PICKET FENCES

After a child brings a severed human hand to school for show and tell, the Sheriff's department teams with the FBI to pursue a serial kidnapper, the "Green Bay Chopper", who severs the right hands of his victims.

Max falls for a dwarf who rides into town on an elephant, which the dwarf says was being abused at a circus. Jill tells Kimberly's favorite teacher, Mr. Pankow, that he has a brain tumor.

The candidates in the upcoming mayoral election are using such outrageous smear campaigns that Sheriff Brock considers running for Mayor himself.

A rash of break-ins leads to an investigation of a "serial bather". Suspicion initially centers on "Frank the Potato Man", a vagrant who, it is learned, was tried for aggravated rape 15 years earlier.

When a catatonic housemaid utters the word "murder" after a decade of not speaking, the Sheriff's department learns that the "suicide" of a beloved town figure a decade prior was actually a homicide.

Town doctor Jill Brock, fed up with the mayor's failure to address women's issues, declares herself a write-in candidate in the upcoming mayoral election. Deputy Kenny Lakos arrests a former boxing world champion and convinces him to engage in a charity match before extradition to New Jersey.

An elderly patient is murdered at a nursing home. A "singing serial mercy-killing" nun is arrested, sparking controversy over the ethics and legality of euthanasia.

Jill's father arrives in Rome with his new 26-year-old girlfriend. Wambaugh finds his wife in bed with another man.

Max, Brock, and Kenny investigate the mysterious death of a woman who may or may not have committed suicide.

A rabbi seeks to block the town from staging a religiously-themed Christmas pageant on public property. The town is shocked to learn that beloved teacher Louise Talbot, scheduled to play the Virgin Mary in the pageant, is a post-operative transsexual.

When the Brock family inadvertently finds Kimberly having sex with her 19-year-old boyfriend on Christmas Eve, Jimmy wants to prosecute him for statutory rape. A man claiming to be Santa Claus takes Max and dispatcher Ginny hostage and Jimmy tries to talk him down.