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.

Spoilers

“Buried Alive”

A traffic stop by Maxine leads to a a special episode of Picket Fences that examines the relationships of everyone involved.

I remember this episode, but I have to say I thought it was a holiday episode. However, it was simply a visit. Jill’s father returned and this episode had the flavor of the Thanksgiving episode from season one, which is why I seemed to remember it that way.

Maxine pulled Hayden, Jill’s father, over for rolling through a stop sign (something I think about every time I do the same thing) and things get out of hand. Maxine arrests Hayden, taking him down to the station. She says she would drop the charges for an apology, but Hayden refuses to do so.

In order to try and smooth everything over, Jimmy invites Maxine to dinner with them.

This triggers all sorts of fireworks that somehow ends up with an examination of the marriage of Jimmy and Jill.

It is a classic Picket Fences episode that goes into problem after problem, all stemming from each other. Each character laid out their personal resentments and their inner most dialogue to each other in an uncomfortable and suspenseful manner.

“Buried Alive” used events from the last year worth of episodes to inform the arguments. Episodes involving Maxine’s therapist, Hayden’s girlfriend, Jill kissing her former fiancée, Thanksgiving, the under sheriff drama were all referenced. I love the use of continuity. Despite the fact that these Picket Fences episodes feel self contained for the most part, they constantly use the things that happen as part of their lives. Just like real people.

I’m not sure that real people lay out their dirty laundry like the Brocks and those in their orbit do in real life (without complete devastation to relationships), but there is no doubt that it makes for riveting drama when they do it on screen.

Spoilers

“System Down”

James Earl Jones guest stars in a dramatic episode that is as relevant today as it was back in the early 1990s.

The show is similar to the classic movie 12 Angry Men as the show features the conflicts and dialogue inside the jury room. Jimmy’s reputation as a fair man winds him up on the jury despite the fact that this case was involving the shooting of police officers.

A drug dealing black man shoots two police officers who are kicking in his door. There was a video as well.

It felt as if this should have been an open and shut case, but the defense argued that the suspect had a reasonable fear for his life at the time and that this was self-defense.

Watching the jury debate this point was fascinating. The jury spent almost an equal amount of time attacking each other in the jury room. We meet Ed Lawson, played by Richard Masur, who would become an important recurring character. He is an unlikable man who is implied to be a bigot.

There is no falling action in this story. I felt like I wanted to see how some people reacted to Jimmy on this decision, but the show does go to black with Jimmy sitting in the jury box after giving the ‘not guilty’ verdict.

A few scenes between James Earl Jones and Fyvush Finkel were epic. The show does a solid job of giving the jurors who we do not know personalities and an easy way to familiarize us with who they are as characters.

Spoilers

“Squatter’s Rights”

This was the second consecutive episode of Picket Fences that I had not seen before. It is strange that there are episodes of a show that I thought I had seen all of them keeps finding episodes that I hadn’t.

In fact, this was the introduction of the potential relationship between John and Maxine. I remember during the original run thinking that the relationship came out of nowhere, but this gives the origin of it.

There were two main stories in this episode, one I liked and one I did not. The one I did not involved the alleged murder of a husband by her grossly overweight wife. The one that I did featured Douglas Wambaugh fighting against being thrown out of his synagogue.

Good first. Wambaugh’s outlandishness finally pushed his rabbi over the edge. The rabbi told Wambaugh that he was expelled from the synagogue. Being Wambaugh, he was going to fight. He insisted on a Beth Din, which is a rabbinical court of Judaism, to state his case.

The whole Beth Din was used as a way to deconstruct the character of Douglas Wambaugh, looking at his behavior and how people react to him. An emotional response from Kimberly and a kind note from Zack saved Wambaugh and gave him a chance to show his softer side.

The second story Dealt with an overweight woman and her dead husband. She confessed to his murder, claiming that she sat on his head and smothered him. There was more to the story than that. I am never a fan of using overweight characters in this manner. It felt disrespectful. The actress was grossly overweight and I kept thinking about how she felt doing this role. They never showed her on her feet and I wondered if she was able to walk. None of this helped entertain me with the story.