Cold CaseGlory Days
Original Air Date: Sept 28, 2008
Amanda - TwoCents Reviewer
amanda@thetwocentscorp.com
Ah, the glory days. Jeffries revisits some of his own in this episode, while the writers apparently really want us to believe that Lilly and Saccardo’s are still ahead of them. Meanwhile, the detectives are busy solving the murder of a star college football player back in 1973. So, without further ado…are you ready for some football?
Continue Reading...
{photo: Danny Feld/CBS]
Posts
Cold Case
ReplyDeleteGlory Days
Original Air Date: Sept 28, 2008
Amanda - TwoCents Reviewer
amanda@thetwocentscorp.com
Ah, the glory days. Jeffries revisits some of his own in this episode, while the writers apparently really want us to believe that Lilly and Saccardo’s are still ahead of them. Meanwhile, the detectives are busy solving the murder of a star college football player back in 1973. So, without further ado…are you ready for some football?
Our victim du jour is Mike “Bad Moon” McShane, a fun-loving small-town kid who lived for God, country, and Warrior football. At the beginning, he’s shown as extremely naïve and trusting, but, over the course of the episode, his illusions are shattered. He learns that the “vitamin shots” the team doctor, the curiously-nicknamed “Pez,” administers are actually steroids, which, by the day of his death, he’s learned have damaged his liver and done even worse harm to his best friend, Tom “Breeze” Bernard. Breeze claimed to have missed the championship game with an injured knee, but the truth was far more serious: he had a life-threatening kidney ailment made worse by the steroids. When Mike found out about this, Breeze begged him not to tell anyone, but Mike reported it to sleazy booster Steve Pratt. Pratt, a fellow small-town kid who played big-time football, served as Mike’s “father figure,” taking him out for weekly dinners and slipping him cash whenever he needed it. Because of his illness, Breeze was not only dismissed from the team, but lost his scholarship.
The suspect pool is large and plentiful, including Pratt, Coach Walters, Breeze, and the mysterious R. Borecki, the person for whom Mike signed out tickets the morning of his death. Borecki turns out to be a tutor who was helping football players cheat, but, after a brief conflict where Mike threatened to rat him out, the two reached an agreement and became friends. (The fact that Mike not only wrote his own paper on “Beowulf,” but got a B+ on it, certainly couldn’t have hurt). Mike challenged Coach Walters to put Breeze back on the team, since it was, in fact, the coach’s fault he hadn’t been able to play in the first place (y’know, “vitamin shots” and all), and Coach responded by threatening Mike’s own scholarship. Mike vowed to quit the team, which didn’t sit well with Coach. He sent Steve out to do his dirty work, which involved taking Mike for a spin in a brand-new Plymouth Duster and offering it to him as a form of hush money. When Mike refused, things quickly spiraled out of control, with Mike dropping the bombshell on Steve that he knew Steve wasn’t a star like he’d claimed to be, he was actually a bench-warmer, and therefore a joke. The enraged Steve inflicted the fatal blow to Mike’s head with a lead pipe, which just happened to be conveniently hanging out in a bucket near the stadium. Seriously, what is this, “Clue?”
The detectives were all in fine form this episode, although Lilly’s contribution seemed to be mostly in the form of awkward flirting with Eddie Saccardo, our friendly barbecue-loving Narcotics cop from last season. Lilly seems to have softened her opinion of him considerably, so instead of matching wits with him, her first scene with him involved nothing more than monosyllables and sentence fragments. At least Vera called her on it. (“Speak English much?”) Their only scene involving complete sentences took place at Jones’ Tavern, where Saccardo showed Lilly bar tricks and introduced her to the joy and wonder of appletinis. Dude, Saccardo. Appletinis? “Don’t knock good,” he tells her. Well, if this were good, I wouldn’t be knocking it.
Will “Tombstone” Jeffries did most of the case work, opening the job with a contribution from his old friend Al, who still has a record 40-yard-dash time and now owns a sports bar. Al brought forth the new evidence, but in a dramatic conversation with Jeffries, expressed doubts about whether solving one player’s murder was worth potentially taking down an entire college football program. Not surprisingly, Jeffries insists it was.
The other detectives were sparse; Stillman was hardly present at all (although…did he dye his hair?), Vera was mostly paired with Kat for a dig through vehicle registrations to try and track down that brand-new Duster Steve offered to Mike (resulting in a couple of humorous moments where Kat proclaimed Vera “evil” and Vera responded by later referring to Kat as his “assistant”). Scotty, meanwhile, demonstrated some hidden football talent, more car knowledge, and lingering bitterness about the 2004 Super Bowl (Patriots, baby!). It was nice to see the detectives out (“outie?” Kat’s got a point, Scotty…ARE you sixteen?) of the office, snarking each other at Jones’. Snark is highly welcome. More outie-of-office snark, I say. We also got a wonderful interrogation of Steve by Scotty and Lilly; when those two weave their web in the interview room, it’s a thing of beauty, and has been sorely missed.
Like last season’s finale, this episode didn’t really feel much like a premiere, more like a continuation. It had an odd feel to it; a bit rushed and disjointed, like they were trying to cram a lot into the episode, but a closer look reveals not much substance, just a lot of stuff. On a positive note, the show seems to be making an effort to lighten up a bit from last season’s incessant Lilly moping, a change which was highly welcome. I’m still not buying the Lilly-Saccardo thing, but I will admit it was nice to see her smiling again.
So that’s my two cents, which, in 1973, would buy you a fourth of a postage stamp. (Think about it. That’s cheap). I’d love to hear yours!
Cold Case is created by Meredith Stiehm (ER, NYPD Blue). Executive producers -- in addition to Ms. Stiehm -- include such reigning entertainment industry names as Jerry Bruckheimer (The Amazing Race, CSI), Shaun Cassidy (Invasion, The Agency), and Jonathan Littman (The Amazing Race, Close to Home).
ReplyDelete