ndue Process
ndue Process
The two day search for Natalie Lambert's young goddaughter ends when the missing girl's body is discovered in the woods. After Nick Knight rescues the alleged killer from an angry mob of vigilantes, a blood test and line-up fail to provide enough evidence to hold him.
Removed from the case because of her ties to the victim, Natalie questions the results of the lab work. When the suspect suddenly dies, Natalie performs her own lab test and uncovers another murder.
A truly different sort of episode. For once, it's not Nick who wants to take down the criminal at any cost, with little regard for the word of the law -- it's everyone else who's after Ronald Gault (played by Allan Royal), accused child murderer.
I thought Nick's flashback was a bit too artificial. He assumes a man is guilty of setting him up, and takes his vengeange, only to find out too late that the man was innocent. Sure, it explains his reluctance to kill Gault, and the way he protects Gault from the mob. But it just doesn't jive with the way he normally acts, bringing people to justice even when he has to step outside the law to do so. Suddenly he's following the spirit of the law (instead of just the letter).
Even LaCroix (in the flashback) gives one of his patented "moral lessons" against vengeance. But LaCroix has always come across as quite vengeful in the other episodes. Often thesxe actions are mere cruelty, as versus a carefully planned revenge. But take, for example, the later episode "Be My Valentine", in which he acts on a grudge against Nicholas more than seven hundred years old. Is this truly the same person who's trying to dissuade others from revenge?
On the other hand, Natalie flirts heavily with the darkness, and really wants to kill Gault. Even when she suspects that Gault didn't die a natural death, and finds out that Dr. Emma Reston killed him, she doesn't become worried -- until Emma starts talking about why they had a right to kill him, an obligation to kill him. Then Natalie steps back and looks at the bleak moral attitude, and finally turns Emma in. It's obvious that she's torn between the need for vengeance and the wish to remain pure, to be able to live with her conscience.
On neither hand, Schanke jumps from side to side, first claiming that "death's too good for him", and then, after Gault dies, that he really wouldn't wish such a death on anyone. And at the end, he notes that Dr. Reston should have gotten a medal for killing Gault, rather than being sent off to jail. Why so many different opinions? Schanke isn't a wishy-washy sort of guy; usually, he comes down hard on some side of every issue. But then, maybe it's a moral statement, that he really wants to be hard on this guy, but couldn't bring himself to personally bring about the punishment. To be judge and jury, but never executioner.
Let's not forget the long, drawn out scene where Dr. Emma Reston (played by Lynne Thomson) kills Gault. After the third closeup of her applying the chemical to his forehead, it was blatantly obvious that something was going on. It really isn't necessary to assume that the viewers are clueless.
This was a good story, with a fine moral message embedded in it. But it wasn't worth the contortions they had to put the characters' personalities through. If the plot has been restructured to let them all act normally, it might have been a good episode. But as it is, I cringe every time I see it rerun.
Episode rating (0 to 10): 1
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