Television Review: Fallen Heroes: Part II (Homicide: Life on the Street, S6X23, 1998)

Fallen Heroes: Part II (S06E23)

Airdate: 8 May 1998

Written by: James Yoshimura
Directed by: Kathryn Bigelow

Running Time: 45 minutes

The penultimate season of Homicide: Life on the Street serves as a textbook example of a series “jumping the shark”—a term coined to describe the moment a show’s creative direction spirals into self-parody or desperate, ratings-driven spectacle. By its sixth season, Homicide had long abandoned the unflinching, unglamorous urban realism that defined its early years, trading gritty authenticity for heightened melodrama and procedural theatrics. Nowhere is this decline more evident than in Fallen Heroes: Part II, the season’s finale. While the episode itself is competently crafted, its reliance on over-the-top plot twists and manufactured emotional beats starkly contrasts with the show’s original ethos. Many long-time fans viewed the season—and this episode in particular—as the logical endpoint for the series, fearing that any further continuation would only compound the damage done by NBC’s increasingly misguided demands for “ratings-friendly” content. The decision to greenlight a seventh season, despite the creative exhaustion evident in Season 6, proved them tragically right.

The episode follows the fallout from the shocking events of Fallen Heroes: Part I, where Junior Bunk, the son of drug lord Georgia Rae Mahoney, stages a massacre at Baltimore City Police headquarters. Three officers are killed, Detectives Ballard and Gharty are wounded, and the department’s authority is publicly undermined. While the question of whether Junior acted alone—or on Georgia Rae’s orders—remains unresolved, Lieutenant Giardello’s priority becomes reasserting police control over the streets. Graffiti praising Junior’s actions appears, symbolising the crisis of legitimacy the force faces. The police retaliate swiftly: Georgia Rae’s organisation is dismantled, her lieutenants arrested, and even the usually calm Detective Bayliss descends into violence, savagely beating Georgia Rae’s driver in an interrogation room. Meanwhile, other suspects opt for armed resistance, escalating the body count. Georgia Rae herself is killed by her own men, but the violence continues. In a climactic scene, Bayliss is shot while shielding Pembleton, who freezes in fear. Bayliss’s fate is left hanging, and Pembleton, consumed by guilt, resigns from the force. The episode’s relentless focus on bloodshed and institutional collapse underscores the chaos that defines its final act.

The finale also resolves the long-running Luther Mahoney storyline, initiated in Season 5 when Detective Kellerman controversially killed the drug kingpin. Lt. Giardello insists that accountability must follow the police headquarters shooting, and Kellerman becomes the scapegoat. Stivers betrays him, revealing that the original shooting was not as “clean” as the official report claimed. Kellerman admits to overreacting, explaining that he acted to protect Stivers and Lewis, who had covered up his actions. Pembleton demands Kellerman face charges, but Giardello instead forces him to resign, sparing Stivers and Lewis their careers. This resolution highlights the series’ recurring theme of institutional corruption, where loyalty to the unit trumps legal or moral rectitude. While Kellerman’s exit is poignant—his career, which defined him, is stripped away—Giardello’s pragmatic choice reflects the show’s grim understanding of how police culture prioritises stability over truth.

Season 6’s overall disappointment stems from NBC’s insistence on overhauling the cast and tone. While Detective Gharty, a blue-collar Everyman, provided a welcome counterpoint to his younger, hipper colleagues, other additions like Detective Ballard—explicitly marketed as “eye candy”—felt tokenistic and underwritten. Both characters survived the finale, but their futures remained uncertain, mirroring the show’s own instability. The season’s nadir, however, was the departure of Pembleton, whose wit and moral complexity were central to the show’s identity. His resignation here marked a hollow victory for the series’ soul; without him, Homicide lost its anchor. The episode’s cliffhanger—Bayliss’s survival—also hinted at the season’s tendency to prioritise shock value over meaningful storytelling.

Writer Tom Fontana and his team, including David Simon, attempted to balance closure for the Luther Mahoney saga with the show’s trademark realism. A key touchstone is Giardello’s reference to a real-life 1994 Washington, D.C., incident where a drug suspect killed three law enforcement officers in police headquarters. This grounding in reality lent credibility to Junior’s attack, suggesting that such violence was not merely plot contrivance but a plausible consequence of systemic failure. However, the script’s reliance on procedural neatness—Kellerman’s resignation as punishment, Pembleton’s noble but hollow exit—felt at odds with the show’s earlier willingness to embrace ambiguity. Yoshimura’s efforts to tie up loose ends were admirable, but the result felt rushed and overly schematic.

Kellerman’s departure is handled with surprising nuance. His admission of guilt, his attempt to protect his colleagues, and his eventual resignation all reflect a man grappling with his flaws. The scene where he nearly takes his own life but is prevented by Lewis adds emotional depth. Reed Diamond’s performance captures the weight of Kellerman’s choices, particularly in a final bar scene where he struggles to assert authority as a civilian, a poignant contrast to his days as a cop. The producers, however, seemed ambivalent about the moral stakes: Giardello’s decision to spare Stivers and Lewis suggests that institutional survival matters more than individual accountability. Yet Kellerman’s exit, while bleak, feels earned—a fitting end for a character who embodied the series’ exploration of moral compromise.

The season’s most glaring misstep was the continued elevation of Paul Falsone. By Season 6, Falsone had evolved from a flawed, morally flexible figure into a cartoonish “hero,” his repeated brushes with death and moral lapses excused by the writers. His arc here—where he manipulates Georgia Rae’s network while evading responsibility—felt increasingly disconnected from the show’s earlier grounded tone. Fans drew parallels to Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Wesley Crusher, a character similarly portrayed as too perfect and shielded from consequences. Falsone’s treatment undermined the series’ credibility, suggesting the writers had lost sight of its core themes.

Fallen Heroes: Part II succeeds as a tense, emotionally charged finale, but its flaws as a season-closer are telling. The episode’s strengths—its exploration of institutional decay, its nuanced handling of Kellerman, and its acknowledgment of real-world violence—were overshadowed by the compromises of Season 6 as a whole. For many fans, it felt like the ideal endpoint: a bittersweet reckoning with the show’s decline, rather than a prelude to Season 7’s bloated, melodramatic detours. By clinging to the series, NBC ensured that Homicide’s legacy would be defined not by its groundbreaking realism but by its final, desperate gasp for relevance. The episode’s tragic undertones—Bayliss’s possible death, Pembleton’s resignation, the erosion of trust within the police force—were all signs that the soul of the show had already left the building. In hindsight, Fallen Heroes: Part II is less an ending than a eulogy.

RATING: 6/10 (++)

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