Death by Good Intentions

Decent but preachy is a way to describe many episodes of "Quincy"--and these episodes are generally among the worst in the series. Instead of focusing on investigating a death, these episodes focus much more on a social issue--and the doctor stomps about preaching about some particular issue. This was the case with such topics as child abuse, spousal abuse, rape and autism. Here, the topic of affirmative action* is the subject of this episode's sermon--and it comes off as more of a message piece than a piece of entertainment. Fortunately, when the story changes and the TRUE reason for the death is discovered, the episode becomes much, much better.

So is this a great episode or terrible one? Well, some of it clearly will depend on what you think of affirmative action. If you think it's necessary and good thing, you'll probably enjoy the show more than someone who is against racial preferences. As for me, regardless of my beliefs, I just think there was too little emphasis on the killing and too much on the bloviating.

*Outside the US, folks may not be familiar with the phrase 'affirmative action'. This is a policy where there are quotas to hire or offer school admission to a particular disadvantaged group, even if their qualifications are lower than the rest of the population.

Death by Good Intentions begins at a hospital where a man is rushed into surgery after coming through the ER. Shortly after the surgery is successfully completed, the man dies of a heart attack inexplicably and Quincy (Jack Klugman) conducts the autopsy. His findings determine that the patient died as result of errors in treatment by the hospital staff, but no one can pinpoint exactly who was responsible. Most of the suspicion falls on a young African-American doctor working in the ER who initially treated the patient and this leads to his suspension. To further complicate matters, this doctor was hired through an affirmative action program which may be in jeopardy if he is responsible for the patient's death, but Quincy suspects that there might be more to the death than doctor error.

I would characterize this as a fair Season 4 episode that does feature a murder mystery along with a social cause. The problem I have with it is that the social cause seems to be much more in the forefront than the actual murder which seems pretty backwards. Granted, it does take some time for Quincy and crew to determine that a murder has taken place in this episode, but it just seemed like way too much time time was spent on the affirmative action program issues which ended up having nothing to do with the crime. I also thought the plot was very similar to that of the Season 3 episode Valleyview which also featured an angel of death type story, so it is not very original.

There are some Quincy episodes that do a great job of blending a murder mystery plot in along with a social cause, but I wouldn't say that this is one of them.