Television Review: Narcissus (Homicide: Life on the Street, S5X20, 1997)

Narcissus (S05E20)

Airdate: 2 May 1997

Written by: Debbi Sarjent
Directed by: Peter Medak

Running Time: 45 minutes

The later seasons of Homicide: Life on the Street are often viewed through a lens of diminishing credibility, their earlier commitment to gritty realism eroded by NBC’s desperation to cling to dwindling ratings through sensationalist storytelling. By Season 5, the show—a once-proud chronicle of Baltimore’s systemic rot—had begun to flirt with melodrama, its moral complexity increasingly drowned out by the network’s demand for splashy twists and high-stakes confrontations. The episode Narcissus, airing near the end of this compromised season, epitomises this decline. While it attempts to grapple with weighty themes of institutional corruption and racial tension, its execution is hamstrung by a lack of subtlety, as if the show’s writers, aware of their dwindling influence, opted to bludgeon viewers with grand statements rather than trust the quiet power of their material. The result is an episode that feels both ideologically ambitious and narratively overstuffed, a cautionary tale of how even well-intentioned storytelling can falter when commercial pressures outweigh artistic restraint.

Written by series regular Yaphet Kotto—a rare instance of an actor stepping behind the pen for the show—Narcissus confronts the thorny issue of ethical decay within policing, particularly in a city where power structures are as entrenched as they are corrupt. The episode’s premise initially presents as a straightforward crime procedural: a man named Kenya Merchant is shot dead on the street, and police quickly identify the suspect, a man named Benin Crown, who flees to the headquarters of the African Revival Movement, a militant Black nationalist group led by the charismatic ex-policeman Burundi Robinson (Roger Robinson). What follows, however, spirals into a labyrinthine exploration of loyalty, betrayal, and institutional rot. Robinson’s refusal to surrender Crown without a warrant—a stance shockingly supported by the ostensibly pragmatic Colonel Barnfather—sets the stage for a standoff that exposes the tangled relationships between the police department’s upper echelons and the communities they ostensibly serve. The plot thickens when Malawi Johnson, a disillusioned former member of the movement, claims Robinson ordered Merchant’s killing to suppress revelations of sexual misconduct within the group. Johnson’s subsequent offer to wear a wire and infiltrate the movement collapses when Captain Gaffney, acting on orders from unnamed higher-ups, sabotages the operation. Lieutenant Giardello’s alternative plan—securing Crown’s testimony in exchange for leniency—culminates in a violent siege, with Robinson barricading himself inside the movement’s headquarters, ultimately choosing suicide over surrender.

Jean de Segonzac’s direction, marked by his signature visual starkness, lends the episode a visceral urgency, particularly during the claustrophobic siege sequence. Yet Kotto’s script, while undeniably bold in its thematic scope, struggles to contain its ambitions within the confines of a 45-minute broadcast television format. The narrative’s reliance on real-world parallels—most notably the rift between Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X within the Nation of Islam—adds intellectual heft, but the density of ideas often feels overwhelming. Unlike earlier episodes that wove social commentary into the fabric of daily police work, Narcissus leans into operatic symbolism, its characters and conflicts laden with allegorical weight. The decision to focus almost entirely on a single plotline, while structurally disciplined compared to the show’s usual multi-threaded approach, inadvertently amplifies the script’s flaws. The sole nod to continuity—a brief scene of detectives Kellerman, Lewis, and Stivers discussing the previous episode’s “good shooting”—feels tacked on, a half-hearted gesture toward the series’ serialized roots. More successful is Munch’s wry reference to David Simon’s Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, a nod to the source material that underscores the show’s enduring connection to its journalistic origins.

Performances, however, are uniformly stellar. Kotto, leveraging his dual role as actor and writer, imbues his dialogue with a raw intensity that mirrors his character’s frustration with institutional hypocrisy. Roger Robinson’s portrayal of Burundi Robinson is a masterclass in moral ambiguity: his charisma is undeniable, yet his actions—justifying violence to protect his movement’s secrets—paint him as a tragic figure whose idealism has curdled into self-serving dogma. The supporting cast, particularly Regi Davis as the conflicted Malawi Johnson, navigates the script’s heightened stakes with commendable nuance, though the material occasionally veers into didacticism.

Where Narcissus falters most glaringly is in its conclusion, a tonal miscalculation that undermines the episode’s earlier realism. The decision to stage a Jonestown-style mass suicide—Robinson and his followers drinking poison before police breach the building—is jarring in its excess. The body count, unprecedented in the show’s history, feels less like a logical narrative endpoint than a desperate bid for emotional impact, a tactic more aligned with network-era hyperbole than Homicide’s documentary ethos. This finale, likely influenced by the recent Heaven’s Gate mass suicide (which occurred just a month before the episode’s 1997 airing), reads as exploitative rather than insightful, reducing complex sociopolitical tensions to a lurid spectacle.

Equally problematic is the epilogue, in which a white suburban family flips through TV channels to avoid news coverage of the tragedy. While the scene’s intent—to critique racial apathy—is clear, its execution lacks the subtextual sophistication that defined the show’s best moments. The symbolism is blunt, even patronising: by framing racism as a passive act of channel-switching, the episode oversimplifies a systemic issue into an individual failing, a stark contrast to the series’ earlier, more nuanced portrayals of institutional bias.

In the end, Narcissus aspires to dissect the moral decay of institutions yet succumbs to the very sensationalism it critiques. Its thematic ambitions—exploring how power corrupts, how justice is compromised by political expediency—are laudable, but its execution is fatally compromised by a lack of narrative restraint. The episode’s flaws mirror those of the show’s later seasons: a willingness to sacrifice subtlety for shock value, and a growing disconnection from the grounded realism that made Homicide a landmark series.

RATING: 6/10 (++)

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