When I interviewed John Ridley a few weeks ago, he talked about conceptualizing this season from an "inciting incident" and then working backwards. At the time, I thought the inciting incident was the sexual assault reported by Taylor Blaine, and "backwards" meant setting the scene and context through subsequent episodes.
I couldn't have been more wrong.
The first seven episodes served as an explanation, a preemptive unraveling for what was about to come: the death of a student on The Leyland School's property. If we had started with Taylor shooting Wes Baxter, we never would have understood how it got to that point. So working backwards led us to Taylor's sexual assault, and the subsequent mess that occurred.
"American Crime" is about a lot of things, and I'm pretty sure I have said that any one of those is actually the core of this season. I've changed my mind again. What has happened over the course of the past few episodes is the exploration of complicity in other people's trauma, and how that, in turn, creates our own.
If there had been more care taken with Taylor's story, this may not have happened. That is not to say that Taylor's actions are inexcusable, but as The Leyland School students mourned their loss, they only saw a fraction of the picture. More and more characters are reaching to call Taylor and his mother crazy, including Coach Dan Sullivan. More people are trying to distance themselves from their own complicity in Taylor's crime by not seeing past their own pain.
A prime example of this is Leslie Graham who is a mess at the beginning of the episode, dealing with her own mortality after realizing that Taylor was originally at the school to see, and presumably kill, her. It is difficult for Leslie to see that her need to control everything, and protect the school through spinning the truth, created a situation that left many of them vulnerable.
My heart continues to break for Taylor, if for no other reason than because he has yet to receive justice. No one with the authority and resources to help him has listened to his story. He struggles to express what has happened to him. He never reported being beat up by Wes and other members of the basketball team. No one seems to know that Wes was actively threatening him when Taylor shot him.
I think that often when we, culturally speaking, talk about the consequences of our actions, it is done in such a way that creates a causation effect. In other words, because Taylor was sexually assaulted, he killed another student, or because no one listened to him, he killed another student. The reality is a little more complex than that. In this case, the consequences were the environment that was created and the pain felt by the community. Each character is responsible for his or her actions, and that includes Taylor.
Of course, none of this means that Wes deserved to die. The fact remains, however, that instead of being steered in the right direction, the young men responsible for tormenting Taylor have yet to receive any real guidance that allows them to grow up and be better men. Most everyone is only concerned with protecting either their children or their school. The consequences of those decisions created an environment where a downward spiral led to a student's death.
That's some heavy stuff.
If anyone was expecting a happy ending with a pretty bow on top, I think that ship has officially sailed. In the episodes ahead, surely things will be wrapped up, but there is also the definitive possibility that we will never know what happened to Taylor.
Lines That Haunt Me
"If we don't love each other, really love each other, this is what happens." -- Coach Dan Sullivan
"What would you have done?" -- Leslie Graham
Catch new episodes of "American Crime" on Wednesdays at 10 p.m. ET on ABC.
Katie Barnes is a digital media associate at ESPN. Follow them on Twitter at Katie_Barnes3.