American Crime - S1E2 - Episode 2

Tweet

Previously on American Crime, ‘Episode 1’

Episode two of American Crime takes us about a day further into the proceedings. Matt’s wife Gwen is still in the ICU in a coma, Carter and Aubrey have been taken into custody and processed, Hector is still in the hospital after being shot in the leg at the end of episode one, and the Gutierrez’s are reeling from Tony being arrested.

American Crime does the Crash thing, hopping story to story; it does it well, but it’ll still be hella less confusing if we do this check-in style.

Tony arrives in juvenile detention, and it really hits for the first time that he’s a kid, and not a hardened one. Prison scares him, and it shows. Alonzo is trying hard to get him out, clearly at a loss. He prided himself in being on the “right” side of the system, and now feels like it has failed him and failed his child. We get our first good look at Jenny, who clearly blames her father for not keeping Tony out of jail. One of the most heart-wrenching lines of the episode comes from her mouth, and you can see it cut into Alonzo when she says it.

We don’t see Hector a ton this episode, but his scenes are powerful. He is rolled to his arraignment still in his hospital gown and in a flimsy hospital wheelchair. It’s in this unfortunate getup that he is informed none of the charges for Matt’s murder matter, because he’s being extradited to Mexico on a murder warrant. This is clearly not expected, because Hector, who is machismo personified, looks petrified. For the first time, he looks really and truly scared, which really makes me hope they follow him to Mexico and we get the rest of his story.

Carter is charged, but seems to barely hear the charges. It’s a mass arraignment, and Aubrey is there, too. While the judge is reading the charges, Carter is silently trying to see if Aubrey is alright. She is, other than being banged up. She’s released on probation and heads back to their apartment. The landlord discovers her and, after a loud argument, throws her out of the apartment. I have to say, sober Aubrey is way more of a badass than Aubrey-On-Meth. It doesn’t last, though. Addicts are addicts, and Aubrey needs a fix. She steals twenty dollars from a table at a local diner and gets a fix at a nightclub. The meth takes her away, as it does, to where she is with Carter and happy. She wakes up, as you do, in a back alley with her pants around her knees and the remainder of her money gone. She makes a call to a man that my closed captioning called Michael, but I’m not sure who he is. A father? Brother? Anyway, she gets him to wire her $2,000 and sets herself up in a suite at a hotel.

And then the Skokies. At the end of episode one, we found out Matt had a crap-ton (actual measurement) of meth at his house; enough to make the police suspect he was dealing. Russ is trying to get to the bottom of things and does a little amateur detective work. He’s still wearing that lost puppy face, and I can’t get a fix on whether he truly isn’t very smart or if he doesn’t think he’s very smart and operates under that assumption, because he makes some spectacularly stupid moves in this episode.

The lab results come back on Gwen and complicate things more by making the police reconsider their rape accusation. Tom and Eve Carlin, Gwen’s parents, have to come to grips with the idea that their daughter may have been into some rather unsavory doings. They are highly religious, and it is clear the idea eats at them, especially Tom.

Now, Barb. Felicity Huffman best win herself an Emmy, because she is just perfect. I mean, Barb is literally the worst, but she’s one of the best characters on the show. Far from making excuses for the amount of meth found at her son’s house, she convinces herself the police simply made the drugs up in an effort to blame her son for his own murder.

AND THEN. Oh, and then. Barb asks to speak to the Inspector in charge of her son’s case regarding the drugs, and it is a BLACK WOMAN, and Barb is well and truly pissed. Because, in her words, “If three white men (did this), it would be a hate crime. But who is there for my son? Nobody.”

People, we have the White Victim card. It has been pulled. Get Jessica Williams out here to lay the smackdown.

Things are escalating, and I cannot wait for next week.