Judging Amy is an
American
television drama
that aired from September 19, 1999, until May 3, 2005, on CBS. The show stars
Amy
Brenneman (
NYPD Blue) and
Tyne Daly (
Cagney & Lacey). Its main
character is a judge who serves in a
family
court, and in addition to the family-related cases that she
adjudicates, many episodes of the show focus on her own experiences
as a divorced parent and on the experiences of her mother, a
social worker concerned with
child welfare. The show is based on
Amy Brenneman's mother's actual life.
After six seasons,
Judging Amy was cancelled by
CBS on
May 18,
2005.
In the US, reruns aired on the TNT cable channel, but the show
was removed for their fall 2007 lineup. The final broadcast
was on
August 31,
2007, with the airing of the fifth-season episode "The
Long Good-Bye".
In Canada
, it airs on
the W Network owned by Corus Entertainment.
Plot
Brenneman
played Amy Gray, a young New York attorney who, after separating
from her husband, returns with her young daughter to her childhood
home in Hartford,
Connecticut
. She becomes a
judge on
that city's
family court at age
thirty-four and eventually gets a divorce. Her mother (with whom
she lives), played by Daly, is a caseworker for the Department of
Children and Families. In what turned out to be the series finale,
Amy quits the judiciary to run for the
U.S. Senate.
Critical reception
Several reviewers have suggested that the show took inspiration
from the formula established by
Providence. Reviewers also cite
the relationship between Brenneman and Daly's characters as the
selling point of the show.
Amy Gray makes reference to "Providence" in episode 3.18, "The
Justice League of America." In this episode, Amy is attending her
10 year Harvard Law reunion and her old friends can't seem to
remember that Amy now lives in Hartford; they continually believe
she's living in Providence. Finally, Amy says "It's Hartford,
David. Providence is a whole other universe."
However, the show has been criticised for "an abundance of clichés
in the show's structure", "shallow examinations of moral issues",
and "little substance". Philip Michaels, writing for TeeVee.org,
criticises the show's formula, stating "The emotional tenor of the
legal cases that carry most of the narrative load run the gamut
from maudlin to preachy and back to maudlin again by way of
manipulative." However, he acknowledges "
Judging Amy isn't
watershed television, but then, it doesn't purport to be."
Characters
Main characters
- Amy Madison Gray, played by Amy Brenneman: After separating from her
husband, Amy Gray returns to her childhood home with her daughter,
becomes a judge on Hartford's family court, gets a divorce and
tries to get on with her life. Balancing her new job, her family
and trying to rebuild her love life isn't easy, but she keeps
trying. She makes a name for herself in family court for her
unusual methods and sentences and her stubbornness, which sometimes
gets her in trouble. She dates several men, but her two longest and
more serious relationships are with lawyer
Stuart Collins and ADA David McClaren. With Stuart, they
dislike each other at first, but when she asks him to be Eric
Black's lawyer, they get closer and finally get engaged. However,
Amy leaves him at the altar on their wedding day, saying he has a
way to always convince her to do things she doesn't want to do. She
meets ADA David McClaren during her short stint in the criminal
court, and things are rocky from the start. Eventually, Amy becomes
pregnant by him and they plan to marry, but things fall apart when
she miscarries and they part ways soon thereafter. In the last
episode of the series, she quits the judiciary to run for Senate, to try to prevent the
passing of some laws that will effectively end the juvenile justice
system by allowing the State's Attorney's office to try teenagers
as adults at their own discretion.
- Maxine McCarty Gray, played by Tyne Daly: Amy's widowed mother. A social worker
for DCF (the Department of Children and Families), she retired once
but returns to the job at the start of the series, and she's
willing to do whatever it takes to help the children in her care,
even bending the law. She's an opinionated, strong willed woman,
very set in her ways and capable of holding long grudges (she
hasn't spoken to her brother in over 12 years) but loving to her
family. Her relationship with daughter Amy is often not easy, since
they're too much alike. After a troubled courtship, she becomes
engaged to rich businessman Jared Duff, but he dies 48 hours
before the wedding (due to the death of Richard Crenna who played the character). By
the end of the series, she becomes engaged once again to Ignacio Messina. She has two
heart attacks in the last
season and has to undergo open heart
surgery, but eventually makes certain lifestyle changes and
recovers well.
- Vincent Gray (episodes 1-51 & 100-138),
played by Dan Futterman: Amy's
gifted younger brother, with whom she has
always been closest. Vincent is the winner of a Pushcart Prize for a collection of short
stories titled "A Fortunate Son". Shortly at the beginning of the
series, he becomes room-mates with Donna, with whom later he
becomes best friends. As he attempts to continue his writing
career, he holds a number of different jobs: dogwasher, reporter, and free-lancer. He eventually marries
his girlfriend, Carole Tobey (Sara Mornell), who has breast cancer, and leaves with her for
San
Francisco
, parting
with Amy on very bad terms. Some time later, his cousin Kyle
arranges for him to arrive as a surprise to Amy's wedding to Stuart
Collins. The wedding never happens, but he patches things up with
Amy. He returns home soon after, explaining that Carole has left
him for her oncologist. He later explains
that this was a lie, and that he left his wife because he could not
handle the struggle of taking care of her. Still stuck on his new
book, he gets a new job as a social
worker.
- Kyle McCarty (episodes 53-118), played by
Kevin Rahm: Amy's cousin, the son of
Maxine's estranged brother Richard (William Devane). A former medical student who
was expelled because of problems related to his addiction to drugs.
Shunning his father, he comes to his aunt Maxine for help. She
gives him a home and gets him a job as a counsellor at a facility
for runaway teens. He later moves in to share a flat with Donna
after Vincent leaves and finds a hospital willing to give him a new
chance to finish his medical
residency, and gets into a complicated on/off relationship with
fellow doctor Heather Labonte
as well as fighting an attraction to his supervisor, Dr. Lily Reddicker. After his father
dies, he quits his job and finds a new path in life as a medic with
the SWAT unit. He finally decides to accompany
his ex-girlfriend Heather to Minnesota and take care of their son
while she's in rehabilitation.
- Peter Gray, played by Marcus Giamatti: Amy's older brother. He
inherited the family business from his father and he's good at it,
even if it wasn't his first choice in life. He's a good but grey
man who sometimes surprises people with some outbursts. He's
married to Gillian and they have been trying to have children for a
long time. They agree to adopt the son of a pregnant girl called
Evie, and he turns out to be half African-American. Some time after adopting
Ned, Gillian gets pregnant and gives birth to Walt. Things get
rocky after Walt's birth and they separate for a while, even dating
other people. Peter goes through a "rebellion" phase, trying to
recall his teenage dreams, until he finds out his business is
almost bankrupt. Soon after, he finally
reconciles with his wife.
- Gillian Gray, played by Jessica Tuck: Peter's wife. A controlling woman
with a good heart who completely loves her husband. She is usually
well-meaning, but also often obsessive and nerve-wracking. After
being unable to get pregnant, they adopt baby Ned. Some time later,
however, she gets surprisingly pregnant, but things go wrong during
the delivery of her son Walt, and she falls into a coma for a
while. She and Peter have problems soon after, and she even dates
another man, but they finally reconcile.
- Lauren Cassidy, played by Karle Warren: Amy's daughter, six years old at
the start of the series. A mostly well-adjusted girl going through
the pains of childhood and pre-adolescence with divorced parents
but a loving family. As a young girl, she struggles over her
father's relationship with Leesha, whom she likes at first. When
Lauren is 12, her uncle Peter, takes her for her haircut and she
returns home with her long straight hair cut into a hipper,
shoulder-length cut. Her boyfriend Victor turns out to be the son
of her mother's boyfriend, David McClaren, which causes Lauren to
feel both awkward and disgusted. When Amy becomes pregnant with
David's child, Lauren reveals what a total blow to her social life
this will be and is furious, but later, becomes accepting and
supporting of her mother after she miscarries. Towards the end of
the series Lauren begins to hang out with a group of friends who
embrace the Straight edge culture,
which puts her at odds with her mother.
- Bruce Calvin van Exel, played by Richard T. Jones: Amy's Court Services Officer, who
eventually becomes her friend. The series addresses a number of
issues of their cross-racial friendship and how each feels
differently about it. Bruce is a stubborn man with strong
convictions, whose advice Amy comes to find invaluable. He has a
daughter, Rebecca, whose mother breaks up with him after he gives
her an ultimatum to move in together. At one point, Bruce is
suspended from work for punching a man. He performs community service in a soup kitchen before returning to work with Amy.
He is also a fairly devout Catholic, and
not thrilled when his sister Winnie takes Rebecca to her more
traditional black church with 'more interesting prayers.' Rebecca
and Lauren attend the same middle school. In the second-to-last
episode, he quits his job to complete his Master's in Family
Counselling, something he always wanted to do. There's an
attraction between him and Amy that's sometimes acknowledged, but
never really explored.
- Donna Kozlowski, played by Jillian Armenante: Amy's clerk. An
eccentric woman from a wealthy family, from whom she's estranged.
Donna is intellectually a genius (she finishes her law degree in one and a half years) but socially
awkward. She is married to a convicted murderer, Oscar Ray Pant,
and becomes roommates with Amy's brother Vincent. While living with
him, she has a daughter by Oscar, Ariadne Gray Pant, to whom she
gives birth in a plastic pool in Amy's living room. Her mother
arrives while Donna is in the pool, but is unable to offer her
support and leaves. Maxine ends up getting in the pool with Donna.
Later Oscar confesses to Donna that he's really guilty and she
divorces him. Upon passing the bar,
Amy fires her so she would go to work as lawyer, and she becomes a
court-appointed minor counsel for the Hartford Youth Advocates,
whose office is across the hall from Amy's.
- Sean Potter, played by Timothy Omundson: Maxine's boss and later
friend, who has his hands full dealing with Maxine's unorthodox
methods. Initially a bit green in his supervisory role (he uses
percentages constantly in common conversation), he loosens up over
time after his exposure to and friendship with Maxine. Sean and
Bruce (Amy's court services officer) become friends and work
together to establish alternative treatment programs for youthful
offenders (such as "Gun 101"), and Sean is revealed in one episode
as an avid karaoke singer...which comes in handy for entertaining
the guests at Amy's and Stuart's wedding (which doesn't quite come
off). Sean also dates the daughter (Courtney Messina played by
Jossara Jinaro) of Maxine's beau (Ignacio) for a while,
entertaining her elderly grandmother with a rendition of "Vaya con
Dios" (an inappropriate selection for an octogenarian, according to
Ignacio).
Secondary characters
- Eric Black, played by Blake Bashoff: A gay teenager who has been
abused several times. When all else fails, Maxine reluctantly takes
him into her own home, where he rapidly bonds with the family, and
afterwards Sean becomes his foster father. Eventually, Eric
protectively confronts and kills a stalker who's after Amy and
Lauren. He
is tried and found not guilty, but as Maxine no longer trusts him,
he decides to run away to Canada with his
boyfriend, Mark.
- Dr. Lily Reddicker, played by Kristin Lehman: Hospital Chief of Staff who
takes a chance by hiring Amy's cousin Kyle. She is a no nonsense
supervisor who nonetheless recognizes Kyle's superb medical skills
and his need to return to medicine which he tries to hide behind a
sarcastic view of the world. She fights an attraction to Kyle
because of their professional relationship and her fears that
pursuing such could create problems for Kyle because of his
addiction problems. Kyle soon becomes troubled by his attraction to
both Dr. Lily and a fellow resident, Heather Labonte.
- Heather Labonte, played by Sarah Danielle Madison: A doctor at
Kyle's hospital with a substance abuse problem who gets busted with
a drug test and gets a job as a bartender.
She has an on/off relationship with Kyle, until she gets pregnant.
Kyle says he'd help economically, but that they shouldn't be
together. Finally, Kyle decides to accompany her to Minnesota and
take care of their son while she's in rehabilitation.
- Louann 'Crystal' Turner, played by Jennifer Esposito: A former meth addict
who runs an outreach program for homeless teenagers. She had a
relationship with Vincent and worked with him until she arranged
for him to work at a youth detention center to teach a creative
writing class.
- Graciela Reyes, played by Tara Correa-McMullen: A gang member Amy
counsels. As time passes, she makes progress, though she is
arrested one day for criminal facilitation, as she was in the car
with her cousin when she was involved in a drive-by shooting. Graciela is tried and
found guilty, thus being sent to prison, where she is murdered,
sadly mirroring the actual gang-related murder of actress Tara Correa-McMullen.
- Courtney Messina, played by Jossara Jinaro: Ignacio Messina's (Cheech
Marin) daughter and Sean Potter's (Timothy Omundson)
girlfriend.
Amy's love interests
- Michael Cassidy, played by #1 John Slattery, #2 Richard Burgi: Amy's ex-husband. Michael
remarries Leesha, a younger and blonder woman than Amy, who at
first tries without success to befriend Amy. Later, Michael tries
to get full custody of Lauren, the daughter he has with Amy, but
after some time he drops the case. It turns out Michael wanted
Lauren to help his marriage, but then Leesha left him. He tells Amy
that even though he stands by what he said about her in court,
she's still a better parent than him.
- Rob Meltzer, played by Tom Welling (episodes 2.9-2.11, 2.15-2.16,
2.19): Lauren's karate teacher, with whom Amy
has a short fling.
- Tom Gillette, played by Gregory Harrison (episodes 1.14,
2.11-2.13): The man Amy chooses over Rob. The relationship only
lasted four episodes. He left her to return to his estranged
wife.
- Barry Krumble, played by Chris Sarandon (episodes 3.12-3.23): A fellow
judge whom Amy dated briefly. He "saved" her from embarrassment at
her 10 year college reunion, but the relationship fizzled out when
she realized they weren't meant for each other because he couldn't
"live in the moment" the way she did.
- Stuart Collins, played by Reed Diamond (episodes 1.3, 1.11, 2.15,
3.1-3.3, 4.16-5.7): A lawyer who, after several on/offs, gets
betrothed to Amy. They rekindle their relationship when she asks
him to be Eric Black's lawyer, but she ends by leaving him at the
altar. Six months later, she learns that he has married a
22-year-old Polynesian woman whom he met
on the trip that was supposed to have been their honeymoon.
- David McClaren, played by Adrian Pasdar (episodes 5.1-6.15): A recently
widowed assistant state's attorney and
the father of Lauren's boyfriend Victor. His relationship with Amy
is rocky from the beginning. At first, he is still dealing with the
fact that his wife had been murdered, and he attends victims'
support group meetings, one of which he asks Amy to attend. Later,
she becomes pregnant by him and they plan to buy a house together.
However, Amy miscarries and in her grief she keeps David at a
distance, resulting in him breaking up with her.
Maxine's love interests
- Jared Duff, played by Richard Crenna: A wealthy businessman who
Maxine meets at a local diner, which he later purchases for her.
Things between them become rocky several times, once because of his
son's opposition to the relationship, but they do finally get
engaged in 2003. He died two days before the wedding is set to
begin (this was done as a tribute to actor Richard Crenna, who had
died in 2003).
- Ignacio Messina, played by Cheech Marin: The landscape designer whom Maxine hired to
work on her garden. The two of them become close, but Maxine
discovers he is not divorced from his first wife, and has two
children Courtney Messina (Jossara Jinaro) and Raul Messina (Tito
Ortiz). They stay friends, and he remains very supportive through
her health problems. Finally, he divorces his wife and in the final
episode he asks her to marry him.
Main crew members
Murdered Cast Member
On October
21, 2005, 16-year old Tara
Correa-McMullen (who played Graciela Reyes in the show) was
shot to death outside an apartment complex in Inglewood,
California
. Suspected gang member Damien Watts, 20, was
charged with her murder on March 1, 2006; he was convicted on
January 23, 2009. When charged, Watts was already in
custody for a separate shooting. Watts was
sentenced on February 27, 2009 to life imprisonment, with no chance
of parole.
Crew
Directors
- James Hayman
- James Frawley (15 episodes,
1999-2005)
- Helen Shaver (11 episodes,
2001-2005)
- Kevin Dowling (8 episodes,
1999-2003)
- Andrew Robinson (7
episodes, 2001-2005)
- Alan Myerson More Than 45
Credits
- Martha Mitchell (6 episodes,
1999-2005)
- Jack Bender (6 episodes,
1999-2001)
- Richard E. Gershman (5 episodes, 2002-2005)
- Joe Ann Fogle (4 episodes,
1999-2002)
- Elodie Keene (4 episodes,
2001-2002)
- Peter Levin (4 episodes,
2002-2003)
- Fred Gerber
Writers
- Amy Brenneman
- Bill D'Elia
- Barbara Hall (Head Writer/Show
Runner)
- Connie Tavel
- John Tinker
- Lyla Oliver
- Karen Hall (15 episodes,
2000-2004)
- Hart Hanson (13 episodes,
2000-2003)
- Randall Caldwell (10 episodes,
1999-2003)
- Paul Guyot (10 episodes,
2001-2004)
- Barry O'Brien (9 episodes,
2002-2005)
- Carol Barbee (8 episodes,
2003-2005)
- Dawn Prestwich (7 episodes,
1999-2001)
- Nicole Yorkin (7 episodes,
1999-2001)
- Joseph Dougherty (7 episodes,
2000-2002)
- Dawn Comer (6 episodes,
2001-2003)
- Alex Taub
Producers
Location
Judging Amy takes place in Hartford,
Connecticut. Although the show often shows the Hartford
Judicial District Court as having the address of 1265 (street
unknown), the actual address of the Hartford Judicial District is
95 Washington Street, family matters are heard on 90 Washington
Street and the Superior Court Juvenile Matters of Hartford is in
920 Broad Street, Hartford, CT 06106.
International
Judging Amy is internationally broadcast by the following
stations under the following names:
Ratings
- Season 1:
- Season 2:
- Season 3: Its highest rated episode was in 2001 and garnered
17.6 million viewers. [68427]
- Season 4:
- Season 5:
- Season 6:
References
External links
(Flanders, Dutch)
, French)
(Galicia
)
)
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