Date of airing: October 12, 1999 (CBS)
Nielsen ratings information: 16.46 million viewers, 11.7/20 in Households, 5.2/14 with Adults 18-49
written by: Dawn Prestwich, Nicole Yorkin
directed by: James Frawley
One thing confused me about this otherwise solid episode. It was nothing related to the storytelling, but it is about the credits during the beginning. I am honest here, and I love me some Mae Whitman on TV, so when I saw her “special appearance by” credit, I was already a little excited, and it reminded me to start watching PARENTHOOD again (it is on my very long list of shows to watch). But the character she portrayed did not quite deserve the “special appearance by” credit, making me wonder about the credit, who gets it, why they get it, and if it brings the actor more money when they get credited with that special credit. Whitman's appearance seemed like a simple guest-starring role, and the only reason this would not be a simple guest-starring situation is if the story were to be continued in future episodes, and Whitman turns into a recurring character. And I do not believe that is the case here because the story of the Mitchells felt over and done with after the mother came to Amy to threaten her and the next scene established that she was in psychiatric care. There is no reason to continue the story. And there was no reason to give Mae Whitman that extra credit, except of course she was already a big name in 1999 and the producers decided to royally pay her for a dramatic role that would have otherwise been hard to do for other child actors with lesser experience.
Anyway, it was a good episode, as I already mentioned. I liked that Maxine got more to do, now that she is working at DCF again, though I would like to see her in the office every once in a while, just to establish the bureaucratic part of the job, and to tell the audience that Maxine’s work is not always about snatching kids away from unruly and lazy parents. It is almost like the writers chose to let Maxine snatch children from unfit mothers, so that she can have a conflict with said mothers, no matter if they are anorexic or still teenagers themselves. The thing is just, Maxine taking a kid away from an uncaring parent was already a storyline in the previous episode, which means the writers just repeated themselves. And the series is only five episodes old at this point, which begs the question if the writers were interested enough in their jobs to bring something new to the table and genre, or continue the same stories over and over. That sounds a little harsh, and let me say that I do not mean it like that, but it is a slightly serious thing after five episodes of JUDGING AMY to repeat a story twice.
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| This is one of the rare cases in which the child *wants* to be separated from the parent. |
Still, I liked Maxine’s story, simply because it showed her working and in her element, even if the case she was working on had a bit of a weird character and could have been elaborated on more. Yes, Stephanie seemed very awkward – she left her baby son behind to do whatever she was doing (partying, most likely), screamed and cried her soul out when Maxine took the boy away from her, and sweet-talked the heck out of Maxine for the rest of the episode, almost making me think that Stephanie was not quite honest about what she said she would do to get back her son. Every time she opened her mouth, I was thinking not to believe her, because the next day, she is leaving behind her son once more to live a rowdy teenage life. Sixteen-year-old teenagers do not have a sense of that kind of life, and they will continue to make mistakes that could endanger the safety of an infant, which is why I wondered why Maxine gave Stephanie a second chance.
Not to mention that the episode forgot to get into why a sixteen-year-old girl became a mother in the first place. The story obviously did not go down the emotionally traumatic and dramatic route (the episode made reference to Stephanie's traumatic past while in foster care, although the baby's father remained unknown), so maybe Stephanie did not receive enough sex ed or did not bother going to school at all, which by itself is a story worth telling without having to involve an infant kid. Maybe next time, JUDGING AMY.
Amy’s cases were good. At least the ones I can still remember after the episode ended. The case about the alleged girlfriend killer was creepy, and seeing this guy fixing his collar when his attorney was talking positively about him, and when Amy was about to release him, gave me the urge to dish out a little bit of after-hours judgment myself. The Mitchell case also seemed intriguing, because of the circumstances. There you have a (probably) schizophrenic mother, not giving the best care to her daughter, and the daughter is crying her soul out in front of Amy about the love for her mother, and about the plea to never live with her again. It was a strong scene (proof that Mae Whitman deservedly could have been called a wunderkind in the 1990s, if she was not already one), and I was hoping for a happy end in this story, which makes the climax in the final third even more shocking when Miss Mitchell came up to Amy with a gun.
But the truth is, the scene was free of any actual thrill. After all, JUDGING AMY is a family show, so this scene of thrill and tension felt out of place. It was obvious Miss Mitchell would not shoot Amy, and it was obvious that she would not kill herself in front of Amy. Both of these outcomes would have created trauma for Amy and the viewers, and they would have created a huge aftermath in subsequent episodes. I would have loved the heck out of such a story, but because the series is still so young, it would have been absurd to go this dark and this deep into trauma after a handful of hours.
The relationship stories... Well, let’s forget about them, because I did not like any of them. This episode had to focus on three pairs, and they were all creepy in a way. Tracy is just a peculiar character who does not deserve Amy, and I could never understand in a million years why she was thinking about sleeping with him. Chris was still a bizarre woman in Vincent’s life, and things became more awkward and problematic when she decided to take his short story and shop it around the publishing circles of her circle of friends. That by itself would have been a huge red flag for me, and I was impressed that Vincent still stuck around with Chris for a day or two, which was possibly the time needed for him to make heads or tails about Chris’s behavior. And the flirtation between Simon and Maxine did not bring anything to the table, except the obvious talk about Amy’s father at the end, which meant the existence of Simon was only good for the delivery of the Gray family backstory. I am glad that Chris and Tracy are history now (weird fact: both had names you usually find belong to the opposite sex), and I hope that Simon is history as well. I accepted the background the writers shared about Maxine and Simon, but in the end, it looked all like a plot device to have Amy and Maxine talk about the father and husband they have lost and to show that there are wives who are truthful to their husband, maybe even after their deaths.
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| Prison weddings are the cutest. |
Then there is Donna, the eccentric court clerk who showed up for the first time, and will definitely have entertained you not for the final time. Maybe the writers realized quickly that they needed some quirky humor, some comic relief with the weirdness that is Donna, but then the writers also decided to make a joke out of that story by giving her a mother-killing husband? I wondered if the writers were thinking of Donna as a throwaway character, or if she was intended to be a recurring character for the show from this point on. Because the fact that the wedding was thrown in her first episode makes the story a simple stand-alone arc.
Unfortunately, an arc that was not very exciting, instead mostly creepy.
“I like your shoes,” “I like your hair,” “I’m marrying a murderer, want
to officiate it?” She came off very awkwardly, and whether it was
intended or not, it was not to my liking. But who could hate Donna here, she was not intentionally creepy. She just does not know any better.
