Anne Bobby as Off. Vicki Quinn
Barbara Bosson as Mayor Louise Plank
Vondie Curtis-Hall as Det. Warren Osborne
Ronny Cox as Chief Roger Kendrick
David Gianopoulos as Off. Andy Campo
Larry Joshua as Capt. John Hollander
James McDaniel as Off. Franklin Rose
Ron McLarty as Ralph Ruskin
Mick Murray as Det. Joseph Gaines
Peter Onorati as Det. Vincent LaRusso
Jeffrey Alan Chandler as Ray Rodbart
Teri Austin as Trish Vaughn
Written by: William M. Finkelstein and Stephen Bochco and Michael Graham and John Romano
Directed by: Brad Silberling
Let’s get things started this week with something that I have largely been ignoring, that also plays a big role in the conflicting emotions this series toys with, and that’s the episode titles, which tend to be puns involving the characters played to comedic effect. While this week’s title is a pretty terrible pun (it’s a takeoff of “Feets, don’t fail me now”, which I had to look up to understand), it has a history that is actually befitting of this episode. It was attributed to several African-American performers in the 1920s who went by names like Stepin Fetchit, or Sleep ‘n Eat…in other words, black performers who catered to the stereotype of the lazy Negro. It is perhaps unsurprising that both of them went on to be two of the most famous black actors of their day, though it came at the cost of belittling their own race and heritage.
I noted that the last episode started dealing with topics of racism and homophobia--this episode continues that trend by sticking mostly to racism. Ironically, though, it all begins with some white people drama: Ralph confronts Vicki and encourages her to find another partner, which she refuses to do, simply because she won‘t allow her husband to bully her. It seems like a scene like this is now required in every episode going forward; it’s quickly becoming the least interesting plotline of the entire series. This scene also leads to the pre-theme song, in which Vicki and some friends sing “Why Can’t a Man Be More Like a Woman?” in the ladies’ locker room. Pretty painful stuff.
"WHY CAN'T A MAN BE MORE LIKE A WOMAN?"
But this isn’t the only time it rears its ugly head: later on, at a bar, Campo (Vicki’s partner for those not in the know) approaches Ralph, hoping to find a way to set aside their differences. Ralph assures him there is a way to do that, and then proceeds to punch him in the face. A fight ensues, but is quickly broken up by other bar patrons. This leads to a visit to the captain’s office, who encourages them to settle their differences amongst themselves, because if Captain Hollander has to do it for them, they won’t like the consequences.
To round out this plot development, at least as far as this episode is concerned, Vicki visits Ralph at the office and encourages him to go to counseling with her. He is reluctant, but he strikes up a compromise: if he goes to counseling to help save their marriage, she has to get another partner. I have a feeling Ralph will end up doing further damage to his marriage in some way, thus pushing Vicki right into Campo’s arms at some point in the near future…we’ll see if I’m right!
Moving onto the race aspects, which dominate almost all the other storylines for the week: The white cops assigned to watch the Potts residence (reminder: Potts is the black cop scheduled to testify against is white partner, Detective LaRusso, who shot and killed a known cop-killer for no reason) “capture” three men on Potts’ lawn who are attempting to speak to him. One of whom, Omar, is played by Tony Todd, who you may remember as either Ben from the Night of the Living Dead remake, or as the Candyman in the eponymous film (or any one of his other 192 film and television credits)! The cops play their tough guy routine, but Potts wants to hear what the men, who are from a Muslim organization, have to say. They are concerned that he has white officers watching him and his family, and offer their protection, believing that blacks would better protect one of their own. He denies this and sends them on their way.
Continuing on with Potts, who gets a lot of screen time in this one, he is “pre-screened” by Sidney Weitz and Trish Vaughn, who as you may remember are the attorneys for Detective LaRusso. They just want to know roughly how he is going to respond to the questions on the stand, to see if he will make a good witness for them; he answers the questions truthfully, and then gets his words twisted around by Trish, which frustrates him and causes him to storm out of the room.
For a second opinion, Potts goes to a black lawyer who either seems to specialize in, or merely has a lot of experience with, police cases. The lawyer tells him to support LaRusso’s claim, much to Potts’ shock, with the explanation that if he testifies against him, as he is planning to do, all the white cops on the force will see LaRusso as a martyr, while they’ll see him as a rat, and want to make life hell for him. This leads Potts to have a change of heart, so he goes to tell Captain Hollander that he’s changed his mind, and that he is not going to testify. This disappoints Hollander, mainly because he wants to see LaRusso behind bars, but there’s really nothing he can do about it. At the end of the episode, he is approached by Commander Warren Osborne, also a black man and the right-hand man of the Chief of Police, who tells him that his fellow officers already see him as a traitor, and that they’re going to give him a tough time even if he steps down, so he might as well do the right thing. This gives him some food for thought for the next ep.
In the other racially-tinged plotline, a six-year-old African-American child is gunned down, by accident, after getting caught in the crossfire of a drive-by shooting. He is the only casualty. For dramatic effect, there’s the required scene that the mother, who seems to always have to be a larger black woman, runs out screaming and crying that her baby has been taken from her. Of course, “Cop Rock” can take it one step further, and they do, by giving her a song, with lyrics such as: “Why God must the innocent suffer, Lord? How many must die, Lord, before we know why, Lord?” It’s an admirable attempt, I suppose, but the minimalist music and bland lyrics do in what could have been a much more powerful song.
"WHY LORD?"
Officer Frank Rose is disgusted by the scene of a dead six-year-old kid in a rough neighborhood, but is bothered even moreso by the lack of concern from Detective Miller, who is the white cop tasked with overseeing the investigation. At one point, Rose approaches Miller at a bar, giving him a list of partial tags and descriptions of vehicles that were spotted at the scene. Obviously, Rose is merely doing this out of interest in the case, but Miller sees this as a personal attack; his response is to sing a song to Rose’s partner, Joe Gaines, about how Rose can’t be trusted, simply because he’s black (“When you need a man to watch your back, blue is blue and black is black” are some example lyrics, with an emphasis on, and a look of utter contempt during, the last part). As expected, an unswayed Gaines calls him a “jerk” and leaves.
Later on, Rose follows up on the case again with Miller, who storms into the Captain’s office and tells him that if the Captain won’t “take care” of Rose, then he will. This doesn’t seem to sit too well with Cap’n Hollander, but things go south even quicker when, later on, Miller tells Rose that he sees black-on-black crime merely as a “thinning of the herd”. Officers are quick to hold back both Rose and Miller, thus preventing a black-on-white crime, but he’s immediately called to Hollander’s office, where he is essentially told to either retire, or he’ll eventually be fired.
In yet another racist-tinged narrative, Chief Kendrick comes under fire at the courthouse that will be hearing the Vincent LaRusso case: he goes on a tirade to the media about how just the fact that LaRusso is being tried makes him sick to his stomach, and that the only people that are questioning his character are “rich west side leftists, negro con merchants“, and the “entertainment industry”, which he feels is mostly made up of “drug addicts, crybabies, and homosexuals who are intent on tearing down all our traditional American values.” As if this wasn’t enough, he calls LaRusso’s own lawyer “one smart Jew.” The journalists there couldn’t get to their computers quickly enough after being bombarded with all those sound bytes.
In her only appearance in this episode, Louise Plank chastises him for his behavior, while he thinks that the only people that were angered by his comments, were those that already hated him. She counters that, as the mayor, she will be called upon to answer to any uproar that this may cause, and that they need to enact some immediate “damage control” to prevent the whole thing from becoming a political liability. The scene is kind of lost when, despite her impassioned speech just two seconds ago, she still says she wants to have sex with him. Thankfully, Kendrick isn’t in the mood, and leaves her office.
And to wrap everything up, Captain Hollander runs into trouble of his own when he gets caught up in work and is late to his son’s piano recital; so late, in fact, that he completely missed his son’s turn. His wife angry, this turns into the clichéd, obligatory cop show storyline where she reprimands him for making promises to his son that he can’t keep, while Captain Hollander defends himself by saying he’s so busy, things are bound to slip through the cracks. He then goes into his sleeping son’s room and sings a song about how he wants to be there for him, or some such trite nonsense.
All-in-all, this was yet another episode that didn’t completely suck. While a lot of it is understandably bland--understandable because this aired on network television in the early ‘90s, so it can only push the envelope so far--the scene in which the black lawyer tells him why he should back away is sadly logical, and no doubt genuine, from a society that still can’t accept humans at face value.
EPISODE RATING: 5.5/10
FULL EPISODE
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