Reuben Jackson is a clean-cut African American who, after a brief internship, has become a senior editor at a fictional New York newspaper. Alas, under pressure to excel, the guy has fabricated a story about having interviewed a murderer. A bounty hunter discovers the fraud and tries to blackmail the reporter, who kills him and tries to frame a hooker.
The defense attorney, Peter Jacobson, is a short and perfervid opponent of the affirmative action program that, he claims, put Jackson into a position in which he was forced to invent stories.
It's not an unfamiliar template for a plot on this series but it's been buffed and rearranged so that it doesn't resemble the earlier variations on the theme.
An interesting conversation -- two of them, in fact -- takes place between Jacobson and Waterston in a bar. McCoy describes himself as "color blind" but Jacobson asks if McCoy's daughter were to have a serious operation and McCoy could choose between two surgeons, identical in background except that one was white and one black, which would he choose? The question sounds penetrating but really isn't relevant to the case or to the perennial issue of racism. We'd all choose someone who resembled ourselves. At any rate, the question of affirmative action goes unanswered, as it should, but it has made a difference. I could give an example involving an African-American friend and co-author who was offered a fellowship at Princeton that involved doing nothing but showing up once in a while, but I worry that if I did I'd be accused of racism.
The defense attorney, Peter Jacobson, is a short and perfervid opponent of the affirmative action program that, he claims, put Jackson into a position in which he was forced to invent stories.
It's not an unfamiliar template for a plot on this series but it's been buffed and rearranged so that it doesn't resemble the earlier variations on the theme.
An interesting conversation -- two of them, in fact -- takes place between Jacobson and Waterston in a bar. McCoy describes himself as "color blind" but Jacobson asks if McCoy's daughter were to have a serious operation and McCoy could choose between two surgeons, identical in background except that one was white and one black, which would he choose? The question sounds penetrating but really isn't relevant to the case or to the perennial issue of racism. We'd all choose someone who resembled ourselves. At any rate, the question of affirmative action goes unanswered, as it should, but it has made a difference. I could give an example involving an African-American friend and co-author who was offered a fellowship at Princeton that involved doing nothing but showing up once in a while, but I worry that if I did I'd be accused of racism.