ABSTRACT
The vowel-heavy name doesn't square with the face: Mike Giardello needs identity clarification. He responds that he is an Italian, Italian and black. A smile creeps up the face of the embattled white man, and he seizes the opportunity to crack wise at this racial enigma. Since establishing his career playing straight-up black characters in Spike Lee's early movies, Esposito has gravitated to roles as offbeat, idiosyncratic African Americans whose hybrid backgrounds and complex personalities scramble conventional racial expectations. In Homicide, Esposito's inscrutably pedigreed Mike Giardello is the prodigal son of Lieutenant Al Giardello, known affectionately as "Gee," an Afro-Sicilian American who runs the detective squad like a padrone, wise in the ways of power, fiercely protective of his surrogate family.
