"Zen and the Art of Murder" is an episode of the seventh season of the American police drama television series '' Homicide: Life on the Street''. It originally aired on

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an Television in the United States, American English-language Commercial broadcasting, commercial television network, broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Enterta ...

on April 2, 1999. The episode was written by

Lloyd Rose Lloyd Rose is an American writer most associated with her work on various ''Doctor Who'' spin-offs. She has also written for the American television series '' Homicide: Life on the Street'' and '' Kingpin''. She often jokes in her biographies th ...

and directed by Miguel Arteta. The episode is significant in the story arc of

Laura Ballard Laura Ballard is a fictional character in '' Homicide: Life on the Street'', played by Callie Thorne. She is a police detective in the homicide division of the Baltimore Police Department. Ballard was born on November 20, 1968, and first appeared ...

's romance with

Paul Falsone Paul Falsone is a fictional character in '' Homicide: Life on the Street'', portrayed by Jon Seda. He is a police detective of the Baltimore Police Department. Born on October 14, 1968, Falsone was introduced as a long-time member of the Auto Squ ...

; fearful that their secret romance will be discovered, Falsone ends the relationship.

Plot summary

A spoon is the only trace of evidence left over after

John Munch John Munch is a fictional character played by actor Richard Belzer. Munch first appeared on the American crime drama television series '' Homicide: Life on the Street'' on NBC. A regular through the entire run of the series from 1993 to 1999, Mu ...

and

Meldrick Lewis Meldrick Lewis is a fictional character on the television series '' Homicide: Life on the Street'', played by Clark Johnson. The character is loosely based on Baltimore detective Donald Waltemeyer and appeared in the series for its entire run. Lewi ...

find a well-respected Buddhist monk bludgeoned to death. Because Det.

Tim Bayliss Timothy Bayliss is a fictional character on '' Homicide: Life on the Street'', played by Kyle Secor and one of the few main characters to last the entire run of the show. He was loosely based on real-life Baltimore homicide detective Thomas Pellegr ...

has become active in Baltimore's Buddhist community, Lt.

Al Giardello Alphonse Michael 'Gee' Giardello Sr. is a fictional character from the television drama '' Homicide: Life on the Street''. The character was played by Yaphet Kotto. He is based on Baltimore Police Department Shift Lieutenant Gary D'Addario, a memb ...

orders him to join the investigation; as a result, Bayliss replaces Munch—a move that frustrates Lewis, who rightfully points out that Bayliss, who knew and respected the victim, tends to lose professional perspective in cases which involve an emotional investment. Bayliss and Lewis immediately clash in the investigation: Upon learning that the victim often worked with the homeless, Bayliss immediately intuits that a homeless person killed the monk, while Meldrick is convinced that the monk was murdered by one of the monks who lived with the victim, since they would have had greater access. Bayliss objects that Buddhists are, by their very nature, non-violent, but Meldrick dismisses this as bias. When a witness claims to have seen a mysterious black man lurking around the house, Meldrick is offended that Bayliss chooses to pursue the lead, which Meldrick sees as nothing but "some housewife's racist fantasy." This disagreement motivates Bayliss and Lewis to split up, each pursuing the investigation according to his theory. While Meldrick continues to interview the victim's fellow monks, searching for a motive, Bayliss searches for Larry Moss, a homeless man who fits the eyewitness's description, and encounters him by chance on the street. Bayliss pursues Moss into an abandoned building, where Moss reveals his paranoid motivation for killing the monk: the monk had offered him a spoon at a soup kitchen, and Moss interpreted the casual act of kindness as an act of disrespect, since, in Moss's words, "I can get my own damn spoon!" Bayliss is forced to kill Moss when Moss starts shooting at him. Although everyone tells Bayliss that it was a "clean shoot," Bayliss is devastated by his actions. He is not comforted by a contrite Lewis' apologies for assumption and statement that Bayliss' emotional approach to the job has actually made him a good cop, and says he is left without any identity as he is no longer worthy of being a Buddhist. In a parallel investigation, Det.

and Det.

Stuart Gharty Stuart Gharty is a fictional character played by Peter Gerety in the television series '' Homicide: Life on the Street''. He is introduced in the season four one-shot episode "Scene of the Crime", as a cowardly patrolman who allows two drug dealer ...

respond to a street shooting witnessed by the victim's mother, sister, and neighbor. The sister identifies the shooter as a local hood named "either Jacko or Jocko," but when Ballard and Gharty track Jacko down, the neighbor who witnessed the shooting mistakenly insists that Jacko is not the man who shot Williams. The cops know that Jacko did it but when he gives an alibi for being in another location, they are unable to prove he is lying because the timeline for running between the two locations is unclear. In the end, to the horror of the victim's family, Jacko gets away with murder. {{Homicide: Life on the Street Homicide: Life on the Street (season 7) episodes 1999 American television episodes