'Judging Amy' may take on weightier issues

Star Tribune - October 3, 2000

BY Neal Justin / Star Tribune staff writer

The judge doesn't always have the final word. In the first season of "Judging Amy," the well-received drama about a single mother trying to maintain order in her courtroom and her household, Amy Brenneman's juvenile-court docket dealt with a fair share of traumatic issues: teen pregnancy, abandoned babies, date rape, child murderers.

But left up to Brenneman, the show's star and co-executive producer, "Judging Amy" would have gone even further.

"We have a lot of information on cases, and some of them can be pretty dark," she said as the show prepared to start its second season next Tuesday. "In my opinion, we didn't go as dark as we could go."

Brenneman, the daughter of a juvenile judge, said the show's writers deliberately stayed away from some hot-button issues, most notably incest.

"Most of what my mother and social workers dealt with is sexual abuse," she said. "That's something we treaded very lightly with, but clearly over half of neglect and abuse issues are sexual. A 2-year-old being raped, for example. I'm not saying we're going to tell all those stories, but we're interested in pushing the envelope."

She understands why Barbara Hall, co-executive producer and head writer, was hesitant about getting too graphic last season and gave a lot of cases happy endings. That formula, plus soapy subplots about wacky roommates, prison husbands, near-death explosions and hectic family dinners, helped make the show fairly successful with critics and viewers. Brenneman and co-star Tyne Daly were nominated for Emmys, and the show finished the season ranked No. 22 in the Nielsen ratings.

But with a core audience established, the show may start to take more chances. Hall said she's talked to her writing staff about "taking things a little further." She also believes the political environment is right to deal with sensitive issues, when such newsmakers as Hillary Clinton and entertainers as Rosie O'Donnell regularly bring up child abuse as a critical issue.

But Hall also doesn't want the show to turn into something the whole family can't watch.

"I think there's a balance," she said. "We ask people to look at the reality of certain problems, but because we're dealing with children, there's a certain way people conduct themselves in their presence and a certain way a juvenile court judge behaves, so we don't have to get into vulgar language and really explicit sexual situations."

Daly agrees with her co-star that the show has only "dipped into a lot of problems," but said it's tough working on a program that often deals with child abuse.

"I didn't realize until we were about four or five episodes into this that our victims weekly were going to be kids," Daly said. "I came up at a time when the woman was the victim. You had to make all those faces, you had to cry and scream and be violated and your character's breasts would be hacked off. All of that.

"That got to be less fashionable in our culture, so we moved on to victimizing children," she said. "It's soul-destroying to have to play out these stories every week about children in pain and children misused and abused. It's hard."

Of course, most viewers will tune in next week because of the characters' personal lives: Will Amy finally find romance? Will her court-services officer (Bruce Van Exel) be transferred after rumors of hanky-panky with the judge? Did Vincent (Dan Futterman) die in the season-finale explosion? (The answer is no, at least not right away; he's confined to a hospital bed in the season premiere.)

But Brenneman hopes fans will talk just as much about the cases this season. When asked to list specifically what she wanted to explore, she reeled off a number of disturbing subjects and storylines, most of which did not have a tidy ending. She then caught herself.

"Hey," she said with a smirk. "To me, that's entertainment."

'Judging Amy' information

Starring: Amy Brenneman and Tyne Daly.

When: 9 p.m. Tuesdays, WCCO-Ch. 4, starting Oct. 10.


Copyright © 2000 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.