"When I am walking down the street at night and I hear someone come up behind me, and I'm relieved when I turn around and discover that person is white," Wallace says. He's quoting someone to his class, which has gathered where all classes do -- the local diner. He quizzes them on who said it. No answer. "Jesse Jackson, October Twelfth, 1993," Wallace reveals. Charlie is stunned and asks Wallace if that's true. "No, but he could have said it," Benton says. "Assume nothing about a story you're reporting." I assume Wallace is a lousy teacher with the sense of humor of a particularly stressed-out giraffe. And that, my friends, is the best snappy comeback I could think of. This show is sapping my strength. I need tequila. Really, really badly. Beth takes charge and reviews the facts: Roth shot an off-duty cop, and everyone's leaving it at self-defense. Who are the cops protecting? "Themselves," Beth says. Wallace is stunned, and suddenly charges out of the diner. "Talk amongst yourselves," he calls to the students.

Wallace is going to confession. Forgive me if I assume it's a ploy, and not a sudden desire to repent for his litany of offensive acts. This is Wallace, after all. He's probably just apologizing to God for not imbibing any of His holy alcohol today. "It's been an eternity since my last confession," Wallace says. "I'm writing a column about a tourist and a cop and a reclamation project named Manny..." The priest leaves the confessional and asks Wallace to get out of the church. It's Felix, our pal the boxer-turned-preacher man. Wallace insists he just wants to talk, and that he thinks Braxton the Hero was trigger-happy. "Manny's an okay kid. All pose," Felix says. "And Nelson was un santo." Wallace implores the priest to help, because he thinks it's unchristian to turn Braxton into a martyr when he shot a saintly kid. "You want Manny?" Felix asks, frustrated. "Ask Nelson Cruz's mother." Nelson died, you know. He was a saint. And now, Nelson's last name means "cross" in Spanish. Is the symbolism hurting your heads yet? Because it hasn't stopped banging on mine.

Mrs. Cruz is praying with her rosary beads. "Sorry about your son," Wallace offers. He might as well have said, "Sorry you snagged your panty hose." She turns away and refuses to comment, then goes ahead and comments about how saintly Nelson was - the light of her life. "He was going to Cornell to study hotel management," Mrs. Cruz says proudly. "He loved people." Well, if he liked people so damn much, why wasn't he going into the medical-supply industry, huh? I thought we'd all learned that lesson. Wallace presses her about Manny, and whether she's talked to him, or just bitter that he's alive and Nelson "El Santo" Cruz is dead. Dead, I tell you. "Manny didn't kill my son," Mrs. Cruz seethes. "That policeman did." She breathes heavily to convey grief. We're officially three-for-three on Episodes with Terrible Bit-Part Actors.