Remembering Andre Braugher, the best TV actor of his generation

If Andre Braugher wasn't the best television actor of the 1990s, or perhaps of his entire generation, it would be an interesting and productive argument to decide who exactly was better.

Braugher — who died Tuesday at the age of 61 following a short illness, according to his spokeswoman Jennifer Allen — finally won an Emmy for the iconic Det. Frank Pembleton of “Homicide: Life on the Street”' in 1998. But those Emmys are occasionally irrelevant, often tardy, benchmarks of talent or accomplishment. “Homicide” (1993-99) and Braugher were the best series and actor on television by general critical consensus by just the third season in 1995. Nonetheless, the Emmys spurned both that season, and would later ignore the singularly great series “Homicide” would beget (“The Wire '') too.

Instead it would be left to viewers, to us, to settle this argument of who was better. Most of us had Braugher by a couple of lengths right from the start.

All you needed to do was watch. A few minutes of Braugher screen time — of Frank screentime — marshaled the evidence. As Pembleton, he was that famous William Faulkner line incarnate, the human heart in conflict with itself. The choir boy, later the cop, raised a Jesuit who had rejected God. The family man whose family were other cops, all dysfunctional, their psyches, like his, wounded by the job and the streets and the constant death.

He was the cynic who, in full uniform, saluted the coffin of a fallen comrade as it passed by. Frank was also the salesperson, the slick Willy, the guy who went into the “Box” — the interrogation room — and came out with a scalp.

Entering that Box in the series pilot, he told his rookie partner Bayliss (Kyle Secor), “What you will be privileged to witness is not an interrogation, but an act of salesmanship, as silver-tongued and thieving as ever moved used cars, Florida swampland or Bibles. But what I am selling is a long prison term — for a client who has no genuine use for the product.”

Frank, was, of course conflicted but the job had no use for conflict, and so the deep internal grind of psychic machinery wore him down to nearly nothing. But adrift in the badlands, Pembleton never fully rejected his soul, or the smoldering ember it had become. As such, he became the true beating heart of “Homicide” — a series more than any other that set the stage for the glorious golden age of television that was to follow.

Who better than Braugher to assume this lofty role? Classically trained, an Obie winner for Shakespeare long before “Homicide” arrived, Braugher was the thinking actor's actor. His words — his dialogue — always seemed to reflect some inner calculation or contradiction, as if he were following a path that was headed in an entirely different direction from where the words indicated.

Tom Fontana, one of “Homicide's” legendary showrunners (the other, Barry Levinson) once told a TV critic, “Andre is one of those actors who makes me think I'm a better writer than I am.” Indeed.

It might seem wrong, or wrongheaded, to reduce this magnificent talent to just one series, and fortunately, there were others — just not nearly enough. Braugher left “Homicide” because he didn't want to be typecast, and later segued to comedy (“Brooklyn Nine-Nine”) and dramedy (''Men of a Certain Age”). Braugher was magnificent on both, but this career still seemed like an ongoing search of the greatness foretold on a great series from so long ago.

Braugher died before he achieved that — more tragedy bound to Tuesday's tragic news.