Cold CaseLibertyville
Original Air Date: March 29, 2009
Amanda — Senior Reviewer
amanda@thetwocentscorp.com
If you had an opportunity that would make life easier, would you take it, even if it meant denying your very identity? This week’s Cold Case skillfully and sensitively examines this question. Also, Lilly spends more time with her dad and Jeffries returns for good. Welcome back, Will!
Continue Reading...
[photo: CBS]
Posts
Cold Case
ReplyDeleteLibertyville
Original Air Date: March 29, 2009
Amanda — Senior Reviewer
amanda@thetwocentscorp.com
If you had an opportunity that would make life easier, would you take it, even if it meant denying your very identity? This week’s Cold Case skillfully and sensitively examines this question. Also, Lilly spends more time with her dad and Jeffries returns for good. Welcome back, Will!
This week’s case deals with the 1958 death of Julian Bellowes, found with his throat slit outside Libertyville, a housing development Julian’s company was planning to build. The detectives reopen the case when a former maid at the Senators Club remembers hearing a violent argument after Julian went inside. When Lilly and Scotty visit the scene, they find bloody broken glass inside a heat vent.
Julian’s widow, Caroline, remembers a name on the list of club attendees that night: her ex-boyfriend Paul Romano, who she dumped for Julian. Paul expressed his displeasure by slashing Julian’s tires, but in an interview with Kat and Vera, he says Julian had bigger problems: Caroline’s brother, Harry, who was “sliding down the food chain like a clown on a Vaseline pole” (tm Scotty) thanks to Julian. After Julian died, Harry got promoted.
When Lilly and Scotty visit, Harry claims not to remember a couple of years due to a close personal relationship with gin. He admits to being jealous of Julian, but says Julian treated others worse. In a flashback, we see perhaps the funniest scene of the episode: a farmer protesting the loss of his family’s land by bringing his sheep (yes, folks…his sheep) into the office. However, the farmer’s dead now, so, according to the Dead Guy Can’t Be The Doer Algorithm, he’s innocent.
Meanwhile, the detectives have discovered that Julian wrote a weekly check to a Regina Reynolds, an African-American woman who the secretary recalls storming into Julian’s office and demanding to see him. She remembers Julian reminding Regina of their “arrangement” and promising to call her. Like all of us, the detectives assume that Julian’s fooling around with Regina, which would have been quite the scandal. However, Regina tells Scotty and Kat the even more scandalous truth: they’re siblings.
Regina explains that their family is Creole, with many light-skinned relatives. She said some of the family teased Julian for not being “black” enough, but when he returned from the Service living as a white man, his father disowned him. Julian sent them money from his new life, but, Regina says, they’d rather have had him. Her urgent visit to the office, she says, was to tell him that their father was dying. In a flashback, she remembers Julian being approached by George Watson, an old Army buddy, who he pretended not to know. George, however, was insistent, and finally Julian relented, agreeing to meet with him.
George, now the owner of a carpet company, tells Lilly and Stillman that he visited Julian in hopes of laying carpet in the Libertyville homes. We also learn that George knows the truth. When the two were new recruits at Fort Benning, he overheard the clerk telling Julian that he checked the wrong race box. He pointed out what a grievous error it would be to limit his opportunities just for checking the “Negro” box, and Julian, after a hesitant moment, said he indeed checked the wrong box and headed off to fix it. George resents the fact that Julian had a choice.
Meanwhile, Scotty and Lilly tell Caroline the truth about Julian, and she says he never told her he was black, but it made everything make sense. She also says that Harry was looking into Julian’s past, and, having learned that the blood on the glass was Harry’s, the detectives go for another chat with him. Harry admits to looking on the registry at the church Julian claimed to attend, and they’d never heard of his family. He and Julian fought, and Julian finally told the truth, taking Harry to his family’s neighborhood. He explained that his father was dying, and he needed to set one thing right before going home to say goodbye. Harry says that Julian had approved a loan for a black family to live in Libertyville, but the first black family didn’t move in until 25 years later.
After learning that the bank denied a loan for George Watson, they bring him in for a chat, which happens to be the Kickass Interview of the Week, courtesy of Jeffries. He explains to George that they all would have made the choice Julian did, and ultimately, George confesses that his anger at the loan being denied because of his race and his resentment for Julian being able to escape the consequences of being black drove him to kill Julian.
This week was mostly case-centered, but we also got to see Lilly and her dad meet for Chinese food and reminisce about visiting that same restaurant when she was young. Lilly also remembers a childhood Christmas after his departure when, having been told there was no money for presents, she found a shiny new bike waiting for her on the front porch. In other news, Jeffries is back, eager to return to full speed, and also eager to get Vera out of his apartment. As the episode ends, we see Vera checking out Libertyville for himself. The flashbacks were in black and white, but, in a very cool moment in the montage, merge to color when Caroline and her daughter meet Julian’s family at last. All in all, a very well-rounded, old school Cold Case episode.
So that’s my two cents, which, in 1958, might have bought some wind chimes for one of those Libertyville houses. What would you have done in Julian’s shoes? Would you ever, in a million years, bring sheep to an office to make a point? And, perhaps most importantly, what do you order when you go for Chinese? I’d love to hear your thoughts!
I would tear Lily apart. With my cock, not a knife.
ReplyDelete