crossedwires:

Gee: I can’t help thinking. Mrs Ellison gets shot and the mayor, the governor, the commissioner are on the phone within the hour.
Kay: A tourist gets shot outside the new stadium. It’s…
Gee: It’s not the kind of thing that keeps white folks coming to town. That’s what’s bothering me. We had a red ball going full throttle, but if, instead, Catherine Ellison’s name was Louella Jones with the 12th hundred block on Calhoun Street, would Beau have gotten an hour of overtime?

entegegenwartigung:

From “Scene of the Crime”:

Kay: “So Gharty got off.”
Megan: “Uh-huh. Tonight he’ll be - celebrating with his wife and family and tomorrow he’ll be back on the street.”
Kay: “It’s absurd, huh? Infuriating?”
Megan: “Oh, who knows, Kay. I should be shocked. I guess I - I should feel angry, but, I don’t know, I don’t.” [Megan lifts one shoulder in a shrug, walks away; Kay looks at her in consternation and follows; Megan continues, slowly] “Maybe Gharty’s no worse than the rest of us. People can’t trust the police and we can’t trust each other. So who’s left to rely on?”

I think “Scene of the Crime” is a seriously underrated episode; it’s one of the very best of season four and one of my favorite H:LotS episodes ever. Among other things, this plot in “Scene of the Crime” features some of Megan Russert’s very finest moments on the show. (I really admire Isabella Hofmann’s acting and wish I had more opportunities to watch her, but apparently she wasn’t in much besides H:LotS because of responsibilities related to raising her child with Daniel Baldwin.)

Russert became one of my favorites on H:LotS, but she is not a particularly introspective character and the final lines of this scene are all the more powerful for that. In a way I wish H:LotS had actually pursued this theme; arguably Mike Kellerman’s s5-s6 arc addressed this to an extent, but not entirely. (I would have probably died of happiness if a major season arc centered on this theme had starred a woman, but that didn’t really happen even on The Wire. [In this post for The Wire Roundtable, Pam Newton deconstructs David Simon’s claim to The Wire being an anti-cop show. Be sure to read all the comments too, since Newton has more to say there and her comments are superb.] It’s probably too much to expect from a David Simon show, unfortunately.)

On a character level: This is the penultimate episode of season four and Russert’s already in France at the beginning of season five. Why did she leave? There’s what must have been the bleak knowledge that with Barnfather and Gaffney at the helm, Russert would probably never be promoted again after her triple demotion - and there’s also the thing where Russert drunkenly tells Munch in “The Wedding” that “Caroline needs a father,” sure - but here in “Scene of the Crime” is an inexorable sense of disillusionment with the system, or the debacle with Gharty confirming what she can’t even feel surprised to know.

(via crossedwires)

sanguinarysanguinity:

Lewis: Gee, this is my partner! I know my partner, huh? Now how many suicides him and me stood over together? And always the speeches. Crosetti believes in God, Gee. My partner did not kill himself, Gee. I know the man. Somebody did something to Steve.

Gee: Ask Meldrick.
Howard: …ask Meldrick?
Felton: Lewis would know.
Bayliss: I don’t know, check with Meldrick.
Pembleton: What’s Lewis say?

Bolander: What are you scared of, Mel?
Lewis: Not you.
Bolander: You can’t protect Steve anymore. He’s dead. You protecting him? You protecting yourself, maybe.

Munch: The M.E. has a preliminary report. Steve drowned.
Lewis: It was an accident.
Munch: In his blood and tissue toxicology he had .25 blood alcohol.
Lewis: So he’s drunk.
Munch: And his stomach and kidneys was [list of drugs]. I mean the guy was a walking drugstore full of tranks and antidepressants when he hit the water.
Lewis: It’s preliminary, huh!? It’s just preliminary.

— 3x04, Homicide: Life on the Street, “Crosetti”

…this sequence — or rather, perhaps, the moment when Lewis goes to pieces — was one of two moments that made the episode for me. I’d known going in that this episode would be hard: the closest I’ve ever been to suicide in my life was in the days immediately after a close friend had killed herself. It wasn’t just that a close friend had died. I could not cope with the knowledge that I hadn’t realized, I hadn’t known, I had failed her.

You love someone, you’re their friend, how could you not know? What kind of friend doesn’t know? You’re their friend, wasn’t it your job to keep them safe? To be there when they needed you? How could you have not known, how could you have not been there, was there anything you might have done to turn it, was there anything you should have recognized, how could you not know, how could you have failed them like that? How could you not have known? A friend — a true friend — would have known.

It was the closest to suicide I’ve ever come in my life. I couldn’t deal with the failure and guilt and self-recrimination. It was agony. And I couldn’t make it stop.

…so this portrait here, where everyone is all unknowingly saying that Lewis would know, Lewis should have known, ask Lewis… Even Lewis insisting that it couldn’t be suicide, because he would have known… Lewis would prefer anything, even murder, to it having been suicide. (In part that’s because he’s a homicide detective — he has tools for handling murder — but that’s not nearly all of it.)

And then, when it becomes incontrovertible… Most stuff on TV doesn’t get death right, doesn’t get grieving right, doesn’t get surviving someone else’s death right.

This show got it right.

sanguinarysanguinity:

…and this was the other moment that made the episode for me.

All through that funeral, grrlpup and I were saying, “There’s no one there. It’s a cop funeral, and there’s no one there.” (Grrlpup spent fifteen years working for the local cop shop. Do you know how many people turn out for an officer’s funeral? For the very biggest ones, the Bureau rents the mega-church in Clackamas: there is no church large enough inside of Portland city limits, you have to go to the suburbs to get a church big enough.) It is a cop funeral, and there is no one there.

Because he died from suicide. Which is allegedly a dishonorable death. A coward’s death. A cheater’s death. If it’s suicide, you don’t get to be buried in consecrated ground. If it’s suicide, you don’t get an honor guard.

I hate that sentiment SO FUCKING MUCH. People don’t commit suicide lightly. The personal hells that people go through, leading up to their suicides: there’s nothing cowardly there. And especially not in how long they tend to have endured beforehand. The decision isn’t easy. It’s never fucking easy.

(All of this bullshit about people who commit suicide don’t deserve our respect? I’m convinced it’s people turning their how could I have failed them? inability-to-deal agony back onto the deceased. When in pain, strike out. If it’s his fault, if he’s to blame, if he’s in the wrong, then it’s not me. If he was weak, then I didn’t fail him.)

And it sure as hell isn’t like suicide nullifies everything someone ever did in one’s life. As one of the officers pointed out in the ep, Crosetti had years of service, he had once been shot in the line of duty. However he died — and he hadn’t disgraced his uniform when he died — he had earned his honor guard.

…and so the show gave him an honor guard. A one-man honor guard, to be sure, but an honor guard.

Because he lived and then he died, and that deserves our respect.

Yes yes yes.  Especially considering that the stigma attached to accessing mental health services in cop culture probably contributes to the suicide rate.  (Not just in cop culture, obviously.)  And refusing an honour guard reinforces that stigma.

(via crossedwires)

fuckyeahhlots:

Megan swans in dressed all French and Kay is like, “I don’t think so.”

crossedwires:

Russert: The bosses don’t think I can handle this red ball, do they? They sent you here to help me.
Gee: They think you’ll screw it up. You won’t. Good night.

*

Random white dude detective: No offense, Howard, but how did she get to be shift commander unless she’s porking the commissioner’s brother?
Howard: I don’t know. Maybe she’s porking the commissioner himself, huh?
RWDD: Could be.
Howard: Or maybe she’s shift commander because when she was in narcotics, she got the silver citation for busting the madame massage parlours that were washing dope money. She went undercover.
RWDD: Under the covers.
Gaffney: She couldn’t carry Lieutenant Scinta’s jockstrap.
Howard: Hey, guys, Scinta was no brain trust. He was promoted because he was Italian at the times when Italians were in the department.
RWDD (gets defensive): Scinta was a good cop.
Howard: He graduate third from the naval academy like Russert, huh? He work in intelligence like Russert?

(Source: mswyrr)

nevertravelled:

first we’re gonna find me a coat, and, uh, everything’s gonna be all right, you’ll see. all right.

(via entegegenwartigung)

crossedwires:

Gee: I can’t help thinking. Mrs Ellison gets shot and the mayor, the governor, the commissioner are on the phone within the hour.
Kay: A tourist gets shot outside the new stadium. It’s…
Gee: It’s not the kind of thing that keeps white folks coming to town. That’s what’s bothering me. We had a red ball going full throttle, but if, instead, Catherine Ellison’s name was Louella Jones with the 12th hundred block on Calhoun Street, would Beau have gotten an hour of overtime?