(Season 6, Episodes 4-5)
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I am officially lost. I’ve hung in there with FX as it downgraded The Practice from four airings per weekend to two, adjusting my virgin diary accordingly, even taking off a week here and there. But it would appear that the network has thwarted my ability to keep up with it — it completely skipped airing episode three of season six, “Liar’s Poker.” As a result, I walked into episode four only to discover that Jimmy had a gambling addiction that led him to steal money from a client account in order to pay his bookie, played by Jeffrey Tambor. Any clarity would be greatly appreciated.
6.4 “Vanished: Part 1″
Jimmy’s $27,000 debt to bookie Sid (Tambor) sent him scrambling to raise fast cash. A dip into the Peterson trust account (it would have been more interesting if it were a client we knew) for money to bet on a winning horse opened Jimmy and the firm up to potential liability … that Eugene seemed prepared to cover up. I dislike Jimmy, and I think he’s incompetent, but while I believe he has the moral ambiguity necessary to do something like steal from a client trust account (remember how he ended up at the firm in the first place), he doesn’t have an addictive personality. There’s nothing that we’ve ever seen that would substantiate his having a serious gambling problem (unless I missed some discussion in episode three). This stunk badly of trying to stir up some drama.
The other big story was the couple who retained Bobby to sue a man civilly who they suspected had kidnapped their son 18 years earlier. It was an interesting method of getting him to reveal where the body was buried, but the fact that it turned into a vengeance thing was as understandable as it was predictably boring. And I’ll tell you something — I believe he had nothing to do with it. He looked guilty as sin, and were it me in that position I’d never believe him, but the fact that he molests little boys doesn’t mean he’s automatically guilty of whatever crime we can think to hang around his neck. Bobby’s righteous indignation really needs to be dialed back.
The episode ended with a twist — the appearance of a young man claiming to be the missing, presumed dead, boy. I love Jonathan Tucker!
And I loved this quote from Bobby when talking about his ability to crack the convicted child molester on the stand: “Contrary to the myth, not all child molesters are rocket scientists.” No way!
6.5 “Vanished: Part 2″
Now things really started to heat up. The woman the kidnapped Chad Baldwin/current James Tucker (Tucker) called mom, Allison Tucker (Patricia Wettig), should have been the only suspect from the start. The very fact that she couldn’t adequately explain why she’d never gone to the authorities about this boy that had suddenly been left in her care should have screamed her guilt. I’m actually surprised it took everyone as long as it did to figure that one out. And the result was that a man who’d served his time for the crimes he’d committed headed back to jail to serve seven more for another person’s sins.
I’m surprised that Bobby and Ellenor have yet to change since becoming parents. Bobby thought that if James knew Allison had kidnapped him, he would abandon her. The woman who raised him. Has Bobby made no parental connection to his son in all this time? It’s unlikely enough in a case where the child lived through years of abuse. But when this is the woman who’s loved him, cared for him, and raised him for 18 years? Is he delusional?
Jimmy definitely is. His pleas to Eugene not to tell Bobby about what he did, as well as his imagining that Eugene could or should ever forgive him is crazy. I honestly can’t believe that Bobby and Eugene are not at the very least firing Jimmy for what was at minimum a grave breach of trust. When are these people going to wake up?
Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Mar 11, 2010 @ 14:00 EST5EDT
