American Crime se2 ep10
The season finale of American Crime was messy for each and every character. No fairy tale endings here. If you were expecting one, then you may be the most optimistic person in the country.
We got a look at the flowers that kept piling up to memorialize Wes, a bully who brought this fate on himself.
There were more hacks, this time involving individual’s phones and Sebastian claimed it wasn’t his doing. There were racist jokes leaked from the LaCroix family, the drug dealing evidence from Becca Sullivan, and more where that came from.
Those leaks resulted in Becca getting arrested and suspended from school. The entire basketball team also got visits from the cops due to the beating that got exposed.
These latest leaks exposed the entire ugly situation at Leyland. All the cover-ups and secrets were over.
Anne was very pleased with all the hacks and figured they would be of help to Taylor at his trial. The Sullivans were destroyed at seeing their kid in handcuffs. And the mom continued her stupidity by speaking with no lawyer present.
The LaCroix’s cop buddy took the fall for getting rid of Kevin’s confession. But they turned out not to be the ones who leaked Anne’s medical records.
If anyone on this show didn’t know the political games being played, it was Principal Dixon. He got railroaded and was being forced out of his position although he was offered a fair amount of hush money.
He never knew he was involved in a game until he had lost.
The storm started by Sebastian kept rolling out of his control. His code of only attacking institutions didn’t matter now that others wanted a piece of the dirty individuals involved in this case. The hacker even got hacked, leading to him taking his kids and getting the hell out of town!
The team would be facing charges of a hate crime depending on how Eric testifies. And he is still adamant there was no rape.
Groveling is something Coach Sullivan isn’t used to but did so to try to get more help for his daughter from Dr. Graham. She took great pleasure in brushing him aside. That was a miscalculation on her part.
Sullivan, now good and pissed off, found out how to get to Sebastian and showed him Anne’s shredded medical reports he had gotten from Graham’s office. The patient old shipbuilder had pieced back together the shredded documents just in case he needed them. It didn’t help his kid but made him feel a lot better that Graham would not get away clean.
The talk between Peter and Eric was a big downer with the younger brother talking about dreams of a cross-country bike ride. Eric knows it will never happen and that their future is nothing short of dismal with a “crazy mom and a clueless dad.”
Amazingly Taylor wants to plea bargain even though the leaks have given hope for a lesser sentence. He tells Anne he doesn’t want Eric to be the hero that saves him by testifying against the basketball team. I’m sure he doesn’t want Eric on the stand going over the details of the night of the Captain’s Party either.
The LaCroix family will be moving away now that Terri LaCroix is being pushed out of her current job to another city for the embarrassing texts leaked. It was relocate or be fired. This lady is a hypocrite who justifies her own racism by saying she’s dealt with much worse on a daily basis. Still taking no responsibility for her own actions.
Thankfully Headmistress Graham did lose her job. Her dirty dealings did not go unpunished like I feared. Coach Sullivan couldn’t have been more pleased to see her squirming.
The new headmaster at Leyland was introduced and said he wanted to continue the “Tradition of excellence there.”
The only excellence I saw was in the ability to raise a ton of cash. The new leader should want to do a 180 on how things were done, not continue anything the failed leaders did before him.
The show wrapped with Eric pausing before entering a hot rod with one of his random hookups. Taylor is standing before the court as the judge asks if he’s sure he wants to enter a plea agreement.
I’m sure many viewers wanted a solid resolution in the finale, but the episode just ended before we see what Eric chooses or if Taylor does, in fact, take the prosecution’s deal. I’m good with it. I didn’t need to see what their choices were. What was great about that ending was that everyone had a major life choice to make, but Taylor and Eric’s were the biggest as they will surely predict the outcome of their lives. If Taylor takes the plea, he will wind up becoming a victim all over again in prison, but if he doesn’t, he can face the guy who raped him and realize that Eric isn’t saving him. By facing Eric in court, it would also show Taylor how similar they actually were too. Both Taylor and Eric had the same feeling about testifying with each mentioning that the other became the saver of the other, but each held fast to their own belief of the truth.
If Eric gets in the car, his future is pretty much predetermined as a kid who’ll take the straight trade route (if you don’t know what that word is, it’s guys who hook up with ‘straight’ guys or guys who don’t want to admit to being gay, knowing that they could wind up serving as a punching bag as Eric was in the earlier episode) where he’ll either be killed from this or HIV. Both he and Taylor are in that self-sabotage route where the future looks bleak if they don’t get their shit together. I’ve known enough people (men and women) who were like this in high school and never grew out of it to see their 30th birthdays.
Connor Jessup easily deserves an Emmy for his portrayal of Taylor, which is quite a difference from his Falling Skies show along with Joey Pollari who added some great layers to a confused kid knowing who he was with society telling him he wasn’t worthy. Both of these guys basically had the same role showing just two ways they could turn out when being told that they are worse than second-hand citizens.
This season of American Crime was about the leaders’ actions, and the disconnect between them and the kids they were supposed to be molding into future leaders.
The failures at the top gave no hope to the young people at the bottom of the food chain, especially the weaker ones without the resources to fight back.
The show certainly didn’t offer much hope for our society which seems to follow suit with what happened at Leyland. The leaders at the top are awesome at lip service, but never seem to make positive change a reality. While the average Joes get more and more frustrated with their lot in life and many just give up like Taylor appeared to at the end.
This season of American Crime was an uncomfortable watch for many, but a season worth of checking out and thinking about going forward.