James Earl Jones Gave a Heartbreakingly Powerful Performance in ‘Who Do You Kill’?

Today, we look at an excellent episode of the short-lived (but brilliant) series, East Side/West Side.

This is “All the Best Things,” a spotlight on the best TV episodes, movies, albums, etc.

This is a Year of Great TV Episodes, where every day this year, we’ll take a look at great TV episodes. Note that I’m not talking about “Very Special Episodes” or episodes built around gimmicks, but just “normal” episodes of TV shows that are notable only because of how good they are.

All this month, I’ll be spotlighting great Black-centric TV episodes.

As I noted before, I wish I could start this in the 1950s, but that decade sadly was pretty much non-existent in terms of great Black-centric TV episodes. You’d have to stretch and say, like, “Well, Jack Benny had his Black servant, Rochester! That’s something!” So I’ll start with the 1960s, and even in this decade, it’s mostly White-centric shows that occasionally had a prominent guest role for Black characters. Luckily, starting in the 1970s through today, there’s been a number of notable shows that are just OUTRIGHT Black-centric.

Here, we’re looking at East Side/West Side, an acclaimed short-lived series starring George C. Scott as Neal Brock, a social worker in New York City, with the great Cicely Tyson playing his assistant, Jane Foster (one of the first regular roles for a Black actor on TV. And yes, it IS weird that her name was Jane Foster). The series tried to address really serious issues, which were shocking topics for the early 1960s.

In 1963’s “Who Do You Kill” (written by Arnold Perl, a producer of the series) and directed by Tom Fries, James Earl Jones and Diana Sands play Joe and Ruth Goodwin, a poor Black couple who are struggling to make ends meet while taking care of their young daughter in the tenements. Joe can’t find anything but very menial jobs while taking care of their baby, and Ruth’s job as a waitress at a sleazy bar makes her the default bread winner.

Well, things go from bad to worse when the baby is bitten by a rat. No cab will pick up Joe when he tries to get the baby medical help, so he has to run to the hospital with the baby in his arms. Her bite gets infected, though, and she becomes very sick. Jane is a friend of Ruth’s, so Neal and Jane get involved and begin to try to help Joe get a job, but racist hiring practices keep screwing him over big time. It also doesn’t help that Joe has been so beaten down by racism that he resents Neal’s offer of help, as Joe is just so angry at White people right now.

And then, of course, the baby dies, and Ruth is devastated, and cannot leave the apartment, refusing to go to the funeral of their baby (which must be held at a specific time because of the city’s health regulations). Joe is at his wit’s end, and talks to Neal about it, and George C. Scott gets a good speech about how no one really understands what it is like for Black people in America, not even people who try to sympathize as much as they can, like him.

Joe and their pastor try to talk Ruth into going to the funeral. Finally, Joe and Ruth spend an important moment together before he heads to the funeral, explaining to her that it she wants to just give up, then that’s fine, he’ll give up, as well, as there is no life for him without her. She tells him to go to the funeral, and in the end, she joins Joe at the funeral, with it seeming like they’re really going to make it.

Jones, Sands, Perl and Fries were all nominated for Emmys, with Fries being the only one to win.

It’s a great, but dark episode (the ending is surprisingly hopeful, all things considered). I used to think the baby died of rabies, but obviously, it’s just an infected bite (rat bite fever is scary stuff, of course). George Gaynes has a good role as a small business owner who is obviously proud that 10% of his 60-person staff is Black, but then has to admit that they’re all just in maintenance. He seemed somewhat willing to actually let Joe into their training program, but we’re not told for sure in the episode.

Okay, if I’m going to have 334 more of these (and 27 more this month), I could use suggestions, so feel free to email me at brian@poprefs.com!