A less inventive actor might convey Pembleton's inner struggle with pained contemplation. But Braugher understands that the conceited Pembleton takes that stuff about being created in His image quite literally. Pembleton's God is one cranky dude who happens to be the best at what He does. So when Pembleton asserts matter-of-factly, "Luck had nothing to do with it. God reached down and graced the fool with wisdom,'' after having narrowly escaped a knifewielding ex-con, you believe it. Hey, Pembleton would have done the same for Him.
Pembleton takes his place alongside great conflicted TV cops like Sonny Crockett of Miami Vice, John Kelly of NYPD Blue and Jane Tennison of Prime Suspect, all of whom found private demons waiting at the end of each shift.
And as a black cop, what Pembleton sees when he stares at the ceiling at night must be very close to the waking nightmares of O.J. Simpson prosecutor Christopher Darden. So physically similar are Braugher and Darden (the shaved head, the somber gaze, the preppie garb) that they seemed to morph into one as the trial of the century limped to its agonizing conclusion.
But long before Darden found himself wedged between the rock of his job prosecuting one of America's most popular black sports heroes and the hard place of Johnnie Cochran's race card, Pembleton was playing out a nearly identical soul-wracking dilemma for Homicide's small but loyal viewership.
So physically similar are Braugher and Christopher Darden (the shaved head, the somber gaze, the preppie garb) that they seemed to morph into one as the trial of the century limped to its agonizing conclusion.
Pembleton's reputation as the best detective in the department would seem to transcend race, but, of course, it doesn't. During the show's run, Pembleton has slugged it out with a white cop who called him "Boy" and lit into well-meaning colleagues for pretending that race doesn't matter. Still, Pembleton is too conservative to make race a rallying cry (it's difficult to imagine him, say, going on the Million Man March). Does this make him a traitor?
The question of loyalty was stunningly depicted in a 1993 episode succinctly titled "Black and Blue," in which Pembleton suspected a police cover-up in the shooting death of a black kid during a scuffle with white cops. Pembleton presses on with his investigation against the advice of his superior, Lt. Al Giardello (Yaphet Kotto), who is also black. Recounting his experience as a rookie detective during the riots following Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination, Giardello admonishes Pembleton, "I had to make up my mind that night which side I was on. Now it's your turn."
In a spectacularly provocative scene that anticipated both Mark Fuhrman and Johnnie Cochran, Pembleton threw Giardello's words back at him and demonstrated how, in a white-dominated society, a black cop whose first loyalty is to the badge can be as dangerous as a white cop whose first loyalty is to other white cops.
Interrogating a black witness to the incident, Pembleton plays up the brothers-in-oppression angle and wheedles, preaches to and guilt-trips the kid until he confesses to the murder he didn't commit.
Finished with his tour de force of self-loathing, Pembleton sneers to Giardello, "He would have had a better chance in the back of a paddy wagon.''
With each bitterly sarcastic remark and impolitic blow-up, Braugher drives home the strain of Pembleton's high-wire-act. Will Frank ever be able to accept his calling as the squad's moral center and voice of reason, without fearing the loss of his racial identity? Can't he ever stop trying to be perfect? It isn't easy being God's favorite cop.