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!

This week, guess who screws up?

Episode 1.14 “Fatal Crossroads”

(Dir by Gary Sinise, originally aired on January 9th, 1987)

As much as I want to like David Abrams — and I did like him for the first few episodes — he’s just dumb.  Offended by the fact that Luca is using his legal advice to try to beat his indictment, David starts this episode out by approaching Luca in public and announcing that he’s not only quit the public defenders office but that he’s also decided to join the D.A.’s office, specifically so he can take guys like Luca down.  Then, later on in the episode, David approaches Luca again and, this time, he brings along his father (Nathan Davis).  David’s father, a former low-level gangster, brags about how smart David is and how he’s going to take Luca down.

So, of course, Luca has someone put a bomb underneath David’s car.

And, of course, it’s David’s father who decides to borrow the car to go to the store and who ends up getting blown up.

And yes, it’s a terrible thing that David’s father got blown up.  BUT WHAT DID DAVID THINK WAS GOING TO HAPPEN!?  He knows who Luca is!  He knows that Luca will kill people without a second thought.  So why the Hell is David walking up to Luca and basically daring him to try to kill him?  I mean, David’s father was in the rackets!  David should have known better and, for that matter, David’s father should have known better.

I’m sorry but David Abrams is a moron.

For some reason, Luca also tries to take a hit out on Torello, despite the fact that Luca’s entire legal strategy depends on Torello denying Homan’s claims that Torello is crooked.  Fortunately, Torello is somehow brilliant enough to realize that Luca is going to take a hit out on him and the members of the Crime Squad are smart enough to take a look at a building and somehow figure out exactly which room a sniper would be hiding in.  If only David Abrams was as smart!

This episode featured a few too many coincidences and a bit too much of David Abrams suddenly acting like an idiot.  It was directed by Gary Sinise, who is one of my favorite people.  Sinise does a good job of capturing the drizzly gangster movie atmosphere but the script could have used a bit more work.