Cold CasePin Up Girl
Original air date: 23 Nov 2008
Amanda - TwoCents Reviewer
amanda@thetwocentscorp.com
There’s beauty in the ordinary. That seems to be the theme of the week, as Lilly and company reopen the 1953 murder of Rita Flynn, a famous pin-up girl found shot dead in her apartment. Add in Vera’s, er, careful study of her photographs, a helpful lab technician, and some actual evidence, and you have this week’s Cold Case.
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[photo: CBS.com]
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There’s beauty in the ordinary. That seems to be the theme of the week, as Lilly and company reopen the 1953 murder of Rita Flynn, a famous pin-up girl found shot dead in her apartment. Add in Vera’s, er, careful study of her photographs, a helpful lab technician, and some actual evidence, and you have this week’s Cold Case.
ReplyDeleteThe case is reopened when a fan of Rita’s produces a photo from his own collection of Rita, very much alive, that was clearly taken a few minutes before the photo of her body. With the help of lab tech Frankie Rafferty, Scotty is able to determine that the photographer was one Stanley Nopell.
In the first interview, Scotty and Kat interview Rita’s photographer (and boyfriend), Zip, who’s never heard of Stanley Nopell. He insists that Rita was faithful to him, both personally and professionally. Meanwhile, Lilly and Jeffries interview Rita’s boss, Monty, who’s also never heard of Nopell. He recalls a photo shoot where Zip was running late and Rita amused herself by taking snapshots of others in the room, including her best friend, Betty, a former soda jerk like Rita who was Monty’s assistant. They then caught teenage fan club president Beanie Emerson in Rita’s dressing room adding to his panty collection. Monty calls this “teenage hijinks,” Lil calls it “stalking.”
After finding no evidence of Stanley Nopell anywhere, Scotty and Kat interview Beanie. He admits to being a bit overzealous, but says he wasn’t the one Rita had to fear. Beanie tells of following Rita to a strip club one night, where, to her surprise, she found her best friend, Betty, dancing onstage. An appalled Rita urged Betty to quit, but she refused. In an interview with Betty, Lilly learns that Betty worked at the Red Curtain to earn extra money to help her father, who spent every last penny on booze. Betty says she and Rita had a heart-to-heart wherein Rita showed her the snapshots she took and said that there was beauty in the ordinary. Whipping out her camera, Rita then took a picture of a man she found intriguing, only to have the man erupt in anger. Betty says the man, Reg Donaldson, was a disturbed WWII veteran who was known to have carried a gun.
Meanwhile, after Frankie reveals that the pre-death photo was a self-portrait, Lilly figures out that Stanley Nopell was Rita herself. Donaldson wasn’t after Rita the pinup, she says, but Rita the photographer. In an interview with Lilly, Donaldson admits to being angry, but says that Rita apologized, and the two wound up on a tour of his neighborhood so Rita could discover more beauty in the ordinary. This wordless flashback was one of the highlights of the episode.
After determining that the murder weapon was registered to Monty’s uncle, who died a few months before Rita’s death, Stillman and Jeffries head in for another chat with Monty. Monty recalls Rita telling him she wanted to quit modeling to become a photographer, and after initially being upset at losing his best pin up girl, Monty decided to hire her to work on the other side of the lens, soon discovering that she was even more talented behind the camera. He says he kept the gun in a safe, which only a few other people had access to, namely, Betty and Zip.
Scotty and Vera have another chat with Zip, who was threatened by Rita’s photographic talent. He insisted that she was the model, he was the photographer, and that’s the way it was. Rita realized they didn’t want the same things anymore, and they broke up. Zip insists he didn’t shoot her, but did see Betty that night, raiding Rita’s dressing room for clothes to wear out on a date that night.
Sure enough, it’s time for the Awesome Vera Interrogation Of The Week. This time, he’s paired with Lilly, and, as they produce pieces of incriminating evidence (a rarity!), Betty admits to borrowing the clothes, then to stopping by Rita’s apartment. When Vera confronts her with the fact that her fingerprints were found on the gun, Betty finally confesses to the rest. She resented that everything came easily for Rita, when she never had a lucky day in her life. The last straw for Betty was when her she learned that her “date” was just using her to get to Rita. Rita protested that Betty’s luck could change; after all, they started out the same. “That’s what hurts the most,” Betty said, then pulled the trigger.
While solving the case, Vera finds time to indulge in a little…okay, quite a lot, of “research” in the form of ogling photos of Rita. Meanwhile, Scotty seems to have a new love interest in the form of Frankie. I’ll come right out and say that Scotty/Frankie (Scankie, perhaps?) has two big strikes against it for me. Firstly, I’m a Lilly/Scotty shipper, so I’m suspicious of any new love interests for the two of them. Secondly, the last place I saw Tania Raymonde was “Malcolm in the Middle,” so I figured I’d have a hard time buying her as a love interest for Scotty. That said, I didn’t hate her. I like how she called him on his crap, and their date at the batting cages was pretty cute. I can’t ship this based on principle, but she is a lot better than any of his other recent girlfriends.
This episode didn’t quite grab me like last week’s did, but Rita was an intriguing character. Oddly, I called both the doer and Stanley Nopell’s identity shockingly early in the episode, which I never, ever do. I’m not sure what that says, as the episodes usually keep me guessing. Anyway, that’s my two cents, which, in 1953, would come close to buying a postage stamp. I’d love to hear yours!
Yeah it was a decent episode, but not the best. I'm not sure either how I like Scotty's love interest. We'll see.
ReplyDeleteI liked how during the Awesome Interrogation they mention some way they used the Patriot Act to obtain evidence and then flash the camera a blank piece of paper "evidence." Hee hee.
Yeah, that was definitely a stroke of genius.
ReplyDelete