The story covers a lot of ground. I don't know how many women have been executed in California, but we do get a sense of the individual circumstances surrounding a woman like the one featured in this episode. Having Rossi get emotionally attached to her makes it that much more real for us. She's scheduled to die, and she does die at the end, but April Smith's script is a nail biter and you keep thinking she will be granted a stay of execution and somehow live...it's truly suspenseful television. What I think Smith does well, as she has in other stories, is plant little revelations about the character's life and what probably led to this outcome. For instance, we learn about the girl's relationship to the other killer, her boyfriend (sort of like Bonnie & Clyde) and we learn about her mother and how she ran away from home and was raped as a teen. Of course, these events do not excuse her criminal misdeeds, and Lou as the gruff bad guy in this episode, represents the other side that is clamoring for justice, which might really be code for revenge. Robert Walden does a great job in this episode and so does Christopher Cazenove as a slick British reporter. My only quibble is that when Billie goes to interview the girl's mother she asks questions that I think would've been gone over in court and would've been in the transcripts of the trial.
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