Picket Fences - S1E19

Sightings
First Aired: Thursday April 8, 1993

The Brock boys find a dead body near the trash outside their home. Carter's examination leads to finding out the man was at a supposed UFO crash. Afterwards, Carter rules that spaceship radiation may have caused the death .. and is fired for his beliefs.

This is an episode where the storyline encompasses both the silly and the thought provoking. After Matt and Zach find a dead body in their trash, Carter Pike first believes that something strange is going on with the body; weird tattoo, severe radiation, and that the man is of Jewish faith. When a traveling UFO troupe comes to town to claim the body, they find out that this Jewish man was at a supposed crash site several decades before. While Carter fights with his UFO urges, Wambaugh is questioning how his Jewish faith is being tested. A local rabbi confronts Wambaugh about making sure then body adheres to strict Orthodox Jewish laws when Carter can't release the body. He later confronts Miriam Wambaugh about how, when he was young, he claimed not to be Jewish so he wouldn't be beaten up. This emboldens him some, but he decides to take Carter Pikes case after Carter was fired for saying there was a possibility that the man died from radiation poisoning from a UFO. Having fallen for one of the ufologists, she pushes him to fight his wrongful termination. Jimmy had fired him because of his odd habits and his recent outbursts. Things change during the case, though, when it is found out that the woman had perpetrated all of the weird stuff, including the marks on the dead body and making Carter think he saw a UFO. Jimmy asks Carter to come back because he was duped into doing what he did. As the episode ends, Carter is confronted by the woman one last time and says that he doesn't know if he will ever be able to truly trust anyone again.

Like I said, this was a semi-serious/silly storyline about the possibility of UFOs with a very convincing case for pro-UFO existence. I enjoy Carter-centric episodes, but I really feel for the guy (which I am sure the writers want) and hope that things can possibly get better for him. Skeritt played a really good part in have to fire Carter and it was good to see his conflict of emotion, though you can tell that he always had questions about Carters methods. The other side of the story about respecting the Jewish faith was also very moving. It is easy to see why Wambaugh won so many Emmy's for his portrayal, since he goes from hilarity to stark seriousness the next moment. And he's a damn good lawyer, besides his wackiness. I like how it ended at a middle ground of emotion; Carter had his job back but he was crushed emotionally and romantically. I just hope things get better for him.

Score: 9.2 / 10