Spoilers

“Cold Spell”

The final day of the November Picket Fences DailyView Rewatch arrived. I watched today’s episode early this morning before I went to school and now I am doing the final write-up of November. I will continue watching Picket Fences episodes as I am currently in the third season, but it may not necessarily be every day. For the rest of the watch, if I have a day where I have a lot of things scheduled, I will not compel myself to watch an episode. I will absolutely continue to finish up season three and then go through season four of this series. I do love Picket Fences.

This was a tough episode because it started a trend. Ginny was found in her home, dead and inside a freezer. She had been dead for three weeks, according to Carter. It was a shocking death when I first saw the episode back in the 1990s and it was a reminder of how sad it was when one of the original cast was sent off in this manner.

Paul Williams came to Rome playing Ginny’s brother, who was struggling to understand why it took the people of Rome three weeks to realize that Ginny was missing. He never got a good answer to that question but, as Jill said, “Rome does well with funerals” and Ginny’s service was fully attended. Paul Williams sang a version of his classic song, Rainbow Connection in honor of Ginny.

Ed Lawson continued campaigning for mayor as an election was coming up. Carter declared his own candidacy for mayor, to a series of giggles from the crowd. Jill had decided to run last episode to become a duly elected mayor and not just the temporary mayor that she had been.

The other main story featured a Wiccan family whose daughter painted a pentagram on the school walls to protect herself from the fear of the black kids. Littleton was front and center for this, leading the way in trying to get the young girl removed from her mother’s care.

I find it fascinating that Rome, Wisconsin has Wiccan, Christian Scientists, Jews, Mormons and many other religions floating around, but they are shaken by the African Americans coming into the school. If there was any place that should fit in, Rome seems to be it.

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.

Spoilers

“The Bus Stops Here”

Racial tensions take over Rome as a federal order came down that 400 black students from Green Bay would be bussed into Rome schools.

The parents of Rome got together, fully recognizing their prejudice, but trying to find a way to stop the kids from being brought in.

Paul Winfield played Federal court judge Harold Nance, who made the order. There were some epic scenes between him and Judge Henry Bone. Winfield and Ray Walston bring similar massive personas that take up the whole room.

I have to say that one of the things I really love about this show is how they use all of their secondary and tertiary characters are characters we have seen in previous episodes. Ed from the jury episode was back. So was a couple of the teachers from previous stories. It felt like a real little town with faces that we are familiar with. Cool.

The ending scene with the National Guard coming in to confront the Rome police department who was deployed to prevent the students from getting off the bus. The moment was tense, but Jimmy ordered his deputies to back down and the black kids walked into the school.

In a side story, the murder trial appeal winds up heading to the Supreme Court. Seeing Wambaugh and Littleton hugging in celebration was a hoot.

Spoilers

E1: “Survival of the Fittest”

E2: “Systematic Abuse”

I kicked off the third season of Picket Fences with the first two episodes. They start it off with a murder case over a sixteen year old girl named Susan. A drifter named Brian Latham had tried to pick up the girl and is arrested for the crime.

When they could not find the girl, Kenny, who had found a cross among Brian’s things, went in to see Brian and asked him to help direct the police to a place where the body might be. Kenny asked him to help, Catholic to Catholic. Brian told Kenny that he could check a pond.

Susan was in the pond, wrapped in a tarp. Wambaugh tried to get the body thrown out as fruits of a poison tree, but Judge Bone, in a surprise ruling, decided to allow the evidence anyway.

Episode two focused on the trial itself, with Littleton and Wambaugh battling in court. The show does a great job of showing the trial, with all of the testimony.

It felt clear that Brian Latham was the guilty party. There was nothing that led us to doubt that. Until the final scene that is. When Brian had been found guilty, he spoke to Kenny and told him, Catholic to Catholic, that he did not kill Susan.

What a cliffhanger. There was no question that he was the guilty party. The show went to great lengths to show that. The glances that Brian made when Wambaugh was coaching him on his testimony seemed obvious that he was understanding what he had to do.

And then… like a bomb… everything we knew about the case was flipped on its side. There was some top line writing involved here.

There was one laughable moment. The trial was being broadcast over local TV and they showed a group of boys in what looked like a locker room including Matthew watching the trial. They were arguing about what they thought of the case. This was silly. No group of 5ht graders (I think that was what Matthew was) are going to have a TV tuned in to a trial in the locker room. That scene pulled me out of the story.

Otherwise, this was a great couple of episodes that kicked off a major story for the third season.

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.