Spoilers

“Be My Valentine”

What a great episode this one was.

Maxine, who in the early stages of the season, killed the criminal the Green Bay Chopper, thinks she found another one.

After taking out a personal ad in the newspaper, Maxine gets a response that she believes is from a serial killer named Cupid. At the same time, Jimmy gets shot in the butt with an arrow. Maxine was sure that this was Cupid because he was known to taunt the police.

She set up a sting operation in an attempt to lure the serial killer to her.

What happens next is a beautiful set up that lands Maxine in the line of fire.

When I watched this episode originally, I remember the shock and the disbelief about the ending. It was one of the best twists of the show, and the performance of Kurtwood Smith as fired FBI agent Barry Jenkins, who was obsessed with Cupid who killed his wife was spectacular. When he turned back to Maxine revealing himself as Cupid, the look on his face was complete psychosis.

The way the show first made us think that Jenkins was Cupid, only to see the other guy, Ben Sasha (Stephen Tobolowsky) to grab the undercover Maxine was awesome. What a great twist to make us think that we had it all backwards and that Jenkins was not Cupid after all, only to reveal that Jenkins and Sasha were both Cupid.

When I watched back in the 1993, I truly thought that there was no way that Maxine was getting out of this. It was a stunning ending.

There are still little bits of character development in the series even in the episodes that are story driven like this one. There was a continuing detail to Carter, showing how lonely and sad he actually feels, which shows why he is always so desperate to be deputized, to make it appear as if he is not as impotent as he feels.

Something that I wanted to mention about Picket Fences that I really love is how they bring back specifics from previous episodes. This episode, they referred to the Green Bay Chopper several times. They have been known to bring up previous characters or storylines in conversation, just like real people would. This is not just a TV series where each episode is stand alone. There is a continuity to Picket Fences and I love that.

As of this moment, Be My Valentine is my favorite episode of the show. We’ll see if it can hold that spot. I am currently five episodes from the end of season 1 and ten days officially into the Picket Fences DailyView Rewatch.