Poetic Television Review: End Game (Homicide: Life on the Street, S3X14, 1995)

In the late '90s, shadows grew long,
A nation’s fears etched in celluloid song.
Right-wing spectres, armed and enraged,
On screens they marched, their hate displayed.
Oklahoma’s thunder, a city torn,
A wound unhealed, a nation forlorn.
Yet before the blast, the trope took root,
In stories of vengeance, justice moot.

Homicide stepped into the fray,
A tale of detectives led astray.
A knock on the wrong door, a fatal mistake,
Three lives shattered, a city awake.
Gordon Pratt, with his guns and his lies,
A racist heart, a mind unwise.
Steve Buscemi, with eyes so cold,
A villain crafted, a story told.

Pembleton, sharp, with a mind like steel,
Faced Pratt’s hatred, tried to reveal
The coward beneath the bravado’s mask,
A high school dropout, unequal to the task.
Yet justice faltered, the system flawed,
No confession wrung, no truth unclawed.
Pratt walked free, though guilt was clear,
But shadows whispered, vengeance near.

A shot in the dark, a life erased,
The line of justice, boldly effaced.
Was it the law, or a cop’s own hand?
The moral compass lost in shifting sand.
Pembleton’s rage, a tempest unleashed,
A man of reason, his calm breached.
The toll of the case, the weight of the fight,
Left questions lingering in the night.

The cameras rolled, a docu-style gaze,
MTV flair in a gritty haze.
A stylistic choice, a bold misstep,
Yet the story’s heart, its depth was kept.
Felton, Howard, Bolander’s pain,
Their recovery slow, their scars remain.
A parallel thread, a tale of strife,
The cost of duty, the price of life.

Turrentine’s pen, with cinephile’s nod,
To Thompson’s Getaway, a flawed facade.
Baldwin’s remake, dismissed with disdain,
A mirror to justice, twisted and vain.
No tidy end, no bow to tie,
Just shadows stretching, questions why.
A system cracked, a moral fray,
The cost of justice, the price to pay.

End Game stands, a beacon of art,
A story of vengeance, a wounded heart.
Its flaws are few, its strengths are vast,
A mirror to a world outcast.
In the late '90s, the shadows grew,
And Homicide showed us what we knew:
Justice is fragile, vengeance is blind,
And the darkest truths are hard to find.

(Note: The review in its original form can be read here.)

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