Tim Bayliss

Tim Bayliss is a fictional detective on Homicide: Life on the Street. He was played by Kyle Secor.

Childhood

He had a difficult relationship with his family, but perhaps because of that he strongly valued family loyalty. In season five it was revealed he had been sexually molested as a child by an Uncle named George. When he admitted this to his father he was accused of lying. At that point onward his relationship to his father was mostly hostile and remained so to the man's death. Another of his uncles was strongly racist.

Unlike several characters in the series religion was not important in his family background. When asked he stated he had been raised "mutt." In this case that meant his family attended several different denominations, most of which could be termed "Mainline Protestant", but they had no attachment to any of them. He briefly joined Unitarian Universalism for a girlfriend, but seems to have not been particularly sincere about it. That being said he did start out with a nominally Christian outlook, which was mentioned time to time in the early seasons.

Adena Watson case

Tim Bayliss had originally worked for the mayor's security, but his ambition had been to work at Homicide. His first case would be the rape-murder of Adena Watson. This case haunted him throughout the series, but particularly in the first four seasons. In one episode in the fourth season he meets with Adena's mother and they both discover that in many ways she had moved on from the tragedy better than Bayliss had. This realization confused and angered her. In this same episode he indicated he was starting to hate Adena due to the fact he could not move on from her death. However his inability to lead to the capture of Adena's murder, and it being his first case, helped make it an obsession for him. The case also led to his partnering with Frank Pembleton.

Partnership with Pembleton

The partnership with Pembleton would form a core element to the character and the entire show. Pembleton was by turns supportive and hurtful to Bayliss. He wanted to go tough on his cousin who killed a Turkish exchange student and also said that he lacked an understanding of "his dark side" so would do poor in his job. Yet he also saved Bayliss from being charged in an incident that could have been interpreted as robbery and Pembleton once told Bayliss that he was the only man he trusted. The only other person Pembleton said he trusted was his wife, Mary.

That being said the two ended their partnership for a time in the fifth season, partly due to Pembleton's stroke. Bayliss stated that Frank's rhythm was "off" after recovery, but there were also hints that he had come to prefer working without him. In addition to that he felt uncomfortable with Pembleton after he told him how he(Bayliss) was abused in childhood. Later he returned to partnering with Pembleton due to Mary leaving Pembleton for a time.

Personal life

In later seasons Bayliss's character evolved far beyond the initial "choir boy" image some had. He had an affair with Emma Zoole who liked having sex in a coffin and who later broke up with him because he "wouldn't fight with her." The statement had something of a double meaning as it directly involved his unwillingness to argue with her about their problems, but other aspects of the character implied she also was referring to his disdain for rough sex. He also later explored bisexuality. However the character did not "come out" in the normal sense and seemed to consider dating men to be a form of personal exploration or experimentation. In the first episode concerning the matter he flatly stated he was "not gay" and never formally declared himself to be bisexual either. This way of treating the matter is believed to have made the network uncomfortable.

As mentioned in the childhood section he had not had a particularly religious upbringing. That being said toward the end of the series, after he had been shot, he became more interested in the matter and converted to Buddhism. Other officers questioned how sincere his conversion was, with some justification. The series finale implied that he had to flee Baltimore after murdering "the Internet killer." In the 2000 TV movie, Homicide: Life Everlasting, he confesses to this killing.

Web sources

This article is based on a GNU FDL LGBT Wikia article: Bayliss Tim Bayliss

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