Spoilers

“My Left Shoe”

Father Barrett is revealed to have a shoe fetish and, when Howard Buss went on the local station and revealed it to all of Rome, the questions about Father Barrett’s worthiness are raised by the whole town.

It also opened up the whole town to wonder about masturbation. Especially Matthew, who worried that it was actually a sin. Matthew’s discussions with Jill, Jimmy and even, eventually, Wambaugh were hilarious and oh so real.

There was a lot of hypocrisy in this episode, since it was just a few episodes ago that Barrett was one of the leading voices rallying against Rachel Harris, a fact that was brought up a couple of different times.

The ending when the city of Rome stood in his parish in support of him was an emotional moment.

“Frosted Flakes”

A sad and tragic story about a young boy who has leukemia and has been given just 6 months to live. His parents wanted to explore the possibility of the experimental procedure of cryogenics in order to freeze the boy until a cure could be found.

Of course, this topic divided the Rome community, including Jimmy and Jill. Everyone in the community wanted to have their say about the idea of cryogenically freezing a nine-year old boy. Sadly, a lot of the arguments overshadowed the tragic story the show was presenting to us.

Judge Bone always does a great job of summarizing the situation though and wrapping things back up.

“Howard’s End”

Howard Buss’s Alzheimer’s Disease was getting worse. It was so bad that he was in the mayor’s office, in a diaper, with a bow and arrow, thinking that he was Bill Pugen.

His son Kevin, who we saw earlier this season needing a heart transplant, found his father suffering and he took a gun from the desk drawer and shot Howard in the head.

After talking with Howard’s daughter, Jill decided against the surgery that could have saved Howard’s life. This choice made Jill feel very guilty for the rest of the episode.

Kevin stood trial for the murder of his father, and nobody really wanted to see him convicted. Littleton even voiced this to Maxine, wondering if he should cross examine Kevin. He chose to do so to honor the adversarial process.

However, when Jimmy got on the stand, he testified that Kevin was unable to distinguish between right and wrong. This was a switch for Jimmy, helping to open up the insanity defense for Kevin. The perfect image of Jimmy was tarnished, but many were thankful for it.

The funeral for Howard was remarkably emotional, with Judge Bone getting up to prevent Wambaugh from speaking. The whole picture of the town of Rome walking past the coffin, tapping on it because Howard had asked Judge Bone to do it saying that ‘he’ll hear it,’ was extremely emotional and nearly broke me. It was a beautiful end to a character that had been important since the first season.

This brought the second season of Picket Fences to a close. There were some of the best episodes of the series in this season. Overall, it may be considered the best season of the show’s time on the air.