Main cast: Polly Draper (Jennifer Richmond), Bruce McFee (Ted), and Page Fletcher (The Hitchhiker)
Director: Randy Bradshaw

Is it just me or the opening shot of the big house suggests that it’s the same house in Part of Me? This episode, The Verdict, wants me to believe that the building is a courthouse, and given that we seem to be permanently out of Paris now and back in America, I am willing to play along.

Sadly, it’s hard to play along for the rest of this episode. If anything, this episode demonstrates that it still has dips on terrible scripts regardless of the episode being set in Paris or America.

Polly Draper is Jennifer Richmond, a public prosecutor obsessed with making sure that her winning streak continues by hook or by crook. In this episode, she is determined to nail a suspected gang member, even if to date there had been no evidence to suggest that Manuel is guilty of murder. Naturally, karma doesn’t approve.

Honestly, though, Polly makes it way too easy for karma, fate, or whatever to mete a payback. She refuses to consider her detective lover’s advice to move in with him when she’s stalked by a gang member that knows her name and likely her address too, and she is all “Eeuw, guns!” when he gives her one to protect herself after Manuel’s lawyer is murdered by this stalker of hers.

People that have watched enough of this show will be able to correctly deduce the twist: the stalker is all in Polly’s head. However, there are many things here that don’t make sense in light of this twist. For example, does this mean that Polly herself killed Manuel’s lawyer? If yes, given that the body is found in the courthouse hallway, how come no one sees her doing the deed or dragging the body out there?

However, the fatal flaw of this episode is that, for Polly to somehow conjure this stalker in her head, she will need to feel conflicted or guilty over her actions. The character demonstrates nothing of that sort here, so the whole stalker thing just comes out of nowhere and for no discernible good reason.

Consequently, this episode ends up being a jumbled mess that either don’t make sense right from the get go, or it has a few key scenes cut out for whatever reason and leaves the episode a garbled affair as a result.

Still, the acting is actually one of the better ones in this season, so I guess I can be lenient and sentence this thing to two oogies. It’s probably one oogie more than it deserves, so really, I’d still recommend skipping this along with the rest of this season. Go watch something else!

One last thing, which puzzles me: is it common for random people to be allowed to make out in the hallways of a courthouse?

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