20 Thoughts on Today’s Episode:

1. Can you believe we’re already at the letter Q?? This month has flown by!
2. I can’t decide if I like Jack Klugman better as Oscar on the Odd Couple or Quincy on Quincy, but I do know that I love him forever.
3. The lead guest star in this episode is a young Melora Hardin (Jan from The Office)
4. Also, I’m just going to call the character by the actress’s name (Melora Hardin) from here on out because I suck at remembering characters names in these one-off episodes.
5. This is some weird punk. I’m pretty sure the lyrics to the first song are “Saw a blind man the other day. Took his pencils and ran away.” I don’t want to be limiting or judgmental of the blind…but do they frequently carry pencils? Or use pencils? I mean if you can write with a pencil whilst blind, then I’m impressed. I usually smear pencil everywhere and I’m not even blind. Like I’ll just forget that I have smudgy sweaty hands and then I’ll let them linger over something I’ve already written or point for emphasis and drag my finger along like an idiot. Pencils are the worst. But I do kind of like them anyway.
6. Some girl has given Melora Hardin a Quaalude in the bathroom at this punk club. And she’s like cool but don’t give me codeine because I’m majorly allergic. This is the Checkov’s Gun of this episode, people!!
7. So I understand from what I’ve seen on television and read about Sid & Nancy  (so obvi I’m like essentially a punk historian–said like Moon Zappa on the “Valley Girl” song) that part of the “punk” culture is “roughing one another up.” (Did any of you follow that sentence? Try diagraming it.) But I didn’t realize that stabbing someone with an ice pick was on the table. Actually, I don’t think it is. But I think that Quincy, M.E. would like me to think that it’s a real possibility.
8. I’m gonna change it up and give you the very special lesson in the middle of this post because it’s so freaking obvious. Very Special Lesson: Punk Kills. Stay away, you innocent children of America!
9. Quincy and his friend (who is maybe family counselor?) investigate the punk scene. And I mean they go to a punk club in business casual attire and whisper/scream in each others ears as the “observe” the punk kids.
10. OMG there is actually only one punk song in this episode. And it’s that awful song about the blind man and the pencils. Melora Hardin scream/yells it at herself in her bedroom mirror as she’s grieving her dead, ice-pick boyfriend.
11. Quincy gives some kind of statement to a newspaper and they print the headline: “LA Coroner Quincy Says Punk Rock Contributed to Teen’s Death.”
12. Took a short break to listen to the Teen Witch soundtrack. I guess (fake) Punk isn’t really my thing, but I’m back now.
13. Okay, so now they’re like all on a Donahue-type talk show. And Quincy basically just argues with a bunch of kids. He says how much better his generation about handling themselves when they didn’t agree with the world. (You know, protesting the Vietnam War…no hate to the Baby Boomers but it seems like a lot more people claim credit for war-protesting than the number of people that were actually out protesting). He says they’re just whiny losers and should stop venting and do something with their lives.
14. One of the punk kids says, “We’re not psychos. We’re not bikers. We don’t go around terrorizing people.” Uh, bikers, do you have a response to that?
15. Okay, so now things are getting really Sid & Nancy. Melora Hardin is accused of stabbing her boyfriend (her fingerprints are on the ice-pick apparently) and one of her friends even says that she saw her do it.
16. Thanks to a “graphics computer” that can take “two combined images and separate them” Quincy is able to get a more detailed forensic analysis going on here. Then he realizes she didn’t commit the murder because the killer’s fingerprints are not hers.
17. Melora Hardin goes to the ER because she’s having an allergic reaction to Codeine. (She knows she is allergic and would never take it.) But then she disappears again before Quincy can get to her. But now they think someone is trying to kill her.
18. Quincy makes an announcement to the whole punk club that the real killer is trying to kill Melora Hardin. And luckily the real killer’s friend is there and doesn’t want her to kill Melora Hardin, so he tells Melora Hardin the truth. And then the real killer (she’s some Punk girl but Lord knows what her character’s name is) is like “noooo you’re my only friend. Don’t be mad at me for killing your boyfriend and then framing you for it!”
19. So then the real killer says she was just caught up in the music. And she didn’t actually mean to hurt him. Uh yeah, okay. Have fun using that as your defense.
20. But then Melora Hardin forgives her because she was also so overcome by the music that she just as easily could have been the one who picked up the ice pick?? What?? OH right, I also forgot to mention that the ice pick belonged to the dude who was eventually stabbed with it. So he was probably a killer also. Ugh these are all horrible people. I’m going back to the magical world of beauty and justice that is the Teen Witch soundtrack.

P.S. If we’re talking music, I really wish there was an episode where Quincy Jones was on Quincy, M.E. And yes, that’s because those are the only people I know named Quincy.