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The Guardian Season 2 Episodes
Season 2 Episode Guide
23 Episodes 2002 - 2003
Episode 1
Testimony
Tue, Sep 24, 200244 mins
Nick is arrested and refused bail for parole violations after Mandy Gressler's ultimately fatal OD in his home. Unless the court is convinced the cocaine came with her, Nick's case looks hopeless. Burton hires reputable criminal attorney David Belden, but personally leads the case discretely, helped by ADA Finneran. When Mandy's mother Mary refuses to let her granddaughter Shannon (11) testify, Burton even takes the stand. Only Jake remains prepared to start a partnership with Nick.
Episode 2
Monster
Tue, Oct 1, 200244 mins
Nick defends, without actual sympathy, confused Ronnie Wagner (13), who killed and later raped his adoptive mother and risks being tried as an adult, which may mean execution. Laurie Solt admits she ignored psychiatric therapy recommendations to speed up the adoption. A fender bender with Kim, who convinces him to let her brother Charlie McPherson repair the damage rather than inform the insurance company, leads to Nick becoming her lover before discovering she's a uniformed cop. Jake and James recruit private clients for the new firm, but Nick has doubts whether those aren't rather distractions for scoring the major corporate clients he's after.
Episode 3
The Dead
Tue, Oct 8, 200244 mins
Ex-senator Caldwell commits suicide in his firm office. Nick continues his hot affair with Kim in secret. Burton keeps advising people what to file, albeit through other lawyers. Nick's new firm defends the manager of a firm developing a city project requiring cemetery plots to be expropriated, Alvin takes on the cause of families opposing exhumations. The FBI suspects Caldwell's motive was exposure in a case of abuse of information from his legislative days. It implicates his right hand Mitchell Lichtman, who tries unsuccessfully to blackmail Burton, who ultimately decides not to go through with his impending appointment as federal judge.
Episode 4
The Next Life
Tue, Oct 15, 200244 mins
Nick pleads the case of over-eager, unattractive pre-teen Josh Bennett, from Gill Mueller's orphanage, who wants to continue partaking in events to present kids to potential adopting couples. Nick gets permission but is ordered to chaperon Josh in person. The boy's usual tantrum after an event follows even though a couple finally shows interest, which is withdrawn as a result. Burton renamed the firm Fallin & Fallin and expects Nick to get involved in all aspects of management, even letting staff go when they don't bring enough business.
Episode 5
Assuming the Position
Tue, Oct 22, 200244 mins
Nick decides to plead a damage claim for tenant Wilcox's small son Bryant's serious lead-poisoning, but soon realizes multiple foul play involving specialized lawyer Mark Hanson. Jake tries to help Barbara get an embarrassing photograph and ridiculing comment from a dating site, but painfully runs into law student Ignatius J. Reilly's legal argument as well as his mates' fists.
Episode 6
The Living
Tue, Oct 29, 200244 mins
Nick must resume his dormant guardianship of Dale and Penny Fante, whose father is in jail and mother neglects them, because cancer-suffering Dale needs a bone marrow transplant. Penny is missing, but brave Dale helps Nick find her through their rogue former social worker. Penny is found with an adult lover and baby, which inspires the court to place her in a shelter. She refuses to save Dale, so Nick brings the parents in, unearthing dark family secrets. Meanwhile Nick is most uncomfortable negotiating with Burton's regular client, excessively weird, even suicidal tycoon Henry Thomas, a merger deal.
Episode 7
The Innocent
Tue, Nov 12, 200244 mins
After a boy was fatally mauled by a firm's parking lot guard dog, Nick takes the case of the sisters' foster parents, the Burke couple, which plans to adopt them. Legally they can't claim damages needed to move to a proper house, only the boy's lush father Lou Caffey can do so, so Nick circumvents a formal conflict of interest by getting Jake to take 'his' case, planning to seize the profits. Meanwhile Albert Gregg, released after proof he was wrongly jailed 21 years ago, wants to avoid a divorce, but can't control his temper any more.
Episode 8
The Neighborhood
Tue, Nov 19, 200244 mins
Nick reluctantly defends his former childhood neighborhood nemesis Hugh, now orphaned, who is obsessed by his dog Bessy but compromises his own home place by violent episode in defense of the dog. Nick does can't make the partners dinner, in fact Burton's first attempt to throw a birthday surprise party for Nick. Lulu meanwhile defends her friends Robert and Sarah Twain, who become prime suspects in the case of an adopted daughter's disappearance, homicide and possible sexual abuse, which wrecks their marriage after bringing out their SM fetish. Hugh's dog turns out to be involved.
Episode 9
The Dark
Tue, Nov 26, 200244 mins
Burton has his next laser eye operation, so Nick takes him in for recovery, but he proves to be a nightmare patient and keeps nagging about a merger deal complicated by environmental issues. James' nephew Levi (for whom he has guardianship) is expelled for refusing to identify the gang kids who beat him up, yet is murdered by the gang afterward. Alvin feels guilty and starts drinking again. Filling in for both, Nick drowns in court cases on three fronts.
Episode 10
Sacrifice
Tue, Dec 10, 200244 mins
Nick defends the interests of the hospital which employs surgeon Brian Olson, whose patient died in a routine operation. He's married to Lulu, and wrecks the marriage completely. Nick discovers Brian failed to disclose his mild epileptic condition. Nick also represents the interests of Betsy Fortunato, whose father confesses the bloody killing of her mother, who has the incurable mental disease of Huntington's. Nick arranges for Steve and Cheryl Manley to adopt Betsy's baby Kris without saying she must be tested as Huntington's is inherited in half the cases, including Betsy. Nick discovers an even worse secret. Burton bugs Nick with a case as well as forcing a lawyer blind date upon him.
Episode 11
No Good Deed
Tue, Dec 17, 200244 mins
A custody case goes out of control. To prevent violence, Lulu breaks the attorney's honor code flagrantly. Nick defends her brilliantly, avoiding even a suspension. Realizing her marriage is completely wrecked, Lulu asks Nick if his glowing plea also reflects his personal feelings, but he dodges that question.
Episode 12
You Belong to Me
Tue, Jan 7, 200344 mins
Burton accepts the city as a bulk client and loses a corporate client Nick and Jake had been pursing for months, in part because he misses a critical meeting. Lulu feels stalked and finds shelter with Nick and Kim, but still turns back to Brian. Burton sympathizes with a widower whose hobby, an aviary, is contested by the neighbors as a serious nuisance, but still wins the case for the city. Gentle gay gentleman Gavin Putinski, who feared from the start that he would be discriminated against, ends up losing unfairly, due to a hostile judge and Nick being overburdened. Nick tries to make clear to young Kyle Plunkett he's entitled to live with his father Bill, but the boy's mother keeps poisoning his mind with terrible lies.
Episode 13
Ambition
Tue, Jan 21, 200344 mins
A deal Nick and Jake worked on for months to land a major client is badly compromised when Burton blatantly fails to attend one crucial meeting. A teenage relative of James is offered a rap record contract. His guardian refuses, but the boy is reluctant to have his manager appointed instead. An adolescent refuses to be adopted by the WASP Martin couple out of reverse racism.
Episode 14
Understand Your Man
Tue, Feb 4, 200344 mins
Nick takes the case of young Timothy Silber, who must choose whether he wants to remain living with his deceased father's cross-dressing partner, Sam Farrell, his trusted, loving "stepmother" or to go live with his unfamiliar, blood-uncle Hank Silver. Burton's platonic live-in, Mary Gessler, with whom Burton wants a relationship and who works at Fallin and Fallin, accepts a date with one of Burton's clients, Frank DeScala. Lulu's husband, Brian Olson, wants to leave to accept a good job in Columbus after cashing in a settlement from the Pittsburgh hospital that fired him and is represented by the Fallins. An auction prize-box mix-up convinces Brian that Lulu cares more for Nick than for Brian.
Episode 15
Where You Are
Tue, Feb 11, 200343 mins
Nick cautions the firm his former schoolmate Rob isn't reliable, but Burton decides to take him on as a client. Nick and Jake must help Rob and his partners finance ahead a potentially extremely lucrative business idea. Now that Brian has moved on, Lulu wants to sell her 'marital' home.
Episode 16
The Weight
Tue, Feb 18, 200344 mins
Nick warns his father against matching a bankruptcy-threatened industrial client's probably unrealistic donation promise to a cancer project advocated by Evan Piscarek, whom Nick knows, but Burton insists to go ahead for the sake of Evan's father Red, his dying former bar-buddy. Lulu promises bride Barbara Ludzinski to fix the groom's marriage license problems, but finds he was divorced repeatedly and his exes have significant financial claims. On the way to the wedding, fate twists cruelly.
Episode 17
The Intersection
Tue, Feb 25, 200344 mins
Lulu's doctor finds swelling on her brain after a car accident. Nick takes on the case of an autistic child whose mother died.
Episode 18
My Aim Is True
Tue, Mar 18, 200343 mins
Burton defends a police officer who shot Nick's former drug dealer. Nick is caught cheating on his time sheet.
Episode 19
Back in the Ring
Tue, Apr 1, 200344 mins
The Fallins are delighted with client Tim "The Mechanic" Dohanic, a brave boxer. Nick helps him keep custody of his doting preteen son Oscar, claimed by his late mother's parents. Burton offers to sort out Tim's business arrangements. Alas, an overconfident fight before a really lucrative results in an eye and a career injury, plus worse. To make up for Alvin's insufficient subsidy, Lulu gets Jake to split some 'juicy' cases. Yet she's unappreciative of his clever methods and results in a case against a bus company which failed to provide contractual adult supervision for a high school's basketball and cheerleaders teams, resulting in a carnal initiation.
Episode 20
What It Means to You
Tue, Apr 22, 200344 mins
Nick and Lulu must argue against each other in court when he represents a real estate developer. Burton makes a decision involving Shannon.
Episode 21
Burton & Ernie
Tue, Apr 29, 200344 mins
Lulu tries to make her relationship with Nick more official after Alvin catches them together.
Episode 22
Sensitive Jackals
Tue, May 6, 200343 mins
James takes on a paternity case involving a deformed man with whom he once had a serious alteration.
Episode 23
All the Rage
Tue, May 13, 200344 mins
Nick's life spirals into turmoil when he's sentenced to court-ordered anger management therapy. Lulu considers a job offer in California.
