I'm the featured guest this week on HOMICIDE: LIFE ON REPEAT with Reed Diamond and Kyle Secor!

HOMICIDE: LIFE ON THE STREET wasn't quite my first taste of what we later came to call "Prestige TV" but it might have been the first show I loved that passionately. I wasn't there from the start - though the show debuted in January 1993, it wasn't until almost exactly three years later that I became a serious viewer of the series. By that point, I was already a regular viewer of ER and THE X-FILES, both of which were redefining how network TV looked and felt. I also was an occasional, if not regular viewer, of LAW & ORDER.

Nothing makes me feel older than having to explain that this was a time when network TV drama felt truly groundbreaking and cinematic to a degree that it hadn't before. This was pre-SOPRANOS, before HBO launched what generally gets credited as the start of Prestige TV. It's not hard to see why that's where most tellings of TV history start there. HBO's pedigree for writer-driven, cinematic, elevated television is probably unmatched. There's also a certain romance to framing the most remarkable TV as being the product of premium cable - as opposed to broadcast television, where the major networks were free to all the unwashed masses.

You're paying a premium for cable TV, so you need to believe that HBO is giving you a superior kind of product, right? As much truth as there is to that, at least two of those HBO shows - THE WIRE and OZ -  have a direct lineage to HOMICIDE.

The things that made HOMICIDE so innovated on network TV in the 90s have all long since been absorbed by premium cable series, prestige streaming series and even current network television. Handheld camerawork, morally ambiguous heroes, downer endings, and controversial storytelling now practically form the Peak TV Starter Pack. Maybe the only technique that still feels truly unique to HOMICIDE is the editing - specifically the jump cuts and the triple takes. In just about every other way, HOMICIDE feels like a show that could have premiered today.

And to the younger generation, HOMICIDE might as well have just debuted. Though the series got a DVD release, it's barely been syndicated in the last 20 years and it had long been absent from streaming. This year, that was finally redressed, as an HD remastered release came to Peacock. Converted to widescreen and HD, the show doesn't look EXACTLY how it appeared in the 90s, but it holds up well, even though a concession to get the show out there resulted in almost all of the iconic music cues being replaced by material cheaper to license.

As a concession to get the show to a new audience, I'll accept it. This was one of the shows that made me want to be a TV writer. It's the show I found myself emulating often in my early writing. Though it often gets lumped in with other cop procedurals, it's much more character-driven than any other procedural. The emphasis is on the characters more than the cases they work. A case is frequently merely a catalyst to force a character to deal with a personal challenge or to provoke a different side of their personality.

A hallmark of the show was the intense interrogation scenes, with the most powerful of those going to Andre Braugher as Frank Pembleton. He'd get inside a suspect's head, break them down psychologically and more often than not, get a confession out of them. It was riveting character drama that just as often would be balanced by quirky humor and idiosyncratic characters like Richard Belzer's Detective Munch. It did things I didn't know could happen on TV - the heroes didn't get their man everytime. Some cases never got closed, the dead going unavenged.

One hour kicks off with the discovery of Detective Crosetti's body, forcing the unit to confront the likelihood he killed himself. Everyone deals with it differently - his partner Lewis insists it couldn't have been suicide and goes as far as trying to interfere in Detective Bolander's investigation into Crosetti's death. Frank and Tim are sent to plan the memorial service, allowing for some dark humor about the cost of cookies. Lt. Giardello is stuck with department politics over how bad it looks to have another suicide. 

All of this leads to a moment I've discussed before - Lewis and Bolander coming to a head over their conflict, only to have the moment interrupted by the autopsy report. The official finding: suicide. Watching Lewis spiral as his denial finally runs out and then fully break down as Bolander pulls him into a bear hug is one of those TV moments that has stayed with me ever since.

Years later I was running a TV drama series for my college campus TV network and I attempted to do a storyline with similar emotional impact. This being 2001, when I shared the script with everyone, they all assumed I was inspired by the equally gut-punching BUFFY episode "The Body." The truth was I'd had the intent for this episode before "The Body" even aired and my direct inspiration was "Crosetti."

Another trope that turned up in a lot of my early work were interrogation scenes. At least three times while in college, I found an excuse to work an interrogation into something I filmed, and it came up in more than one script. The perfect culmination to all of this nearly happened when one of my SUPERMAN & LOIS episodes would have called for what was essentially an interrogation between Lois Lane and an antagonist. Alas, a rebreak of the story ended up denying me the moment that seemingly my entire career was building towards.

As is evident, HOMICIDE made a meaningful impact on me as a creator and an audience member. Over the years, I've paid tribute to it before, broken down the pilot, and reexamined one of the show's most controversial moments - the Luther Mahoney shooting. Thanks to a Twitter conversation, I even connected with and later went out to drinks with Reed Diamond, who played Detective Kellerman. We sorta became whatever you call an internet friendship these days. (Pen-pals? Digital friends?) Which brings me to the real point of this post...

At almost the same time HOMICIDE launched on Peacock, Reed and one of his surviving co-stars, Kyle Secor (Detective Tim Bayliss), launched their rewatch podcast HOMICIDE: LIFE ON REPEAT. Every week, Reed and Kyle recap another HOMICIDE episode, delving into their recollections of making it and sharing their perspectives on the series with three decades of hindsight.

They also usually welcome a guest, typically a writer, director or fellow cast member, but on occasion the guest is someone with no professional connection to the series. If you somehow missed the post title, by now you've probably intuited the reason for this long preamble is because *I* am this week's guest.

I can't tell you what a thrill it was to be "in the Box" with "Kellerman & Bayliss" for a little over an hour. The topic of the show was Season 1, episode 8, "And The Rocket's Dead Glare," but we veer into other topics. I haven't heard the edited episode yet, but I talk about what scenes in David Simon's HOMICIDE: A YEAR ON THE KILLING STREETS directly inspired a subplot in this episode, and we even got into a brief discussion of copaganda.

I've done more than a few podcasts and this was easily the most fun I've ever had on a show. Reed and Kyle were great and I just loved the energy I was feeling while we recorded it. Hopefully some of that joy comes across in this week's installment.

The direct YouTube link to this week's episode is here.

You can find it on Apple Podcasts here.

You can find the main site for the podcast here.

All episodes are uploaded - with video - to YouTube here.

And if you're interested in the New York Magazine that discusses the misconduct that many of the Baltimore cops who inspired the show are accused of, you can find it here: David Simon Made Baltimore Detectives Famous. Now Their Cases Are Falling Apart.

SUPER/MAN is a tribute to not just Christopher Reeve, but his entire family

Early on in the Christopher Reeve documentary SUPER/MAN, we hear Reeve's own voice in an archival interview, discussing how he took extra care during "the Superman years." He dreaded doing something that would lead to a New York Post headline like "Superman hit by bus." The observation reinforces how aware he was that his image and his on-screen alter ego would always be entwined.

And that certainly was prescient. For nearly a decade after the riding accident that left him a quadriplegic, it seemed no reporter could cover Chistopher Reeve without using some version of "He played Superman and now he IS a super-man." (Heck, I even noted that in my own tribute to Reeve in a piece I wrote commemorating the fifth anniversary of his death. Reading it now, it's exactly the kind of tribute this documentary avoids being, to its benefit) 

Certainly even in death, the advocacy he strove for in life has cast a long shadow. Reeve says himself in an archival interview that "People want to believe in a hero." And so, through a combination of his iconic role, some truly bad luck, and his bravery in putting his recovery process on the public stage, Reeve morphed from being the custodian of an inspirational figure, to a source of inspiration himself.

Hope can be a powerful thing. At one point in the documentary, we're told that when faced with a critic who accused Reeve of peddling "false hope," Christopher shot back, "There is no false hope. There is only hope."

No one can decide to be an inspirational figure, as inspiration is ultimately about what people take from you. It's a power that resides with the audience, though it's also dependent on what that figure is willing to give of themselves. For me, that's what a great deal of this documentary is about, how Christopher put aside his ego and allowed the world to see him as disabled during a time when people like him were treated as invisible. A lesser film would have succumbed to a trite and obvious way of telling this story, giving only empty "inspiration porn" to assure us that heroes of untold virtue are among us. 

But what I saw in this film is that the hope that Christopher Reeve represented could not have existed without his family around him. And so this loss of privacy and inviting the public into a private tragedy is not just Christopher's, but a toll paid by everyone in his circle. While the movie never gets as far as explicitly stating that, that feeling runs through much of the narrative.

As obvious as it is that the Christopher Reeve documentary is called SUPER/MAN, by the time it was done, I felt like it could have just as accurately been called SUPER/MAN & SUPER/WOMAN, in tribute to Dana Reeve. Dana's presence permeates this entire story, even though she tragically is no longer with us to tell her part of it. She is a constant presence in all the post-accident footage, including many private home movies shared by the Reeve family.

In archival recordings, Christopher credits Dana with saving his life twice, the second being in the immediate aftermath of the accident that left him paralyzed. He was facing the reality of never moving his arms and legs for the rest of his life, pondering that it might be best for everyone if he just died. Dana looked at him and said with conviction, "You're still you, and I love you." 

That completely changed how he looked at the new life that lay ahead of him. The movie doesn't sugarcoat what she lost alongside Christopher that tragic day, and throughout the narrative we understand the emotional toll she felt mostly in private. That she died less than two years after Christopher is an incredibly unfair loss. Were this a fictional narrative, it would have felt like screenwriter hackery, designed to manipulate more tears out of an already exhausted audience. Here, it's just a reminder that life is under no obligation to give happy endings to those who would have seemed to earn them many times over.

This film also easily could have justified the title SUPER/FAMILY, for while Christopher Reeve's story is the spine of the movie, the picture of Chris that emerges would not be complete without the voices of his children and many family friends. This especially is where the more complete picture of Chris emerges, thanks to their willingness to be frank and open about some of their most private moments. It's easy to take that for granted as an audience member, but throughout my viewing it became the lens through which I took in everything. Unpacking this will require you to indulge me for a brief tangent.

I think you understand grief in a different way after you've lost a parent. There's a different burden that comes with losing someone that close to you as opposed to an uncle, a friend, a grandparent. In those cases, you generally get to deal with that loss on your own terms. But when it's a parent, a spouse, a child... that relationship means that you become everyone else's vessel for closure with the departed.

And - whether or not this is the intention of the other mourners - the effect is such that you end up taking on their grief. Though they come to console you, the strange nature of this interaction means that you find yourself consoling them, that in this exchange they get closure. Sometimes it means that they feel useful in passing on, "your father was so proud of you. He talked about you all the time." In other instances it's simply a matter of them intending to help with your grief but well before they have managed their own. 

You end up hearing a lot of people talk about how much your father meant to them. Which is nice, until you find yourself enduring it ten times in a row - while you're getting a handle on your own feelings. While realizing the obligation of this encounter means the other party must walk away assured they have done A Good Thing. I mean no disrespect to any close family and friends when I say that some of the best conversations I had about losing my father were with people who never knew him and were able to be there just for me.

For most of us dealing with loss, this is something that persists across weeks, perhaps months. When your father was someone like Christopher Reeve, I don't know if that ever ends.

I thought of that often as the film frequently returned to Reeve's children as its narrators. Matthew and Alexandra are from Christopher's relationship with British model Gae Exton, while the younger Will (now a correspondent with ABC News) is Christopher and Dana's child. Among the many voices that contribute to the documentary, their perspective is the most potent.

It was impossible not to think about how over the last nearly 30 years since Chris's accident, these three have had to play the role of giving closure to those who admired and were inspired by their parents. Matthew Reeve and I are less than a month apart in age, a connection that makes it impossible for me not to think about what it would have been like for me to deal with this burden at the age I was at the time of Chris's accident and later his death. 

I vividly remember reading the news of Chris's accident the same weekend that I was at a cousin's wedding. It was just before of the end of my 9th grade year, during a summer where I was working as a swim lesson aide and spending many, many days at the local pool. The contrast between my summer and what that summer must have looked like for the Reeve family is rather stark. I can't imagine dealing with a tragedy that enormous, let alone doing it so publicly.

We eventually learn that following Chris and Dana's deaths, Matthew stepped up at the age of 26 to fill in as a surrogate parent to his younger brother Will. Matthew was dealing with that obligation thrust upon him when I was somewhere between writing coverage for agents and sharing an apartment with two roommates.

You don't always get to chose the moments and experiences that define your life for you. Sometimes those come from moments that belong to other people. From what we see here, the Reeve siblings have an incredible amount of grace in accepting what their lives became and how they chose to share some of that with us.

I lost my own father four years ago, an experience I commemorated in this post that I've never quite been able to revisit in full. In that case, the public display of mourning helped, though I'm still not sure I fully grasp that other people have actually read it. Not long after that, I paid him tribute in a story I wrote for the SUPERMAN & LOIS comic. It was another public display, but one where I felt in control of how I presented my feelings, and thus, and experience I was comfortable with. 

But not every instance in which I've been asked to tap into those feelings of loss has been cathartic. I've not always had the opportunity to revisit those feelings on my own terms, and sometimes that's resulted in less pleasant experiences. Throughout Matthew, Alexandra and Will's interviews, I couldn't help but think about how much this documentary appeared on their terms, and if the necessity of promoting it via weeks of media interviews was at all more of a burden to endure.

I wondered if this documentary in some ways was how their whole family reclaims the narrative of Christopher Reeve from the "he played Superman, then he became a super-man" distillation. The movie doesn't hold back from pointing out less admirable moments in Reeve's life. It also takes time to explain how he clashed with some in the disabled community. It rarely dwells long on these particulars (we're kept at a respectful distance from some of the inner-family conflicts while still told enough to infer what need not be made explicit), but they're given enough spotlight to keep the film clear of any charges of hagiography

It's to the film's credit that it's able to tell Christopher Reeve's story in ways that feel fresh even to the Superman fan who's seen every special feature pertaining to the movies. His work as Superman gets about as much focus as necessary, but through perspectives not usually employed. The story of how he was cast usually falls to director Richard Donner or casting director Lynn Stalmaster. Both men passed in 2021, before this project was shot (though a few archival interviews with Donner are briefly integrated.) Instead, it's Jeff Daniels, who was in a play with Chris when he went to screen-test for the part, who tells us about those days in Reeve's life. 

Some interviews with Reeve also augment that portion. There were moments where I found myself mentally adding what would have been Margot Kidder's stories about working with Reeve, but in general, it's wise that the voice of the film comes from people who knew Reeve as a person before they ever knew him as Superman.

In showing us Reeve's faults and lesser moments alongside his successes, the film somehow becomes more inspirational than it might have otherwise been. A person doesn't have to be defined by their relationship with their distant domineering father, any more than not having a great example of a marriage precludes them from eventually discovering the kind of love that changes your perspective on romance.

We think we need Christopher Reeve to be Superman, but in exposing his human frailties, it highlights that any one of us has the power to be an inspiration to someone. Without Dana Reeve, Christopher might not have seen the final nine years of his life. Certainly it's hard to imagine Christopher being a public face for paralysis without the love and support of his wife. Could he have had so many positive days without his children rallying around him? You need people there to give you the kind of life you want to live for.

This is as much the story of what Christopher Reeve achieved as it is the story about the love around him that made that possible. In opening themselves up to tell that story, I hope the Reeve family has found peace. May they receive at least as much grace and love that they have put out into the world.