The Ledger

6.23 Aftershock: The Death of Claire Kincaid

In this extremely unusual episode (6.23), Briscoe, Curtis, McCoy and Kincaid witness the execution of a rapist/murderer, and then have an emotionally volatile day. The episode follows each character through his or her day as they meet new characters and sometimes intersect with each other. The episode ends with Kincaid being killed in a traffic accident as she drives Briscoe home.

Extras

Here are some pictures from the episode.

Plot Summary

The episode begins with a doctor and a man on a hospital bed (of sorts) discussing a meal. As they continue talking, we learn from the conversation, what the camera reveals to us, and an additional character that we are watching the preparation for an execution. When a man who is apparently the prison warden pulls back a curtain, we see Briscoe, Curtis, McCoy, and Kincaid standing behind some people who are apparently the victim's family, waiting to witness the execution. Some technicians activate the lethal injection machine, and within moments, the victim's hand goes slack, and we hear the tone on the heart monitor go flat, indicating he is dead. Cut to credits.

The remainder of the episode jumps from short scene to short scene, following each of the characters through the rest of their day. Here's what happens:

• McCoy and Kincaid sit in traffic in Manhattan, driving back to the office. Kincaid says she's not feeling well -- you get the impression she's very upset about the execution -- so McCoy tells her to take the rest of the day off and gets out to walk the rest of the way to their office. We learn that the executed prisoner's victim's name was Adelle Saunders.
• Back at the precinct, Briscoe and Curtis receive applause from the other detectives (led by Profaci), apparently b/c their work led to the execution. Neither Briscoe nor Curtis seem particularly interested in celebrating. Profaci is interested in the grisly details of the execution, and seems out of vengeance, a character trait he's had since his earliest appearances on the show.
• McCoy works out plea bargains with a man who seems to be a public defender. As they go through a laundry list of cases, McCoy refuses to show any of the defendants any mercy, and offers only stiff sentences for each of them. The other lawyer comments on how tough Mccoy is.
• Claire is jogging through a park in spandex pants and a man jogs up to her and tries to start a conversation. She is flippant and then jogs faster than he can handle, leaving him in her dust. The camera stays with him and he says, "Lesbo."
• Briscoe is at a bar with some old cop buddies, telling stories but not drinking. His old buddy tells a story about how a suspect in a string of vending machine robberies paid his bail in coins.
• Back at the precinct, Profaci is booking a disrespectful suspect. Curtis takes over for him and is unusually rough with him, pushing him against the wall and threatening him. Van Buren and Profaci have to call him off and break up the altercation.
• McCoy meets Olivet for dinner or lunch at a fancy restaurant. She looks at him as if they are on a date, and McCoy is clearly uncomfortable. She tells him he needs to find room for something else besides work in his life, and that watching the execution could have a damaging effect on him. He concludes that Schiff put her up to meeting with him, and stalks off.
• Curtis walks around a downtown park and encounters a young woman who flirts with him, calls him "Wall Street," and tells hims he's a grad student. He takes her out to lunch. (The young woman is played by Jennifer Garner, by the way.)
• Briscoe places wagers at an off-track betting facility with his buddies.
• McCoy has made his way to a bar, where he talks to a grizzled old construction worker named Mike. McCoy offers a toast to cops, saying his father walked a beat for 35 years.
• Briscoe's daughter Cathy (the same one killed in a later episode) enters the betting facility and the two head out for lunch. She mentions that Saunders was involved in a fender-bender with her killer immediately before he killed her.
• Curtis continues talking to the grad student, apparently after lunch, and they look at CDs at a street vendor together. He tells her he is married and she says, "So?"
• Back at the precinct, we learn that Curtis's wife is trying to track him down and he's not answering his cell phone.
• Back at the bar, McCoy is playing darts and continues talking about his father, and tells a story about how when he was a child, he played darts continuously and his father used to bet with other bar patrons that an 8-year-old McCoy could beat them at darts. He lost, and then spent "the next three weeks in the basement." He says he hasn't lost darts since, and that in his family, "failure was not an option." It's clear that he's quite drunk.
• Kincaid heads over to her law school and sits in on a law school class taught by someone we assume is her former professor. He is talking about the difference between two cases Idler and Bannon, and grills a young brunette student about the cases. After class, Kincaid approaches him and calls him Mac.
• Briscoe and his daughter are having lunch. We learn that her boyfriend's name is Martin and that she has refused proposals from him. We also learn that Briscoe walked out on her when she was 7. The scene is tense, and Briscoe tells her he's struggling to come to terms with the execution he watched earlier in the day. "I see dead people all the time," he says, but adds that seeing one die is much harder.
• Kincaid and Mac enter his office, where Kincaid discusses her emotions about the execution with a reserved and almost-aristocratic Mac, who finishes the conversation with this shocker: "Your mother would like it if you came by for dinner some time." Wow...it looks like Mac is Kincaid's dad!
• McCoy, back at the bar, tells Mike that he wanted to be a cop, too, but his dad made him became a lawyer. He says his dad could do anything and describes him as a "superman." He looks up at the tv in the bar and sees Schiff giving a press conference. He tells Mike that Schiff is the wisest man east of Missouri."
• The scene cuts to Schiff's press conference, where we learn from a reporter that 25 years ago, while he was in private practice, Schiff wrote an amicus brief in opposition to the death penalty.
• Curtis has made his way back to the grad student's apartment, and is talking about her various books. They begin dancing to the Cowboy Junkies' cover of "Sweet Jane," the old Velvet Underground song.
• Briscoe and his daughter walk down the street and talk. They part ways.
• Back at the precinct, Kincaid stops in to talk to Van Buren. She asks Van Buren why she didn't attend the execution, and AVB says it was because it's not part of her job, and she didn't feel she would get anything positive from the experience.
• McCoy, back at the bar, continues to talk about his childhood and brings up his mother, and for the third time, mentions how big his dad's hands were. He says that his dad abused his mom and says, "I'm still afraid of those hands," implying that his father beat him, too. He reveals his dad smoked like a chimney and eventually died of cancer. (As he talks about this, the famous Mike Post Emotional Breakdown String Music starts up on the soundtrack, lending an added weight to his words.) McCoy asks himself, "Why am I talking about that? I never talk about that."
• Curtis and the grad student are now drinking wine on the couch, and they start making out! Let's not forget that Curtis is married. They are listending to The Sundays on her stereo. I'm not sure what album.
• Briscoe arrives, coincidentally, at the bar where McCoy is talking to Mike. They talk. Briscoe seems upset to have run into McCoy, a work colleague, who is drunk. He expresses concern about McCoy's insobriety.
• Curtis has escaped the clutches of his young suitor and shows up at Briscoe's apartment, which looks like it's in a slightly dingy building (in stark contrast to another episode in which we see Briscoe enter a large, elegant lobby at what appears to be his apartment building. Guess he moved.) Briscoe's not home, but Curtis runs into an elderly female neighbor who recognizes Curtis as Briscoe's parner and says she's glad that there are still good men around like Curtis and Briscoe.
• Back at the bar, McCoy checks his watch, and Briscoe says, "She's not coming," not realizing something that the audience suspects: McCoy is waiting for Kincaid. McCoy puts on his coat and leaves, just as Briscoe says, "But at least she's Irish." I'm not sure if this indicates he knows it's Kincaid. As McCoy leaves, Briscoe somewhat shockingly orders a vodka straight up, surprising since he is a recovering alcoholic and has not had a drink in years.
• Back at the precinct, Van Buren and Kincaid discuss the nature of their work.
• At the bar, Briscoe is still drinking and discusses his two daughters, both of whom hate him, he says.
• Van Buren sits at her kitchen table, and her husband enters. She's writing a letter to her mom about the day, and says that she doesn't feel bad for the executed murderer. Her husband tells her not to lie to her mom, and she revises the letter. We learn from her reading the letter outloud that it is "almost midnight."
• Back at the bar, Briscoe shoots pool with Mike, and Kincaid walks in. They talk for a minute, and she offers him a ride home.
• In the car, Kincaid and Briscoe discuss a couple of things, and Briscoe says, "It wouldn't be so terrible...if you were my kid," and says some nice things about Kincaid. She speaks her last words, "Lennie, I doubt your daughter hates you." He says he doesn't know his daughter, and he never will. With that, Kincaid looks away from the road for a second. When she looks back, headlights shine across her face, we hear a car horn sound, and a big SUV smacks into their car, perpendicularly, striking the driver's side. Briscoe makes his way out of the car, and stumbles around to the other side to check on Kincaid. Kincaid is dead. As this unfolds, we hear Van Buren's voice-over, reading her letter to her mom, discussing the circumstances of the crime (which began with a traffic accident, remember.) The closing words of her letter, and the episode, are, "It's not enough and it's too much."

Analysis

Coming soon....

In the meantime, think about the themes of parenthood and work, and note that each character spirals into behavior that is the opposite of their usual selves: McCoy talks about his personal life, Curtis commits adultery, Briscoe drinks, and Kincaid shows almost debilitating self-doubt.

Here's another summary of this episode by someone else.

Posted by adm at May 11, 2004 08:18 PM

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