The Hope of Elkwood begins with a verbally and physically abusive college track coach putting a star athlete through an intense training session in poor weather conditions. The young man dies later that evening, and the coach is blamed for the death by the university administrators and the police with charges filed against him for negligent homicide. Quincy (Jack Klugman) is a friend of the lawyer hired to defend the coach and he assists by conducting further analysis in the coroner lab to pinpoint exactly what caused this young man's death.
The first problem I had with this episode was that it lacked originality. We have seen several sports related plots already where an athlete dies unexpectedly and there is an investigation into whether it was natural causes or something else. I can think of at least four off the top of my head that centered around football, boxing, auto racing, gymnastics and now we have track. It's becoming an overused plot and changing up the sport as well as a few nuances to the story does not make it different or interesting.
Without giving anything away, at most the only potential crime committed here is negligence which didn't amount to a compelling plot. I also don't really like the episodes where more time is spent in the courtroom rather than the coroner lab, and this is the case here. Another thing I found ridiculous was the long speech made at the end by the attorney even after he already made his point by winning his case, what was the point of this and why would the judge allow the court's time to be wasted on this after the case resolved? It was almost as if the writers realized they had an extra five minutes of time to fill and threw that in at the end to compensate.
Overall this is not a quality Quincy episode as it is lacking in originality and entertainment value and I would not recommend viewing unless you are a die hard fan of the series like me.