The Rise and Fall of Paul the Wall

An elderly lady, Mary Minot (Fran Ryan, "Stripes"), has killed a burglar in her apartment. Although she is hailed as a "hero", it later looks like she deliberately set the guy up. A disturbed family man named Flowers (Paul Lieber, "What Just Happened") douses his apartment with gasoline, threatening to light it up. And Belker, who is undertaking another of his undercover operations as a bum, ends up victimized by street denizens, led by Dan Hedaya ("Commando"), who beat him up, rob him, and strip him naked.

It's heartbreaking to see Belker in such a vulnerable position, and ultimately satisfying when he is found & rescued, and later gets back at Hedaya. A darkly humorous storyline with an extremely corpulent crime figure, the "Paul the Wall" of the title (played by the late George Memmoli ("Phantom of the Paradise")), deals with his dying in his jail cell, and the over-stressed efforts of several cops to try to move his body. This also serves to introduce Pauls' wife (a lovely Jennifer Tilly, making the first of five appearances on the series).

The contrast between the stories of Mary and Flowers is unfortunately affected by public perception, as Frank says to a judge; people are demonizing Flowers for what he did, while praising Mary endlessly.

There are lots of great twists and turns in this *intense* and potent episode, and, in addition to an early acting credit for Tilly, this also marks an early acting credit for Joaquin Phoenix (then using the name "Leaf"), who plays Flowers' victimized son who pops Fay in the eye for daring to call his old man "sick".

Excellent entertainment from beginning to end.

Nine out of 10.

Lots of action. For one thing, an enormous man known as Paul the Wall seems to have had a heart attack. Most of the episode involves seven or eight guys trying to get his body up the stairs. Belker, undercover with derelicts, is tortured and beaten and left naked, cuffed to some pipes. An old lady kills a boy with a shotgun, but she has a history of getting away with things.