The Rogue's Eye View
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M I L L E N N I U M
106. BLOOD RELATIVES

Written by Chip Johannessen
Directed by James Charleston
Original Air Date: December 6, 1996


Brief summary: After a mother who is attending her son's wake is found mutilated in his grave, Catherine and Frank begin an investigation which points to an ex-con that is seeking a family of his own.

Rogue's Review: Another of my very favorites. James Dickerson (Sean Six, who previously played Buck on the engaging but short-lived Fox series ALIEN NATION) is a lonely, disturbed young man who goes to the funerals of people he doesn't know, in order to comfort the bereaved and relieve his own deep-seated loneliness. But following one such funeral, a grieving mother is yanked into an open grave and savagely knifed to death, and we're off on another tour of the dark undercurrents of our existence.

At its heart, "Blood Relatives" is a story of loneliness, a study not so much of serial murder but of societal abandonment, detachment from our fellow human beings. "There's home after home full of kids just like James," Catherine says at one point. "People full of holes."

There's a great shot early in the episode – Frank, Bletch, Watts and Giebelhouse (Stephen James Lang) walking through a cemetery – which serves to identify what works best about this episode: everyone's busy, and everyone plays a role. Frank is not the core of this investigation, but only one of its key players. What's even more satisfying is Catherine's heavier involvement, working with the city's Victim Assistance program and going head to head against Bletcher in defense of a family shattered by one of the killings – and later defending the disturbed suspect, a victim of neglect and abandonment.

If I have any problem with "Blood Relatives," it's the intimation that homosexual jealousy could lead to killings with this level of ferocity – homosexuals are not ordinarily violent or sociopathic individuals. It has been amply pointed out to me, however, that the driving factor in the killings was not homosexuality, but rather the deep-seated psychosis of the killer. There are kind and giving persons in every sector of society, regardless of race or creed, religious belief or sexual orientation. It seems logical there will also be broke souls and damaged minds in every sector as well.

Once again, there seems to be a bit of a leap in logic on Frank's part, as he reaches a surprising conclusion about the murderer, but the evidence is there, if one looks closely enough. And the finale is a deliciously terrifying confrontation, in which Frank AGAIN puts himself in harm's way. This time, however, Bletch and Catherine call him on it, and again we're reminded that the rifts in society have already wormed their way into the big yellow house, where the Blacks keep too much from one another. [Rating: 9/10]

"You scrape together 250 for a house. Spend your weekends trying to keep up with repairs. You got to wonder how the dozen convicts next door qualifies as a single-family residence." -- Detective Giebelhouse


reviews by Rick Smith (1996 - present) and website by Matt Asendorf (2004)
all material property of Paper Street Productions ~ http://www.paperstreetprod.com