Spoilers

“Enemy Lines”

After trying to stop the bused Green Bay kids from coming to Rome, Wisconsin, Jill Brock, as one of the co-mayors, had to face the consequences of her actions as Judge Nance, played by Paul Winfield, marched into her office and placed her under arrest for contempt of a federal order.

He placed Jill in a jail cell and made noise that she was going to be the one that he made an example out of.

Nance took the time to come and see Jill and the pair of them spent most of the episode engaging verbally with each other. Both gave some great performances in the small jail cell. We learned about the motive of Nance, who had clearly had something driving him to be as desperate as he had been.

Meanwhile, John was struggling with the new normal of Rome, a town that suddenly felt less welcoming than it had before for the D.A. He even tried to get taken off the case heading to the Supreme Court, but Judge Bone would not recuse him.

Kimberly and one of the new black girls from Green Bay got into it as well. I remember these two becoming friends, but their start was extremely shaky. Kimberly was nervous and the other girl, named Aisha, picked up on it immediately, which led to a fight between them.

This was a decent episode, but honestly, some of the discussion between Nance and Jill felt forced. It was the typical Picket Fences fight that had its origins in other traumas. Here it turned out that Nance was dying of liver cancer and he was trying to fix race relations before he died. I’m also not certain that the inclusion of the story about his son made sense when they were including it. Winfield delivered it well, but I’m not sure it worked.