Jim Hill Speaks Out on the 7th Season

And speaking of Cousin Guido, isn't there enough of a mob presence in TV production to have stopped Fontana from his nauseating rendition of la famiglia? Oy, the pain. How many Italian families use one or two words of Italian to begin a sentence and then switch to English?

GEE: "Mario e morte. They killed him, Aunt Providenza."

AP: "AIIEEE! Roma tomato! Who could have-a done such a teeng?"

I used to like it when Gee spoke Italian. It was cool. He'd drop in comments about Sicilians and their attitudes on suicide. Now that's destroyed.

ObHappyPlace: The old couple that Munch and Bolander saw in season one who hated each other's guts but stayed together for the kids. Spin City's James as a car-stealing homicidal Ganymede. Jerry Jempsons's keen evasions in the Box. Jamaicans driving people to the hospital. Those two shitkick brothers running through the mall, one of 'em squeezing off shots toward his brother over a girl, killing Patrick Garbarek along the way. Zeke Lafeld lying dead outside a gay bar for having the bad luck to be there when a carload of skinheads was looking for kicks. Beau's bad luck to be guffawing over a dead woman's case when her husband comes by for a status report.

Homicide used to be great TV. Each of us on this list and indeed ATH was drawn for one reason: David Simon's gripping book made for unforgettable television. The people charged with bringing it to life had read the book, loved the book, and chased down the author to learn how to produce the rhythms and the crimes of Balto homicide detectives. It was the realest fiction you could find, because the names had been changed but the song remained the same.

We watched. Week after week, we watched. Some of you sweated through the first two years never knowing if the show'd be on or not. If it was, you tried to figure out backstory when episode 113 segued into 121. Our friends began to wonder what had happened as we increasingly had better things to do on Friday nights than go out and boogie-down. Our videotape racks began to groan under the weight of copies.

And we talked. On Usenet, on ath, in real life, via email, we talked. Our common passion was the fertile breeding ground for friendships both virtual and IRL. We'd wax rhapsodic about a particularly stellar episode and discuss pieces of characters that had winkled out because of a crime. Why _was_ Tim so splutteringly unprofessional when it came to crimes against children? How could Frank be so disillusioned in a world where so much good exists? Where did Barnfather get his hair done?

We'd carry our conversations over to The Real World. Why _did_ so many cities up and create MLK drives? Was it racist for people to suggest that the old name was just fine, thank you? Does affirmative action help or hurt the cause of equality in America? Should you take a brain-dead kid off a ventilator and harvest his organs? Can a woman be as effective as a man in a job which requires physical strength? What about jobs which _might_ involve physical strength but which probably won't?

We've sunk a lot of time into this show. We've harangued friends, family, coworkers, neighbors, strangers, other people in the dorms, roomies, pets, and inanimate objects about how great it is.

And now it's actually a little embarrassing to admit that we religiously watch this show. 'Fess up: If last night had been the first episode of Homicide that any of you saw, would there have been a second?

The sense of betrayal is there. The sense of outrage that no one at Baltimore Pictures seems to Get It anymore is there. The anger at Fontana for using Simon and Levinson's dream child as his personal "Let's see what we can fuck with next" project. The blinding rage at his dismissive remarks about the fan base which keeps him employed.

We've been sold out. We made a deal with TPTB: we'd obsess and worship their work of genius and they'd keep it real. They lied.

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