American Crime: Do It for the Team

These American Crime episodes on ABC don’t have titles so we have to give them one. In the January 13, 2016 episode (S2 E2), “Do it for the team” was Kevin’s advice to Eric after Eric got disciplined for the Captains’ Party. Coach Sullivan had to order him to sit out one game and Eric was not happy about it. We think it’s a sure bet that Kevin was no innocent bystander at that party based upon his conversation with Eric.

This episode was all about setting the stage before all hell breaks loose.

Elvis Nolasco was introduced as the principal of Thurgood Marshall, the public school Taylor will probably be going to soon. They didn’t give his name yet. We also saw the Superintendent there, Doctor somebody, because they didn’t give her name either. A Hispanic student named Matteo tried to give a black student named Sean a hard time for chatting up a Hispanic girl, but the principal put a stop to that and sent them all on their way. Monica is a lady who wants school breakfast to be served during first period and considers it a civil rights issue.

Kevin’s mother, Terri, almost got in a road rage incident on her way to work and she videotaped it and called a cop that she knows well enough to ask him to take care of it when she got to work. Later she discovered that her star basketball player bought Val, his “unworthy” girlfriend, a $900 bracelet and gave Kevin a big lecture on the type of girls who were going to go at him hard just to be his baby mama so they can get paid. He tried to explain that Val was not that kind of girl and he honestly seemed to think that Terri would just pay for the expensive bracelet. Terri demanded that he retrieve it or she would go to Val’s house with the police because as far as she was concerned, it was stolen. Val did give it back to Kevin but she also broke up with him.

Officers responded to Anne Blaine’s call from the end of last week and she gave them what information she could. They wanted to talk to Taylor but he didn’t want to talk to them. Officer Sanders explained that if he would not cooperate, they could not help him. Anne was able to get Taylor to go for a medical exam that was very uncomfortable for both of them. More so for Taylor, of course, but Anne was scared when the prospect of HIV testing came up. Later, Taylor met with his girlfriend, Evy, and leaned on her for comfort.

Coach Sullivan tried to have “that talk” with his daughter as they shopped for his wife’s birthday, but Becca pretty much blew him off. She told him that she has seen porn and that what happened to Taylor is not a big deal. She doesn’t know why her father assumes she will get in any trouble just because Taylor got drunk and pictures of that were “out there forever.” Well, he wasn’t assuming she would get into trouble because of that really. It was because he saw her twerking in Wes’s face in the gym but Coach Sullivan was too rattled to recall that.

At the school board meeting, Headmaster Leslie Graham informed everyone about the incident, more or less. One parent, Rhys Bashir, stayed behind to try to get more information out of Graham about what happened but she was very cryptic about the whole thing. She went off to try to raise $3 million dollars, $1 million from a reluctant donor who went to public school and wasn’t too keen on endowing a prep school for rich kids. Then she went home and complained to her husband, Charles, about her job. He told her to resign but she persuaded him that her work was important to her.

Eric’s mother drove him and his brother to see their father and they went to shoot some hoops. His father gave him advice about taking care of his hygiene or he wasn’t going to be able to get with any girls. “You’re divorced,” Eric scoffed. Later Eric met up with a guy who let him drive his car around and we saw that Eric is definitely not interested in girls but he also seems to be out of his league with this fellow.

Anne was not happy with the attitude of the detective who interviewed her. She felt that the general thrust was let’s blame whatever happened to Taylor on Taylor for drinking. She was advised to get him help if she thought he had an alcohol problem. So Anne went online and was shocked to learn that her situation was not unique. She met up with a woman named Cammy Ross to make plans to go public with her story. Anne asked Cammy not to use Taylor’s name and Cammy told her that once the story was out there, it wasn’t going to be too hard to figure out who it was about. She asked Anne to make sure she was absolutely sure she wanted to go public and Anne said she was.

Now the stage is set.