Homicide: The Student (1969) User Reviews (4)

Interesting...but one of the characters was poorly written.

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 27 November 2009]

This is one episode whose plot is rather easy to figure out if you know about the plots of books like Camus' "The Stranger" or Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment" or "The Legend of Saint Julian" by Flaubert. If you do, then you can quickly guess where the story is headed.

The show begins with a report about a double homicide. Two workers at a factory were killed with a .22 rifle and no one has any leads about the assailant. Eventually, after chasing some dead ends, the police look into a strange college student who is into existentialism and death.

The episode isn't bad but the character of the young man's aunt is pretty dumb and very one-dimensional. Virginia Gregg played this hyper-religious character and if you hadn't seen her last appearance on "Dragnet", you'd swear this woman was a terrible actress--but in "The Shooting" she did a great job. It just goes to show you that writing can make or break any performance. Still, despite this, it's a pretty good episode and worth seeing--even if its message could be construed as a plea to possibly ban books!!

Bad Student

[hellraiser7 · 10/10 · 29 April 2021]

Warning do not read unless seen episode.

This is another favorite episode of the show for me, this episode is a bit different as it's more of a character study on the serial killer.

Throughout the investigation we get a layout on Jeff's psyche. From the things we find out, this guy I'll admit really creeps me out because unfortunately monsters like Jeff do exist.

There are two interviews which have some red flags on Jeff's behavior pattern. From the coach we see Jeff does have athletic capability and had potential to get even further if it wasn't for a couple of bad pitches. As we hear later the guy's behavior just suddenly changes negatively on a dime. He got angrier than humanly normal and this was reflected on how he threw the baseballs in some practices, extremely hard and even looked like he was going to throw the ball at someone, it happened only once which was thought to be accidental but doubtful.

Then we get on one girl Nancy Morton Jeff talked with, for a collage student she's really wise beyond her years and she really hit the mark on the guy's diagnosis. As we see he is deeply delusional, that he has no real sense of reality, this is a person that living in his own fantasy world. But also indication the guy is a sociopath as he interacted with Nancy be he never was able to connect with her in any normal way along with any other people in his life.

One thing I like about this episode is how it really shows how books really don't create bad people or cause people to do bad things. Friday stated that the book was just the excuse, as fraked up as the Flaubert's story is, that didn't give him the tendencies to kill. Those tendencies were always there way before he even got into that book, once he read it, he took it as inspiration to act on those fraked up tendencies.

Strange as this may sound this episode made me grateful that I am human as well as being able to read books for part of what they should be pure enjoyment in the enrichment of intellect and life.

Jeff was no where closer to Sainthood but even further away from the freedom of reality.

Rating: 4 stars.

Fascinating episode

[dlightd-32292 · 10/10 · 9 May 2022]

SPOILERS

Love the music playing as the librarian reads the snippet. ALL written accounts of this episode omit the actual story the young murderer was reading, which the librarian summarizes. Gustave Flaubert's tale, "Three Short Works" -- the middle tale. "The Legend of Saint-Julian the Hospitaller." A rich, princely husband and wife are enjoying a festival. Their son Julian loves hunting and giving alms to the poor. The parents are visited by two old gray men with two destinies for their son, Jullian. In sackcloth, at her bed, an old man appears."Rejoice, O mother! Thy son shall be a saint." Later, the father is giving alms to beggars when a 'gipsy' appears. "Ah! Ah! Thy son!--great bloodshed--great glory--happy always--an emperor's family." Neither parent discussed either's warning to each other. In church, the devout son Julian is infuriated a mouse appears. He plots, murders, and crushes it. The son Julian grows up finding his sport: love of death, killing, and hunting alone as primitive as possible. After one night's murder of all manner of animals, he delights in attacking a stag, his doe, and their fawn. After the fawn and doe are slaughtered, the wounded stag charges, only to stop and speak a curse before dying. "Accursed! Accursed! Accursed! Some day, ferocious soul, thou wilt murder thy father and thy mother!" Returning home, Julian vows to never hunt. His father encourages him out of the funk. Jullian, in moving a hung sword accidentally strikes his father and aiming at what he considers to be a stork, strikes his mother's hat. Julian runs away; becoming a mercenary. Growing powerful with an army, he marries a king's daughter, becomes peaceful, and never travels. Julian tells his secret to his wife who tells him to hunt and to ignore the curse. Julian hunts all night. Coming home, he sneaks to surprise his wife. Unbeknownst to him, Julian's parents had been looking for him and found his wife and she hosted them in her bed. Believing the couple in the bed to be lovers, he kills them and then realized his mistake in fulfilling the prophecy. Julian gives his wife burial instructions, all his property, attends as a monk, then leaves forever. He wanders, begs, and endures insults. Traveling to the ends of the earth, he becomes a ferryman, creating his own popular service. One day a leper appears and comes aboard. Leper demands food, drink, and warmth. Finally, Julian strips nude face to face. The leper reveals himself as Jesus Christ and takes Julian to Heaven.

Why anyone who hasn't seen a show and wants to remain safe wouldvseekout a review sight is unfathomable. Read the TV Guide. LOL.

This student deserves detention

[Fluke_Skywalker · 6/10 · 6 July 2023]

A double murder is a pretty brutal way to kick-off your episode, but things start to get a bit silly when Friday and Gannon begin their investigation.

The trail leads them to a poetry-spewing wannabe philosopher who lives with his zealotous Aunt. On the surface that seems like a good set-up, but it's undermined by a couple of very shaky performances; particularly by Virginia Gregg as the Aunt. Ms. Gregg has 228 credits on her resume, so I'm willing to chalk up her over the top performance to the direction and the material. Not faring much better is Kevin Coughlin, whose performance would feel more at home on "The Brady Bunch" than "Dragnet". Actually, most of the cast outside of Webb and Morgan don't acquit themselves very well here.

I believe some of this could have been offset had we known that Coughlin's character had another target and that he was poised to strike again, but it's played more as an "he might", and it robs the episode of the kind of tension that it needed to really hum.