Main cast: Clifton James (The Inspector), John Christopher Jones (Officer Parkhurst), Tony Shalhoub (Officer Mancini), Ken Costigan (The Homeless Man), and John Robert Bloom (The Golem)
Director: John Tillinger

Leavings is about two New York cops, Mancini and Parkhurst, stumbling upon a bizarre kind of problem: the homeless and the vagrants in town are losing their body parts. For example, a homeless man wakes up one morning with both his arms gone. They report this to their boss, who then takes forever to reveal the “twist” that I can see coming the moment the episode begins.

This episode has plenty of style and mood, with the music, the lighting, and the characters’ lines all seeming to pay homage to noir genre of the old days. However, it moves at a painful crawl, making the characters do nothing but drop exposition on one another for pretty much the entire episode.

As it progresses, the episode starts going around in circles, as these characters start rehashing the same things in what seems like an effort to pad the episode. Throughout it all, Tony Shalhoub and especially John Christopher Jones overact like they thought they were in a slapstick comedy. They are annoying to watch, and should have taken their cues from Clifton James, who chews scenery with gusto and glee but at the same time never overdoing it to the obnoxious degrees that the two actors take it to.

So, this is a pretty episode, but the execution is never quite there. It’s a shame, as the premise has potential only to have this show completely falls short in delivering.