Recap: American Crime S3 E4: The Value of Human Life

In the fourth episode of American Crime Season 3 (4-2-2017), Luis learned with certainty what happened to his son and gave Coy some advice. Kimara helped Shae get court permission to abort her baby. Jeanette’s attempts to help the workers and her brother-in-law are thwarted and a new situation is introduced.

Right off the bat, in the opener, Luis was being asked about his son by a police official. Luis talked about Teo’s personality, but the man said that wasn’t what he meant. He meant scars, marks or tattoos that would help identify Teo’s body. He gave Luis a book with pictures of dead John Does. Luis found Teo after looking at just a few pages and he was indeed the body fished out of the river in the first episode. Kind of an anti-climax at this point. He was told that the body was already cremated but he could have the ashes for $35.00. In the opening flashbacks, Itzel was shown telling Luis that Isaac was the man who had taken Teo away. We swear we didn’t see her say that last week. Luis met with Jorge El Gallinero who gave him a gun to get his revenge. Luis also called his wife in Mexico but he did not have the heart to tell her that their son was dead.

After finding out that he owed $363 to pay his debt to the farm, a black and blue Coy tried to call his brother Aidan for help. He didn’t tell Aidan the kind of jam he was in but just asked for money, a familiar request to Aidan who told him to never call anymore and hung up. Coy’s only alternative was to return to the field and try to work faster but in his condition, he soon collapsed. He was taken to the on site doctor, given a check up for $35, and some pills he did not want for $10. Diego and Isaac were overseeing. Diego told the doc to give Coy extra pills just in case. Total price of collapsing: $45. Isaac said if Coy just stayed there the rest of the day, he’d be fine. Coy begged him to take the pills but Isaac just reminded him of how he was nothing but a wandering druggie when they met and how Coy laughed at the idea of picking tomatoes and walked off.

Later, Luis visited Coy and told him to text Isaac to get him to come over. Luis told Coy to just leave, there was nothing keeping him there. Coy texted Isaac and left. Isaac showed up only to be confronted by Luis while Coy, out on the road, proceeded to take all the pills. Isaac had a couple of flashbacks while denying that he killed Teo, showing him angrily hovering over the boy and dumping his body in the river. Luis shot him and when he fell to the ground, shot him two more times and the next time we saw Luis, he was getting on a bus to go back to Mexico. He still had not told his wife that their boy was dead.

Coy and Isaac sort of died at the same time. Luis made sure that there was no coming back for Isaac, but mysteriously, a medical crew showed up and brought Coy back to life in the same manner he had previously described to Isaac. Who knows how or why they happened to come across Coy. Maybe they got some kind of “white boy down” message telegraphed to them. But it was weird that he was out on the road, taking a deliberate overdose because he lost all hope and the first thing he did when revived was ask to call his family.

So that is the end of the Luis’ story, but we are not done with the Hesbys yet. J.D. cried on Jeanette’s shoulder that Laurie Ann would not let him visit his father because he went to the worker’s rally and his sister is afraid he will say something to the old man. He needed Jeanette to talk to Carson and Laurie Ann on his behalf. Laurie Ann told Jeanette that the real reason J.D. was not let in was because he was noticeably drunk and she proceeded to treat Jeanette worse than a nobody. Jeanette sent the workers a donation by check and Carson cancelled the check and told Laurie Ann. This was an act of betrayal in Laurie Ann’s book and she minced no words in telling Jeanette that her sympathies, however well intended, were entirely misplaced. Jeanette was stunned that Carson cancelled the check behind her back and she had to learn about it from Laurie Ann.

At one point, we thought that we had accidentally changed the channel. A woman who could only speak French was at the airport trying to figure out where she should go. A woman named Claire Coates (Lili Taylor, so okay, we didn’t change the channel!) appeared and greeted the Haitian woman whose name is Gabrielle. Claire was as happy as an alouette that Gabrielle would be teaching her boy Nicky French and she would have more time to spend with her husband. Nicholas (Timothy Hutton). He was having a bad day at work when a potential purchaser examined some shoddy goods at his warehouse and refused to buy them. Nicholas Coates is dealing with the same economic crisis as the Hesbys. They need to scale back on costs, which affects quality and results in loss of customers. When Nicholas got home, he was clearly not happy about the additional expense of a nanny or the language barrier. Gabrielle greeted him warmly in French and he just stood there looking at her like she was a Martian. Amusingly, he griped about Gabrielle not knowing any English, pointing out that no one speaks French. Clueless Claire replied that everyone in France knows it and so does she. Gabrielle woke up to the sounds of a big argument in the morning so he must have gotten around to the cost part. She asked Claire if everything was all right and was rudely told, in French, to go back to her room.

The most heartbreaking scene for us was when Shae finally got permission from the judge to have an abortion without parental consent if an ultrasound proved she was under 20 weeks. First the judge insisted she try to contact her mother. Shae angrily replied that she didn’t see why she had to contact a person who made home life so miserable that she thought screwing guys in alleys was better than staying there. Kimara went with Shae for the ultrasound and it was practically unbearable for her to watch this burgeoning life inside of Shae that was going to be destroyed, while she was coping with the possibility that her in-vitro treatments might never work because she just can’t conceive. Nevertheless, she encouraged Shae to listen to the baby’s heartbeat with “the more boxes we tick.”

Ultimately, the value of human life was the thread that bound most of these stories together: how much or how little a life is worth. “Tell me about Teo” had completely different meanings when asked by the police official and the boy’s mother. Isaac didn’t even know who Luis was talking about when he was first asked. Teo was just a problem to dispose of to him. Coy will still have a long row to hoe to get right with his family and how much will they care about the appalling situation his drug addiction led him to? We have no idea what can happen for Jeanette or J.D. to turn their powerless positions around in the Hesby family. The previews showed Shae deciding to keep her child. As for the nanny situation, we’ll have to wait and see what’s up with that.

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