‘Night Court’ Recap: ‘Just the Fax, Dan’

Written by John Edward Betancourt

NIGHT COURT -- "Just the Fax, Dan" Episode 203 -- Pictured: (l-r) John Larroquette as Dan Fielding, Melissa Rauch as Abby Stone -- (Photo by: Nicole Weingart/NBC/Warner Bros.)

Caution: This article contains spoilers for Episode 203 of ‘Night Court’. To revisit the previous episode, click here.
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One particular challenge that sitcoms face when they enter their sophomore year, is finding ways to grow and challenge the characters. Because that’s what creates an enduring story in any genre, and that is likely why, so many sitcoms have a quick run. For so many sitcoms love to stick to a status quo and give us more of the same from prior seasons and that is indeed so commonplace and at times frustrating, that we tend to meet a great deal of sitcoms in their sophomore years with worry and skepticism. That is until the sitcom proves to us that it knows what makes a story great, by giving the characters the growth and challenge they require and well, that is why we can all breathe a sigh of collective relief when it comes to the new season of Night Court on NBC.

For season two of this show, is indeed pushing the good people of the Manhattan Night Court to deal with scenarios and problems that the rest of us deal with, to see how they respond and see how their good souls find solutions to them, and grow in doing so, as evidenced by this week’s episode. For ‘Just the Fax, Dan’ saw the team not only welcome a new Clerk named Wyatt into the fold but deal with a nasty little hacker. Who shut down the court WiFi and hacked into everyone’s personal device to make a difficult demand. In that, he expected the sixth case on the docket to end in a guilty verdict or secrets would be spilled and trouble would arise and well… that put the team on high alert.

Because they felt their secrets were indeed embarrassing in nature and of course, someone was demanding a perversion of the course of justice. Which meant that only real course of action here, was to slow things down, see if the hacker could be found so that order could be restored and justice could be served and well, this was indeed a powerful challenge for the characters to deal with. Because they had to face the very real possibility that parts of their lives, they wanted kept to themselves were about to be exposed and they had to choose to either handle this case with class or respond in kind. Challenging the moral cores they all established in season one. Which brought about, a tough fight… one that Gurgs led the charge in. But since they stuck together and took the high road, they were able to finally ID the hacker and bring this mess to its proper conclusion. 

Courtesy of the reveal that they were victims of a revenge scheme. But what mattered more, was that they stayed true to themselves and really met a tough challenge head on. One that we all fear and that made for a surprisingly relevant episode, one that gave us exactly what we want and of course was delightfully funny. Thanks to the mad scramble that everyone took part in to protect their precious secrets and let’s be honest, Gurgs stole the show a lot in this episode. Because her attempts to make Wyatt confess to a crime, he didn’t commit, was pretty darn epic in nature, since beating someone up with a sack of oranges is a hardcore way to garner that confession, and the homage to Jaws via her modern embodiment of Quint, will easily go down as one of her finest moments. 

Plus, challenges or no, this episode also found a way to sneak in some lessons about the human condition and friendship. Since Abby was right in pointing out that those, we hold closest to us, should indeed hear our secrets, and share their own. Because then we will quickly learn that some of our concerns and worries over the past, are a bit less terrifying than we give them credit, and who knows… we might learn that our pals have some talents along the way. Since everyone learned that Dan is quite the fan fiction writer and has quite the Monk story to tell. But in the end, it was just great to see this series challenge its characters in a manner that properly tested their mettle, and it will be interesting to see what other challenges lie ahead for this group as season two continues along. Until next time.

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