Judging Amy

Amy and Michael agree to work out Lauren's custody with a mediator; Maxine and Kimberly clash over a child lost in the system; Jared returns from China to get an answer from Maxine; Lauren fears that their apartment is haunted and Amy begins to agree with her; appearing before Amy in court as the caseworker for a teen-aged mother, Maxine gives an impassioned plea which provides Amy with food for thought about not only the girl, but Amy's relationships with Maxine and Lauren; Bruce runs into Amy and spurns her offer of friendship, but later relents most emphatically.

Amy's discovers that the man the police have in custody may not be her stalker after all; Maxine refuses to give up on a client who may be the victim of police brutality; after Bruce denies having romantic feelings for Amy and they agree that confusion and alcohol led to their embrace, they decide to be friends who don't kiss; Kyle applies for a residency and is confronted by his sponsor for not working his program; a persistent attorney paves the way for Bruce to regain his court position; Amy must decide if a retarded teenager is competent to make her own reproductive choices.

As Amy decides the fate of a ten year old boy who was kidnapped by his adoptive parents when they lost custody to his birth mother, she finds an answer to some of her own family's pressing concerns; Bruce is back at work as Amy's C.S.O. and is completing his community service at a soup kitchen; Amy gets the silent treatment from Lauren when she won't let her become a cheerleader, but both sides are forced to relent when Gillian unwittingly spills the beans about her own and Amy's cheer leading pasts; Maxine's refusal to sell her house to buyers she doesn't like leaves Peter feeling angry and unappreciated, so she hatches a plan that heals both him and a badly abused client; at the behest of his sponsor, Kyle applies to every residency program in the area, and Amy agrees to write him a letter of recommendation; Maxine finally finds the perfect buyer for her house.

Amy presides over the custody hearing of a boy whose mother died in the collapse of the World Trade Center; an old friend offers Kyle a job with a pharmaceutical company, and Maxine counter offers with the job of heading the Center; Amy re-landscapes her new home and accidentally throws out Ethel, the antique heirloom rosebush Maxine's grandmother brought over from Ireland in 1889; after initially spurning her offer, Bruce agrees to speak at Zola's press conference for convicted felons; and Maxine helps Sean over some rough spots as Eric's foster father.

Amy must decide whether a teenager is responsible for the death of an infant she was babysitting; Maxine investigates an abuse case at the home of a disabled veteran and his adopted granddaughter; Kyle is torn between keeping his lucrative job as a pharmaceutical rep or accepting a residency at a low-ranked hospital; Amy has an alarm system installed in the house as her stalker escalates his harassment; Maxine and Peter are at odds after Maxine attributes Peter's promotion within the ranks of a Revolutionary War reenactment group to the publicity surrounding her engagement to Jared.

Amy must decide if a student raped his teacher or was seduced by her; Kyle is unhappy about his non-medical duties at St. Michael's; Maxine tries to locate the mother of an abandoned newborn; after Jason menaces Amy while she's driving Lauren and Eric home, Bruce suggests getting a restraining order; fearing the worst about her health, Gillian gets the diagnosis she's dreamed of for years.

Amy hears the case of a young boy charged with obstruction of justice for not revealing the name of the man who took pornographic pictures of him; Maxine contends with a woman who allows her abusive husband to violate a restraining order; Peter and Charles negotiate a prenuptial agreement for their parents; Jason Lobdel eludes Amy's police protection as he continues to stalk her; everyone walks on eggshells as Gillian suffers through ugly hormonal mood swings; Jared gives Maxine the diner; Amy's plan to censure an attorney backfires.

Amy's ruling in the case of a teenager who called in a bomb scare to avoid a test is complicated by the arrival of an I.N.S. agent who's ready to deport the boy to Afghanistan, and almost certain death, if he's found guilty; Eric saves Lauren from being kidnapped by Jason; Gillian's raging hormones leave Peter exhausted as she goes into overdrive about the plans for Maxine's wedding; Kimberly blackmails Sean into getting her job back in exchange for helping Maxine find an endangered teenager who's aged out of the system; Kyle defies hospital protocol to give a dying woman her last wish; Eric ends Jason's stalking with tragic finality.

Maxine and Jared move up their wedding date, to the consternation of their children; Peter's plans for a classy bachelor party go awry, but the men manage to have a good time at a less highbrow establishment as they convince a greatly under-the-influence Bruce to call Zola and ask her for a date; Maxine's hen party is much more sedate, but Maxine manages to work out an escape plan nonetheless; Amy presides over a hearing to determine if four teenage boys accused of drugging and raping a teenage girl should be tried as adults; after Charles announces that he's quit his job, Jared is forced to return to China and reschedule the wedding, and Amy lets Charles know that it's not in his best interest to interfere with Maxine's happiness; Maxine's efforts to keep Eric's case in juvenile court are successful.

Amy must decide if a little girl in the middle of a bitter custody dispute is being molested by her father; doing research for a paper, Donna shadows Maxine during a day in which she deals with the neglected children of a severely depressed mother who refuses treatment; Kyle receives an unwelcome visit from his mother and sister; after employing a private investigator to follow Amy for over a year, Michael sues for full custody of Lauren; the decorator that Amy hires to redo the kitchen disparages Maxine's taste.

Maxine drives carpool for Amy. Kyle and Dr. Redikker track down an injured man released from the emergency room in grave danger. Sean finds himself drawn to a foster mother.

After Amy accidently sets on fire the homework that Lauren has spent hours painstakingly hand-calligraphing, she agrees to make it up to her by spending the weekend role-playing at an 18th century inn and inviting Maxine to join them. The going is rougher than she anticipated when they are assigned the roles of kitchen servants. Over a late night fireside heart-to-heart chat, Maxine and Amy share their dislike of change and inability to reconcile conflicting emotions about their place in the world. Bruce pursues Zola after meeting, and being completely unimpressed by, her boyfriend. Kyle treats a 14 year old girl who delivered a baby in a high school bathroom, and cannot get through to the girl's mother, who is unwilling to accept her responsibilites as a parent. Gillian gets an unexpected job offer after spending a long day waiting to interview a new pediatrician. Amy must revoke a custody order after a father reverts to his former abusive ways.

Amy and Michael continue to hash things out in court about their daughter, Lauren. Kyle gains a new opportunity as well as a new perspective at work. Maxine is presented with a challenge from Eric.

Maxine and Sean battle a sleazy attorney with a penchant for blackmail when they attempt to remove a child from her negligent parents; Amy presides over the case of a deadbeat dad who is willing to go to extreme measures to avoid paying child support when he learns that his son's paternity may be at issue; Maxine is "filled with existential dread" at the prospect of the wedding ceremony Gillian is planning for her; Kyle experiences a sleepless night discovering why the parents of a handicapped man who appears to be healthy insist that he be hospitalized overnight.

Maxine's reunion with Sally Goodwin is bittersweet when Maxine discovers that Sally was sent to investigate complaints filed against her. A father testifies on behalf of his teenage daughter who appears before Amy for conspiring in his attempted murder.

Stuart Collins returns from Sri Lanka reincarnated as a criminal defense attorney eager to take on Eric's case and renew his romance with Amy; Peter and Gillian hear unsettling news about the potential health of their unborn child; Maxine and Sean work together to create the best possible placement for a young Sudanese refugee; a father petitions Amy for legal custody of his 14 year old daughter after her mother allows her to drop out of school and pursue a full-time career as a pop star with an over-sexualized and age-inappropriate image.

Eric's trial begins and is presided over by a slightly eccentric and seemingly unsympathetic judge. Meanwhile, a party is planned for to celebrate his 17th birthday.

Maxine unwittingly provides Amy with the information she needs to decide whether promoters are responsible for the death of a teenager who died from an ecstasy overdose during one of their raves; Maxine and Sean join forces to persuade a couple to take back their former foster child after she's released from work camp; Amy and Maxine disagree about Amy's being overprotective of Lauren; Sean lets Maxine know he's angry about her judgemental attitude toward Eric; after conferring with Martin, Kyle decides to pursue a romance with Heather; Kyle goes off the wagon when he and Heather throw a party to celebrate their successful evaluations; after Lily sees them kissing at the party, she decides not to reveal that a random drug test is being conducted the next day, and Heather is fired; Bruce distances himself from Amy in an effort to convince Zola that there's nothing going on between them.

Maxine tempers her frustrations over her daughter-in-law's outlandish plans for the Gray-Duff nuptuals after Peter tells his mother about Gillian's refusal to face their new baby's condition; Stu's plans for a romantic dinner to celebrate the rekindling of his relationship with Amy are derailed by an obnoxious couple at the next table; Kyle discovers why Lily has been treating him so poorly; after Amy hears the case of a pro-cannabis couple threatened with losing custody of their son after he brings a joint to school, she has a talk with Lauren about drugs; Maxine investigates when a man asserts that his ex-wife has been cheating on the drug tests required as a condition of her retaining custody of their daughter; Amy has conflicting emotions after she reads the Judge Gray tribute page on Donna's blog.

Stu has convinced Amy to go on a camping trip with him, while Maxine is making plans to bring wedding forward to this weekend at her house. Maxine is devastated when Charles appears at work to tell her Jared has had a heart attack and died. Maxine does not want anyone to comfort her and lashes out at everyone around her. Charles is having trouble getting Jared body returned from China and Peter and Charles fight over how to deal with this. A slightly more composed Maxine takes everyone to the dinner in which she and Jared first met for a highly emotive memorial service.

Maxine's first day back on the job finds her removing a boy from the custody of his mother, who was one of Maxine's clients for a short time eight years earlier; although Amy is worried about Maxine's bottling up her grief, she becomes unsettled when Kyle tells her that Maxine has been talking to Charles instead of her own children; Kyle does an end-run around Lily to get an indigent patient the reconstructive surgery she desperately needs after an accident; Amy hears the custody case of a teenager whose divorced parents disagree about sending her to a school for overweight children.

On "Take Your Daughter to Work Day", Lauren learns how lucky she is when she spends the afternoon with Maxine, and Rebecca becomes seriously injured after she falls during a seizure; Kyle continues to drink; Stu reassures Amy that she's a permanent part of his life after she fails to make a fabulous first impression during lunch with his opinionated mother; Bruce struggles to get a boy discharged from probation; after begging Lily to rehire Heather, Kyle is shocked when she refuses to return; Heather and Zola let the men in their lives know that they've got romance on their minds.

Amy must decide if it's in a teenager's best interest to get married; Bruce investigates when he suspects that a teenager's probation violation isn't as innocent as his parole officer claims; Amy struggles with telling Lauren that she's dating Stu; after worrying about Gillian's insistence that the baby's fine, and a girl, Peter decides to let her hold on to her beliefs when he discovers that they're having a boy; Lily considers accepting a job offer in New York; Michael confesses to Amy that he was to blame for their divorce.

A stressed out public defender goes ballistic in Amy's courtroom; Maxine tries to figure out why a woman who lost her son wants to give up her foster child; Kyle tells Lily how he feels, but it doesn't go as he hoped; Amy is confused about whether or not Stu actually proposed marriage; Gillian goes into labor with unexpected and seemingly tragic results.