Cold Case

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Cold Case
Cold Case intertitle
Format	Police procedural
Created by	Meredith Stiehm
Starring	Kathryn Morris Danny Pino John Finn Jeremy Ratchford Thom Barry Tracie Thoms
Country of origin	United States
No. of seasons	5
No. of episodes	104 (List of episodes)
Production
Running time	approx. 45 minutes
Broadcast
Original channel	CBS
Picture format	480i (SDTV), 1080i (HDTV)
Original run	September 28, 2003 – present
External links
Official website
IMDb profile
TV.com summary

Philadelphia Portal

Cold Case is an American police procedural television series revolving around a fictional Philadelphia Police Department division that specializes in investigating cold cases. The series first aired in September 2003 on CBS. Its fifth season began on September 23, 2007.

Format

Each episode of Cold Case begins with a flashback scene informing viewers of the year in which it takes place. A set of characters are revealed in a seemingly mundane situation. The viewer is then shown the corpse of the victim as he or she was found. It is always one of the people introduced in the previous, seemingly innocent, scene. The show then flashes to the present day. The detectives of the homicide division of the Philadelphia police department are told there is reason for further investigation of an old case gone cold, for one of several reasons: new evidence has come to light, the victim’s physical remains have been discovered, a witness has decided to come forward, etc. All or any of these cause the detectives to give the cold case a new look and begin researching the victim and interviewing their friends, acquaintances, and family. The friends, family, co-workers, etc. who were introduced in the flashback at the beginning of the episode have aged (in one case, a six-year-old witness to the crime is interviewed by the detectives when she is 94). Gradually, the detectives gather enough evidence to determine the killer, who most of the time is then arrested. At the end of each episode, the detectives mark the case solved, while an apparition of the murdered person looks on. The problems in the detectives' personal lives are also featured, though the main emphasis of every story is on the victim and the search for the killer. Most notably, Detective Lilly Rush grew up in a severely dysfunctional, poverty-stricken home with an alcoholic mother. Cold Case is also notable for double-casting: it will cast a young actor for the flashback sequences and an older actor for the shots in the present, and cut back and forth between the two, to show how the character has aged. The episode "One Night" managed to triple-cast one character, showing him in the present day, when he committed his murder, and when he was a teenager. If the murder takes place within the recent past, i.e. one to five years earlier, the same actors are often used with subtle changes in appearance and with a few exceptions (i.e: infants to adolescents). If the murder takes place in the distant past, i.e. 15 years plus, different actors with a few exceptions are used (e.g. adult persons who are not likely to age significantly other than gray hairs and/or weight gain/loss).

Victims and end scenes

Typically once the murderer is revealed, their confession is depicted in one final flashback in which the murder is shown. The episode then ends with a montage (with no dialogue) of the killer(s) being arrested, as well as the fates of other characters from that era, showing all of them in their current appearance, but briefly flashing back to their younger selves, and finally Detective Lilly Rush or someone else close to the victim seeing a vision of the grateful-looking victim standing nearby, who then quickly vanishes (this aspect of the show is left up to viewer interpretation: depending on the viewer's perspective it could be Rush's imagination or it could be representative of the victims themselves). There have been numerous variations on this pattern however. In some cases the final vision is seen by another member of the team because of a connection to the victim. Other visions are seen by someone close to the victim. Some cases do not end with an arrest or vision at all. In the first season "Hitchiker" episode, the culprit sees the victim both as a teenager and as an adult, the only time this type of vision occurs. This latter because the victim is an infant or the former because the actual culprits are already deceased. The fifth season episode "Family 8108" had the rare distinction of ending with an original monologue instead of a song during the closing montage.

Notable Unlikeable Victims

Generally the majority of the victims are shown to be good people or truly innocent victims thus making the endings, in which the victims are seen one last time, rewarding for the victim's family, the investigating officers, and the viewer. There have been occasions where the victims were depicted as rather unlikable or even despicable: such as a sexual predator, child molester, a greedy manipulator, spree killers, an abusive parent, or a date-rapist, making the endings somewhat bittersweet.

Exceptions to some murder scenes

The scenes showing the actual murders are the theme in most episodes with some notable exceptions, such as the Season 1 episode, "Our Boy Is Back", the Season 1 Finale "Lover's Lane", the Season 3 episode "Death Penalty: Final Appeal" and the Season 4 Episode "Offender". In those scenes the viewers see the immediate events precipitating the murder but then the screen fades out just as the final act is about to happen. This is due to the heinousness of the underlying crime which is included with the murder. In the aforementioned episodes the crime is usually rape or sexual assault of an innocent child or woman. One exception is the episode "Revenge" where the victim, who died of drowning, is last seen swimming across the water in an effort to get to his family. That scene fades as he is swimming into the night.

Directorial styles

Each episode, during the flashbacks, will feature a different style of direction, whether it be the colors, lighting, shading, or camera angles. Flashbacks from an era such as the 1950s have been shown in black and white, an episode with a case from 1939 featured sepia-toned flashbacks, one episode set in the '80s used a split-screen style, while a case from 1990 ("Sleepover") was shot with an effect that resembled a home video camera. In the oldest cold case ever investigated by the team, a 1919 homicide, the flashbacks are seen in the vaudeville reel film style used at that time with a fade-in opening sequence. Some popular films have served as inspiration for several episodes such as "Disco Inferno" (Saturday Night Fever), "Yo, Adrian" (Rocky), "Detention" (The Breakfast Club), "Dog Day Afternoons" (Dog Day Afternoon), "Greed" (Wall Street), "The Sleepover" (Heathers), "Saving Patrick Bubley" (Saving Private Ryan), "The Key" (The Ice Storm), "Forever Blue" (Brokeback Mountain), "Knuckle Up" (Fight Club), "Blood on the Tracks" (The Big Chill), "Shuffle, Ball, Change" (Footloose and Flashdance), "Willkommen" (Cabaret), and "Stand Up And Holler" (Mean Girls). The episode "Bad Night" heavily referenced the movie Halloween as having possibly inspired a murder. The episode "Creatures of The Night" is particularly significant in that it used the same segues, lighting, and acting styles in its flashbacks as The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Two episodes featured flashbacks shown in widescreen format. Season 3's "Family" had flashbacks that were presented with a 1.85:1 aspect ratio while Season 4's "Blood on the Tracks" had flashbacks with a 2.35:1 aspect ratio.

Music

The show's theme song is an excerpt from "Nara" by E.S. Posthumus with an introduction by series composer Michael A. Levine. Besides Levine's original music, each episode makes extensive use of era-appropriate music for flashbacks to the year in question. In an episode of a murder in 1994 (Detention), the episode featured references to Kurt Cobain and added grunge songs from the same era, a genre of music that Cobain had popularized. The fifth season premiere, also dealing with a 1994 murder, would later feature songs by Nirvana, which Cobain fronted. Seven different episodes exclusively used the music of one particular musican or band. These include Johnny Cash, John Mellencamp , Bruce Springsteen, Tim McGraw, U2, Nirvana, and Bob Dylan, respectively. Also, there has been an episode featuring all Rocky Horror Picture Show songs, as well as an episode with all Cabaret songs. One episode featured music from an era different than the one featured in the flashbacks. The episode "Blood on the Tracks", about former hippies turned yuppies, took place in 1981 but featured Bob Dylan's music from the 60s. The episode that was taken the farthest back in Cold Case was the story of a suffragette who was murdered in 1919. This episode also features popular music of that year. Rarely is the same song ever heard twice on the show. This has only happened three times. The first time being the fourth season episode Forever Blue which replayed The Monkees song "Daydream Believer" first heard in the third season episode Debut. This was due to the fact that "Daydream Believer" was a last-minute replacement as the producers had originally intended to use "Happy Together" by The Turtles in Forever Blue. The second time a song was replayed was in the fifth season episode Justice which used Duran Duran's "Save a Prayer" first heard in the second season episode Schadenfreude. Finally, "Natural Blues" by Moby was featured in Season 2's Discretion and also the closing scenes of Wunderkind from this season. The song "Landslide" has been used at the end of two episodes, though not the same version: A cover by The Smashing Pumpkins was used in the episode Detention while the original version recorded by Fleetwood Mac was used at the end of the episode Fireflies. In the 2006 season, the music aired on the show during some episodes has been sponsored by XM Satellite Radio, where music from the various years covered can be heard on XM's decade channels.

Characters

From left to right: Det. Nick Vera, Lt. John Stillman, Det. Will Jeffries, Det. Lilly Rush and Det. Scotty Valens

Main article: List of Cold Case characters

• Det. Lilly Rush played by Kathryn Morris
• Det. Scotty Valens played by Danny Pino (Rush's partner)
• Lt. John Stillman played by John Finn (Rush's mentor)
• Det. Will Jeffries played by Thom Barry
• Det. Nick Vera played by Jeremy Ratchford
• Det. Kat Miller played by Tracie Thoms (Season 3-)
• Det. Chris Lassing played by Justin Chambers (Episodes 1-4 of Season 1)
• Det. Josie Sutton played by Sarah Brown (Episodes 1-5 of Season 3)

CSI: NY crossover

On May 2, 2007 one of the Cold Case detectives made a rare appearance outside of the series. In the CSI: NY episode "Cold Reveal", Danny Pino appeared as his Cold Case character Scotty Valens as he traveled to New York when it was discovered that CSI Stella Bonasera (Melina Kanakaredes) was connected to an unsolved case. Some of the CSI shows have crossed over with each other at some point (CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and CSI: Miami, CSI: Miami and CSI: NY) but this is the first time that any one of the three shows has interacted with a character from Cold Case and acknowledged that they all exist in the same world. The CSI shows and Cold Case all air on CBS and are produced by Jerry Bruckheimer.

Controversy

In 1998, a similar Canadian series called Cold Squad debuted, several years before Cold Case. Fans of Cold Squad accuse the American series of copying the basic premise and characters of the Canadian version, and at one point the creators of Cold Squad launched legal action against the makers of Cold Case. Both shows air in Canada (and on the same network, CTV). Waking the Dead is a similar British TV series about a "Cold Case Squad", which first aired in 2000. Another BBC series, New Tricks, also features cold cases being reinvestigated by a team of retired detectives led by a woman. The series was first shown on TV in 2003 and stars Amanda Redman, Dennis Waterman, James Bolam, and Alun Armstrong.

Real life cases

A 2004 episode based on the "Boy in the Box"^[1], a still-unsolved 1957 Philadelphia homicide, was criticized for giving viewers the false impression that the actual case had been solved. This was not the only episode to use real events as inspiration. Some other episodes include:

• The pilot episode "Look Again" was based on the Martha Moxley murder case in Greenwich, Connecticut in 1975.
• The 1st season episode "Our Boy Is Back" was based on the actual case of Troy Graves - the infamous Center City Rapist - who raped a total of 12 women between 1997 and 2001, one of whom was murdered. The victim was based on the real-life murder victim Shannon Scheiber.
• The 1st season episode "Love Conquers Al" was based on the 1995 murder of Adrianne Jones at the hands of Texas Navy cadets Diane Zamora and David Graham.
• The 1st season episode "Disco Inferno" was based on the Station nightclub fire and the Happy Land fire.
• The 1st season episode "Late Returns" was loosely based on the 2001 Chandra Levy murder case.
• The 1st season episode "Maternal Instincts" was based on the real-life cold case of Cathleen Krauseneck.
• The 1st season finale "Lover's Lane" was loosely based on the tragic murder of 9-year-old Krystal Dawn Steadman.^[2] The location of the crime may have been based on the attack Bryan Calvin Hartnell, 20, and Cecelia Ann Shepard, 22 in 1969. They were victims of the Zodiac Killer.
• The 2nd season episodes "Mind Hunters" and "The Woods" were based on serial killer the case of Robert Hansen, who kidnapped and killed 15 women between 1980 and 1983.
• The 2nd season episode "Schadenfreude" was based on the Sam Sheppard case.
• The 2nd season episode "Strange Fruit" featured shades of the Emmett Till murder in 1955, with even the victim's father comparing his son's murder to that of Emmet Till. Emmett Till would later be mentioned in the 4th season episode "Fireflies".
• The 4th season premiere "Rampage" was based on and references the Columbine High School massacre.
• The 4th season episode "Lonely Hearts" was based on Martha Beck and Raymond Fernandez, a.k.a. "The Lonely Hearts Killers", who conned and killed women in the 1940s.^[3]
• The 4th season episode "Blackout" was based on the murder of Florence Unger in 2003.^[4]
• The 4th season finale "Stalker" was loosely based on the murder of the Huling family in Minnesota in 1978.^[5]
• The 5th season premiere "Thrill Kill" was based on the West Memphis Three case.
• The 5th season episode called "Boy Crazy" is loosely based on the Brandon Teena Case.

Episodes

Main article: List of Cold Case episodes

U.S. television ratings

Seasonal rankings (based on average total viewers per episode) of Cold Case on CBS. Note: Each U.S. network television season starts in late September and ends in late May, which coincides with the completion of May sweeps.

+Current Position

References

External links

• Warner Bros. Cold Case official site
• "Cold Case" at Yahoo! TV
• Cold Case - TV Wiki at Wikia
• Cold Case : Music at have-dog.com
• Cold Case Music at TuneFind.com