Judging Amy

Plot

Amy Gray, an attorney and Harvard University graduate, moves back to her hometown of Hartford, Connecticut after separating from her husband Michael in New York City. She and her six-year-old daughter Lauren move in with her widowed mother, Maxine Gray who is a caseworker for the Connecticut Department of Children and Families. The move back to Hartford also reunites Amy with her two brothers. Her older brother Peter juggles the operations of their late father's insurance company along with the struggles he and his wife Gillian are facing towards starting a family due to fertility issues. At the same time, Amy's younger brother Vincent an aspiring writer, struggles to jumpstart his career while working odd-end jobs. Later on, Amy's cousin Kyle McCarthy, a former med student, returns to help cope with the rehabilitation of his drug addiction. In her line of work Amy takes on a wide variety of challenging cases, with the assistance of her Court Services Officer Bruce van Exel and Court Clerk Donna Kozlowski both of whom she ultimately becomes good friends with. In the de facto series finale (the series was canceled after the conclusion of the season) Amy quits the judiciary to run for the U.S. Senate.

Characters

Main

Judge Amy Madison Gray, played by Amy Brenneman: After separating from her husband, Amy Gray returns to her childhood home with her daughter, becomes a judge on Connecticut's family court, gets a divorce, and tries to get on with her life. Balancing her new job, her family, and trying to rebuild her love life is not easy, but she keeps trying. She makes a name for herself in family court for her unusual methods and sentences and her stubbornness, which sometimes gets her in trouble. She dates several men. Her longest and more serious relationships are with lawyer Stuart Collins and David McClaren. Amy and Stuart dislike each other at first, but when she asks him to be Eric Black's lawyer, they get closer and eventually get engaged. However, Amy leaves him at the altar on their wedding day, saying he has a way of always convincing her to do things she does not want to do, calling him "a bully". She meets David McClaren during her short stint in the criminal court, and things are rocky from the start. Amy becomes pregnant by him and they plan to marry, but things fall apart when she miscarries and they part ways soon thereafter. In the last episode of the series, she quits the judiciary to run for Senate, to try to prevent the passage of a law that will effectively end the juvenile justice system by allowing the State's Attorney's office to try teenagers as adults at their own discretion. Amy's often complicated and ever changing definition of a relationship with her Court Services Officer, Bruce Van Exel, whom she calls her "best friend" and with whom she's shared intimate moments – despite his refusal to date white women, ends with him coming to be with her in Washington as she testifies at a Senate Hearing.

Maxine McCarty Gray, played by Tyne Daly: She is Amy's widowed mother. A social worker for the Department of Children and Families, she had retired, but she returns to the job at the start of the series. She is willing to do whatever it takes to help the children in her care, even bending the law. She is an opinionated, strong-willed woman, very set in her ways, and capable of holding long grudges (she has not spoken to her brother in over 12 years), but loving to her family. Her relationship with daughter Amy is often not easy, since they are so much alike. After a troubled courtship, she becomes engaged to a wealthy businessman, Jared Duff, but he dies 48 hours before their wedding (a storyline twist necessitated by the unexpected death of the actor Richard Crenna, who played the character). She later becomes involved in a very complicated, on-again off-again relationship to her landscape designer Ignacio Messina. She suffers two heart attacks in the last season and has to undergo open heart surgery, but makes certain lifestyle changes and recovers well. At the end of the series she accepts Ignacio's marriage proposal and is set to retire again, becoming a foster parent to the last child she helped.

Recurring

Eric Black, played by Blake Bashoff: He is a gay teenager who had been so badly abused that he was blind for two years. When all else fails, Maxine reluctantly takes him into her home, where he rapidly bonds with the family; afterwards, Sean becomes his foster father. Eventually, Eric protectively confronts and kills a stalker after Amy and Lauren. He is tried and found not guilty, but does so by lying on the witness stand. Maxine is disappointed in him, so he decides to move to Canada with his boyfriend, Mark.

Dr. Lily Reddicker, played by Kristin Lehman: She is the hospital chief of staff who takes a chance by hiring Amy's cousin Kyle. She is a no-nonsense supervisor who recognizes Kyle's superb medical skills and his need to return to medicine, which he tries to hide behind a sarcastic view of the world. She fights an attraction to Kyle because of their professional relationship and her fears that pursuing it create problems for Kyle because of his addiction problems. Kyle soon becomes troubled by his attraction to both Dr. Lily and a fellow resident, Heather Labonte.

Heather Labonte, played by Sarah Danielle Madison: She is a doctor at Kyle's hospital with a substance abuse problem, who gets busted with a drug test and then gets a job as a bartender, which she says is a better job with better pay. She has an on/off relationship with Kyle, until she gets pregnant. Kyle doesn't believe she was pregnant, and claims he even visited her father who also said there was no baby. When Heather returns and tells Kyle she is going into rehab and the baby would be staying with her sister, he still doesn't believe her – until his Aunt Maxine literally beats on his chest and yells at him "don't you dare abandon your son!" and, after apologizing, reminds him that the best decisions aren't the easy ones. As a result, Kyle decides to accompany Heather to Minnesota and take care of their son while she is in rehabilitation.

Louann "Crystal" Turner, played by Jennifer Esposito: She is a former meth addict who runs an outreach program for homeless teenagers. She had a relationship with Vincent and worked with him until they witness a young prostitute get murdered. She goes on a bender and tries to seduce Vincent. When she gets sober, she realizes they can't work together and she arranges for him to work at a youth detention center to teach a creative writing class.

Graciela Reyes, played by Tara Correa-McMullen: She is a gang member Amy counsels. As time passes, she makes progress, though she is arrested one day for murder, as she was in the car with her cousin when she was involved in a drive-by shooting. Graciela is tried and found guilty as an adult because of a cousin's lies on the witness stand, and thus being sent to adult prison. The cousin later recants, but Graciela is murdered in a gang retaliation before Amy can get her out of prison. (See also #Murdered cast member below.)

Murdered cast member

On October 21, 2005, five months after the series ended, 16-year-old Tara Correa – who played Graciela Reyes in the final season – was shot to death outside an apartment complex in Inglewood, California, where she lived with her gang member boyfriend. A rival gang member, 20-year-old Damien Watts, was charged with her murder on March 1, 2006; he was convicted on January 23, 2009. When charged, Watts was in custody for a separate deadly shooting. Watts was sentenced on February 27, 2009 to life imprisonment, with no chance of parole.

Production

Judging Amy takes place in Hartford, Connecticut. Although the show often shows the Hartford Judicial District Court as having the address of 1265 (street unknown), the actual address of the Hartford Judicial District is 95 Washington Street, family matters are heard on 90 Washington Street and the Superior Court Juvenile Matters of Hartford is in 920 Broad Street, Hartford, CT 06106.

Episodes

Broadcast

After six seasons, Judging Amy was canceled by CBS on May 18, 2005. In the United States, repeats aired on TNT from 2003 until 2007. On July 17, 2011, UP (the former Gospel Music Channel) began airing the series daily, albeit with content and episode edits (including episode removals) to conform to the network's programming direction and ownership. Since February 2016 it has aired more intermittently on the network, mainly in the form of all-day marathons (episode removals have been relaxed under a more secular programming direction that included fellow Connecticut-set series Gilmore Girls being added to UP's schedule).

Judging Amy is broadcast in Australia on channels ELEVEN and 111 Hits and in New Zealand on Sky Open (formerly Prime). In Canada, the show aired on channel Séries+ and, beginning in September 2017, in French with described video on AMI-télé. Ireland's TV3 carried the show, as did UK stations Living TV, Hallmark, Channel 4, and CBS Drama, Israel's YES Base Channel also carries the show.

Reception

Critical reception

Several reviewers have suggested the show took inspiration from the formula established by Providence. Reviewers also cite the relationship between Brenneman and Daly's characters as the selling point of the show. Also likely is the physical similarities at the time between Brenneman and the lead actress in Providence, Melina Kanakaredes.

Amy Gray makes reference to Providence in episode 3.18, "The Justice League of America". In this episode, Amy is attending her Harvard Law School class' tenth reunion, and her old friends cannot seem to remember Amy has moved to Hartford. They think she resides in Providence. Finally, Amy is pushed to state, "It's Hartford, David. Providence is a whole other universe."

Ratings

Season 1: 21st – 14.1 million viewers

Season 2: 28th – 13.3 million viewers

Season 3: 21st – 13.9 million viewers

Season 4: 26th – 13.1 million viewers

Season 5: 39th – 10.7 million viewers

Season 6: 37th – 10.6 million viewers