Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Mondays, I will be reviewing Crime Story, which ran on NBC from 1986 to 1988.  The entire show can be found on Tubi!

Torello is going to snap….

Episode 1.9 “Justice Hits The Skids”

(Dir by Mario DiLeo, originally aired on November 11th, 1986)

Torello is losing it.

Well, that’s not really a surprise.  Torello has been losing it since the pilot.  However, this episode finds him acting even more intense than usual.  He’s getting divorced.  His best friend Ted Kehoe has been murdered and the federal prosecutor seems to be more interested in trying to prove that Torello is corrupt than in going after Bartoli and Luca.  Torello doesn’t even go to Ted Kehoe’s funeral, leading to everyone thinking that Torello is losing what little grip on sanity he has left.  Even his soon-to-be ex-wife checks in on him.

While Torello stews over Luca, Suzanne Terry attempts to investigate the growing use of drugs in some of Chicago’s poorest neighbors and she gets attacked and put into the hospital as a result.  David Abrams tries to investigate on his own, leading to Suzanne telling him that she needs some time apart from him.  (Before she’s attacked, David takes her out to dinner.  When a racist diner complains and the head waiter asks them to move to a different table, Suzanne wants to leave the restaurant.  David insists that they stay  and finish their meal.  David may see himself as being a righteous crusader but, at the same time, he also comes across as being rather controlling.  It doesn’t seem to occur to him that Suzanne might not want to give any business to a racist restaurant.)  Torello and the Major Crimes Unit then take up the case, even though his superiors tell him not to waste any time on it.

Sweet Haywood (John Canada Tyrell), the drug dealer who attacked Suzanne, is eventually captured.  Sitting in jail, he meets his public defender, who just happens to be David Abrams.  Abrams pulls out a gun and shoots Haywood in the chest.  However, this turns out to just be a fantasy on David’s part.  When the real Haywood demands to know if Abrams is going to keep him out of the jail, Abrams says, “Of course.  That’s my job.  Abrams for the defense.”

The gun-shooting fantasy scene was effective but otherwise, the ending doesn’t make much sense.  Assigning Abrams to serve as the public defender for a guy who was arrested for beating up Abrams’s girlfriend is a massive conflict-of-interest.  If Abrams intentionally offers up a poor defense, Haywood will automatically have grounds for an appeal.  I mean, this is 1963.  This the era of the Warren Court!

Even with that in mind, this wasn’t a bad episode.  David Abrams and Mike Torello are both flawed heroes, which is what makes the show so watchable.  Torello may be fighting on the side of the law but he really does seem like he’s one bad day away from blowing up the entire city of Chicago.  Meanwhile, Abrams clearly sees himself as being the last righteous crusader but he often seems oblivious to how his actions effect other people.  Neither is perfect.  Indeed, each one seems to be just one step away from self-destructing.

We’ll see what happens!