and focus on personal resilience, harks back to the serialized depth of Season 1, while the Rader case channels the social critique of episodes like Gone for Goode. Pembleton’s evolution from a by-the-book detective to a man capable of bending the rules for a perceived greater good mirrors the show’s own oscillation between institutional authority and moral relativism—a tension that defined its best years.

Ultimately, Double Blind is a reminder of what made Homicide revolutionary: its refusal to sanitize the moral ambiguities of law enforcement, and its commitment to portraying characters not as heroes or villains, but as fallible human beings navigating an imperfect system. In the broader context of Season 5—a season often criticized for its tonal inconsistency and reliance on soap opera theatrics—this episode feels like a fleeting return to form, a brief but luminous rekindling of the show’s original fire. While it may not fully redeem the season’s missteps, it endures as a masterclass in ethical storytelling, a quiet rebellion against the very network pressures that sought to dilute the series’ soul.

RATING: 7/10 (+++)

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