Date of airing: September 19, 1999 (CBS)
Nielsen ratings information: 19.57 million viewers, 13.5/21 in Households, 5.3 rating with Adults 18-49, 7.0 rating with Adults 25-54
teleplay by: Barbara Hall, John Tinker, Bill D'Elia
story by: John Tinker, Bill D'Elia
directed by: James Hayman
I watched this show somewhat obsessively when it aired on German television for the first time during the early 2000s. Back then, TV channel VOX aired the show in a weekday afternoon rotation, when it was still fun to watch TV shows on German television and they were not replaced by talk shows, reality insanity, or sitcom repeats. Me having been a lazy high school student, I always found myself in front of the TV to watch the next episodes of GILMORE GIRLS, 7TH HEAVEN, JUDGING AMY, and even NASH BRIDGES, between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m (maybe even dinner time?). I would consider those “great times,” although the question remains how better I could have been in school if I had focused on that instead of putting my butt on the couch to watch American TV dramas every day.
And now it is time to revisit JUDGING AMY. The planet is in flames, there is less and less time to get caught up on everything scripted TV had to offer for multiple decades, and I figured it was a good time to get back into a show I always loved and will love, and would consider prime and peak television. I wonder if I would like this show even 24 years after its televised premiere, and about seven years after I watched the series for the last time. I wonder if the premise of the show would still hold up emotionally and connect with me on that level, and if it is something I would love to watch again, in addition to "over and over." As you might know, I love my share of emotional TV, so a series about difficult cases in family law, connected to cases involving the Department of Children and Family Services, might be the right choice. So, here I am, going through six years of TV history I barely remember anything from.
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| Amy just cannot deal with her overbearing mother right now. |
The pilot episode was a solid offering. It did many things right, it
did a couple of things wrong, and all in all, it was one of the more perfect
introductions to a show. Because it did one thing right so many pilots
cannot do right these days: It took one character (the major character,
and in this case, the titular character), and told the story around her, not
involving any other stories led by other characters. It gave the
audience time to get connected to the world of Hartford, Connecticut,
without losing any overview, because the writers decided to bring as
many stories into the pilot as possible, so they can get the
storytelling going with the second episode. Also, it made the conscious
choice to make the eponymous character a person who still has to learn a
lot about the job, to take her first steps in this new world that seems
to be run by men, the same way the audience has to do. It seems kind of
intelligent that Amy Gray barely knows anything about the judicial
system, especially in youth and family cases, and has to resolve on the
knowledge of the people in front of and beside her to get the job done.
Yes, she knows how to do her job (she trained for it after all), and
yes, she has somewhat of a great first week (considering that Bruce
smiled at her when she told DCF worker Lena that it is her job to bother with her job, while it
is Amy’s job to question her), but the first steps into Amy’s new job were
not without questions about the job she is performing.
The characters also worked nicely in the pilot. I know more about Amy than the rest of her family, which should be the case, considering it is her name in the show’s title and therefore her show. And what I know is that she has a somewhat difficult relationship with her mother, and a complex relationship with her daughter Lauren – enough information to create at least half a dozen of episodes, which is a good thing for the writers, since they are not always guaranteed more than 13 episodes. In addition, the writers created a little bit of background in Amy’s place of work, hinting that her hiring might not be seen as a good thing with a couple of other people, meaning that Amy has to prove herself – another plot point that would probably create half a dozen episodes, essentially filling the idea book for the entire first season, and this after just the pilot episode. It is interesting how much premise JUDGING AMY has shown during its first hour, and it was all being done by caring about the titular character the entire time, which is a thing you do not see very often on broadcast network television.
But there were a couple of things that were minor bad things: The scene with one of the kids smashing the jug on the table and threatening Amy on the spot, with the officer not doing anything but staring down at the kid, was utterly over the top. I know the scene was in here to show that family law and cases involving violent teens can go down that route every once in a while, but the scene was used as comic relief, and not as a scene that would prove violence exists in Amy’s courtroom, and she will have to face it sooner or later.
In addition, a
couple of the dialogue scenes between Amy and Vincent, as well as Amy
and Maxine, were “disrupted” by the camera slowly zooming in on the
people in the scene. When Vincent and Amy were talking on the steps
(“Throw her a cow then”), I was curious why the camera would slowly
zoom in on both Amy and Vincent, which is a thing I noticed and found
slightly weird. Also, Lauren is a bit of a no-go. She seems too
intelligent for her age during important scenes (and that is always a
no-go in broadcast dramas, especially sitcoms), while she is too much
of the cliched kid when she is supposed to be a kid (like playing with
her dolls, together with her uncle). Something does not fit together
here, which makes for a bit of an awkward viewing experience. Although maybe Lauren is supposed to be the confusing kid – stuck in a world in which her parents are separated, and about to grow up into the t(w)eenagehood era, even if it will take a couple of years for that.
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| Playtime with Barbie dolls before bedtime. |
But all in all, JUDGING AMY still works quite well in the fiery third decade of the twenty-first century, but what I am wondering about is if the whole show is working in that era. I liked a couple of the DCFS stories on ER, so I know what to expect from this show, but on the other hand, this is a CBS show created by Barbara Hall, and with a production and writing team keen on getting the “message” right: That there is light at the end of the tunnel, no matter how dark it is (not to mention Hall's own background: She converted to Catholicism as an adult and studied religion, later creating a show that had God as a recurring character – JOAN OF ARCADIA).
It was shown in the main case of the episode: A four-year-old cannot go back to the drug-addicted mother, the father is deceased, but the light at the end of the tunnel is the grandmother who may or may not be interested in wanting the child. I find it weird that DCFS was not investigating this matter on their own, without having Amy tell them what to do, and I find it curious that the light at the end of the tunnel was created as the “last best chance” for a four-year-old kid (and a character we did not see on-screen), even though there are enough cases when the last best chance is foster care. It is realistic enough, but I am a little scared that the writers bring these lights at the end of the tunnels a little too often, showing that there is always a happy end. Sadly, happy endings are never really realistic on broadcast TV. But that is another topic worthy of a roundtable discussion.
