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Although I absolutely loved this show up until the last season or so, I also love this MadTV parody of it (especially the ghost's admonition that Lilly fix her hair):

Edited by Bastet
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Thanks for reminding of this parody, had forgotten about it, but it's hilarious.

Lilly's hair... While the show was airing it somehow barely bothered me, but of course noticed the discussion about it. Just have started to rewatch episodes and this time even I wonder, what fashion trend they wanted to set with that hair-do. On the other hand maybe more realistic than most we see on TV. One can only be impressed how others seldom have a bad hair day or even just a bad hair hour on shows, often not even after running for hours through rain, diving into a chlorine water pool, a muddy lake, just getting out of bed or some hand-to-hand combat. Hair magic.

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Rush's hair made me crazy! I remember reading somewhere that the actress did her own hair, because she didn't want to be one of those female TV cops with perfect hair.  Laudable, perhaps, but do RL female cops not know how to use a hairbrush and put in a ponytail?

Or get a timely dye job?

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(edited)

Marathon last night, too -- comfort TV at its finest.  The next two Fridays, too, so it looks like it's back on the schedule.

 

Last night included an episode I just love, the one where a drive-by shooting that killed a little girl on the swings turns out to have been committed by her brother, who was aiming at the guy having an affair with their mother.  The flashback shot of that little boy sitting on a phone book to drive the car is wonderful, as is the modern-day scene when Lilly and Scotty show up to make the arrest -- the parents, having also figured it out, try to cover for him, and the detectives are genuinely sorry to have figured it out.  I also love the part of the closing montage - set to Michael Jackson's Man in the Mirror - showing the evidence locker filled with guns. 

 

Unfortunately, the gross storyline between Lilly's sister and Scotty is in the mix, but I just ignore that.

Edited by Bastet
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   The backstories generally sucked, save for perhaps Nick's. I always liked the stuff going on with him.

 

    Ion was running season 3 last night, and I think season 2 to season 4 was the strongest run of the show, where they consistently hit it out of the park. Season 1 still had some kinks to work out (though there were some gems like The Letter) while season 5 - season 7 clearly showed that they were running out of ideas. The show should've ended with Into the Blue at the end of season 6, I think. I can't think of any season 7 episode that really stuck with me.

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I can't think of any season 7 episode that really stuck with me.

 

I love WASP, and Two Weddings and Flashover are pretty good.  I know many fans disagree, but I also enjoy the two-parter with Susannah Thompson.  

 

I think the show started strong out of the gate, and thus really enjoy season one.  I find the first five seasons fairly consistent, with one through four being the strongest, and season six is when it really started showing its age (but I absolutely love Officer Down).

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This is one of my favorite shows. I don't cry easily and this show would reduce me to tears all the time. I was so glad they never paired Lilly and Scotty together. He had a bad temper and sleeping with her sister was unforgivable. I would have liked to see Lilly and Vera as a couple. They each had tough lives and I think they understood each other very well.

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I used to enjoy this show, but there were two episodes which drove me nuts due to the era the murders occurred in.  One was "Beautiful Little Fool" in which a woman is murdered by her rich lover in 1929 and their love child dumped at an orphanage.  The other was, "Torn", which took place in 1919!  I can't see how Lilly & Co. would have bothered to make time for either case, especially considering all parties involved were long since dead and there could be no arrest. 

 

The other thing that bugged was the routine of Lilly interviewing Suspect # 1, who hints that they should talk to Suspect #2, who denies everything and says Suspect # 1 is the one they should be looking at due to some detail suspect number one forgot to mention.  Then we learn the killer was someone we never suspected.  Or was an accident.  Then rinse and repeat.

 

I'm not saying there weren't some well written episodes or ones that tugged at my heart strings, but after a while the pattern was getting by the numbers.

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I used to enjoy this show, but there were two episodes which drove me nuts due to the era the murders occurred in.  One was "Beautiful Little Fool" in which a woman is murdered by her rich lover in 1929 and their love child dumped at an orphanage.  The other was, "Torn", which took place in 1919!  I can't see how Lilly & Co. would have bothered to make time for either case, especially considering all parties involved were long since dead and there could be no arrest. 

 

It was rather unlikely, but I liked the stories and even more the music, but I have a thing for the time between the World Wars. On the other hand I don't know much about police process in Philly, so no idea what obligation they might have to follow a new lead regardless, or how they react and have to react to request, what standards they have for working on cold cases. Stilman sure had to account to someone for the hours his detectives spent on whatever case.

 

 

The other thing that bugged was the routine of Lilly interviewing Suspect # 1, who hints that they should talk to Suspect #2, who denies everything and says Suspect # 1 is the one they should be looking at due to some detail suspect number one forgot to mention.  Then we learn the killer was someone we never suspected.  Or was an accident.  Then rinse and repeat.

 

Kinda have that problem with many crime prodcedurals, there are patterns and formula all over TV. And true, Cold Case was sometimes quite formulistic. But I care little to figure out who did it, there is no thrill or suspense in that mystery for me, besides that it seldom is one, often the perp is clear in the first 5 minutes (to me), even if the writers still send the audience on some alleged who-done-it chase. I find it a lot more interesting anyway to explore the why and the interpersonal dynamics as much as individual struggles of the coppers and the people involved in cases. That is the fun for me to watch crime shows.

 

There was some of that in Cold Case, and that combined with embedding the crime cases into interesting historical moments and events made the show attractive.

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This is one of my favorite shows. I don't cry easily and this show would reduce me to tears all the time.

 

I've never cried so hard watching a TV show as I did watching Strange FruitThe Letter and The Goodbye Room made me cry too, but Strange Fruit made me do that cry/snort noise!

 

I just started watching this show this year thanks to Ion's Wednesday and Friday night marathons.  I missed the first 4 episodes of season 1, but I was happy to see that Ion is going to replaying the entire series from the beginning on 8/14.

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Strange Fruit was one of those episodes you knew was going to be an emotionally difficult one just based on the title (that song is wonderful, but hard to listen to), and it delivered.  The actor playing the little girl did a great job in the car, but the actors playing the '60s versions of the victim and his friend/girlfriend (I can't remember if they were dating) were the real standouts for me. 

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I was ridiculously excited to tune in last night and see they'd cycled back to the beginning. I didn't watch the pilot in real time - the first episode I ever saw was the one with the "Battle of the Sexes" tennis match - but I know I'd have been hooked on the show from the start if I had.

 

And for a second episode, Glean is very strong. The actor playing Gwen as an adult does a terrific job playing the anger and lashing out, the trauma of having seen her mom after the explosion, and especially the devastating realization her dad had done it.

 

Church-going People is on today, and the first time I saw that episode was late at night (when TNT ran this and Without a Trace in the wee hours), so I was half asleep and just drifting back into full consciousness when I opened my eyes to see the flashback of the wife coming after her husband.  That woman freaked me right out.

 

Thankfully, tonight's block of episodes takes us through A Time to Hate, one of my favorites.  The boyfriend and the mother meeting in present day never fails to get me.  And I could not love Tinkerbell more. 

Edited by Bastet
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I watched "Daniela" from Sesason 2 yesterday.   It's always been one of the episodes that I remember and stands out for me, out of all the seasons.

 

The casting was great and the ending always hits me emotionally.  This one was unusual for Cold Case because

there was no homicide - - the victim ended up killing herself.  And the first time I saw the eppy, I was shocked that Daniela was actually a man. Very sympathetic victim and clearly John was still in love with her, all the years later.  Although I was somewhat disappointed that it was never explained why John buried Daniela - - I'm guessing so that her secret would never get out.

 

 

All in all, one of the best episodes of the show.

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Thankfully, tonight's block of episodes takes us through A Time to Hate, one of my favorites.  The boyfriend and the mother meeting in present day never fails to get me.

 

This episode never fails to make me cry like a baby. I'm tearing up just thinking about it. 

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I started watching this show randomly (I think it was on after Without a Trace or something else I watched), and I stopped watching when it got really heavy into the "Scotty sleeps with Lilly's sister" and "Scotty essentially takes a hit out on his mom's rapist" stuff got way overboard for me.  It's been interesting to hop back in on ION and see episodes that are entirely new to me, like the crackastic Rocky Horror one, but also the inevitable ones that make me cry (something about the way this show used music just gets the tears going, dammit).

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My favorite part of Creatures of the Night is the Rocky Horror-style credits at the end - the perfect touch.  I love Nick and Will at the theatre in the closing montage -- Nick loving it and Will sitting there a big ball of "WTF?"  It reminds me of when I took a friend with me (I used to go to the midnight showings at a local theatre when I was in college).  It's a love it or hate it movie, let alone the theatre experience, and she definitely hated it.

 

I hate Lilly's sister, period, and especially with Scotty (and I can't stand Scotty during that time, either), so that storyline drags down any episode it's in.

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They aired Detention, which remains one of my favorite episodes, just because I loved how they used "Today' by the Smashing Pumpkins and "Anna Begins" by the Counting Crows.

 

They also had the debutante episode. Elizabeth, the headstrong Astronaut's daughter, really was an awesome character.

Edited by methodwriter85
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ten years ago, i watch one episode of Cold Case from TV but had never got another chance to watch any more of that in the following 10 years. 

 

though only one espisode and I didn't know much about the storyline at that time, Cold Case di seize my eyes immediately, touch me and give me the sense that it was a Different show that others. perhaps i felt the whole atmosphere in the show was a little bit blue, including the protagonist, whose name i even didn't know then. when she wasn't smiling, i just felt she might have a sad story which made her sad sometime. however, when she was smiling, i thought she could make all other people around her warm and peaceful. 

 

during the past 10 years, sometimes i recalled the tune and the role of the show but still there was only that one single episode in my mind. finally a couple of months ago, i got a best chance to watch Cold Case from the very first episode after 10 year's waiting.  it still touched me the moment I started watching. it's worthy of 10 year's waiting absolutely! to me, it is not a Cold TV show.

 

now I'm on season 4. i still love this show! but i would like to slow down to watch it. it's ended already and one more episode i watch, there would be one fewed episode i could watch later. this made me sad.

 

the only thing made me disappointed is that since Cold Case has ended years before, i barely could find anywhere online to discuss the plots and the roles of it. then just coincidently i came here and realized excitedly that there are new posts about Cold Case here! hope i could join the discussion.

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I remember watching Death Penalty: Final Appeal when it initially aired and it made me as sad and angry watching the rerun.   I couldn't believe that Jeffries didn't go to check out Tibbs' story about the letter until after he was executed.  Tibbs had been saying for years he wrote a letter and was at the house to deliver it.  Why couldn't Jeffries have searched the files a day or two earlier?  And that said, if that letter was in the files, why wasn't it used at trial? 

 

Just a sad, sad episode.  Sad that an innocent man was executed.  Sad that the girl's father believed he pointed to the guilty man only to find out he was wrong.

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Although I absolutely loved this show up until the last season or so, I also love this MadTV parody of it (especially the ghost's admonition that Lilly fix her hair):

That MadTV parody remains one of my favorite spoofs ever.  

 

I haven't watched this show in years (after being somewhat obsessed with it during it's run) and I caught a few eps the other night on some channel (TNT?  what channel still reruns it?) and I gotta say, it doesn't hold up all that well for me, which is a bit disappointing.  I think it's because Kathryn Morris is just so hit or miss as an actress.  Some scenes, she's fantastic, and others she seems like she either can't act at all or is totally phoning it in.  Also, now that Pino is on SVU and playing the EXACT SAME CHARACTER (just with a different backstory) I kept referring to him in my head as "Amaro" and expecting Olivia Benson to show up while watching like three eps of Cold Case.  Yeah, Danny doesn't really have much range as an actor either, or maybe I just haven't seen him in anything else.  Still, there were a lot of really great episodes and CC was and will always remain a favorite of mine because of it's uniqueness in comparison to other procedurals.  

 

I used to enjoy this show, but there were two episodes which drove me nuts due to the era the murders occurred in.  One was "Beautiful Little Fool" in which a woman is murdered by her rich lover in 1929 and their love child dumped at an orphanage.  The other was, "Torn", which took place in 1919!  I can't see how Lilly & Co. would have bothered to make time for either case, especially considering all parties involved were long since dead and there could be no arrest. 

 

The other thing that bugged was the routine of Lilly interviewing Suspect # 1, who hints that they should talk to Suspect #2, who denies everything and says Suspect # 1 is the one they should be looking at due to some detail suspect number one forgot to mention.  Then we learn the killer was someone we never suspected.  Or was an accident.  Then rinse and repeat.

 

I'm not saying there weren't some well written episodes or ones that tugged at my heart strings, but after a while the pattern was getting by the numbers.

Dude, both of those eps drove me bananas!!  Although clock-bludgening was a nice change of pace from the usual murder methods used :)

Also, both of those eps were somewhat redeemed for me because of drunk ass Meredith Baxter (Birney) as Lilly's mom.  But yeah, all the old cases where everyone is dead except for one old person who was a small child at the time but just happens to remember everything drove me nuts.  

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It's ION that's airing it now, Wednesdays and Fridays (Wednesdays all of prime time thru early morning and Fridays all afternoon and up until prime time), and it was on this past Thursday, too.

 

Boy Crazy (with the teenage girl tormented and institutionalized in the early '60s for not fitting gender norms) was on yesterday, and that's an episode that never fails to punch me in the heart. It is followed by Justice (the serial rapist killed by the little brother of one of the victims), one of the rare instances in which cops let a sympathetic perp get away with murder and I don't turn off the TV in disgust.  After that, Family (the Japanese internment camp) and Sabotage (the man who became a serial bomber after life unraveled around him) -- the middle of season five has a pretty powerful block of episodes.

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Family 8108 was directed by the great Jeannot Szwarc, who also directed the genius episode Forever Blue, about the cop killed in 1968 - - an episode that never fails to affect me and make me teary. 

 

I think Cold Case still holds up well but I tend to get stabby over all the detectives making comments in front of witnesses and suspects like "A blonde headed woman?  That sounds like (insert name)," or "It was midnight?  (Insert name) didn't mention that fact," etc.   Also, the perp is always composed when initially confronted by the detectives but by the 49-50 minute mark suddenly gets wonky and starts confessing.  

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I tend to get stabby over all the detectives making comments in front of witnesses and suspects like "A blonde headed woman?  That sounds like (insert name)," or "It was midnight?  (Insert name) didn't mention that fact," etc.

 

That is one of my biggest gripes with police investigations on TV, and Cold Case does seem to be among the worst offenders. 

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That is one of my biggest gripes with police investigations on TV, and Cold Case does seem to be among the worst offenders. 

 

I think it's a case (no pun intended) where the writers of the show assume the viewers are either complete morons or it's their first attempt at watching a police procedural.   Speaking for the majority, WE GET IT.  We don't need every single detail spelled out for us.  And if you're going to do it, at least have the detectives leave the room and rehash what was said/done privately. 

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It's ION that's airing it now, Wednesdays and Fridays (Wednesdays all of prime time thru early morning and Fridays all afternoon and up until prime time), and it was on this past Thursday, too.

 

Boy Crazy (with the teenage girl tormented and institutionalized in the early '60s for not fitting gender norms) was on yesterday, and that's an episode that never fails to punch me in the heart. It is followed by Justice (the serial rapist killed by the little brother of one of the victims), one of the rare instances in which cops let a sympathetic perp get away with murder and I don't turn off the TV in disgust.  After that, Family (the Japanese internment camp) and Sabotage (the man who became a serial bomber after life unraveled around him) -- the middle of season five has a pretty powerful block of episodes.

 

Boy Crazy gets my tears going too.  Linsey Godfrey did a good job as the victim in this episode.  I only knew her from The Bold & the Beautiful where she plays Caroline Spencer, and I fast-forward through her scenes most of the time.  I was surprised to see her in such a different role and make me feel something.

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Yes -- ION is back to the beginning tonight.  I'm watching Gleen right now, and the actor playing adult Gwen never fails to strike me with how wonderfully she captures how screwed up Gwen is by her mother's death - and seeing her after the explosion - and then how horrified she is by the realization her father did it. 

Edited by Bastet
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I like that one as well, for a host of obvious reasons (a bit surprising, perhaps, as I don't like children), but also for the man who found the body.  At first, the fact he's hung up on the case causes the squad to suspect him, but then they realize that traipsing after a rabbit and instead finding a dead child stuffed in a box just plain screwed him up.

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Well, damn, now I'm going to have to come up with another reason not to exercise on Wednesday nights.

 

But I do love the Friday marathon and will be happy to have it back; I almost never go out Friday nights because I'm too tired, and I like my end-of-the-week bubble bath routine to be bookended by comfort TV.

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There was some of that in Cold Case, and that combined with embedding the crime cases into interesting historical moments and events made the show attractive.

Very old post, but I just found this forum. :) I tend to hate crime procedurals (and there are so damn many of them!!), so this show's only hook for me was the historical settings and period costumes. I was always disappointed when the crime year would show up on the screen and it was only like a year or two prior to the present, though there turned out to be quite a few "current" episodes that I really liked. 

 

But if my first episode hadn't been an old-time setting (the 1932-set Best Friends was my first), I'd never have been drawn into the show. 

 

I've seen all of the episodes in seasons 1-5 and have seen a few from season 6, but I've only recently gotten to see several of the season 7 episodes. I really enjoyed the classic story/flashback elements of these episodes (the cruise ship one, WASP, Runaway Bunny, etc), BUT the cop drama/lead character backstories were absolutely out of control and disruptive to the parts of the show that I like. 

 

I was never all that bothered by the minor backstories in the earlier seasons (except for the repeated, colossally lame and ultimately failed attempts at giving Scotty an adversarial love interest), but these episodes were just way over the top with all of the cop stories. I guess it doesn't help that I wasn't watching them in order/hadn't seen all of the season 6 episodes so I had no idea what was actually happening with this guy that Lily was being stalked by (? that she ended up killing, I think? Not even sure and don't care.) 

 

Given this turn and with all the ratings problems they had with sports running overtime, I guess I'm not surprised it was cancelled. Still a bummer because I did love the original concept and execution, and honestly, it's the type of show that could have gone on a good long time with that original formula. Wish they hadn't tried to make it so much about running storylines about the main characters instead of the stand-alone stories that could have contributed to a very long shelf life. 

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I always wondered how this shows take on the Cleveland kidnapping case or other real life cases would have been had it stayed on.  I still imagine that Scotty just left Philadelphia and moved to New York (since the actor is on L&O:SVU after Lily decided to go work for the feds.  

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(edited)

I've been digging through a bunch of these on ION, through Season 4. My favorites of the ones I've seen:

 

Season 1:

A Time to Hate

Fly Away

The Letter

The Boy in the Box

 

Season 2:

Factory Girls

Daniela

Wishing

 

Season 3:

Detention

Debut

Willkommen

Beautiful Little Fool

 

Season 4:

Baby Blues

Saving Sammy

Fireflies

Forever Blue

The Goodbye Room

Edited by SilverShadow
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(edited)

So I was on ION's site and it looks like, after the last episode at 2:00 a.m. coming up, that's it for the show. Cold Case is no longer on ION's list of shows on their site. (Other rested shows [Psyche, Rookie Blue, Law & Order: Criminal Intent], for example, are still listed. So I guess the change with Cold Case being deleted is a permanent thing unlike the others and as it was still on the site as of a week or so ago, I guess the site edit was recent.)

 

Soon, the channel will just be Criminal Minds, Ghost Whisperer, and The Listener all the time.

Edited by WendyR72
Edited for clarity; it always helps!
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Nooooooo!!!!!

 

I was so excited that last night's marathon ended with the series finale, figuring that meant next week I could plop down with a bunch of season one episodes.  I even changed a Friday "go for a walk and catch up" plan to Thursday because of it.  (Yes, I have a problem.)

 

I'm kicking myself for not recording during one of ION's many rotations through the series.  This is major comfort television for me and I should have made sure I could just pop in a disc when the urge struck; I guess I got spoiled by how long it had been on.

 

Hopefully another network will pick it up at some point, or ION will again, but the music licensing costs for the syndicated package may be getting pretty high this many years removed (I have no idea what the contract provides for, so this is just idle wondering, but some have time limits).  I liked when TNT aired this and Without a Trace in blocks.  I don't particularly care for the latter, because the personal storylines were even more annoying than those on Cold Case, but certain seasons were good and the two shows paired nicely.

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Hopefully another network will pick it up at some point, or ION will again, but the music licensing costs for the syndicated package may be getting pretty high this many years removed (I have no idea what the contract provides for, so this is just idle wondering, but some have time limits).  I liked when TNT aired this and Without a Trace in blocks.  I don't particularly care for the latter, because the personal storylines were even more annoying than those on Cold Case, but certain seasons were good and the two shows paired nicely.

 

I do think the fact that the show was music heavy has hurt it in the long run. What mystifies me is that TPTB never planned for the future. This show debuted in the relatively modern era (2004), a time when TV on DVD was becoming the norm and music clearance was a known issue. I could see if this was an '80s or '90s show. Then the rights problem would make sense. But not as late as 2004.

 

Probably also why the show hasn't yet made it to DVD, never mind syndication costs. (Although some shows never thought that would be released  or re-released with music intact [The Wonder Years and WKRP in Cincinnati, respectively] actually have as has China Beach, so maybe there's hope.) The show perhaps could have been released with changed music, but in WKRP's case, when it was first released like that, sales tanked, so...

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I was going to use the ION website’s feedback form to cast a vote for picking up Cold Case again, but you can’t submit your feedback unless you fill in a bunch of personal information.  (Yeah, I can just make something up, but it’s the principle.)

 

While there, I checked out ION’s new schedule.  Criminal Minds airs 36 times in one week!  One day is nothing but Ghost Whisperer, and another is nothing but Blue Bloods.

 

(I either don’t care about or, in the case of Blue Bloods, hate every show they’re airing now.)

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It could be an error, but in searching for it on the TV Guide app (...I'm out of town and use it at hotels) and Cold Case comes back on Ion's schedule on Tuesday, June 9, at 6 pm. Fingers crossed!

I frantically managed most of the last series run on Wednesdays and Fridays (clearing off my DVR each week was a real challenge), but didn't catch all of the first and second season. So I was looking forward to finishing S7 and crossing the last episodes off my list. (On the upside, it's been nice not having ("having") to binge-watch this week to make room for 14 new hours on Friday, but it sounds like due to music licensing it's a hard show to get your hands on elsewhere.)

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It could be an error, but in searching for it on the TV Guide app (...I'm out of town and use it at hotels) and Cold Case comes back on Ion's schedule on Tuesday, June 9, at 6 pm. Fingers crossed!

 

ION's schedule for that date lists the usual explosion of Criminal Minds; no Cold Case.  I figured that was an error, since it would have been weird for ION to remove CC from its list of shows (not just from the schedule) if it was just going on hiatus for a couple of weeks, but I had to check.  Damn.

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