CC Newspaper Column

[TVFan]

A friend sent this to me. It's a column from the Palm Beach Post from this past weekend. It's a cute column on Cold Case.

'COLD CASE' WORKS BY KEEPING YOU GUESSING
By Kevin D. Thompson
June 27, 2004

It's been said that first impressions are lasting impressions. And that you never get a second chance to make a first impression.

Well, if that were always true, I wouldn't be hooked on Cold Case.

CBS' absorbing crime drama stars the wonderfully world-weary Kathryn Morris as Lilly Rush, a dogged Philadelphia homicide detective assigned to old crimes that were never solved. When Cold Case debuted in September, I wasn't immediately hooked. As I recall, I called the show an "OK cop series."

Cold Case, executive-produced by big-shot movie guy Jerry Bruckheimer, looked like just another CSI: Crime Scene Investigation clone. And with CSI: Miami, Without a Trace and NAVY: NCIS on the air, there were certainly enough of those.

But I still planned to watch Cold Case, mostly because Morris' nuanced performance made it tough for me to take my eyes off her. And because, well, let's face it, it's what I'm paid to do.

However, I missed many episodes during the season because the show never seemed to come on during its regularly scheduled time period.

CBS also televises NFL games and when those games ran long, which was just about every week, Cold Case didn't air until, say, 8:18 p.m. Or 8:28 p.m.

By that time, I had already shifted my attention to American Dreams, NBC's '60s family drama.

But over the last several months, I've caught several original and repeat episodes.

I'm proud to say I'm officially a Cold Case junkie - along with the 14.4 million viewers who watch the show each week.

The stories are not only compelling, but they're heartbreaking. Take the episode, for instance, about the young boy who froze to death in the snow. Originally the cops thought a group of black neighborhood kids killed the kid. But delving deeper, as Lilly always does, she found out that a racist white store owner, enraged because the boy stole a tube of glue for the black kids to sniff, was the actual culprit.

And there was the poignant episode about the 1939 case of a black woman assumed to be a murdered prostitute. But the murdered lady actually was a proud, outspoken woman who refused to be treated like a second-class citizen because of her race.

My favorite episode airs again tonight. The body of a champion disco dancer who died in a 1978 club fire along with 22 others is found beneath the building's ruins. But there's a gunshot wound in his head. The investigation reveals the fire was set intentionally to cover up the man's murder.

Cold Case, the season's most watched new drama, works so well because it's such a twisty murder mystery that always features enough suspects to keep you guessing.

And in a cool visual gimmick, we see the suspects and survivors of each cold case as they were then and as they are now. The gimmick gives Cold Case an added layer no other TV crime show has.

Gimmicks aside, Morris is the chief reason why Cold Case is such a strong show. While she's pretty, she's not so pretty that she comes across as threatening to other women or not-so-believable to men.

Lilly's tousled dirty-blond 'do is so apt for the character. Lilly is a workaholic. A determined crime solver. The last thing she cares about is how she looks on the job.

And Lilly does that job extremely well. I didn't totally get it the first time. Or the second. But I definitely get it now.

Sometimes first - and second - impressions aren't all that accurate.

[ebron]

Oh lala, Cold Case has some fans! Let's hear it for KM!

[Naj]

Good article. I must admit there have be tv shows that I didn't take to right away.

I think this is funny:

Lilly's tousled dirty-blond 'do

:lol:
Keep watching, Kevin, she might let her hair down a little more in season 2!


I'm still a little impatient about it not having a quaranteed time slot too. But I certainly don't mind the reruns on other nights.


~Naj

[TVFan]

You know Naj after reading that column, I'm completely convinced that the timeslot really kept CC from being a Top 10 show every week. How are people suppose to watch a show they can never find?? Unlike viewers like all of us who wait forever on Sun nights in the fall for it to come on, most people probably just start watching something else and forget about CC. The sporting events thing is a real problem. Maybe with the consistency of the last half of the season and this summer, CC will pick up some more faithful viewers who will be more willing to wait out the sports. We'll see in the fall.

[Trublu]

See, this seems to happen often. this exactly what happened to me. i saw the second episode (dont know what happened to the first, but oh well) and i loved the show. i thought lilly's character was wonderful and the plot was perfect. but then for the next for or five episodes, i lost track of them because they werent on when they were supposed to be. i'd never miss an episode now, but ill say, cbs doesnt make it easy.

[onebyone]

Thanks for posting that article. I love hearing good reviews of Cold Case, makes me excited that maybe Lilly and I are going to have a long, wonderful relationship.

[TVFan]

Now that I think about it, the sporting event thing must be why I missed Sherry Darlin', Fly Away, and Hitchhiker the first time around. I also missed The Runner, but I hear that it's rerunning next Sunday. I've been trying to figure out why I didn't see those eps the first time - I probably couldn't find them and thought they weren't on that night.

[blankregus]

Someone sent me the link for a nice story on "our" show, from the Aug. 12 Naples (FL) Daily News:

http://www.naplesnews.com/npdn/neapolitan/article/0,2071,NPDN_14939_3104073,00.html

Recently I tagged "A Time to Hate" (no. 7) as the first episode where everything came together. So it's cool to see exec. producer / creator Meredith Stiehm agree:

"And that's the one we still hold up as the one to emulate, the one that really works and had the effect that we wanted for the show."

There's also a nifty bit on the film used for the flashbacks in the pilot -- a stock intended for color slides. It's never employed in movie cameras, and Kodak had to thread it onto special reels. (I love this stuff!!)

;D


/me edited url to fit page margins. please copy and paste url into your browser to visit the website - Naj

[Naj]

Thanks blankregus. Here's the article:

'Cold Case' cast keeps its eye on the past
By DAVE MASON, Scripps Howard News Service
August 12, 2004

Turning back the clock builds the drama on "Cold Case." Executive producer and creator Meredith Stiehm cites an example: In the sixth episode of the first season, Detective Lilly Rush (Kathryn Morris) investigated a murder case from the 1960s, one related to gay-bashing.

"And that's the one we still hold up as the one to emulate, the one that really works and had the effect that we wanted for the show," Stiehm said. "It was a story that couldn't have been told back then (in the 1960s) because we could tell it now in hindsight because we have terms like 'gay-bashing.' And I think the past to present, usually with the cases that are much older, it works much better. You really feel how time has affected a case or affected the characters."

On "Cold Case," Rush and partner Scotty Valens (Danny Pino), Philadelphia police detectives, investigate unsolved murder cases from the past.

The popularity of shows like "CSI" has extended to "Cold Case," which ranked as the fourth-highest-rated show on TV in the latest Nielsens. TV and movie mogul Jerry Bruckheimer produces both series for CBS.

"Cold Case," which begins its second season in September, airs at 8 p.m. Sundays.

The producers and stars credit "Cold Case's" success to the storylines, the characters, the public's growing interest in homicide cases and the way that Bruckheimer's TV shows are filmed.

Morris ("Minority Report," "Paycheck," "As Good As It Gets") said she's amazed by the response she has seen to her character, the only woman in this fictional version of the Philadelphia homicide squad. "It's not just about being a cop. It's almost like I feel like I've become almost a spokesperson for the single working woman," she said.

Morris said fans have told her they're glad to see a woman in a man's world, as well as a woman who cares about the present-day loved ones of those murdered in old, unresolved cases. Rush gets her greatest satisfaction from giving those people some resolution to their grief.

Morris said fans also tell her they like seeing a female character whose main focus in life is her work, just like a man's tends to be.

But "Cold Case" keeps its main focus on the cases, rather than the characters, and Stiehm said that won't change.

In July, "Law & Order" creator and executive producer Dick Wolf told reporters his least favorite episode of his series involved the kidnapping and murder of the daughter of Detective Lennie Briscoe (Jerry Orbach). He said it was a mistake to steer away from the series' focus on solving crimes.

But the "Cold Case" stars and producers say there's room to show how the detectives' emotions and backgrounds affect them when they're investigating cases.

"I think some of our best episodes are when the detectives have a real point of view about the case," Morris said. "And we also have personal stuff going on that's filtering into the pressure at work."

Cold case detective squads weren't formed until the 1990s, and they came about because of the science of DNA, Stiehm said.

"The majority of cold cases are cases where they have old blood or semen or something, and they can solve them that way. But we're less interested in those cases that are a simple science test than we are on the ones where it took going back and getting people to talk when they wouldn't talk before and exploring how to psychologically get people to open up."

Executive producer Jonathan Littman said the way "Cold Case" is filmed has contributed to getting and keeping viewers.

"Jerry (Bruckheimer) once said: 'People watch TV with their thumb. They keep flipping around. You've got to stop them ...,' " Littman said. "You do that with a look, and then you hold them with great stories and great actors."

Littman said "Cold Case" tries to maintain a distinct look by filming its flashbacks in a style appropriate for previous eras.

"In the pilot, we used 16 mm Ektachrome, which is slide film, which nobody's ever run through a moving camera before," he said.

"We had Kodak make special actual reels of it, but it really looked like the 1970s," he said. "We've done the '80s; we've shot on video. When we did the '40s, we used sepia. There's a lushness and a richness and an incredible sense of detail, and they're just a little darker."

[TVFan]

Another great thought provoking article on CC. Thanks blankregus and Naj! One part that made me especially happy was when KM and Meredith Stiehm said that we'll continue to learn more about the characters through their cases. The best episodes, IMO, are the ones where the cases affect Lilly personally. I think that's where the best character development occurs. If you consider the side of Lill that we saw in "Sherry Darlin'" and the side we saw in her interrogation scene with Henry Floyd (still one of my fav Lilly moments) in "Hitchhiker" as well as the side we saw with Sean in "Maternal Instincts," they are all different. But each side helps us understand the complicated nature of the character.

[CC Fan]

I agree with the first article. While I really enjoyed the show after the first episode, it took me a while to get into the groove of the show. This is the type of show that takes a few episodes to really get going, but once it did, I thought it was great.