Cold Case - General Discussion

[ShellsandCheese]

I really need this show on DVD! I can’t believe the music licensing rights are still such a huge issue this day and age. For those of you who have been able to watch via the Roku Channel or SMART, is the original music in the episodes? I tried watching Queer as Folk when it was on Netflix(US) and I gave up midway through season one because the music was different and awful. LOL. 

[Raja]

5 hours ago, ShellsandCheese said:

I really need this show on DVD! I can’t believe the music licensing rights are still such a huge issue this day and age. For those of you who have been able to watch via the Roku Channel or SMART, is the original music in the episodes? I tried watching Queer as Folk when it was on Netflix(US) and I gave up midway through season one because the music was different and awful. LOL. 

Yes they use the original music on the SMART TV syndicated episodes 

[Percysowner]

On 7/19/2020 at 7:05 PM, ShellsandCheese said:

I really need this show on DVD! I can’t believe the music licensing rights are still such a huge issue this day and age. For those of you who have been able to watch via the Roku Channel or SMART, is the original music in the episodes? I tried watching Queer as Folk when it was on Netflix(US) and I gave up midway through season one because the music was different and awful. LOL. 

Roku Channel has the original music as well. It's great being able to see these again.

[Jaded]

If you use an Amazon Fire device The Roku Channel is now available through their app offerings. I was surprised to see this show available through it since I didn't know about this thread and remember the show being discussed in other ones at times.

[Bastet]

20 hours ago, Jaded said:

If you use an Amazon Fire device The Roku Channel is now available through their app offerings.

Cool - I would never have thought to look for the Roku channel on my Amazon device, so thanks for the heads up.  I promptly downloaded it and watched the first three episodes.  I'm re-watching a couple too many things at once right now, but it was too tempting to resist.

One of the many things I love about "Gleen" (the second episode, where the firefighter blew up his wife with a homemade bomb in a box of laundry detergent) is how Lorraine, the fiancée, is not presented as a ditz who insists he couldn't have done it.  She has to be shocked, but she knows - from the evidence, from the fact Gwen is accusing her own father when she's always believed him a hero and thought the killer was the sex offender, and probably from realizing some red flags in his behavior - it has to be true, and thus stays with Gwen to support her, rather than running over to get in his face about all this.

"Gleen" is one of my favorite first season episodes because of the performance by the actor playing Gwen; she so perfectly portrays how eternally screwed up Gwen is by having seen her blown-up mom, and then by how further traumatized she is by realizing her dad did it and she can provide evidence against him.  What a sympathetic character - I'm especially touched by her first scene, when she says she just turned 25, which is the age her mom was when she died, and she never realized until now just how young that is.  And the scene when she's there to tell the cops about her dad's telephone equipment, and she says half to them and half to herself, "If I'm going to do this, I'm going to have to kill myself afterward."

[Tdoc72]

Roku channel peeps—Cold Case is leaving at the end of this month.  😥

I only found it was on last month. So now I’m trying to binge the last 4 seasons before then. 

I watched this in its original run and loved it. They did a great job w/both casting and the music. 

Edited October 14, 2020 by Tdoc72

[Bastet]

14 hours ago, Tdoc72 said:

Roku channel peeps—Cold Case is leaving at the end of this month.  😥

Well, crap; I really wanted to do a full re-watch!  (I've only watched twelve episodes so far; I'm not going to get through the whole series in a couple of weeks.)

I thought I'd seen the early episodes several times each (I used to watch this a lot when ION ran marathons), but I didn't recognize "Hitchhiker" at all. 

Watching "A Time to Hate" for the umpteenth time made it official: I am incapable of watching the scene between the mother and the boyfriend in her hospital room or the closing scene without tearing up.

Also official: The couple in "Love Conquers Al" are two of the most batshit crazy people ever.  Good grief!

[Bastet]

Boy, binge-watching really brings home how every episode follows the same formula, and the perps on this series are almost as bad as those on Murder, She Wrote for confessing in the face of a theory and two pieces of circumstantial evidence.  And the personal storylines suck.  It's really saved by the music and the flashbacks (the older the better).

There is rarely an episode that doesn't have at least one actor who later went on to appear in an episode of Major Crimes (I've seen every episode of that show numerous times, so that's what I associate the actors with, even where I know I've seen them in other things, too).  And then in "The Plan", I could not for the life of me come up with where I recognized the killer from.  When I looked it up the next morning, it was Crashdown from Battlestar Galactica.  It's kind of a fun little game, spotting people I know from other shows.

[Bastet]

Oh my - the actor who played the innocent man executed in "Death Penalty: Final Appeal" (Michael Jace) is doing 40 to life for killing his wife in front of their children, eight years after that episode aired.  (He confessed.)  He had abused his first wife, too.  Yikes; I'm glad I didn't find that out until after I re-watched the episode (each day, I check IMDb for any trivia about the episodes I watched the night before), because I will never again be able to get caught up in his sympathetic performance!

[Tdoc72]

Cold Case is still on Roku. Sorry for the false alarm. For all of October, there was a green banner that said ‘leaving at the end of the month’.  It’s all I watched in Oct so I could finish the last 3 seasons. Last night about 2:00am (now it’s Nov 1) I notice the banner is gone & the show’s still there. 🤷🏻‍♀️

[kathyk24]

On 10/14/2020 at 5:04 PM, Bastet said:

Well, crap; I really wanted to do a full re-watch!  (I've only watched twelve episodes so far; I'm not going to get through the whole series in a couple of weeks.)

I thought I'd seen the early episodes several times each (I used to watch this a lot when ION ran marathons), but I didn't recognize "Hitchhiker" at all. 

Watching "A Time to Hate" for the umpteenth time made it official: I am incapable of watching the scene between the mother and the boyfriend in her hospital room or the closing scene without tearing up.

Also official: The couple in "Love Conquers Al" are two of the most batshit crazy people ever.  Good grief!

Love Conquers All and Our Boy is back were based on real crimes. The female killer in Love Conquers all is named Diane Zamora. The killer in Our Boy is back is named Troy Graves.

[Bastet]

On 11/1/2020 at 12:19 PM, Tdoc72 said:

Cold Case is still on Roku. Sorry for the false alarm. For all of October, there was a green banner that said ‘leaving at the end of the month’.  It’s all I watched in Oct so I could finish the last 3 seasons. Last night about 2:00am (now it’s Nov 1) I notice the banner is gone & the show’s still there. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Yet when they air the commercial promoting their crime shows, Cold Case isn't included.  So I'm still binge-watching just in case it does get yanked soon; I'm a few episodes into season six.

For all the show's myriad recurring faults - police misconduct brushed off, the characters talking about Person of Interest B in front of Person of Interest A (which they keep doing even after it results in a vigilante father trying to throw someone off a roof!), the godsawful personal storylines (I think Lilly and Scotty were in some sort of contest for the most ridiculous love life), the formulaic nature, etc. - I've been struck by how the final scenes are not just cool musical montages (since the music is a good 80% of the show's appeal) but terrific statements on the futility of violence.

Especially when watching so many of them in such a short time span, those endings really drive home how many lives are destroyed by one act.  The killers' intents vary - everything from accidental to premeditated - but we consistently see that the life taken away is only the start of the damage; the victim's loved ones, the killer's loved ones, the witnesses, those who had a temporary beef with the victim and never got the chance to resolve it, the killer, those who killed in retaliation for the original homicide and their own circle of loved ones ... a whole bunch of lives are all irrevocably altered.

I can get distracted by calculating how quickly most of these cases won't hold up as soon as the arrestees secure legal representation, but by ending with the arrest and cuing up the montage showing all the folks the episode was about, I'm quickly shifted away from the legalities and back to the people.

[Bastet]

I finished the series last night, and I think I'm rather glad it didn't go on for another season.  I'd have continued enjoying the music (if they could still afford it) and the flashbacks, but it feels like they intended to let Scotty get away with murder, and we'd have Lilly's awful sister* around all the time because of the baby.

*The only name I dreaded seeing in the guest cast credits more than Daniel Baldwin's was Nicki Aycox's.

[jah1986]

On 11/1/2020 at 3:19 PM, Tdoc72 said:

Cold Case is still on Roku. Sorry for the false alarm. For all of October, there was a green banner that said ‘leaving at the end of the month’.  It’s all I watched in Oct so I could finish the last 3 seasons. Last night about 2:00am (now it’s Nov 1) I notice the banner is gone & the show’s still there. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Now the banner in red is "back by popular demand" I guess that means we don't have to rush through all the episodes. 

[Tdoc72]

On 11/11/2020 at 8:21 AM, jah1986 said:

Now the banner in red is "back by popular demand" I guess that means we don't have to rush through all the episodes. 

Maybe I was the popular demand b/c I tweeted Roku?  🤣

[ljenkins782]

On 11/11/2020 at 8:21 AM, jah1986 said:

Now the banner in red is "back by popular demand" I guess that means we don't have to rush through all the episodes. 

I was so disappointed when I saw the "leaving this month" and so excited when it allegedly returned by popular demand. That was a short span of time, so either they changed their minds or there was some kind of crazy outcry.

It's interesting to me that they run the whole series here, for the other shows that I like on the Roku Channel, they only do 2 seasons at a time. 

[Magnumfangirl]

I've been watching this occasionally and the leaving this month banner reappeared in December.   It's not a show I can binge because it's pretty dark.  There's no way I'll make it to the end by January, maybe they'll reconsider again or it will land on one of the others.

[Magnumfangirl]

It's gone from the Roku channel as of Jan 1.  Anybody know if it's streaming anywhere else?

[Dr.OO7]

On 11/9/2020 at 5:28 PM, Bastet said:

finished the series last night, and I think I'm rather glad it didn't go on for another season.  I'd have continued enjoying the music (if they could still afford it) and the flashbacks, but it feels like they intended to let Scotty get away with murder, and we'd have Lilly's awful sister* around all the time because of the baby

Technically, it could have, but the formula had gotten stale, and the cases weren't very "cold" anymore, and the whole thing just seemed very disorganized, with all the personal and professional upheaval going on.

[MarylandGirl]

The police in my county just solved a 40-year-old cold case with a rape and murder (from DNA). My first thought was, "Oh, this would have made a great Cold Case ep!"

[joanne3482]

On 5/27/2021 at 3:32 PM, MarylandGirl said:

The police in my county just solved a 40-year-old cold case with a rape and murder (from DNA). My first thought was, "Oh, this would have made a great Cold Case ep!"

When I was in college a young woman was murderd in a bathroom. They just solved it thanks to one of those DNA sites. His aunt was in the system. 

Cold Case is now in HBO Max. I've been sucked in all day. So many guest stars I recognize from other things! 

[Black Knight]

I've been in the same rabbit hole since yesterday and yes, was really interested to see some people who weren't known then but went on to big things. Bellamy Young (who played the taxi dancer in "The End of the World") and Justin Hartley (who played the rapist in "Justice") were two I came across on my binge. Loved Vera's look of contempt at Hartley's ghost at the end BTW.

One thing about this show is that the killers were usually not sociopaths or psychopaths, but people who lashed out in a moment of frustration or desperation, very often at someone they loved. (I remember this show being snarkily referred to as "Your Best Friend Will Kill You" on the old TWoP forum.) The thing is, leaning on this trope made sense because, given the nature of the cold cases, there usually wasn't going to be the physical evidence needed to solve the case. It was largely about just finding enough to give the killer, who had been feeling guilty for however long, enough of a push to finally confess and get it off their chest. That's also what made this show especially difficult to watch, though, because it meant the victims were mostly really likable/sympathetic people, whom we saw a lot of in the flashbacks.

I actually liked Rush's messy hair and I was glad that the show went back to that instead of the hair down as she wore it for a while. It's so rare to see portrayed on a Hollywood TV show or movie, but there are women outside the "crazy old lady" and "eccentric artist" stereotypes who just don't care. Rush also probably found it useful in making people underestimate her a little.

I feel like kids and teenagers should watch "The Sleepover," or at least the part where the killer sobs, "I didn't know you live through it."

[ljenkins782]

On 6/5/2021 at 6:53 PM, joanne3482 said:

When I was in college a young woman was murderd in a bathroom. They just solved it thanks to one of those DNA sites. His aunt was in the system. 

Cold Case is now in HBO Max. I've been sucked in all day. So many guest stars I recognize from other things! 

Ah, I love you! I was lamenting the loss of this show from the Roku Channel just yesterday and wondering if it might have shown up somewhere else on streaming. And I do have HBO Max, I'm so excited to fall asleep to my favorite Cold Cases again.

Quote

I feel like kids and teenagers should watch "The Sleepover," or at least the part where the killer sobs, "I didn't know you live through it."

That episode is painful in a lot of ways. The queen bee's secret home life, those terrifying parents, poor Rita's optimism about the future and yes, that moment from the killer at the end. Very sad episode, I have trouble rewatching this one.

[Black Knight]

The one episode I have never been able to rewatch is the one with the Asian immigrant couple (I don't remember more specifically, it's been so many years) who were forced to degrade themselves by kissing that guy's shoes and then he killed them anyway. It's such a painful death scene to begin with, and then how solemn their ghosts were made me feel like they still hadn't found any peace. Usually the ghosts smile or give a "well done" kind of nod. The only two other exceptions that come to mind (though there were probably at least a few more) were of people whose killers got away with it and so they were understandably grim: Justin Hartley's rapist whom I mentioned above, and Laura Allen's character, the woman who was killed by her politician boyfriend but his sister (and ex-lover) took the rap for him.

Oh, one more: The little girl who was unintentionally killed by her brother. I could certainly see why her ghost wasn't happy with the results of the investigation either, since her brother's been arrested and her parents are devastated all over again.

[MarylandGirl]

1 hour ago, ljenkins782 said:

That episode is painful in a lot of ways. The queen bee's secret home life, those terrifying parents, poor Rita's optimism about the future and yes, that moment from the killer at the end. Very sad episode, I have trouble rewatching this one.

 

29 minutes ago, Black Knight said:

The one episode I have never been able to rewatch is the one with the Asian immigrant couple (I don't remember more specifically, it's been so many years) who were forced to degrade themselves by kissing that guy's shoes and then he killed them anyway. It's such a painful death scene to begin with, and then how solemn their ghosts were made me feel like they still hadn't found any peace. Usually the ghosts smile or give a "well done" kind of nod. The only two other exceptions that come to mind (though there were probably at least a few more) were of people whose killers got away with it and so they were understandably grim: Justin Hartley's rapist whom I mentioned above, and Laura Allen's character, the woman who was killed by her politician boyfriend but his sister (and ex-lover) took the rap for him.

Yes, those are both particularly brutal episodes. Others I can't bring myself to rewatch are Glued, The Boy in the Box, Daniela, Wishing, Ravaged, The Promise, and Perfect Day.

[Black Knight]

Daniela and A Perfect Day have such beautiful ending montages that they are always near the top of my rewatch list even though what goes before is so painful. Daniela's ending montage is my all-time CC favorite.

(Though I will also admit to having an occasional snicker of amusement imagining how the A Perfect Day "then" and "now" actors must have been frantically scrambling around out of view to pull off that unbroken shot. Usually CC took the easy way of panning the camera to a person or object in the foreground, so that they could just stitch the shots with the different actors together in editing. But that episode had a director who hadn't previously worked on CC, and she must have wanted to make an impression. She certainly did: CC ultimately had her direct an additional seven episodes.)

[methodwriter85]

3 hours ago, ljenkins782 said:

That episode is painful in a lot of ways. The queen bee's secret home life, those terrifying parents, poor Rita's optimism about the future and yes, that moment from the killer at the end. Very sad episode, I have trouble rewatching this one.

The episode is based on the absolutely horrific Shanda Sharer case from 1991 which is even more haunting.

There has been so many recent cold cases that have been solved because of DNA websites and I always think of the show when I think of cases like Buckskin Girl (Marcia King) or the Golden State Killer.

Edited June 8, 2021 by methodwriter85

[Black Knight]

I just read the Wikipedia page for the Sharer case, which I only vaguely recalled. I see where Cold Case is listed as a TV show that "loosely based" an episode on the Sharer case, but it seems like "loosely" is meant in the broadest possible sense. Other than that they were all high school girls, one was murdered, and one of the others lived in an abusive home (albeit a completely different kind of abusive home), there's nothing in common between the two. Thankfully, because the real-life case is way too dark for Cold Case. Maybe they started off intending to base it on the Sharer case and then had to completely change almost everything because of network hesitation. (I vaguely recall the L&O: SVU episode, which hewed a bit closer, but since that show doesn't generally depict the actual crimes, just tells viewers what was done to the victims, it can get away with more.)

Love Conquers Al was much more clearly based on the real life Adrianne Jones case.

It's been many years since I've watched Cold Case in order, and mentioning the Daniela montage before got me thinking: Is that the first episode in which a ghost really interacted with a living person? The other one I can think of is A Perfect Day, which came later. There is also Best Friends, arguably, but I think we're supposed to view that like the end of Titanic (both women are even named Rose!): Rose has just died on that bench, and Billie is welcoming her into the afterlife. So we are seeing two ghosts, not a living woman and a dead woman.

[Bastet]

4 hours ago, Black Knight said:

I just read the Wikipedia page for the Sharer case, which I only vaguely recalled. I see where Cold Case is listed as a TV show that "loosely based" an episode on the Sharer case, but it seems like "loosely" is meant in the broadest possible sense.

Yes; one could say "Sleepover" is loosely based on just about any case of teenage girls killing another, including the Sharer murder (and, here, it was only one girl doing the killing all on her own).  As you said, the SVU episode got closer, with the motive (although, of course, they changed it to being about a boy rather than a girl), more extensive group action than in this one, prolonged attack, the stabbings, the trunk, and taking the victim's jewelry.

Unlike that SVU episode, this one got into the psycho abusive parenting angle, but only for one of the girls who didn't do it (where in the Sharer case, the ringleader and girl most involved in the murder was the one who'd grown up in horrifying circumstances).  It would be impossible for any one-hour crime drama episode to get into the crazy degree of abuse the multiple perpetrators in the Sharer case grew up in and how that affected everything from the commission of the crime to the charging to the sentencing to the parole decisions, though.

I doubt this episode was ever intended to be more similar to the Sharer case - most CC stories resembling real crimes took a basic set of facts or one particular aspect and then went off in their own direction (it wasn't as "ripped from the headlines" prone as L&O).

Edited June 8, 2021 by Bastet

[joanne3482]

I've been rewatching in order and I'm in the middle of season 2.  I loved a pre-Veronica Mars, Jason Dohring in The Plan. That was a good one.  I also really liked the Bronsky episode, which I know will be resolved later, with the guy who hunted women at night. 

I swear, even though I've seen them all (I think), I cry over half of them. It's especially sad when it is a loved one who does the killing in a "crime of passion." Like the factory episode where he killed his wife because she was changing and he hadn't and he was just angry. 

[ljenkins782]

12 hours ago, Bastet said:

Yes; one could say "Sleepover" is loosely based on just about any case of teenage girls killing another, including the Sharer murder (and, here, it was only one girl doing the killing all on her own).  As you said, the SVU episode got closer, with the motive (although, of course, they changed it to being about a boy rather than a girl), more extensive group action than in this one, prolonged attack, the stabbings, the trunk, and taking the victim's jewelry.

I doubt this episode was ever intended to be more similar to the Sharer case - most CC stories resembling real crimes took a basic set of facts or one particular aspect and then went off in their own direction (it wasn't as "ripped from the headlines" prone as L&O).

The Sharer case is one of the most horrifying stories I'd ever heard. I read about that one in the regular newspaper back when it happened and it stuck with me forever. I recently saw a true crime story about it and it was just as awful as I remembered.

I don't see a ton of similarity, so if this was based on that at all, "loosely based" is a generous description.

Cold Case has done some very faithful representations of some high profile cases, like the pilot episode being nearly identical to the Martha Moxley murder or the Love Conquers Al case being so similar to the Adrianne Jones case.

I had the first 5 seasons taped from TV for years and years, so with the streaming availability, I tend to gravitate toward seasons 6&7 just for the novelty.

It's very unfortunate how much time they spent on the Lily vs Stephen Baldwin storyline, it kinda blots out half of season 6.

I do love The Runaway Bunny as an episode, but the ending is absolutely infuriating. One that I recently rediscovered is Read Between the Lines, about a young foster girl who's an aspiring rapper. That one has a lot of fun early 90s details and features a very cute little Yara Shahidi (aka Zoey Johnson from Black-ish and Grown-ish) when she was much younger. 

 

[Black Knight]

8 hours ago, ljenkins782 said:

One that I recently rediscovered is Read Between the Lines, about a young foster girl who's an aspiring rapper. That one has a lot of fun early 90s details and features a very cute little Yara Shahidi (aka Zoey Johnson from Black-ish and Grown-ish) when she was much younger. 

Oh! That wasn't one of the ones I binged over the last couple of days, but I'll have to watch it now to see Yara as a young girl.

I know why I didn't rewatch it before, because all my favorites were episodes set further back in time. I was always disappointed at the start of an episode if the year showed as being in the 90s or 00s, i.e. near-indistinguishable from the present. But gosh, now we're 20-30 years out from those years. I should rewatch all those episodes now, they'll have a totally different feel!

[MarylandGirl]

I ended up watching Daniela again last night after reading these posts. You're right that it's a really powerful episode, and her dancing with the boyfriend at the end is touching. I was crying. (My husband happened to come downstairs, and I was like, "Everything is fine, just crying at this TV show!") I realized what made me so sad about the episode--it's that Daniela died alone, feeling she was rejected. If she was still even slightly alive when her boyfriend came back, enough to know that he still loved her, then it would have felt less sad to me. But the idea with the ending is that she eventually realized it.

I was also touched by her mother adding the more recent photo of her to the photo album of her childhood.

[Black Knight]

Yes, that's exactly how I viewed the ending too - that once Daniela entered the afterlife she knew the truth about how much her boyfriend loved her. He loved her all his life. And the moment with the mother accepting her daughter via the photo addition is also so wonderful to see. Daniela must know about that too.

[ljenkins782]

I love when the show introduces me to songs I didn't know or reminds me of songs I'd forgotten. The song they play at the tail end of Volunteers is Joe Cocker's I Shall Be Released, it's already a haunting song, but played over the last moments of those two young people, it's so sad.

ETA: 

Quote

Oh! That wasn't one of the ones I binged over the last couple of days, but I'll have to watch it now to see Yara as a young girl.

I know why I didn't rewatch it before, because all my favorites were episodes set further back in time. I was always disappointed at the start of an episode if the year showed as being in the 90s or 00s, i.e. near-indistinguishable from the present. But gosh, now we're 20-30 years out from those years. I should rewatch all those episodes now, they'll have a totally different feel!

Bonus 90s nostalgia for this episode, Kadeem Hardison (aka Dwayne Wayne from A Different World) plays the older version of a character called "Cosby". This was a good episode, but I didn't catch it the first time around and like you, probably wouldn't have been that interested because in '06/'07, the early 90s didn't seem far enough back.

Sadly, it's now far enough in the past that I'm hearing 90s songs on the oldies station. :( 

Also, on the topic of songs I'd forgotten, this one reminded me of Queen Latifah's 90s songs, those were fun to go back to.

Edited June 16, 2021 by ljenkins782

[GHScorpiosRule]

I enjoy the episodes from that took place at the start of the 20th century through the 70s. And  I don't always get who the killer was, correct.

However. If I see Chris Sarandon's name or Michael Nouri's, I know right away, their characters will be the killer.

Add me to the list that cannot ABIDE Christine. UGH.

Seeing John Finn as the leader/Lieutenant on this show was such a surprise, and I came to love him so much; considering the last role I saw him play was a dirty cop 13 years previous to the premiere of this show on original recipe Law & Order.

I was coming here to alert everyone to the fact that the show is now on HBO Max, but I see you all already knew that! And it's so refreshing to watch, UNEDITED, and not have to hear beeps, or blanks, or obviously cheesy words that ION or the other cable networks decided wouldn't pass their censor boards.

I really liked the character of Kite, the ADA that Lilly dated...briefly in season one.

One of the reasons I love "Disco Inferno" is seeing Thom Barry’s Will, dancing in slo mo at the end, and me, laughing hysterically when the victim, Benny, rebelliously tells his father that "Disco is here to stay".  😝😅🤣His father was right, It was a "fad".

Edited June 22, 2021 by GHScorpiosRule

[Bastet]

5 minutes ago, GHScorpiosRule said:

One of the reasons I love "Disco Inferno" is seeing Thomas Bray's Will, dancing in slo mo at the end,

I love when we get these little glimpses into the many facets of Will, like that he was a country radio DJ in college.

7 minutes ago, GHScorpiosRule said:

I really liked the character of Kite, the ADA that Lilly dated...briefly in season one.

The only non-annoying love interest she ever had.  I like that, when they ran into each other after they broke up, he asked her how the cats were doing.

10 minutes ago, GHScorpiosRule said:

However. If I see Chris Sarandon's name or Michael Nouri's, I know right away, their characters will be the killer.

I had to look Michael Nouri up, and, while I have never seen him as a killer in anything else, I have seen him play a couple of other total jerks, including a racist asshole congressperson on an episode of Major Crimes; I have hated numerous murderers on that show less than I hate that character.  So Nouri does a good job as a bad guy, I guess.

[joanne3482]

For me it is if I see Zeljko Ivanek, he's going to be a creepy murder guy. He was on an episode I watched last night 

[MarylandGirl]

2 hours ago, joanne3482 said:

For me it is if I see Zeljko Ivanek, he's going to be a creepy murder guy. He was on an episode I watched last night 

See, I associate him with Homicide, but he has played his share of creepy bad guys, including on that episode of Cold Case. Which was an interesting one, because it diverted from the usual formula.

[GHScorpiosRule]

Ugh. Now I know why I'm not a fan of the episodes for cases from the 1980s. "Family" from season three just gave me a freakin' headache. Every time they flashed back to 1988, the scenes were in boxes like The Brady Bunch. Who am I supposed to watch? Box 1? 2? 4? Nor am I fan of the speeding up the camera as if the scenes were in fast motion or something.

And the actress who played the teen mother, I remember from Law & Order: SVU, I think it was, where she played another pregnant teen; and of course a brainwashed teen in Criminal Intent.

But I'm enjoying the show and saying: Hey! I know that Actress/Actor from X show!

I hated the revisit to that serial killer George. I get he was a clerk in the department, but how did he get all that information on Lilly and the attack when she was 10? Or on Stillman's daughter? I hate shit like that.

And I much prefer Lilly's hair in that slightly mussy clip, then hanging loose.

Watching "Strange Fruit" and "Colors" is so difficult and brought me to tears.

[Bastet]

2 hours ago, GHScorpiosRule said:

I hated the revisit to that serial killer George.

Me too.  I always do; never in the history of crime dramas/procedurals has there been a recurring serial killer character that didn't cause me to throw my remote in disgust every time the actor's name popped up in the guest starring credits.

2 hours ago, GHScorpiosRule said:

But I'm enjoying the show and saying: Hey! I know that Actress/Actor from X show!

I enjoyed that when I did my re-watch, too.  It was interesting how many actors I recognized were people who went on to also guest star (or, in the case of Tony Denison, be part of the main cast) in Major Crimes.  I looked it up on IMDb, and it was something like 150 people who'd appeared on both shows.

[MarylandGirl]

13 minutes ago, Bastet said:

Me too.  I always do; never in the history of crime dramas/procedurals has there been a recurring serial killer character that didn't cause me to throw my remote in disgust every time the actor's name popped up in the guest starring credits.

I enjoyed that when I did my re-watch, too.  It was interesting how many actors I recognized were people who went on to also guest star (or, in the case of Tony Denison, be part of the main cast) in Major Crimes.  I looked it up on IMDb, and it was something like 150 people who'd appeared on both shows.

Agreed for the most part on returning serial killers.

I find that I need to look up the actor, and then I'm like, "That's it! That's where I know them from!" And some I feel weirdly invested in, like, "Oh, they've had a good career since then, good for them!"

For those who like this show, I do highly recommend "The Closer" and "Major Crimes." (though: returning serial killer warning!)

[joanne3482]

3 hours ago, GHScorpiosRule said:

I hated the revisit to that serial killer George. I get he was a clerk in the department, but how did he get all that information on Lilly and the attack when she was 10? Or on Stillman's daughter? I hate shit like that.

He had something to do with the witness statements. That's also how he found his own victims. I think he may have been digitizing them maybe. 

[Bastet]

6 hours ago, icemiser69 said:

They ought to just pay the rights for the music so it can be released on DVD. 

The DVDs would likely not sell enough to even get that cost back, let alone make a profit. 

At least it's on in syndication (which is covered under the original music license).

[Black Knight]

Musicians, like other creators, have every right to be paid for their work. But it seems like in these kinds of situations where there isn't a lot of money to be made at all, it would make more sense to change the compensation from a flat fee to a percentage of the total pot. Then they get something instead of nothing...in other words, if I were a musician I'd rather have the DVDs for this old show be released and get some money for it than not have the DVDs be released at all and thus get nothing. It's not like it encroaches into their other revenue streams - if I want to listen to a song I'm going to stream it or play it on my iPod, not put in a Cold Case DVD, find the episode, navigate to the point in it the song plays...

But the DVDs market has tanked anyway, thanks to streaming, and it's very unlikely to rebound, so it's basically moot now.

[Percysowner]

15 hours ago, Black Knight said:

Musicians, like other creators, have every right to be paid for their work. But it seems like in these kinds of situations where there isn't a lot of money to be made at all, it would make more sense to change the compensation from a flat fee to a percentage of the total pot. Then they get something instead of nothing...in other words, if I were a musician I'd rather have the DVDs for this old show be released and get some money for it than not have the DVDs be released at all and thus get nothing. It's not like it encroaches into their other revenue streams - if I want to listen to a song I'm going to stream it or play it on my iPod, not put in a Cold Case DVD, find the episode, navigate to the point in it the song plays...

But the DVDs market has tanked anyway, thanks to streaming, and it's very unlikely to rebound, so it's basically moot now.

A lot of times it isn't just the musicians. The record companies are a big stumbling block to use of music. Frankly, I wish that copyright law had been amended to set up reasonable payment for rebroadcast in any form of shows using licensed music. The creators of the show used the music for their creative vision, and they should be allowed to have that vision available to the public. It will never happen and deciding a fair, reasonable rate that won't break the bank for rebroadcast would be a difficult needle to thread.

[GodsBeloved]

On 6/21/2021 at 4:13 PM, GHScorpiosRule said:

One of the reasons I love "Disco Inferno" is seeing Thom Barry’s Will, dancing in slo mo at the end, and me, laughing hysterically when the victim, Benny, rebelliously tells his father that "Disco is here to stay".  😝😅🤣His father was right, It was a "fad".

I just watched this episode this morning and it may be my all time favorite Cold Case because of the music. Man this episode took me back. Good times, good times!

[joanne3482]

Just watched the episodes with Kenny Johnson as Joseph Shaw. I'm bummed he and Lily didn't work out. I liked them together even though how they got together was a bit sketchy.  

[GHScorpiosRule]

Just finished watching through season four, and, will Lilly have her mess of a hair in her face and flying about for the rest of the series? I really liked it when it was clipped.

I've never liked Scotty, but in "Saving Sammy", I liked him. How careful and understanding, and compassionate he was with Brent.

And in the season finale, "Stalker", Philly's SWAT had to be the most incompetent. That they had a clear shot at the murdering psycho, they hit him in the back, yet, he was still able to get up, grab Emily, and still walk, uninjured, was ridiculous.

I was so scared that they were going to kill off John Finn/Stillman. So glad they didn't.  I did remember Lilly getting shot--I think I was watching sporadically by season four, because the first two seasons were so much better and I was getting sick and tired of all the personal lives drama using up screen time that could have been spent on the cases.

I'd forgotten that they'd killed off Lilly's mother so quickly. I really enjoyed seeing Meredith Baxter again. I think she'd done the two movies about Betty Broderick before she was cast and guest starred here.

And I've found I don't care for the cases that are only a couple years to five years old. I like the ones from the 40s-80s.

It's so odd that for the cases that are 10 years old, some of the characters have the same actor, while others have a different one. Even for ones that are five years old. Makes no sense.

 

[GHScorpiosRule]

Season Five;

YAY! Lilly is back to clipping her hair up!

BOO! Will/Thom shaved off his ‘stache!!

OOOH! Mackenzie Phillips!!!