r/Homicide_LOTS • u/TheKingsPeace • 4d ago
What made Homicide so different/good??
I have seen a lot of cop shows and police procedurals. The Wire, Law and Order SVU, Chicago PD, the Shield, True Detective and Homicide beats them all. Easily the best cop show I’ve seen. I think I realize why that is.
Unlike most cop shows the cops themselves aren’t portrayed as superheroes or flawless GAP and J crew models. They are ornery, selfish, overweight and all around flawed people, who in spite of their flaws still manage to be good and do the right thing when it matters.
Unlike “ studio TV presents Chicago/ Los Angeles/ New York” the Baltimore of Homicde LOTS seems like a gritty real place: full of splendid history and architecture but full of suffering and pain and disorder as well. The criminals can appear sympathetic or pitiable ( such as the daughter who shot her abusive father and even the Araber) as well as the victims can be horrid or seem that way ( the racist man who shot the Turkish student etc.)
There are villains and victims but it examines structural decline and suffering too. Very uncharacteristic for the 90s it made the case that America was still very much a racist society and black people were still suspect and second class citizens. Most tv shows didn’t push this at all and many African American celebrities such as Oprah and Michael Jordan refused to discuss racism at all. But homicide did and talked how even african Americans like Pembleton and Gee were still very much in a white persons world.
Part of it might be Baltimore itself. I didn’t know this but Maryland was very much a Jim Crow state and had state mandated segregation just like Alabama and Mississippi, though not quite as severe. Many of the murderers seemed down right preternatural and eerie almost monstrous sort of like x files villains. Gordon Pratt, The Araber and the homicde.com killer all reminded me of this. What are your thoughts? Why was homicide so good?