#he commits suicide...what'm I supposed to do?

[moviehater]

Homicide: The Movie

I keep thinking about tim bayliss out by the water telling frank about how he was abused by his uncle, about bayliss talking about how he hadn't been happy in a long time and now he was going to have dinner with chris rawls and be happy. bayliss on that rooftop scruffy and dead-eyed and tortured by what he's done, grabbing frank by the coat and pleading for him to be the one that takes him in. what kind of message to send, to take the most idealistic character and make them a lesson about what happens when you don't deal with your demons? or simply what happens because life is convoluted and imperfect?  bayliss has two choices. he can ask frank to forgive him, and this will be enough. it’s frank or the justice system, and frank can’t do it. though bayliss was sure he could. and so bayliss is left with nothing. if frank can’t forgive him, then that’s it, he can’t live with what he’s done. frank begging bayliss to go home, to never mention it to anybody, would rather save bayliss than their friendship. bayliss saying he's been thinking about killing himself, he'll do it if frank doesn't bring him in...and so frank gives in. he grants bayliss this one final wish. he clears the ryland case. bayliss goes to prison, bayliss kills himself anyway. how could he live with a justice system that jails a good man and lets an evil one go free? it's a fitting way to end the show. the show was never about happy endings, it was about moving on. death goes on and on, because life goes on and on. but bayliss doesn't get to move on. everything he ever did will be lost. everything about his old life will become obsolete. bayliss, who so deserves it, not getting a happy ending...almost had an epiphany, but not quite. was almost out of the woods, but instead took a wrong step and fell into a deep abyss. there was no one else so idealistic or as good-hearted as bayliss. “just because perversion exists doesn’t mean I have to accept that.” good ol tim bayliss, the zen detective. a cop who dabbles in bisexuality and buddhism (two things which he eventually has to give up). an emotional man, a misguided man, but a good man, who deserved to live on, to learn, to move on from his mistakes. he wanted to have a family one day, but he won’t have that. he won't get to see pembleton's kids grow up. he gets nothing for his trouble. maybe he was doomed from the beginning. he came into the homicide unit as damaged goods and was hit with the adena watson case. a little angel-faced girl lying in the rain. rookie detective faced with his demons, and given no outlet to deal with them.  he should’ve taken off after that sixth year. should’ve gone to see somebody. instead he came back bereft of frank, spouting bullshit philosophies and pretending he was healed. he ended up where he did, his life thrown away over some convicted murderer who got off on a technicality. killing a man to ensure he wouldn't kill again. a man who didn’t deserve to live, but whose death was somehow a usurpation of the justice system because the power of life and death cannot be put into the hands of another man. the various shades of gray that are borne out of deciding who gets to live and who gets to die. that’s how it is: a good man committing a sinful act is punished, but an evil man committing sinful acts goes free... all those years of bayliss trying to get close to frank, and frank continually warding off his friendship. unrequited love, almost. except that frank did love bayliss in his own way. just in a way that bayliss had no use for. and this final moment on the rooftop, frank gradually realizing that this is the result of his untimely departure...he left bayliss in his darkest hour. now all those years of fending bayliss off, being so guarded, and this is the last time they’ll get to be together, the way things used to be. cursing bayliss for putting this on him, for challenging his virtues. it was he who said virtue is not true virtue unless it slams up against vice...and this is it for frank, the ultimate test. bayliss confesses to a murder, and he can’t go back from that. tim bayliss is no longer just tim bayliss, he’s a killer. “you can’t be a killer.”  a good man and a killer can’t be the same. this is the one variable must remain constant, in frank’s eyes, or else his entire worldview would shatter. how can you love a man who’s killed somebody? something that you’ve stressed for so long as irrefutably evil? even if bayliss went home that night, even if neither of them told a soul, nothing would be the same. bayliss is a cop. the sanctity of law and order has been hammered into him from the get-go, so even if he knows in his heart he did the right thing, his mind will always contest it. frank wouldn’t be able to forgive bayliss. he wouldn’t be able to see him as a good man. he would struggle with it for the rest of his days: the idea that there is no solid line between good and evil, and what that could possibly mean about all the people he’s put away. about himself. about humanity. something like this had to happen eventually. frank couldn’t live the rest of his life sorting everything into categories of good and bad, black and white. bayliss with his ideals, his belief in the reign of all things right and just, all while being exposed to the darkest, ugliest and most perverse parts of the world. bayliss the good guy, the bright-eyed rookie, who had to earn everybody's respect and was miserable every minute of it. just trying to do good the only way he knew how. trying to make things right. tried to do right by adena watson, for all the abused and battered children. those he saw himself in.  poor, poor bayliss...he never got to be happy. maybe for a few fleeting moments it was in his reach, but he always just missed it. he couldn’t make peace with the terrible things he saw. he couldn’t abide injustice. couldn’t abide that he could look very much like the terrible things and people he loathed. homicide got to him. he let it get to him and he didn’t deal with it. from the very beginning he was a ticking time bomb. it didn’t start with adena watson, though that’s what it always comes back to. it started when he was five years old.  jesus. what a hopeless and terrible way to end.