Fan Review by Mari

CAUTION: POSSIBLE SPOILERS!!!

Before you get mad, remember, these are only my opinions, and I am nothing more than a tiny little human being among teeming millions.

What an episode. I had an exceptionally difficult time reviewing it, which is why I took so long to get it posted here. I'd have to say that while I'm still unsure whether or not I out and out hated it, I'm pretty certain it was my least favorite.

Why? The content was timely and excellently presented. The outcome was satisfying.

It's weird how the episodes I like the best are the ones other fans like least, and vice versa.

I guess it's because while I was satisfied with the verdicts, I didn't believe it would happen, if not for certain conditions. This case reminds me of the Rodney King trial and the OJ saga. A lot of things about it angered me, and it was really hard to take only one side. But it seems you have to take only one side, or people take you for the same kind of racist depicted in this episode. Throughout this review, I will constantly be using two words that are very touchy, "black" and "white".

I honestly can't take one side or another. Every single person involved in this particular event had their reasons for doing things, and they were mostly bad reasons, and ALL had something to answer for. All except the only completely innocent person, who turns out to be...

A ten year old girl, black, name of Tanya Anderson, is tragically gunned down while playing hopscotch in her own neighborhood.

Nearby lays the body of a white boy in his teens, also shot.

One thing that bothers me about this episode is that you don't really hear a whole lot from neither of the dead kids' parents. You get a piddly scene of the white teen boy's parents grieving over their loss, but that's the last you see. You get nothing of the little black girl's mother, except scenes of her leaving the crime scene in horror, and weeping in the courtroom.

So we must depend on the People's representatives to speak for the victims, and whie the DA's office gave Tanya Anderson the clear, indignant voice of the truly innocent child victim, they really didn't say a whole lot for David Kendall, the white teen who was killed in the same shooting. Maybe it's because David wasn't an innocent the way Tanya was, but in the words of the EADA, "These kids did not cause this tragedy, their parents did." Words that, even if I agreed with them, seem to contradict the silent contempt that everyone has for the deceased white teen boy.

I do NOT agree with Cutter entirely. I agree that the two parents involved in the tragedy certainly have a lot to answer for, but are their children innocent? Fuck no! And to say that they are not at least responsible in part for two wasted young lives is bullshit.

It begins when three white teen boys venture into a basketball court in a predominantly black neighborhood. Instead of being able to shoot hoops, they get their ball ripped off by some older black teens and then chased off the playground. They return home in tears, are given some very stupid advice, and return to the basketball court with baseball bats in hand, intent on getting their b-ball back. The 2 dead kids are the result.

The detectives slowly piece the puzzle together after being lied to by the mother of 2 of the white kids. Her name is Gretchen Steele (guest star Ally Walker), and she and her family live in on the wealthier side of town. When questioned, this woman tells bald lies: Her two sons were nowhere near the terrible scene at the time of the double-shooting; they stayed home and their friend, David Kendall, must have gone back alone to deal with the theft of his basketball. Oh yeah, and David was kind of a bad influence anyway...dabbling in drug experimentation and stuff like that.

Green and Lupo have their work cut out for them as the canvas the neighborhood where the shootings took place. Nobody is talking, except one drug dealer whose tips lead them to the prep school where the Steel brothers end up telling a slightly different version of the story Mom gave that morning. According to the brothers, their ball was taken from them and then they were told to get out of the neighborhood, or "We'll bust a cap in your white ass". Whether this is a lie or no, who can say? The white kids might have made it up after listening to rap music, right?

The detectives encounter such a sense of loytalty and "protecting our own" in both the black neighborhood and the white preppie school that Van Buren ends up appealing to a community leader named Jonas Durning, who won't do anything without getting something HE wants in exchange. I'm all for preserving beautiful old architecture, but I think he's an asshole anyway. Durning is successful in getting "his" people to drop their "don't snitch" policy and come forward, but they don't do it without a degree of resentment toward the police.

Green and Lupo chase their new clues to the home of Roy and Will Manning, a black father and his teen son, in whose closet is found the stolen basketball, and the gun that killed the ten year old black girl and the teen white boy. After the police sweat young Will for a while, his dad, Roy confesses to the shootings, saying that while the killing of little Tanya was purely accidental, the killing of David Kendall was in defense of Will, as Kendall was wielding a deadly weapon and intending to use it: a baseball bat.

A few more tidbits lead Green and Lupo back to the prep school, where they learn that Gretchen Steel is quite the enthusiastic parent when it comes to her sons, soccer games, and "standing up for themselves". It isn't long before 3 baseball bats are discovered in her car trunk, and she is facing some criminal charges of her own, among them, criminal facilitation and inciting violence.

McCoy comes up with a brilliant strategy: Try Roy Manning and Gretchen Steele together, for the exact same crimes. As Mrs. Steele is responsible for instigating the threats and the use of deadly weapons, she is equally responsible with Mr. Manning for the deaths of two children. I myself agree, she was equally responsible. Her lawyer doesn't think so, and points at Roy Manning as the sole perpetrator of the crime. "She sent her boys with baseball bats to defend themselves. She didn't send her boys to attack or kill anyone." What a crock. If you send your children somewhere with baseball bats, knowing there has already been a confrontation and threats made, you know damn good and well that violence is inevitable.

Meanwhile, Manning's lawyer, Clifford Chester (guest star Terry Kinney) is more interested in grandstanding to angry blacks who attend the trial, obviously fancying himself a white Johnnie Cochran.

I found it hard to like many of the characters in this story. Most of them reek of deep-seated racism, especially Gretchen Steele, who spoke on the stand of cultural differences. "They play loud music, they leave trash all over the place, they talk loud at all hours of the night." It's sad but true. There ARE cultural differences. There is an US and a THEM. And it will never go away. Not until we decide we're sick of being this way to each other.

Sorry to have to add that I found Jonas During and some of the other black characters to be just as racist as Mrs. Steele. Maybe not as generalizingly ignorant as her, but racist all the same. I dare any Durning to say that if he lived in some trashy trailer park, and a bunch of white rednecks were playing honky-tonk music by Glen Campbell or Willie Nelson really loud and howlin' and hoopin' and leaving beer cans and paper plates laying around at 3 in the morning, he wouldn't mind. Bullshit with a capital B. I detest most rap music by the way, but I must add that I don't care if rap music is done by Eminem or Dr. Dre, it's pretty much shit. I'll add that I'm not fond of most country music either.

It is great that at the trial, the jury seemed to be made up equally of black and white servers. A far cry from the mostly white jury in A TIME TO KILL. I kind of wish they had shown how these jurors were selected and what reasons were given. Was the even distribution of color part of the hope that there would be an even distribution of justice?

As I said before, I was very satisfied that Gretchen Steele got her comeuppance. After she and Roy Manning both refuse to make a deal at the behest of McCoy and Cutter, they both end up serving much more severe sentences. Satisfied as I was though, I could not help but have doubts about the reality of the verdict. Steele didn't swing a bat or fire a gun. What she did was shoot her mouth off at teen boys under duress. Still, is that enough to really give her the same sentence in the real world? Was the fear of a riot like the ones in Los Angeles after the Rodney King trial what really drove the DA to push for the exact same sentence?

I hope I am being clear when I say that I ask these questions not because I LIKE Gretchen Steele! She is a bitch and a lying racist scum-bubble. In a perfect world, she DOES get the same sentence as Mr. Manning. But in our imperfect world, I can't help but believe that the fear of civil disturbance and even more dead bodies piling up is what motivated the prosecution and the jury, just like Steele's lawyer implied. Political pressure to put a white face at the defense table.

Honestly, while I found Mr. Manning to be responsible for his part in the killings, I totally understood how and why he did it. You could see him as callous not to be sorry for shooting David Kendall, but he saw David menacing his son Will with a baseball bat. He saw someone about to bludgeon his son to death. That's what he saw. I don't for a minute believe that the eviction notice was on his mind. If you saw someone swinging a bat toward your child's head, what would you do? I had to sympathize with him. He was the second least responsible party, in my opinion of course, after Tanya Anderson. I can't say that for Gretchen Steele at all.

Why am I glad Mr. Manning was sentenced to prison too then? Because perhaps he should have shot David Kendall in the arm or leg, just wounded him, to stop the attack. Instead, he shot him in the neck. Perhaps too, if he had aimed at a different body part on David, Tanya would not have been killed.

And what of the kids that took part in this awful event? They weren't responsible for the 2 deaths, their parents were? Come on! The 2 white brothers should have been charged with assault with a deadly weapon. Will Manning's friends should have been rounded up and made to answer for their threats too. They were every bit as much a part of this travesty.

An episode of such touchy subject matter is meant to be thought-provoking. All I can say is, these are my thoughts. Some people may not like them, but I wouldn't expect everyone to agree with me. As I said before, until races decide to stop seeing each other as "different", racism will always be here.

I can't say I hated the episode. But I can't say I loved it either. It's sad, depressing and gives you a lot to think about, be angry about. I think these same reasons are why I feel the way I feel about the movie THIRTEEN. Excellent, thought-provoking, yet so morbid and upsetting and controversial that it's hard to watch.

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The opinions in this commentary are solely those of the reviewer. They are not the opinions of any actor, crew-member, producer or director. They are not the opinions of NBC, Wolf Films or Universal, nor are they of Angelfire/Lycos, Inc.

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