User Reviews

A former marine whose son was discharged from the marines when he killed an innocent bystander in Afghanistan, comes home and is shot to death by Roe, the latter thinking that David had a gun.

The dead man's father creates quite a situation when he takes the office staff hostage and we're dealing with someone from the hostage negotiating team who appears to be quick on the trigger.

The episode gave Roe, Nina and our new medical examiner a great opportunity to do some fine acting. Al and Poppy Montgomery definitely take a back seat in this episode, although Poppy's intervention in the end in solving the problem saves the day.

The media was of course ready to jump on the officer when no gun was found.

The tension is riveting and in fact, this may have been one of the best episodes ever in this very good show.

This is the most egregious example of copaganda that I have ever seen. It takes the (disturbingly) common occurrence of a white police officer killing an unarmed black man and does everything possible to justify it.

First, it shows the cop as sympathetic, distressed by his actions and remorseful. He risks his life to make amends and is generally someone you're meant to feel bad for. The show encourages us to show more sympathy for the cop than the murdered man because it must be so hard to kill someone.

Second, it shows the grieving family who are demanding justice as violent and dangerous. The father who is justifiably upset and asking to file charges against the cop who shot his son is brushed off by the police who misunderstand his request as a complaint, not asking for criminal charges. Then, he takes hostages. Throughout the episode he is shown as unwilling to listen to facts, calling every statement from the police a lie. He injures one of the hostages severely. This paints those who call for justice after police killings as unreasonable and aggressive.

Third is the issue of the gun. While there was no gun found on the body, the cop swears that he saw a gun. How many times have we seen that from police killings? Yet, this show posits that if only there was a smart protagonist who could dig for the truth and find out that actually, there was a gun that magically disappeared because a junkie (played by a black man, of course) had stolen it after the victim was shot. We are asked to believe that this happened while the cop was still in the alley, but of course the cop didn't notice this. Not only does this explanation make no sense, but it asks us to never doubt a cop's story after a shooting like this. Sure, there was no gun found on the body, but the cop said they saw it. Never mind the forensic evidence, there must have been a gun there. This is simply unrealistic and tells the viewer to use this same line of logic with real world police shootings, literally allowing cops to get away with murder.

I could go on with a more nit-picky analysis, but this episode is a masterclass in how to justify murder. And it's working.