if i was a vampire would you lift my face with your hand and run the pad of your thumb over my fangs and tell me if i wanted to bite i had to ask nicely, before pressing down on my tongue to stop me from being able to beg properly. be honest.
hi I love max and his lip freckle and his hand gestures and the way he says both like “boats” and how he is so honest and authentic and also so nice to all of his friends and family!!! he’s just an all around lovely guy
I just finished watching the movie that rounded up the series and I’m feeling a little emotional. Hiding behind a cut because no one wants to read this right now.
I watched the last 6 eps of season 7 today and then watched the 2000 movie which is in youtube. To say I’m slightly emotional right now is the understatement of the decade. If there are any typos it’s because I’m typing through tears. I also can’t breath because my nose is bunged up and my eyes now hurt from the pressure in my head from the crying. This also may not be very coherant.
I’m emotional because this was the end of a series which I started watching when I was about 16 or 17 years old back in 1995 or 1996. It was my first real ‘fandom’. Not my first slash fandom, that came later after I had gone to university, found the internet and found the thing that would become the biggest thing in my life. But HLots was the first real obsession, before slash, before pairings, before fic. I’d loved shows and characters before, thinking back I was pretty much a tv fiend since I was about 4 or 5 years old. Gentle Ben I think was my first tv love, so long ago I can barely even guarantee that was the right show. All I can remember is turning on to watch it one day and refusing to because he didn’t look right. His beard had gone, or something and apparently I didn’t believe it was him. The it was Knight Rider, Airwolf, The A Team and so on for the next ten years or so (well thirty seven to count).
But Homicide caught me. Mid teens. I loved the characters, the stories, the look and feel. It was earthly, intriguing, dark and different. I remember boring friends at Uni talking about it so much (the ones I knew would listen anyway). I lost some of my interest as University brought with it it’s own focus; uni life, love, friends and of course no TV! I got my parents to tape it for me at home but I lost chunks of it when they forgot or didn’t bother. Still, I never forgot my first obsession even though I didn’t return to it until recently, nearly twenty five years later.
I never saw the end of the show and now I’ve seen all 7 seasons I don’t think I ever saw the start either. I watched around season 4 and 5 with bits of 3 maybe. Now looking back I wonder how quickly I loved and how much I actually saw back then. I barely remembered many of the episodes I’ve watched over the last three weeks, some stood out; Thrill of the Kill and Hate Crimes specifically. (I think was because when I was a teenager to enable me to ‘watch’ my favourite tv I would record them onto audio cassette so I could listen to them in bed or in the car - great for taking on holiday! And because I’d watched them I could see them in my head - ingenious or what?!I think these were two episodes I had on tape which I could then record).
I remember the Waterfront and Dr Cox and Kellerman being under suspicion but not for what. I remember seeing Bayliss tell Pembleton about his childhood abuse but the rest of the stories are missing. I remember the layout of the squadroom, the board, the box (who’s idea was it to turn that into Gee’s office in the seventh season?!?! Ugh) and the coffee room.
So essentially I’m really upset right now because something that was so important to me as a teenager has now concluded. And in such a sad way (everything is going blurry again). I’m not going to lie, when I watched as a teen it was Bayliss who was my favourite (lets face it Kyle Secor was gorgeous back then - still is but that’s another story) and his relationship with Frank which was for me the draw of the show. I liked all the characters, some more than others and it was the way the whole show was put together; look, sound, feel. Watching it through now, Bayliss is still my favourite, Frank still amazing but I enjoyed the other characters more, I paid more attention to Lewis and Kellerman (yes I’m slashing them) and Munch and Howard and even Felton, Crosetti and Bolander who I think had pretty much come out of it by the time I’d started watching originally.
Watching the show now I’ve also been able to watch with a slasher’s eyes, something I didn’t have back then. I was always drawn to the partnership between Frank and Tim but I’d never paired them because I didn’t have the language or the knowledge that you could do that. I’d been intrigued by gay storylines in shows, those that were starting to emerge on tv in the 90s but it had never crossed my mind that you could ‘pair characters’ outside of the ‘canon’ (and I’m talking het as well as slash here). So this time I’ve been watching Frank and Tim and especially Tim and his relationship with Frank. Watching now I can see the love and the adoration that he has for Frank grow over the 6 seasons they were together and despite it being unrequited it’s quite easy to see that as a canon love story. I believe I’ve read somewhere that Kyle did actually approach it as Bayliss being in love with Frank (when I’m more together I’ll try and find where I read it) and watching it, I can very much believe that.
Which is what made the movie so difficult to watch. Watching Bayliss slowly fall apart. Turn to Frank at the end when they’d caught Gee’s shooter. The scene on the roof at the end when Bayliss is confessing what he has done to Frank and the way that scene plays out. The complete inability for Frank to comprehend what Tim is telling him, to comprehend that Tim has killed someone, not just in self defence or as a cop related shooting but as a murder. A cold blooded murder (Tim used the word execution and their difference in vocab is specific). He can’t understand, gets angry (righteously) that Tim has put this on him. When Tim pleads with him to take him in or he will likely eat his gun, has thought about it before, can’t marry up his heart with his head (knows in his heart he was right but in his head he can’t accept what he has done), Frank can’t do it. Despite knowing, seeing that Tim has threatened to end his life if he doesn’t. I can’t accept that as the ending to their partnership. It stings. It hurts (blurry eyes again). After all that they’ve gone through in the past 6 years it’s upsetting that it finishes here. I’m not going to lie. I hated when Frank left at the end of season 6. I hate this a hundred times more.
When the name goes to blue on the board, I assume we are meant to understand that Tim has indeed confessed/been taken in. By Frank? His words to Mike in Gee’s office seem to indicate so ‘good at catching the bad guys...caught me a couple tonight.’
...and I can’t....to hear Frank refer to Tim as a bad guy just breaks my heart into tiny pieces (oh god my nose is never going to unstuff at this rate). To be honest, that out of the whole film is what I can’t get over. And why I’m so upset I think. It really fucking hurts.
And then. And then we get the scene of Gee in the afterlife, going into the squadroom and seeing all the people from the past, his life and the stations. Little Adena skipping past. And then seeing Felton and Crosetti in the coffee room (as it was thank god). And then the chair. The fourth chair (oh god I’m off again). Gee asks but they don’t know who it’s for, ‘we don’t know yet’ says Beau, ‘but they’ll here sooner or later.’ Gee worries about his son (he’s a foot cop now) but to me, I take that to mean be for Bayliss. He threatened his life and when Crosetti says ‘it’s not like it’s written in stone, it’s not preordained or anything.’ My brain took that to mean that if Bayliss is in custody, that won’t stop him from eventually taking his life, either in jail or on bail if he’s allowed it.
So this had been the ending tonight of a very very long fandom arch. I’m emotionally battered and bruised and feeling rather strange. I want to return to season 1 ep 1 straight away (that’s what I did with Starsky and Hutch every time I finished season 4, immediately pop the first ep in again and start over) but I’mn not sure I’m ready. I’m not sure I could watch fresh faced Tim enter that squad room, knowing where he’ll end up in seven years time.
I loved seeing everyone come back for the movie, even for the brief scenes most of them had, it was enough (why oh why didn’t Kellerman have any scenes with Lewis though??). Cox and Griscom over Gee’s bedside? Excellent! Kellerman shovelling food down whilst Mike beats up suspects? Awesome! The knowledge that they go back to the squad room in the afterlife? Beautiful if emotionally traumatic.
It’s going to take me a long time to get over this but suffice to say this was one of the best shows ever made. I didn’t like season 7 or the new characters much and the show was definitely at it’s best earlier on when it was in it’s original and intended format but even later on it still beats the pants off most of the shows made then and today.
jerked of this morning for like half an hour and have proceeded to spend my day lying on the floor in the sun. and now i get to have soup and pastries. this is what life is all about.
