Original Airdate: September 21, 1999
Characters:
1) Amy Gray
2) Vincent Gray
3) Lauren Cassidy
4) Maxine Gray
5) Bruce
6) Peter Gray
7) Gillian Gray
Characters Introduced:
1) Tracy Carroll
Life isn't getting much easier for Judge Amy Gray.
With something like 60 cases on one day's docket, and Lauren wanting to avoid school due to a troublesome teacher, not to mention Maxine's obsessive chat room hobby, Amy has a lot on her hands.
As much as Amy is having a difficult time at it, though, this episode focuses almost as much on Maxine and her dreams of traveling abroad, from Vietnam to Cambodia (despite Peter's misgivings). Since her retirement, Maxine's been spending much of her time gardening and chatting to troubled individuals on the internet. While she occasionally consults with her old job at DCF, more often than not, she's just biding her time.
Amy, meanwhile, has been dating more; she's currently planning lunch with one Tracy Carroll, who happens to be a psychiatrist. With the various cases on her docket, though, the lunch became a dinner plan for the upcoming Friday.
After a tense discussion with Peter and Gillian, not to mention Vincent, Maxine shelves her dreams of traveling, and decides to go back into the career she had an instrumental part in creating, working for the welfare of children.
While Maxine is making those decisions, Amy has a somewhat heated conversation with both the principal and teacher from Lauren's school. According to the teacher Lauren simply speaks too much, which Amy vehemently disagrees with. The conversation then shifts to Amy's ability to pitch in and volunteer at the school, which she agrees to do in the capacity of being a crossing guard.
One last interesting note, we learned that Vincent refused, back in elementary school, to say "Under God" as part of the Pledge of Allegiance, citing his belief in the separation between church and state. I bring this up because it's the first overtly political point mentioned, and from this and future episodes, juxtaposes Peter's conservative beliefs with Vincent's more liberal sensibilities, which I will expand on later.
Overall, while this is a decent episode, it presents nothing overly special, save for the subplot regarding Maxine, which leads her to rejoining DCF. Vincent and Amy have a somewhat revealing conversation at the beginning of the episode, further showing that Amy is far more comfortable sharing her feelings and life events with her younger brother as opposed to Peter.
Lauren continues to have problems adjusting to both her new school and being a child of a single, working mother, but is slowly maturing to understand her place in the family.
Quote of the episode:
Maxine [to Lauren]: "Your opinions are not as fascinating as you think there are."
Rating: Average
- Michael
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