James Earl Jones’ Gabriel’s Fire Was Too Good for Network Television

Today, we look at how the pilot of James Earl Jones’ Gabriel’s Fire was a sign that the show was too good for network television

This is “All the Best Things,” a spotlight on the best TV episodes, movies, albums, etc.

This is a Year of Great TV Episodes, where every day this year, we’ll take a look at great TV episodes. Note that I’m not talking about “Very Special Episodes” or episodes built around gimmicks, but just “normal” episodes of TV shows that are notable only because of how good they are.

All this month, I’ll be spotlighting great Black-centric TV episodes.

Okay, I won’t front, I totally forgot about Leap Year this year, and I thought that I was going to begin the month with James Earl Jones, and end the month with James Earl Jones. It would have been awesome. But, well, it IS Leap Year, so I came up with a way to handle Leap Day.

For now, let’s look at the brilliant pilot of Gabriel’s Fire from 1990, written by Coleman Luck & Jacqueline Zambrano and directed by Robert Lieberman. The episode opens in the past, as Chicago policemen are bursting into the home of what looks to be a Black Panther leader (as noted by my pal, Fraser, in the comments, this was based on the killing of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton by agents of the local Attorney’s office, working in concert with the Chicago Police Department and the FBI. That incident was the inspirastion for the recent film, Judas and the Black Messiah, about the informant the FBI placed in Hampton’s group. They don’t identify the group as the Black Panthers in the TV show, though). They begin cutting down whoever they see. A cop turns and gets ready to shoot a woman with her child, when one of his fellow cops pulls a gun on him and tells him not to shoot. The cop ignores him, and so the other cop shoots his own fellow cop. We learn, of course, that the cop who shot the other cop is Gabriel Bird, who has been in prison ever since for killing a fellow cop.

Another prisoner comes to him, and asks him to help with improving prison conditions, but it is clear that Bird has checked out on the human condition. He just reads and reads and reads, and everyone leaves him alone. We realize, though, that this other man (played by the great Lincoln Kirkpatrick) is the only real friend Bird has. He is then killed while trying to organize the other prisoners.

This brings in the lawyer of Bird’s dead friend, Victoria Heller (Laila Robins), who wants Bird to testify. He tells her off, and she decides to look into his case. It was handled terribly at the time, and so she gets the case reversed, and the city is no longer willing to try it, so Bird is free. He is stunned. But not grateful. He had resigned himself to a life in prison, but now he doesn’t know WHAT to do with his life. There’s an amazing scene where he has a hot dog, and the sheer JOY at it is amazing. That joy, though, is fleeting, when he adjusts to living in a boarding house and working menial jobs because no one will hire an ex-con.

The one bright spot is a local cafe owner, Josephine (Madge Sinclair), who Bird had been kind to in the past when he was a beat cop in the area (when her husband had died, Bird had visited with her son regularly). She insists that he take a room over her cafe. In any event, we learn that Heller is so intent on solving the murder of Bird’s friend because she blames herself for not keeping the man out of prison (she was a new lawyer at the time, and she didn’t do a good enough job on his case. It has haunted her even as she has become a high-powered lawyer). By the end of the episode, she and Bird solve the murder, and she convinces Bird to work for her as a private detective, and to use his skills to help other people who have been screwed by the system.

It is such an am amazing show, and both Jones and Sinclair won Emmys, but it was just TOO high brow for network television, and after an attempt to revamp the show to make it more commercial (which I covered here), it was canceled. But really, this was outstanding television with a CAPTIVATING performance by Jones (and a great, more understated performance by Sinclair).

Okay, if I’m going to have 308 more of these, I could use suggestions, so feel free to email me at brian@poprefs.com!