The BEST episodes written by Ernest Kinoy
#1 - Part 3
Roots: The Next Generations - Season 1 - Episode 3
The year is 1914 and Will and Cynthia Palmer's daughter Bertha heads off to college, eventually meeting and falling in love with a poor but hard-working fellow student named Simon Haley. Meanwhile Jim and Carrie Warner's son has become a doctor but because he is black, he is prevented from treating his own dying white grandfather, Colonel Warner. Bertha returns home from college for break to find the Ku Klux Klan has come to town and Simon returns to his home in Georgia to learn that his share-cropping family can't afford his tuition anymore and his father is ready to put him back to work in the fields. Simon manages to find work as a Pullman porter on the railroads to earn money during the summer, but also attracts a benefactor - a kind journalist who he served on a train route. In 1918, rather than attend graduation, Simon enlists in the army and heads off for war, heeding the words of Dr. W.E.B. Dubois, but leaving behind a stunned and grief-stricken Bertha.
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#2 - Part 4
Roots: The Next Generations - Season 1 - Episode 4
In a flashback of a military gallows in 1917 Texas, a group of black soldiers from the 24th Infantry, convicted for various crimes including mutiny, are hung. Fast forward to 1918 and the local church in Henning, Tennessee hears about the military's atrocities in a sermon, which frightens Bertha into imagining the same may happen to Simon. Meanwhile, Simon's 92nd Infantry are going through basic training but face many injustices at the hands of the locals in the Illinois town where their camp is located. Simon and his all-black company finally head overseas and fight valiantly in France under the command of a white Lieutenant. After a gas attack, the unit is taken to a hospital and then sent home after a brief period of R&R in France. However the now battle-hardened men face an escalation of racism, harassment, and violence, while the Spanish Flu rages throughout the country. Despite this, Simon and Bertha have a happy reunion and eventually marry, with intentions to move to Ithaca, New York so Simon can get his Masters at Cornell. They eventually return home from New York with a baby who they name Alex.
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#3 - Part 2
Roots: The Next Generations - Season 1 - Episode 2
Thirteen years have passed in the town of Henning, Tennessee and now in 1896, the town has taken advantage of a burgeoning new industrial age thanks to the expansion of the railroad. Returning home from Kansas City after a decade away teaching, Elizabeth Harvey reunites with her younger sister Cynthia, now grown up, and reconciles with her father. Cynthia has taken an interest in a local railroad gang worker named Will Palmer who returns her affections. But in order to court her properly and gain the approval of her father Tom, Will leaves the railroad and finds a better job at a lumber mill, eventually taking Cynthia to be his wife. His hard work, dedication, loyalty, and financial acumen leads to his surprise promotion to owner and operator of the mill, although it is now saddled with debt. Despite this, he and Cynthia give Tom and Irene their first grandchild. Meanwhile Colonel Warner's son Andy decides to get involved in politics by running against his father to institute a new Democratic Party that plans to disenfranchise blacks of the vote and ensure victory against the Republicans. And now thanks to new restrictive voting laws in the state of Tennessee, Tom is denied the opportunity to vote for the first time since the end of the Civil War.
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#4 - Part 1
Roots: The Next Generations - Season 1 - Episode 1
It has now been 12 years since Chicken George and his family left their plantation in Virginia and arrived in Henning, Tennessee. The year is 1882 and the era of Reconstruction of the south and substantial progress for the newly-freed slaves, is coming to an end with the implementation of Jim Crow laws throughout the state. George's son Tom Harvey has been asked to travel to Memphis to meet with members of the Colored Republican Party Club, a group of local black politicians who are trying to come up with a new election strategy in light of the changing times. Meanwhile Tom's oldest daughter takes a liking for and wants to marry a young mulatto man, much to Tom's disapproval. The white son of a local attorney and adviser to the railroad eschews his father's profession in favor of poetry and falls in love with a local college-educated black school teacher brought to the town by Tom to open a colored school. However when they marry, he is expelled from his family and their presence in town raises the ire of the townspeople.
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#5 - Part II
Roots - Season 1 - Episode 2
Despite a violent rebellion, the slave ship Lord Ligonier completes its voyage and Kunta Kinte endures the indiginity of an Annapolis slave auction. Fiddler, the slave in charge of Kunta's training, becomes his only friend, a friendship that's tested when Kunta plans his escape.
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#6 - Part I
Roots - Season 1 - Episode 1
In Gambia, West Africa, Kunta Kinte, son of Omoro and Binta, distinguishes himself in manhood training rituals. But he does not enjoy his new status long: slave traders sweeping the countryside seize him. Chained with other captives, Kunta begins an agonized odyssey to the New World.
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#7 - Today Is the Last Day of the Rest of My Life
Diagnosis Murder - Season 6 - Episode 22
Dr. Sloan crusades to keep a physician-assisted-suicide advocate from practicing her trade.
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#8 - Part 7
Roots: The Next Generations - Season 1 - Episode 7
In the exciting conclusion, it is now 1960 in Henning, Tennessee, 10 years after Alex's wife Nan left him, and Alex attends the funeral for his great Aunt Elizabeth. He has finally succeeded in a writing career by publishing free-lance articles including interviews with Minister Malcolm X of the Nation of Islam and George Lincoln Rockwell, head of the American Nazi Party. Alex lands a contract to ghost-write the autobiography of Malcolm X, although Malcolm is assassinated before the book is published. Alex then realizes that he should write a book about his own family and he obsessively researches his origins, alienating his new girlfriend in the process. After identifying the language of the words passed down to him, he manages to get an advance that will allow him to travel to Gambia, West Africa. Once there, he is taken by boat to the Griot for the Kinte clan. After the Griot retells centuries of history, Alex finally hears the name of Kunta Kinte and the story of the drum that lead to his capture into slavery, marking the end of his search for his family's roots.
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#9 - First Do No Harm
Diagnosis Murder - Season 5 - Episode 21
When a young girl is rushed into the hospital in need of immediate treatment, but dies due to a HMO's negligence, Dr. Travis and Community General are sued for negligence. Dr. Sloan must choose between his ethical convictions and the hospital.
#10 - The Empty Chair
The Untouchables - Season 1 - Episode 1
Narrator: "Chicago, May 5, 1932. After 7 months of legal delays, Al Capone... was on his way to federal prison, to serve 11 years for income tax evasion."* Eliot Ness and his Untouchables had spent 18 months to get Capone behind bars-- but now who would try to take over the throne, the Empty Chair? May 8. Barbara Ritchie (niece of Jake Guzik) has been grieving over the death of her husband George Ritchie for 12 months-- unaware that it was her own uncle Jake who had him knocked off for being an informer to Ness. At a service at the cemetery, marking the first anniversary of George's death, are: Barbara Ritchie (George's widow), her uncle Jake "Greasy Thumb" Guzik (treasurer and bookkeeper for the Capone mob), Norma Guzik (Jake's widowed sister, Barbara's mother), Phil D'Andrea (expert machine-gunner), "Fur" Sammons (hijacker and rumrunner), Gus Raddi ("pineapple" expert), Tony "Mops" Volpe (chief triggerman) and last and most important Frank Nitti ("The Enforcer"). May 12. Two of Capone's principle lieutenants-- Gus Raddi and Tony "Mops" Volpe-- go to a barber shop where Enrico Rossi is working as a barber. Nitti barges in with a machine-gun and blasts them, eliminating some competition for the Empty Chair. (Unfortunately, some stray machine-gun bullets hit pretty Tessie DiGiovanni, the 17-year-old manicurist working in the barber shop.) Enrico Rossi uses his straight razor to attack Nitti's henchman and agrees to testify against Nitti. Since being a witness against "the Enforcer" can be hazardous to one's health, the Untouchables must give Rico protection. They figure the best way to do this is to hire him on as their driver. Thus, Rico joins the squad where he will remain for the entire run of the series. Guzik calls a meet of the 4 still-living heirs at the Montmartre Cafe, headquarters of the Capone gang: himself, Frank Nitti, "Fur" Sammons and Phil D'Andrea. Nitti sits in Capone's Empty Chair, saying "Big chair-- big man. It fits all right. Anybody ob
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