This had all the makings of a psychological thriller similar to the episode "Shadow In The Dark". There was an unmistakably dark tone throughout (serial child murder always grips a society, as it should), and great casting that included John Bowman as Delgado, Dylan Baker as the frazzled cop, and Gary Basaraba as the drug lord's top redneck henchman who has it out for Tubbs. You also had a great score by John Peterson, and Billy Idol's "Sweet Sixteen" was a perfect fit (which is more than I can say for Aerosmith's "Rag Doll", which seemed to be injected for the title alone).
So the makings were there for a top episode that could have rivaled the other top episodes, but execution and production flaws limited it.
First, you had Crockett & Tubbs essentially being held against their will at Palmo's place because the latter is distrusting of newcomers. You have a serial killer on the loose, and a child killer at that, and the two top cops aren't out looking for him.
Second, Castillo was doing a lot of legwork in the episode, something that police lieutenants do not do, which relegated Switek, Trudy and Gina to background noise. That trio should have been showcased better. Especially Trudy and Gina, since we're talking about little girls being murdered, one would think female cops would care the most.
Finally the kangaroo court at the end was corny. It was an "ah-ha" moment when Delgado tells Sonny that he was their contact re Palmo all along, but that was never capitalized on by Delgado during the so-called trial. Then at the end of the "trial" and after Burnett's empty defense, Delgado just runs for it. None of the other dealers who were there as "the jury" shot him down. None of them caught him, took him to a secluded location, killed him, then dumped the body. Nope, Delgado ran up to the rafters, then in a fit of dissociative identity disorder (which by the way was never explained) jumped to his death and just so happened to kill Palmo also. In "Shadow In The Dark", the Shadow catburgler's psychological profile was explored and helped us care about the character. But not with Delgado.
I'm tempted to give this fewer than six stars, but I could tell the casting was pretty good and a doll-obsessed child killer was a great idea for an episode. It's just that the actors didn't have a good script to work with. This episode just fell a bit flat.
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