Ep. 5.17 Slipping

[boxman]

Apr 30, 2008 12:43:50 GMT -5 LillyKat said:

Lilly hadn't opened her mouth to anyone to talk about anything - mom, being shot at, break-ups, lack of ... I don't know ... anyone and anything in her life.

So as I said earlier, I think you make a good point that the show missed a great opportunity earlier in the season to present Ellen's funeral. There's sooo many things that could've happened at sooo many levels if they had dramatized that event.

First of all, I'd like to know how was Ellen's funeral arranged? Did Lilly struggle to crawl out of her hospital bed and make arrangements? Or did someone from Ellen's life do this?

And then who attended the funeral? Ellen had several marriages. Did any of her ex-husbands (i.e., Lilly's stepfathers) attend? How about Lilly's biological father himself? Did Christina attend? Did Lilly even attempt to find and call her to let her know that their mom died? These are the kind of questions I'd like answered when I said before that I wish they would be less ambiguous and more forthright about Lilly. The decisions Lilly made in regards to Ellen's funeral would've told us a lot about what goes on in her mind.

I also have a sneaking suspicion that Eddie Sacarrdo was written as the character that he is as a way to capitalize on the ending of "The Sopranos". Now there's nothing really wrong with this, and it makes sense to me that the network would make such an attempt to bring in a variety of viewers to a Sunday evening show. But instead of this type of "Sopranos" personality as a Lilly-love interest, why not make such a recurring character one of Ellen's ex-husbands or old friends? (Or maybe one of Ellen's old bartender freinds, LOL...) Ellen's funeral would've been a perfect event to have brought in a new recurring character into the series.

Funerals are also highly "visual" events. Think of all the fun we could've had if Ellen's funeral was decorated with tons and tons of white Lilies!! We'd analyze the heck out of it. Were the white Lilies foreshadowing "zombie Lilly" in season five? As white Lilies are used traditionally around Easter, did white Lilies symbolize rebirth? A return to innocence? I'm sure if they had dramatized Ellen's funeral, there would've been many, many, opportunities for the art department to have thrown in symbols of all kinds for us to ponder upon.

Bleah. Anyway, have you had a chance to view "Firefly" yet, LillyKat? Since you have this incredible passion for tightly written story arcs and "Big Damn Heroes", I hope you can find some time for it as the series was excellent in these regards.

Apr 30, 2008 16:39:20 GMT -5 TVFan said:

I'm willing to give the show the benefit of the doubt because of the writers strike. I know it put a damper of many shows and broke up the creative process right in the middle of the season. But, this will only hold if things improve for Lilly next season. It's hard for me because she's still my favorite character on television -- maybe that's out of loyalty to the character or the wonderful Kathryn Morris -- and yet, I do find her to be both less interesting and likable in the past couple of seasons. I REALLY hope that changes. Lil deserves better.

Heck, Kathryn deserves better! Like I said elsewhere before, her portrayal of Lara Anderton just blew me away. Why cast an actress that can play that type of self-assured mature woman, if Lilly isn't ever going to be that way?

[myril]

Some discussion going on ... hm, but before throwing in my two cents about that, gonna talk about the episode.

TVFan mentioned, she'd read that it was loosely based on the film Gaslight - didn't know that, but I was reminded of it watching the ep. Did you know , that gaslighting is even used as term for such psychological abuse and manipulation? Unfortunately being reminded of it meant, that I was early seeing where the plot was going. Not to mention, another professor displaying seemingly tenderness and charm but being a controll freak especially if it comes to women - that brougth the ep Hubris to my mind. I still enjoyed the flashbacks and how they created what was happening to Nancy (what sound and music and acting can do), but at some point was impatient to get to the point. They stretched it to the uttermost, suicide or murder. As much as I normally like, when case and personal story of one of the detectives get intertwined, it became more of a Scotty thing than that it was logical in the case. Danny Pino did a great job though and I somewhat liked, that he still was struggling with Elisa's death. Liked as well that even most of our great detectives for once were ready to close a case though it was not solved, not really solved. But I might be a bit biased if it comes to Scotty, I was always far from interested in his story.

Oh, but I loved the little Jeffries thing. How he immidiately lit up when meeting the housekeeper. Go Jeffries!

All in all a good episode, but it never struck me as excellent despite that I particular love such psychological stuff. Or maybe because I like it so much.

So, and now some other thoughts...

Collider is basically right in that Lilly is the protagonist of the show and so they have to bring up something more than for any other character. But, Lilly as the focus, that's what fans want and like, at least fans from the first hour, I'm not so sure that production team shares that view. They at least tried to make Scotty equal, I think, but he will always be second, no offense to Scotty fans. He came in later and it seems for a majority of people he was not and still is not the main reason to watch the show . Take SVU as a different example, Olivia and Elliot had been in the focus from the very beginning as a team - as much as my focus might be as usual on the female hero of a show, in this case I actually like to see Elliot's stuff and development nearly as much as well. But for me Scotty's story and character development is and will be a side story, despite that I lost a lot of my interest in Lilly over the time as well.

I don't mind, if they give us mainly only pieces and not a whole cake, though once in a while getting a big "snack" is nice. I was more a sci-fi show fan and there you often get both, strong chracter focused episodes as well as a lot of tidbits during the whole show. But you don't have to give up on issues of a character, solve them like a crime, you can revisit them, come up with a new point of view later and still get some sort of moving on and (temporarily) conclusion. It's like that in life. Some things we really might close for ourselves, but in some cases we stumble about the same issues again and again (very annoying ), occasionally in the same way, often coming from different, new perspectives. It's something I do miss in Cold Case, though I think, the basic idea of the show, working on Cold Cases, flashbacks, suggests to do something like that with character development as well. That was the charm of the show in the beginning as I saw it, that and a strong, interesting, witty but fragile female character.

Well, actually the recent "post-strike" episodes gave me a bit of hope concerning this, espcially the road. Of course this ep here was more about Scotty, that's okay every now and then. Will see what this season's final will bring, if it makes me wish for my Cold Case, because being excited again to watch it, or if it will be more of just another finale of a show I watch more out of a habit (but think it's still one of the better shows on tv).

edit: actually just noticed a litlle mistake I made, tstse, meant post-strike episodes gave me hope.

[00bomber]

I'm not gonna say much because basically everything has been said. It was a good episode IMO, but not excellent. It was good to finally actually get a "cold case" and the Jefferies moments were some of the funier moments that they've had in recent times. It was good that they finally tied a loose end with the Scotty/Elissa thing but it was about 2 seasons to late, so a lot of people would be hard pressed to remember exactley what that was all about.
Lilly might not be looking so zombie-like anymore, but she still is on auto-pilot for mine. I think they've really made the character of Lilly quite stale, which is really a shame.

FIRE UP CC!

[longislanditalian2]

To follow up what everyone else had said the strike kind of messed up this season but all in all Lilly does still have problems, she may not be a zombie anymore but it's clear she's thinking about her mother in this episode. She might be over the shooting but not her mother entirely, but I'll still watch since the show isn't in a bad way. Acutally I thought the writing was great and the acting even better.

[coldcasegirl]

I absolutely LOVED this ep. It needed NO drama to make me happy either, which surprised me b/c that hasn't happened too too many times that I can recall [where I only liked the case/storyline].

It was truly GREAT ;D ;D

[qirjanran]

i agree with you, coldcasegirl, the episode was great. i was especially hooked because, for the first half there, it really seemed like they had no suspect in mind! they were all stumped and so was i haha. great episode.

oh, and i love your avatar. i just asked where that scene was from over in the 'scotty/lilly' thread because i saw it on youtube but didn't know which episode it was from. great scene.

[longislanditalian2]

After re-watching it on the big screen, I noticed how much more alive Lilly seems to be. She's happier but still has her problems but not to an extreme like in the beginning of this season, perhaps she is restorting back to herself the way we first saw her during the first season. However Scotty seems to be someone who isn't getting over Elisa's suicide, but perhaps Lilly is realizing she needs to move on with her mother.

At the end I seriously thought that we were going to see Lilly standing at her mother's grave, but instead saw how sad Scotty looked. We can tell he is thinking about Elisa but maybe about Lilly how he couldn't stop her from being show though he killed Ed, perhaps this is guilt or that Scotty always blames himself for everyone else?

[eurache]

CBS REPEAT - 9/14/08 - 9PM ET

[eduardodelroice]

I have just re-wacthed this episode in a rerun after I saw yesterday "The Brush Man" and let me tell you... I love 60's cases
This episode is part of 2 collections

WONDERFUL 60'S CASES along with : "A Time to hate" "Wednesday's women" "The Brush Man" "One small step" "Revolution" "Forever Blue" "Boy Crazy" and many other
I really like 60's in CC
Also, this episode was the only episode in Season 5 made in a year with no previous cold cases(1962)

WOMEN IN OLD CASES(1910's-1960's) KILLED BY THEIR HUSBANDS
"World's end" 1938
"Factory Girls" 1943
"Slipping" 1962

This episode makes me think that Season 5 wasn't that bad as many other people say.

About the episode, I loved it! I voted for one of the season's best... It was really well done. I like the twist and turns and how creepy Annete and Daniel were together making Nancy think she was crazy That's something I did not catch very well... Both were planning to drive Nancy crazy? Were both doing the same united? or separated?

This is one of the few episodes I like Scotty.
I liked 2 Vera's funny lines
When Scotty said "no life insurance, no heritance" and Vera says "no leads"
When Bruce says "They did not have a name for it in 1962" and Vera says "They have a name now" ;D

and a Scotty's one "What's up with Cyndi Lauper" ;D

Another thing that seems has been happening a long time ago is that we don't get a lot of Stillman in episodes

I liked the flashbacks and the music. Erica Shelton does a wonderful job at writing 60's cases but horrible in other years(Breaking News)

ONE OF THE BEST OF SEASON 5

Apr 27, 2008 21:05:56 GMT -5 coldfan74 said:

Maybe its just me but it seemed almost a copied plot of The World's End...some loser of a husband who can't control his wife blah blah so he offs her.

Well, the only similar thing is that the husband kills the wife but for totally different reasons

Let's compare it
1938/World's end/The husband killed Audrey because she was discovering she could live by herself and she was in love with another man, they were stressed because of the Depression(as we are now)/They had a child

1943/Factory Girls/The husband killed Alice because she was working(as in World's end) but in this case Alice loved her husband so his attitude was kind of wrong. An evidence that Alice loved her husband is that she did not have an affair with any other man because he told the 17-year old kid that "they could not have anything"/They were stressed because of the depression too but also for the World War II/They did not have any child and there was another woman in love with Alice's husband.

1962/Slipping/The husband kills Nancy because she was a talented writer and he wanted to steal from her work because he was not even as half as talented as she was/They did not have a common child. Rachel was Nancy's daughther Rachel's dad died in a car accident. There was a man in love with Nancy's husband but this was a secret and not "almost-public" as in "Factory Girls". Anette does not count because she knew Daniel would never marry her/There were no other men in love with Nancy/No social issues(war or economic issues)