A racist leaves a gas bomb on a subway train in Harlem and kills more than twenty people. The detectives track him down with the help, and often the interference, of a couple of detectives from Baltimore.
A high-priced defense lawyer shows up and slathers racial stereotypes all over the courtroom -- "Sure, slavery was an obscenity but it end A HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS AGO!" He brings up the race of the defendant, who is a white man, repeatedly and claims he's being blamed by African-Americans simply because he's white. The name of Louis Farrkhan is raised, a notorious black leader of the Nation of Islam and generally considered a vicious anti-Semite.
McCoy puts on a spirited case and the defendant is convicted, but questions arise. The perp was no more than a truck driver for a chemical company. How did he learn how to build and plant a somewhat sophisticated gas bomb using volatile chemicals? Who paid for his expensive lawyer? The last scene is chilling. McCoy and Kinkaid ask him, and he won't answer except to say that his government didn't convict him -- McCoy's government did. And nobody knows what's going on. He's just the tip of the iceberg. It's as dispiriting as it is because it sounds like it was written yesterday instead of in 1996.
This is a "cross-over" episode with two or three detectives from one of the spin-offs, "Homicide: Life on the Streets." There are a few other cross-overs in the series and they're mostly a nuisance, interfering with a comforting and ritualized formula. Andre Braugher always brings a welcome animation to his role, but Richard Belzer's character is a pain. On the plus side, one of the Baltimore cops puts a move on Claire Kinkaid and she smiles knowingly, in a way that Jill Hennessy rarely has an opportunity to do.
A high-priced defense lawyer shows up and slathers racial stereotypes all over the courtroom -- "Sure, slavery was an obscenity but it end A HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS AGO!" He brings up the race of the defendant, who is a white man, repeatedly and claims he's being blamed by African-Americans simply because he's white. The name of Louis Farrkhan is raised, a notorious black leader of the Nation of Islam and generally considered a vicious anti-Semite.
McCoy puts on a spirited case and the defendant is convicted, but questions arise. The perp was no more than a truck driver for a chemical company. How did he learn how to build and plant a somewhat sophisticated gas bomb using volatile chemicals? Who paid for his expensive lawyer? The last scene is chilling. McCoy and Kinkaid ask him, and he won't answer except to say that his government didn't convict him -- McCoy's government did. And nobody knows what's going on. He's just the tip of the iceberg. It's as dispiriting as it is because it sounds like it was written yesterday instead of in 1996.
This is a "cross-over" episode with two or three detectives from one of the spin-offs, "Homicide: Life on the Streets." There are a few other cross-overs in the series and they're mostly a nuisance, interfering with a comforting and ritualized formula. Andre Braugher always brings a welcome animation to his role, but Richard Belzer's character is a pain. On the plus side, one of the Baltimore cops puts a move on Claire Kinkaid and she smiles knowingly, in a way that Jill Hennessy rarely has an opportunity to do.