It didn't really strike me when watching this episode, but I looked the trivia here which points out that the woman playing Isaac Hayes' daughter is actually one year *older* than him. (The trivia is off by a few years) She's also 4 years older than the guy playing her older brother. Not only is that casting a little crazy but I realized Issac Hayes was only around 33 when this was made??? Was Hayes lying about his age back then? And his character just spent 19 or 20 years in prison? That makes him about14 when he allegedly committed the crime. So crazy! It would put a slightly different spin on the story if Gandy was in his late teens to very early 20s when he dated Lila. There's never an excuse for abuse, especially the level they describe with Gandy, but it would make his remorse, maturity, and growth that he found in prison even more believable.
This episode has the quality of one of those "very special episodes" that started being popular in the seventies, though long before the maudlin clichés of the eighties. It seems to be capitalizing on the Blacksploitation movies that were super popular then, and even just the then still need style of movies in general that often ended bittersweetly or even tragically.
Not my favorite episode though definitely not the worst. Hayes is captivating to watch. I don't think I ever realized what a good actor he was. But by today's standards it was perhaps a little slow with not a lot of action to break it up, so it seemed very long. I checked the timer at one point to check if it was a double episode. Then it just ends rather suddenly.