TV Bender

Finally, a new show! No repeats last night for CBS and no politics!

If you’ve never watched to Close to Home, the show is set in Indianapolis and revolves around the district attorney’s office. Key players are Annabeth (Jennifer Finnigan), Maureen (Kimberly Elise), Ray (Jon Seda), Ed (Cress Williams), and the newcomer this year is JAG’s David James Elliott who plays their boss the D.A. James.

Annabeth and Maureen work for the D.A. while Ray and Ed are detectives who handle the investigation work.

Last night’s case involved the murder of a local college football player. The boy was badly beaten to death; his spleen ruptured in the injuries. As the boy had been at a football party, they go to question the other team members, two are also cut and bruised, but everyone is repeating the exact same story–the victim started a fight because he’d been benched due to injuries. Due to the other two boy’s injuries, they are arrested. Now the DA has to build their case.

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The two boys lawyer up pretty quickly. The coach (B.J. & The Bear or My Two Dads’ Greg Evigan) seems happy to forget all about them and move on without the star quarterback. Meanwhile, one of the boys does seem willing to make a deal, so Annabeth plays that route.

They continue questioning friends and party goers, something isn’t adding up because the dead boy had no drugs or alcohol in his system. Annabeth and Maureen are pointed in the direction of a bunch of girls on campus who are “given gifts” in exchange for “servicing” the players. The girl questioned denies seeing the fight.

After it becomes clear the judge is convinced the boys will not receive light treatment, the one boy agrees to tell everything IF he gets a reduced sentence. At the party, one girl was “servicing” one of the booster club sponsors (an older guy who owns a car dealership) and the dead boy found out about it and became enraged. The fight ensued, but he swears when they left the other boy was still alive and standing up.

With new names to question, Annabeth goes back to the dealer who says he left as soon as the fight began. The girl still says the fight went outside and she never saw what happened, but the fight was really over the dead boy telling the star quarterback that he knew the quarterback was having an affair with the coach’s wife and he was going to tell everything.

Annabeth goes to trial and calls both the coach and his wife to the stand hoping that she can get them to give conflicting information. She has proof that the quarterback called the coach’s wife that night - even though everyone says she was no where near the hotel where the party was held.

When the star quarterback gets up on the stand, he cracks. He tells Annabeth that he left the other guy alive. That he came back out to the pool area and saw the coach talking to the boy. That the coach had him pinned down and wasn’t letting the boy get up to get help. This is the break they need. The coach knew the boy was dying and let him die.

The court is adjorned and they bring the coach in. He states that the boy was causing his hard work building a winning team to fall apart. He couldn’t let his team fall apart. He couldn’t let the boy live and inform the press that they had girls who “serviced the team” in exchange for gifts… Annabeth repeats that what they did with the girls is considered prostitution by Indiana law. The coach is arrested.