Homicide: Life on the Street: Season 05
Another Homicide: Life on the Street regular bids goodbye to the Baltimore PD homicide division as the series enters its fifth season: Megan Russert (Isabella Hofmann) has decided to leave for Europe to pursue a romance (though she will make a handful of return visits in subsequent episodes). In its typical revolving-door fashion, the series compensates for Russert's loss by promoting... (read more) a former recurring career, police videographer Brodie (Max Perlich), to full regular status. Other additions to the cast roster include Michelle Forbes as abrasive, no-nonsense chief medical examiner Julianna Cox and Toni Lewis as transplanted downtown narcotics detective Terri Stivers. Stivers, in fact, is a principal player in the fifth season's most significant story arc, involving the pursuit of elusive drug kingpin Luther Mahoney (Erik Todd Dellums). Picking up a plot strand introduced in the previous season, Detective Pembleton (Andre Braugher) tries to return to duty, even though he has not fully recovered from his stroke; before long, Pembleton and his partner, Bayliss (Kyle Secor), will come to an acrimonious parting of the ways. Elsewhere, Brodie tentatively inaugurates a romance (or so he hopes) with Det. Kay Howard (Melissa Leo); Assistant DA Danvers (Zeljko Ivanek) rethinks his opposition to the death penalty when his fiancée is murdered; and arson detective Mike Kellerman (Reed Diamond) is targeted by a federal grand jury's investigation of corruption within the arson unit. By the time the season has reached its climax, drug lord Luther Mahoney is killed under highly suspicious circumstances that will have wide-ranging and tragic ramifications in the future; and Jon Seda makes his first series appearance as Det. Paul Falsone, freshly arrived at Baltimore Homicide to investigate the reported suicide of former department member Beau Felton. ~ Rovi