7.15 Two Weddings

[Naj]

THE TEAM DECIDES TO KILL TIME AT A WORK ACQUAINTANCE'S WEDDING BY LOOKING INTO WHETHER HIS BRIDE WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR HER PREVIOUS FIANCE'S UNSOLVED 2008 MURDER, ON "COLD CASE," SUNDAY, FEB. 28 at 10 pm (ET)


Noah Bean ("Damages"), Sean Maguire ("The Class," "Eve") and Rachel Miner ("Californication") Guest Star

The Episode Was Written by Series Creator/Executive Producer Meredith Stiehm

"Two Weddings" - While at a colleague's wedding, Jeffries impishly persuades the team to spend their time at the reception casually investigating whether the bride was responsible for killing her former fianc, whom they learn died hours after canceling the nuptials, on COLD CASE, Sunday, Feb. 28 (10:00-11:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.

Guest stars include Rachel Miner ("Californication") as the bride, Noah Bean ("Damages") as her former fianc, seen in flashbacks, and Sean Maguire ("The Class," "Eve") as the former fianc's best friend.

SERIES REGULARS:

Lilly Rush................................. Kathryn Morris
Scotty Valens................................. Danny Pino
Lt. John Stillman................................ John Finn
Nick Vera............................ Jeremy Ratchford
Will Jeffries................................... Thom Barry
Kat Miller................................... Tracie Thoms

RECURRING CAST:

ADA Curtis Bell................... Jonathan LaPaglia
Louie Amante .......................... Doug Spinuzza

GUEST CAST:

Dan Palmer (2008)......................... Noah Bean
Anna Coulson (2008, 2010)........ Rachel Miner
Phil (2008, 2010)....................... Sean Maguire
Ed Coulson (2008, 2010)............. Brian Hamill
Joan Coulson (2008, 2010)........ Sara Botsford
Tenley Coulson (2008, 2010)................. Lorena Segura York

WRITTEN BY: Series creator and executive producer Meredith Stiehm

DIRECTED BY: Nathan Hope

RATING: To Be Announced

[Electrophile]

I thought this was going to be a throwaway episode, considering the plot was all the detectives sitting around at a wedding solving a cold case. I didn't think there was going to be much to it and initially, that's exactly what was happening. It was very slow and frankly, boring.


But then, the episode picked up and it quickly started becoming one of the best of the season to date. I could understand Dan wanting to move on, seeing as how Melanie was "there" but she really wasn't. You want to pick up and go on, try to put your life back together again but a part of you is always anchored to your past, and you can't undo it. Dan realized that when the hospital called and said that Melanie was asking for him. He realized that he could finally have his old life back, regardless of how much he may have loved Anna. Then he finds out that Melanie asking for him was merely the "moment of clarity" before death that everyone fears, yet knows will happen one day. He sees that without Melanie he is no one and has nothing, and takes his own life. What a powerful ending, and what a true testament to the bond that can exist between two people. I didn't even think suicide was a possibility when I was reading over the plot - so many people could have been the one to kill him. If it's possible to die of a broken heart, then that's what Dan did. You'd like to think that after Dan visited Anna at her reception, he went off to be with Melanie wherever she was. What a fantastic episode, and I'm very glad I didn't write this one off.


My only gripe was the ending song. Kenny Chesney? Really? There are literally millions of other songs that could have been played over the ending that would have been better than a country song about going out and getting drunk. CC dropped the ball on that one.

[ninja1088]

Very amazing episode that started off slow but ended with a bang. You can see the happiness and joy Dan had at thinking he could have his old life back,with the woman he loved, only to sadly realize that she was gone and so was his reason for living all these years. I can only imagine the guilt Phil has been carrying around as well, both for what happened to Melanie and his best friend killing himself. The cold hard truth was that was nothing he could have done once Dan found out the truth about Melanie. Some people are sadly too gone in their own grief to be saved.

[tommyk]

I am tired and going to bed, and will write more tomorrow, but I couldn't head off to sleep without writing "Wow." Just "wow." This episode reminded me why I fell in love with this show.

[The Reverend Bizarre]

Whether intentional or not, I found this episode to be one of the funniest of the season. I loved the way that Lilly and Bell worked together.

"and I'm your drunk boyfriend! Woah, oops!"

"Ugh, you idiot!"

and curious that the bouquet would land at Lilly's feet.

I'll post more a bit later.

[boxman]

Yeah, this 10:00pm showing really is late and makes it hard to spend time here to post. I really enjoyed the episode's twist and gave it a "Season's Best" vote. If anyone was wondering: Logistically speaking, yes, it is plausible for the detectives to walk out or catch a cab from a hotel ballroom and get back to the police offices in the time portrayed. "Center City-Philadelphia" (the city's "downtown" section) is densely packed, and it could be as little as a few blocks between the two locations. Phil and the bride's father would also have to live in the area for the timing in this episode to all work out too, and that's certainly a possibility.

[Kassandra]

I personally loved the episode IT did start off a little slow but became very interseting and I mean who would not watch Lily's dress! WOW I have one very similar it is so beautiful. The ending was so awesome with the flowers at her feet and Scottys whistling! Perfect. The case was pretty solid, I loved loui and I always wondered what ever happened to him. But i guess now we know. lol. I missed Kat I was hoping she would be there and the entire crew could be their together but that didnt happen

The drunk Curtis Bell act was so funny I loved that haha. Lets not forget Vera and the sister naughty boy haha but the ending was by far my favorite part I actually enjoyed the newer music in this episode like Time Mcgraw and Carrie Underwood.

Lets all agree that the Men look pretty hot in Tuxes and Lily looks amazing in green They did a good job covering up her tattoo, I think they may have just digitally removed it after the filming is my bet.

But gotta go school tomorrow! Hope someone shows up for live chat tomorrow!

[eduardo]

This one got just OK for me.
I don't know why but when I liked the previous episode too much... This one didn't fill me out BUT there are some things I'd like to say...

1- Meredith is back! Yes people, Meredith back means the show could head to its original roots (to get better ratings or to say Goodbye who knows?). This episode was written by Meredith! I couldn't believe it. Her episode always relate to family issues... so You could feel this was HER episode.

2-Suicide? Interesting. I like the way it was portrayed. I was thinking the last time that we have only gotten 1 suicide on all the series (2x03 Daniela) and some people say Best Friends (2x22) is suicide but I consider it traffic accident.

3-I must admit I didn't see the suicide coming. I thought It was the sister or the best friend. However, are they gonna arrest Phil (the best friend?)... was he involved in the accident in Cancun?

4-No box closed... Rare... I know it was like 5 am but still.

5-Why Anna saw the victim? Please, don't tell me she was the right person. Even Phil or anything but she? OK, she loved him at some point but no way. Meredith had a long history on her episodes where almost always a detective saw the victim. What's happening? It's that a new rule or what?

[ninja1088]

I too felt Anna was NOT the right choice to see the ghost in this one. It should have been Phil or one of the cops.
As to the suicide, I was expecting at any moment Phil was going to get ticked off for his friend being stuck in the grief stage and push him over. I was shocked to see him jump.
I don't think Phil will be arrested, they just had him fill out a statement on what happened. I felt for him. His attempts to help his friend move on proved to the final straw that broke the camel's back.

[princesschristmas]

All I have to say is this is the best episode and it was funny to see the squad work even when they are suppose to be celebrating. I didn't really expect Dan to jump and how much he really wanted to be with Melanie. I loved how Louie asked Lilly is she was ok with him getting married. I really missed that. Also Lilly looked really beautiful but I found what Vera was wearing to be funny. I loved the ending where the bouquet ended up in front of Lilly and she wasn't even trying.

[The Reverend Bizarre]

It was never an expressed rule on the show that only the detectives can see the victims at the end. As to why Anna saw the victim at the end, look at it one of two ways.

If the appearance of the victims at the end is a supernatural occurrence, then it's possible that Dan wanted to appear to Anna. Shocking I know...

If the appearance of the victims are based solely on the imagination, then who's not to say that Anna wasn't thinking about Dan?

the point is, again, there's no rule on the show that the victims must only appear to the detectives at the end.

[beldasnoop]

I loved this episode and voted it "one of the best ever". I've liked most of the episodes this season, but this one really reminded me of why I got hooked on this show in the first place. There was humor, real believable emotion, strong character development and a truly chilling finale. Also, I loved the way the regulars interacted. This was truly a top-notch episode.

[coldfan74]

The interesting stuff:
Louie being a suspect (kind of) and actually involved in flashbacks was a surprise
Funny how the detective were posing as guests while subtly interrogating

The rest just seem so off at a lot of levels. The story just didn't seem to have any coherent plots. Just didn't gel. It felt that the way the new plots were presented were just "thrown" in and not at all like some sudden heightening twist.
So here's Melanie that Anna just happens to look like her which is kinda why Dan wanted to marry her in the first place that we find out he's still in love with Melanie who we just discovered the best friend caused an accident to put her in a coma that started this whole spiel. And throw Louie in there that he and Anna somehow met in some class that is related to his work somehow. Mommy and Daddy wanted to be part of the uppercrust or were they always and just gone broke?? Slutty bitter sister thrown for good measure.

Really?

All this stuff was really hard to follow through and digest to find that he ultimately committs suicide through it all.

And the music choices. Bleh. I dont even think they fit the theme at all let alone I hate country music with a passion.

This gets "Hated It" from me which is the first time ever!

[Naj]

Oh no, I went to bed because it just didn't seem to be going anywhere and I also have a difficult time staying up till 11 pm to begin with. It was funny those inferences between Lilly and Louie that Lilly liked him and did she mind him getting married. I loved Vera's suit! Really I did and his hair all dulled up. Lilly looked lovely. I did find it a bit contrived how they just happened to drum up a case but then usually CC has a lighter episode as they have done since Willkommen and Creatures of the Night so this was their "play" episode.

[ninja1088]

It's like with the CSI shows and Without A Trace as well. Sometimes lighter hearted episodes are needed to bring a smile.. espcially when many of the episodes are darker in nature.

[marshall]

Not many shows on TV I like anymore but this is one of my favorites.
I was so disappointed that I fell asleep last night before the show was over!!
I am so glad I found you guys here!

Thanks for the great recap!

[openthebox]

A lot of powerful, emotional elements involved. I really enjoyed this one.

two minor issues - just to get them out of the way:

I don't get why the best man didn't just go down and say what happened when the guy jumped. It would have resolved a ton of family animosity. Not really living up to his best man duties there.

And I'm not sure the groom getting seduced by the maid of dishonor tracks. His problem wasn't that he was a player but that he was too loyal to his 1st wife. So he wouldn't have been seduced in the first place.

But I loved the wedding stuff, Vera was awesome, Lily looked fantastic, Scotty was smooth. A lot of smiles with this episode. And it was quite tragic what happened to the groom.

I kinda get that the bride saw the ghost. She was horribly wronged by him and emotionally crushed and she was able to let go of the bitter memories by the end.

[ninja1088]

My theory is Phil felt guilty over not only what happened to Melanie, but that forcing his friend to face the truth caused him to jump. As he said himself, there a lot of things you do to forget. His not coming foward was his way of coping with the pain.
It is selfish in many ways? Yes it is...but it's sometime the only way some people can work through it.

[stillmanfan]

That was a good episode.

I loved Vera in that tux..

How often has Stillman been shown in jeans?

Screencap of Stillman in that tux please!!

I didn't expect the guy to kill himself but I could understand the guilt the friend felt.

Where was Kat? I thought there was a scene with her from last week's previews?

[tommyk]

I'm a little more awake now than I was at 11:20 last night, so let me try to expand on "wow." I loved this episode from the get-go. The first flashback started, and I didn't know (I'd seen no spoilers) who was going to die -- and that instantly pleased me. And when we cut to the present, and we were in front of a church, it was clear that all bets were off. I wondered who'd penned the episode, and was delighted to see Meredith return. It promised something out of the ordinary, and indeed it was.

The sly interrogations, the unforced humor, the rapport between detectives, the complexity of characterization -- it could have been Season 2 all over again, which (to my mind) was infused with a sense of the writers knowing the rules, loving the rules, and delighting in breaking the rules. And of course, when the creator pens an episode, all bets SHOULD be off. They alone can tell the showrunners, "I don't care how this fits into the season arc. Here's the script, film it." I'm not suggesting Meredith steamrolled this script past Johnson and Plageman, but if a freelancer came in with this story, would they have let it be a "standalone" episode, or would they have stuffed it full of ongoing subplots?

And about those ongoing subplots -- you know, it's not until an episode like this airs that I realize how much the focus on personal story-lines this season has damaged the series. I know lots of folks dig them, but for me, the heart of the series was always the cases, and how the detectives revealed themselves THROUGH the cases. I thought Johnson and Plageman found a nice balance between cases and subplots last season; this year, the balance seems way off. When you're devoting a third of the episode to subplots, don't they see that the cases and suspects become less dimensional, and as a result, less involving?

When you see an episode this fresh, you're reminded how stale the format has become. A columnist at TV Guide years ago -- one I didn't particularly like -- said that you could do a drinking game with how many times in a COLD CASE episode the detectives accused a suspect of being the doer. That was a common device by Season 3 or 4, and it's only gotten worse. Now it seems the detectives say "And then you killed him" thirty seconds into every interrogation. And the overused response is that the suspect says, "I didn't have a problem with him -- so-and-so did," and we move on to the next suspect; each potential doer hands us over to the next one. Originally, it was just the freelancers who wrote this lazily; nowadays, it's almost become part of the format. It's not until a writer like Meredith breaks from that, finds a fresh way into the story-line and the interrogations, that we're reminded how those tired devices have developed over time -- and that that a clever, caring writer can still avoid them.

COLD CASE has shed viewers this season, and we've all been quick to blame the lead-in, and the time-slot, but last night reminded me that the way to engage new viewers -- and snare old, lapsed viewers -- isn't through continuing subplots that mean nothing to the occasional onlooker. It's through great cases, and marveling at the way the detectives solve them. Last night, COLD CASE snared its highest 18-49 rating of the season -- a nice coincidence. Let's hope some of those viewers stick around.