Quincy M.E. (TV Series) Into the Murdering Mind (1982) User Reviews

"He's as phony as a three dollar bill." Good Quincy episode.

[poolandrews · 6/10 · 18 June 2007]

Quincy M.E.: Into the Murdering Mind starts as Mrs. Werner (Conchata Ferrell) arrives home to find her husband Jeffrey, her daughter Rebecca & son Ryan all brutally murdered. L.A. coroner Quincy (Jack Klugman) is on the case & even he is shocked at the brutality of the murders, it's not long before Lt. Monahan (Garry Walberg) has a suspect in custody. Glenn Werner (Kelly Ward) is accused of murdering his own father, brother & sister but is regarded as mentally ill & under Californian law if found insane could get as little as 90 days in a mental institute. Quincy's moral conscious is aroused & he sets out to try & put Glenn behind bars for as long as possible...

Episode 14 from season 7 this Quincy story was directed by Georg Fenady & again sees everyone's favourite coroner on a crusade to set another of the world's injustices to rights, there's not much lab work in this one & he doesn't get to use his medical skills to solve any crime & it's a pretty open & shut case. Instead Into the Murdering Mind concentrates on it's moral message about the slackness in the law surrounding mentally ill people & the fact that they are not held accountable for their crimes, having said that since this was made back in '82 over 25 years ago the laws it refers to may have changed. Unusually for Quincy this episode has a quite downbeat ending where, for a change, Quincy doesn't have it all his own way. This is a decent enough story, it moves along at a nice enough pace & it's a perfectly entertaining way to pass an hour even if Quincy doesn't get to play detective.

I don't know whether the version I saw was cut but during the opening montage before the credits which show brief scenes from the episode contains footage that wasn't actually in it, a shot of Glenn moving towards his father with a knife can be seen here but not in the finished episode proper. The acting is pretty good as usual except Ferrell who doesn't seem that bothered that her husband, daughter & son have all been brutally murdered by her mentally ill offspring.

Into the Murdering Mind is a good Quincy story, I wouldn't call it a classic but as a fan of the show I still liked it anyway.

A bit preachy, but it is still a serious issue.

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 28 May 2013]

This episode of "Quincy" addresses the concept of legal sanity. This is a complex issue and many don't realize that although a person might be insane or do really sick things, in the eyes of the law this might or might not be a case of Not Guilty By Reason of Sanity (NGI) if they commit some horrible crime. It all has to do with a determination of court ordered psychotherapists as to whether the person understood that what they did was wrong. So, if they kill but know they are killing, legally, they ARE sane---even if they butcher a bus load of babies (or the like). It's a confusing and foggy situation, that's for sure. And here in "Quincy", it's still very confusing.

The show begins with a young man at the hospital--demanding to see his doctor NOW. It's obvious the guy is becoming unglued and eventually he stomps off...and butchers his father and two siblings!! There is no doubt he did it and now the question is what to do with the guy. He has a long history of mental health commitments but he COULD legally be responsible for these murders. But if he isn't, there is no definite period of incarceration and he MIGHT be allowed out rather soon....to finish the job on his mother!

For the most part, Quincy is a minor character in this show. The autopsy is never in doubt and Quincy himself has very little to do in this one. Unfortunately, like so many of the social issue shows, Quincy's role is reduced to speechifying about this terrible problem (it's really bad when there is about five minutes left in the show)--and how mentally ill murderers MUST be kept off the streets. The show really had a point and the problem is STILL a serious one. With a bit less preaching by Quincy, this would have been an even better show.

By the way, this issue is tackled really, really well in the Richard Gere film "Primal Fear"--and Edward Norton does a great job playing a homicidal killer who pleads NGI. Well worth seeing.

Terrible episode that tries to address a complex problem

[rayoflite24 · 4/10 · 18 December 2015]

Into the Murdering Mind begins with a young man, Glenn Werner (Kelly Ward), in a hospital waiting area demanding to see his psychiatrist while having an apparent meltdown, but the doctor is unavailable and he runs off. He then goes to his family home and stabs to death his father, sister and brother who are found by the mother (Conchata Ferrell) the next day. The police apprehend the young man in what appears to be an open and shut case, but matters are complicated when they discover that he suffers from mental illness. If it is determined that he was in fact mentally ill at the time the crimes were committed and could not reason or distinguish between right and wrong, he could be remanded to an institution and released in a minimum of 90 days. Quincy (Jack Klugman) is shocked by this and fears that if this happens that he will go after his mother next.

This episode attempts to delve into the complexities of mental illness and how it correlates to the law when a crime is committed. While I'm no expert in this subject area, I thought they did an extremely poor job of it which results in a terrible episode. First off, there is zero mystery to this as we see right in the beginning who committed the crime and how it was done, so the only question that remains is how law enforcement and the courts are going to handle the killer. Even if being declared insane and institutionalized was the determination, you cannot tell me that a killer of three people would be put right back out on the streets in three short months. The person would be institutionalized for years, possibly even decades. Maybe in some remote, highly unusual cases a killer declared insane could get out sooner, but I just wasn't buying that it happens at the frequency that was suggested in this story and it seemed like this was exaggerated for dramatic effect.

There are plenty of plot holes as well. In the opening scenes, the hospital staff can't reach the psychiatrist and somehow there is no one on call to back him up or anyone else on duty to substitute in his absence, seriously? This is not the protocol that would be in place for mentally ill patients with prior violent tendencies. I also thought the subplot involving Sam (Robert Ito) knowing the victims was stupid and pointless as well. First he says he mowed their lawn for a couple of years implying it was brief and a long time ago, but then he also "watched the kids grow up". How did you watch the kids grow up when you only mowed their lawn for a couple of years when you were presumably a young man as well? Robert Ito was around age 50 at the time this episode aired, so unless the Sam character is 10 years or more younger or was mowing lawns well into his 30s, the time span still doesn't add up that he would have seen these kids raised.

I rarely criticize any actor or actress in particular in these reviews, but I have to break with tradition this time and say that Conchata Ferrell is awful in her performance as the mother to the point where it is a distraction. Here your husband and two of your children supposedly have just been brutally murdered, and your only surviving child who committed the crime might be out to kill you next, yet you are going around calmly discussing the matter while barely showing any emotion in your scenes only mildly concerned. I'm not very familiar with the work of this actress besides knowing that she later found success in comedy (Two and a Half Men), but I just couldn't believe how someone with so many acting credits fouled up this role so badly.

All of this combined with a huge letdown of an ending makes this a terrible Season 7 episode in my opinion and one that I would definitely not recommend viewing.