Black and Blue
Directed By: Chris Menaul
Story By: Tom Fontana
Teleplay By: James Yoshimura
Pembleton continues to investigate the police shooting, but finds himself stonewalled by Giardello, who refuses to accept Pembleton's theory that a cop was the shooter. Complicating matters is that Pembleton's chief suspect, Lt. Jimmy Tyron (Michael S. Kennedy), had an affair with Howard.
List of tropes applying to this episode:
- Be as Unhelpful as Possible: The cops Pembleton interrogates all blatantly lie to protect Tyron, while all the witnesses Bayliss and Howard interview refuse to give them any information, rightfully believing that the police are trying to cover-up their culpability in the shooting.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Giardello wants Pembleton to pursue a civilian suspect and constantly stonewalls his investigation whenever it points to a cop having carried out the shooting. When Pembleton does so by browbeating the innocent Staley into confessing and unsubtly calls Giardello out in his behavior, he's guilt-ridden and lets Staley go free after getting him to say the shooter's identity: Jimmy Tyron.
- Berserk Button: Pembleton goes into a rage after Giardello accuses him of being a Category Traitor. When Gee tells him to "choose a side" between the black community and the police, Pembleton snaps and tricks an innocent man into confessing just to prove his point.
- Break the Haughty: Staley goes into the interrogation cocky and arrogant. Pembleton swiftly breaks him and leaves him a crying, weeping wreck.
- Breaking Speech: Pembleton gives a particularly brutal, ten-minute long Breaking Speech to Lane Staley to get him to confess, knowing full well that Staley is innocent, just to spite Giardello.
- Category Traitor:
- Giardello accuses Pembleton of showing more respect for his white superiors than him when he gets the white Granger to let him take a polygraph test of the suspected officers. Hypocritically, he later calls Pembleton out for putting his race before his duty as a police officer and tells him he needs to "choose a side”.
- During his interrogation of Staley, Pembleton accuses him of showing more respect to his white partner Bayliss than him, which he segues into guilt-tripping Staley until he becomes truly convinced that C.C. Cox's death was his fault.
- Desk Sweep of Rage: After Pembleton calls out Giardello for making him force a confession out of Lane Staley, Giardello sits at his desk before angrily sweeping the contents off, startling everyone in the squad room.
- Dirty Cop: Tyron executed Cox when he tried to run after Tyron threatened him at gunpoint and brutalized him and Staley, then covered it up with the help of his fellow officers.
- Hidden Depths: Bolander turns out to be a talented cellist.
- Meaningful Echo: During his Breaking Speech to Staley, Pembleton tells him to remember the days when white officers would take African-Americans into the back of a paddy wagon to beat a confession out of a suspect. After Staley confesses, Pembleton tells Giardello about Staley, "He would had a better chance in the paddy wagon...they would have given him a fair shake."
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Munch recovers a tropical fish from a crime scene, and adamantly refuses to flush it down the toilet when Bolander and the evidence officer suggest he do so, instead deciding to give it as a gift to his girlfriend Felicia, who owns a tank full of tropical fish. However, it turns out the fish was actually a Jack Dempsey
, and it devours all of Felicia's fish when he puts it in. She promptly kicks him out and demands he repay her for the fish she lostnote . - Police Brutality: It's revealed Tyron had roughed up Cox and Staley during the raid, and threatened them both at gunpoint. Cox (who was unarmed) slapped the gun out of Tyron's hands and made a run for it, and Tyron promptly pulled out another gun and shot him in the back.
- Reflexive Response: When Linda asks Bolander what he wants for lunch, he says he feels like a cheeseburger, to which she naturally replies, "You don't look like a cheeseburger", which further endears her to him.
- That Reminds Me of a Song: When Howard goes to find Pembleton on the roof of the building (to tell him she once had an affair with his chief suspect), Pembleton admits he goes to the roof because he thinks better there, and he and Howard start singing "Up on the Roof".
