I've seen Christina Pickles play everything from meek and sympathetic, put-upon women to psychotic, homicidal nuts...but this took the cake. A crazy man has admitted to her in a psychiatrist session that he was actually the murderer of a man who had a fling with his wife and framed an almost-total stranger for the deed, who now sits on Death Row and is due to be executed - sooner than later. (Osley, the murderer, should have killed his wife instead; seems every man in Sparta knew where her birthmarks were!) The condemned seems resigned to his impending execution. Dr. Allcott (Pickles) is more concerned with her public image than with seeing justice done. Indeed, the last lines of the show are her saying, despite the death of an innocent man, everything came out alright; when asked by a stunned cop, "for WHOM?" she brightly replied, "why, for ME of course!" I've seen few doctors as detestable, callous, and inhuman as she. FWIW, Pickles perfectly brings out the selfish side of the doctor without going over the top - probably a tall order, indeed.
4 Reviews
Nauseating
ivegonemod9 August 2018
Warning: Spoilers
I really wish I had not watched this episode. What kind of human being would allow an innocent person to be executed knowing full-well who the killer is? How could a psychiatrist be so concerned with ruining her practice, that she would rather see the innocent man dead?
A man is about to lose his life and she's worried about losing patients because they won't trust her anymore. The guilty party is crazy and constantly harasses her and beats her up, yet she defends him because he's sick. Give me a break!
She knows the police department is determined to make sure that the killer pays and gets the same sentence of death penalty, but she won't open her stupid mouth. That means two men will end up dead!
A man is about to lose his life and she's worried about losing patients because they won't trust her anymore. The guilty party is crazy and constantly harasses her and beats her up, yet she defends him because he's sick. Give me a break!
She knows the police department is determined to make sure that the killer pays and gets the same sentence of death penalty, but she won't open her stupid mouth. That means two men will end up dead!
A question of privilege
bkoganbing5 October 2020
This episode has Robert Walker, Jr. sitting on death row in Parchment state
prison while the whole Sparta Police Department in an unusual twist is trying to prove him innocent.
The problem is psychiatrist Christina Pickles who has evidence of possible innocence but won't reveal anything because of doctor/patient privilege.
Walker is a sympathetic figure. But there is a hint that a certain amount of cosmic justice is in fact being done. I wish that theme had been developed further.
The problem is psychiatrist Christina Pickles who has evidence of possible innocence but won't reveal anything because of doctor/patient privilege.
Walker is a sympathetic figure. But there is a hint that a certain amount of cosmic justice is in fact being done. I wish that theme had been developed further.
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