Crime Drama TV

Periodically, I will watch A&E’s Cold Case show and then catch The First 48.

First 48 starts with a crime and then shows the first 48 hours of the investigation. Often, the crime scenes (they are real) are aired and can be rather creepy. It is fascinating to see a detective at word, but I wonder if it is also giving criminals insight into how to get away with a crime. This is not a good thing.

We have an ongoing murder investigation here. Some may have heard of it as it made national news a couple weeks ago.

A UVM (University of Vermont) student was walking home from the bars and vanished. No one had heard from her since. A man came forward and admitted that he had loaned her his cell phone because her battery had gone dead, but that he left her walking up Main Street. A little over a week ago, hikers found her body at Huntington Gorge (a great place for swimmers, but also deadly because undertows can pin a body for months. I’m sure that’s what the killer was thinking. That man that loaned her his phone is now the prime suspect. He has a history of using Ether to sedate women for sex. He has been arrested on outstanding child rape charges. His ex-wives and girlfriends have come forth and said he is a sadistic man. His jeans also contained blood splatters that match the victim’s DNA. This is all that has been publicized so far.

The investigation is on going, but a few things still have me wondering… I’ve seen this guys picture and no way would I have found him remotely safe. He’s creepy looking. I supposed she’d been drinking, and that can alter your view. Makes you think though!

Another thing is if he is tied in to a few other area disappearances. He’s lived here for a long time, and travels all over the state, so he could well have had the opportunity.

I guess police are thinking along those lines. The entire case has been kept hush hush. I just hope they don’t blow it and that this man stays behind bars for life!

So last night was a wash out for me. Local debates were aired in lieu of normal programming - so that meant no Cold Case. Plus football delayed things, so shows started late anyway. I never lasted to see Without A Trace and it was my son’s birthday so using the DVD recorder for the night was out of the question, he only gets a birthday once a year so I’m not going to fight him on that!

Hopefully, at some point, the Cold Case’s I have missed will be reaired. That’s two now that politics have overruled. I’m tired of it! I want the elections to be over already!

Okay, last night’s show started out to be pretty cool. Two nuns are walking through the room and spot a “mess” on the floor. There is blood dripping from the Virgin Mary’s hand. They look up and see a body tied to a cross and hanging from the ceiling. CSI is called in.

Greg is back. He’s still pretty battered looking, but he’s dying to get back to work. Grissom lets him help out a little, even though Greg is still on desk duty.

Meanwhile, the mystery resolving this dead woman is their only case of the evening.

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The father comes to the church and announces he doesn’t recognize the woman. This turns out to be a lie when they find pictures of the father, the woman, and a local car dealer. The car dealer had just repoed the woman’s car and was the last person seen with the woman.

The search her apartment and find blood. They search the car she’d borrowed and there is blood. It seems everywhere they turn there is blood.

At the apartment, Catherine and the blonde lady that I’m still not sure I truly like realize the woman was pregnant. The coroner confirms it - she was about 10 weeks. There are also two separate sperm samples in the bedroom.

The father is forced to admit that he knows her. The three of them are friends from high school.

There really are not any huge revelations from this point until we learn that she was marrying the reverend/father, and that the car dealer killed her after she told him their relationship was over because she was marrying the other guy. The car dealer got ticked and murdered her and staged it to look like the father did it. They tell him that she was pregnant and that it was his child - so he killed his child too…

Last night was my Lost night, so I really don’t have anything to discuss CrimeDrama wise. I could talk about Lost or South Park, but neither are truly CrimeDrama related. Instead I’m going to talk about something that has always ticked me off.

Years ago, I was thoroughly hooked in a show called John Doe. (The star of that show, whatever his name is, stars in Prison Break now.) The season ended with an amazing cliffhanger that I couldn’t wait to see what happened next. What happened next is that Fox canceled the show over the summer and we’ll never know! Why they couldn’t do one more episode and tie up all loose ends is beyond me. It would be like Lost being cancelled tomorrow and never airing again.

Fox did the same thing with Dark Angel, much to my husband’s chagrin, and then Tru Calling. Tru Calling was a great show, possibly less impressive once Luke Perry showed up, but then they could have dumped Luke Perry and let the show go on. Either way, I still enjoyed it. The problem was that they had Tru Calling pitted against, if I remember it correctly, CSI. Nothing stands a chance against CSI. So they cancelled the show. Oddly enough there is a show, DAY BREAK, starting very soon that has the same premise. If Tru Calling was cancelled, I’m going to assume this show will as well no matter who is in it.

My advice: instead of dumping a show that is pulling in some ratings, TRY moving it to another time slot. Wednesday from 8 to 9 there is NOTHING on that I want to bother with. Same with Monday and Thursday. Try moving schedules around and see if ratings pick up before just dumping a show. Verdict is the only show I have ever seen that has actually moved to a different time slot and I hope it helps save that show, I kind of like it. (Even though they’ve moved it to a time slot that doesn’t work for me.)

I am a big fan of NCIS. I’ve always had a bit of a crush on Mark Harmon (going back to his days on St. Elsewhere), so it was obvious that I’d watch the show when it first aired. It is Abby, however, who steals the show. Abby cracks me up.

Now I have caught my children’s chest cold, so I am sorry to say I started drifting towards the end, but my husband filled me in on what I missed.

Last night’s episode revolved around a realtor showing a house that had just been built. She goes to demonstrate the remote controlled fireplace (pretty cool I think) and discovers the body of a dead man in a chair. NCIS is called in. The body belongs to a missing Navy man. Ducky and his assistant determine he’s been dead for about three months. It coincides with the man’s disappearance.

Soon they discover that the guy was not the most scrupulous in the world - he has two fiancees. He owes money to both. A cat fight ensues (much to Tony’s delight) and each team of agents is assigned to find out more about the fiancees and this casanova.

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So the agents start delving into the guy’s background and looking into the girlfriends’ backgrounds. They find the DNA of two women on the guy, one fiance offers her DNA sample, the other will not. The first fiancee matches the bodily secretions found on the man. The other is a woman’s and they assume it will be the other fiancee’s.

One winds up getting shot (or shoots herself, they aren’t sure) and the case heats up. Probie happens to have gotten her blood on his shirt, so they now have the DNA sample they need. Unfortunately, it is not a match. There is another woman somewhere.

Ziva finds that the guy owned a storage locker in another town. She and Probie (I can never remember his name when I consciously try to think of it) head out to search the locker and find nothing. The locker is empty. Until Ziva looks up and there is a bag tied to the ceiling. Inside the bag - a load of gold coins.
Meanwhile they search the house where his body was found after finding insulation fibers in his nose. They pull up floor boards and find a blood stain on one of the beams.

Now I’m afraid I’m at the point where I would start closing my eyes during ads (never a good idea!) Focus turned to the realtor after it was determined that it was her DNA. She was in the bone marrow donor registry. They go to bring her in for questioning.

She admits she was having an affair with the Navy guy. He fell and hit his head and was knocked unconscious.

Meanwhile, her husband clued in to her affair and saw her leave. He goes in, finds the body, and buries it. (Now this is what my husband says happened, he can be pretty vague at times, so I’m hoping I didn’t miss anything else.)

The problem was the guy wasn’t dead so he wound up suffocating to death while underground. The husband is guilty of his murder in actuality. The show ends with a third fiancee showing up…

Again, I had an issue staying awake for the last 15 to 20 minutes. So I’m going by what my husband informs me occured. Some aspects still don’t make sense to me though. Did the fiancee shoot herself or did someone else? Why didn’t the hubby check for a pulse or did he mean to kill him?

In this week’s epidsode, the team of FBI agents investigate the disappearance of a 15 year old girl from the detention center where she was serving a sentence for vehicular manslaughter.

So the case begins with this girl getting a note that says “You’re dead.”  The teacher catches it and asks the girl to leave the room for a minute so that she can grill the other girls in the class over who wrote it.

 The girl vanishes that night.  The adoptive/foster parents tell the FBI how Melia was always a bit of a handful in comparison with her angelic sister.  There are plenty of suspects and the possibility that the girl left of her own accord.  But that doesn’t fit with the fact that she was in the final months of her sentence.

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Okay so the team starts by grilling the other classmates to find out where the note originated.  Through this they learn that the girl (Melia I believe was her name) had asked another classmate to get her into a “program” run by one of the school guards.  He was using the girls as prostitutes.

 They also learn that the father of the boy who died in the car accident had been to see Melia at the detention hall.  So they question him and he says no matter how twisted it seems, she is the last person to see his son alive, so he cannot deny that connection.

They drill the guard and he admits that Melia wanted out, but not to be a prostitute, it was to get a ride to some seedy apartment.  He left her there after he heard gunshots.

They learn that Melia and her older sister used to live in one of those apartments during their foster home time and that the guy Melia went to see is a notorious drug dealer.  In fact, he is the guy who gave Melia and her sister the “happy pills” that led to the accident.  He drops a bombshell, Melia wasn’t driving at all, and some guy picked her up from his apartment after Melia shot his car window out.  Melia’s sister is also a junkie who owes him $2,000.  Melia was there to settle the debt with drugs she’d stolen from her cellmate.  Only he wanted cash, not crummy pills.

It turns out that Melia’s sister drove that night and crashed.  Melia knew her sister would go away for a long time, but that Melia would go to a juvenile center, so she and her sister lied.

They learn that it was the dead boy’s father that gave her a ride and he took her to the subway station.  When asked why he would do that for a 15 year old, he repeats that he told her if she ever needs anything - he’ll provide it no questions asked.

Looking at the train that Melia would have taken, they realize she headed to her sister’s apartment.  They question the sister and her boyfriend who was paralyzed in the accident.  While they are grilling them, another team searches the apartment and finds blood and hair on the wheelchair.

The disappearance is now narrowed down–Melia arrived to find her sister passed out.  She wanted to call 911 but the boyfriend wouldn’t have that so he knocked her down and then drugged her to keep her sedate.  He used the wheelchair to move her body down to the apartment storage room.

 The agents swarm the basement and find Melia alive and tied to what looks like a radiator or pipes.  She’s taken to the hospital and her sister says how much she loves her before going to confess that she was the one driving.

My take - I liked the storyline, but after Melia’s sister put her through that, I would have expected two things - first, Melia to tell her sister to go to hell.  The second, the foster parents who had adopted the sisters needed to come forth and apologize for every mean thing they said about her in the beginning.

I’d read an article saying that the 10/15 episode of Cold Case would have the viewer in tears.  Now I can be a very emotional TV viewer, last night’s episode didn’t do it for me.  I found it rather predictable.

 The Philly coroner is going through SID deaths in the 80s because studies are finding that some SID deaths are actually murders that went undetected.  Modern technology can help determine the cause in some of these deaths.

 Lilly Rush and Kat Miller are handed a case where an infant died.  Something isn’t right though, the child was wet when her father picks up the infant from the crib.  The team delve into his case by interviewing the infant’s now divorced parents and older brother.

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Nothing was obvious about this case.  The mother and father had a loving marriage until the baby girl was born prematurely.  Then she required a lot of care.

The first suspect is a Hispanic nanny who had lost her own son to SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrom).  She now heads a SIDS support group.  The boy (now man) remembers the nanny trying to baptize the infant girl to “save her soul”.  However, the nanny has an alibi for that day.  She mentions the babysitter would slip cough syrup into the boy’s water to make him sleepy so that the babysitter’s boyfriend could come over for some sex.

 Focus moves to the babysitter who says there is no way she did it and that they should look at the father who was having an affair with his wife’s business partner.  Only he grew a conscience and broke it off… the business partner wasn’t particularly happy.

 The father is cleared of suspicion and the business parter is rather quickly as well.  She points back to the husband/father who was heard by his wife over the baby monitor saying “Did you hurt her?  What did you do?”  He confesses that he found his young son stood over the baby and she was wet and not breathing.  Lilly catches the fact that the mobile was turned on–the boy at that age couldn’t reach the mobile so it couldn’t have been him.

 This leaves the mother.  It turns out she was in the throes of severe postpartum depression.  She took the infant girl outside into the snow storm because it had snowed the night the girl was born.  The snow might cleanse them all.  Unfortunately, the mother falls asleep and the infant dies in the cold.

Something about this case screamed “the mother did it” all the way.  Even when they kept throwing other evidence out there, the mother still didn’t sit right with me.  So I wasn’t surprised at all when she was determined to have caused her child’s death.   Now why when they found the baby (she was still wet after all) didn’t the focus more on her body temperature?  Sure the nursery window was open, but I would bet that a hypothermia victim has a much lower body temperature than an infant wrapped in blankets inside a house with a window cracked open.  That didn’t set right with me.

 I do have one quesiton about another aspect of this night’s show.

Who is Ray?  Lilly’s cell phone keeps ringing - Ray is calling.  She finally takes the call and finds that Ray has been badly beaten and is in the hospital, so she goes to the hospital to see him.

Now I did miss last week’s Cold Case.  Instead of airing it as scheduled in Vermont, they aired the political debate between Bernie Sanders and Rich Tarrant.  So if Ray was featured in that episode, it explains the gap.  Otherwise, I couldn’t place Ray at all.

Last night was a poker/beer night for me, so I didn’t catch Close To Home.  Instead, I’m going to back track to Wednesday night.  The show of the evening for me was Law & Order’s Criminal Intent.

The show starts with Mike Logan and Megan Wheeler at an NYFD location where they get into a huge brawl that involves many cops and leaves Mike relatively well battered.  Why they battled is not apparent, but the show really starts when they backtrack and give the explanation.

A NYFD member is dead, brutally stabbed to death, and Mike and Megan are assigned to the case.  They follow what little evidence they have and from all signs it points to a murder of sheer rage/passion.

Interviewing the wife, they find her protected by other FDNY members, especially one bulldog who seems to the be one with the biggest issue with Mike and Megan doing their job.  It appeared to me that he might be guilty…

After talking to the wife, they learn that the victim was gone a few nights a week and that she had confronted him about ending whatever affair he was having the night he died.  Turns out she’d just found out she was pregnant.

Now comes the spoilers:

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The fireman (victim) was actively involved in a group protesting the effects of 9-11 and how the firemen were exposed to more risks that day that the government isn’t admitting to.  During one heated debate, one of the officials makes a gesture that suggests he supports the fireman even though he works for the city.  Mike and Megan question him for as much information as they can get.

 They also learn that the fireman had broken up an attack by a gang of youth.  The fireman had smashed the glasses and cut the face of one kid who in turn mimicked shooting the fireman, so they track down those kids in Central Park who are in the process of beating a new victim with a baseball bat.  They arrest the kids but are unsure if that kid truly did the stabbing.  The kid swears he is innocent.

So they start tracking the victim’s moves and find he’d been frequenting a gay bar-he was gay and having an affair.  So this leads them in a new direction. As it was a crime of passion and the fireman/victim had broken up with his lover that same night, a gay partner would have had the strength and anger to stab this man dozens of times.

The case progresses and it means that they have to go ask questions about the firefighter being gay.  This is what leads to the brawl that opened the show.  Those firefighters will not believe or allow a cop to state their “brother” was gay.

As they continue searching the different suspect’s backgrounds, they learn that the guy at the 9-11 meeting that works for the city is gay and is linked to a man who was attacked and killed another lover almost a dozen years earlier.  Same situation, the wife became pregnant and went to end the affair.

Catching him is trickier.  They ask a favor of the bulldog-like firefighter.  He comes to the police station and proceeds to confess to the murder while the real murderer watches from behind a hidden mirror/window.  The real killer cannot believe that his lover was having an affair with another man and that that’s why he broke off the affair.  This leads the real killer to confess.

The show wasn’t bad, though I felt the ending was a little too tidy.  I can’t see a killer who got away with another murder for almost 12 years turning around and quickly confessing rather than admit his lover could have had another gay lover.  Perhaps it is so, but he was slick and I can’t see him so easily confessing.

My bigger issue with the show is that I am a big fan of Vincent D’onofrio.  I just don’t like Chris Noth (Mike) as much.  He doesn’t tap into the killer’s mind the same way that D’onofrio does.

Okay, let me start by saying that I will be discussing the entire show.  I will be giving spoilers, so if you’ve taped it or live in a country where it has not aired yet, stop reading when you hit the spoilers section.

Last night’s show started with the brutal beating of a Hispanic casino worker (I believe he was in maintenance, not that it really matters).  He was found dead on the scene and his wallet and cell phone had been stolen.  They get his cell phone number from his wife and supeona his cell phone records to track any calls made after his time of death.  As the CSI team processed the scene, cops were called to another scene where a female tourist had been beaten to a pulp, though she survived.  Again her wallet and cell phone were stolen.

 As the CSI’s evening progressed, they were called to a liquor store that had been robbed by a large mob of people.  The store owner couldn’t identify them, however, saying that they all had grotesque facial features and wore hoodies.  He was able to pull the hoodie off one and handed it in for evidence.

Meanwhile, Greg shows up at the CSI offices having completed his first court (jury) trial and he’s pretty revved over doing a great job.  He helps Sara process the foot marks on one piece of clothing and both are disgusted to find at least six different shoe prints, both men and women’s.

After he finishes up with Sara, Grissom asks him to change and go to the liquor store.  On the way, Greg witnesses a huge mob of people beating someone and calls for backup.  He pulls into the alley and turns on his lights and siren.  The crowd, all but one person, disperses and the one black guy wearing freaky white contacts approaches Greg in the vehicle.  Greg runs him down, but it doesn’t stop the rest of the mob from sneaking up behind the truck, smashing windows, pulling Greg out of the truck, and severely beating him.

 If you plan to watch the show, stop here.  If you feel asleep and missed the ending, I have good news, the rest of the show will follow.

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Sara, Nick, and Warrick arrive on the scene and Sara talks to a barely alive Greg, who is stable, and able to tell her a little bit.  Nick and Warrick gather evidence, but a heckler in the crowd really ticks Nick off so Nick attacks.  Warrick breaks it up, but the heckler threatens that he took pictures of the assault on his cell phone.  Warrick grabs the cell, offers to arrest all the people in the address book who are drug dealers courtesy of this heckler’s cell phone, and the guy backs off.  At that point, I had a strong feeling that the heckler was one of the mob, but he walked off and caused no more problems.

The story moves to the hospital where Greg is going to be okay, but he admits to Grissom that he’s never told his parents he left the lab and became an agent because they are over protective and wouldn’t even let him play sports as a kid because they didn’t want him to get hurt.  Meanwhile, the other beating victim asks to see Greg in person so that he can thank him for saving his life.

At the police station, a new victim comes in and tells them he was beaten by a large group of people wearing black hoodies, and his wallet and cell phone were stolen.  Grissom quickly determines that the guy was lying because his supposed beating occured out of range of the other beatings.  The guy fesses up that he lied and said his $10,000 was stolen because he owes a bookie.  Meanwhile, police trace a number made from the Hispanic victim’s cell phone and bring in a woman for questioning.  She’s no more than a teen and admits she and her friends have been crusing the street “Fanny Smackin’.”  Apparently it is all fun and games to beat a tourist and steal his/her money and cell phones.  Through this girl, they are able to find and arrest another girl.  In her car, they find the dead man’s cell phone and wallet.  They are able to pull up all text messages sent from the cell phone that night.

This second girl keeps her mouth shut and refuses to give any names.  Brass makes it clear that unless she speaks up, she’ll be going down for 1st degree murder.  He tells her not to speak, but to write a message similar to the ones that were sent out to gather the mob.  She finally complies and Nick sets up a text message from the computer using the ringleader’s cell phone as the originating number.  They set these kids up and have them drive into a warehouse.  Once all the kids arrive, the police move in, block the entrances, and arrest them.

It turns out the heckler is the only adult in the mob.  He obviously has a distaste for cops, and none of the kids show remorse for what they have done.  They find it “fun” and “exciting” to beat tourists up.  The Hispanic guy was their test run and they just happened to become over eager.

Meanwhile, Greg and the beating victim he saved meet.  Greg learns the black kid he hit with the truck has died and that guy’s brother stares at Greg in a rage.  It is apparent that that kid will be looking for revenge in future shows.

The show ends with Sara, Nick, Warrick, and Catherine discussing what makes these kids become so cold and evil.  Sara says it best when she says you cannot blame the parents that ultimately these kids have a choice to use their morals and say no, but they opt to do the heinous acts.  Grissom gives his opinion and the show ends.

Okay, having watched that show, I became horrified that there are kids out there that do target and beat tourists to within inches of their lives.  I hope this doesn’t go on in real life, but then I know that CSI takes stories from around the country and spins it into shows.  I did an online search of fanny smacking and all it came up with is a new “hobby” in which men or “boys” go to dance clubs, bars, or the likes and smack cute women on the butt.  This is still juvenile and unacceptable behavior, but not quite as bad as murder IMO.

I’m going to bypass the usual and dive into the meat of this blog.  Crime Drama TV.  As many of today’s top rated shows are crime dramas, their is no doubt that crime drama is what people enjoy!  Perhaps it is the insiders look into detective work.  Maybe it is seeing how killers behave.  Possibly, the attraction is the courtroom side of life.  Whatever draws us to crime drama, there are more shows than ever before.

 Today, I want to talk about what I like and what you will see at this website.  I try to watch as many shows as possible.  Monk, CSI (the original), Cold Case, Without A Trace, all of the Law & Orders, Close To Home, and NCIS are favorites that I try to watch or record every week.  I’m also open to watching new shows and Stand Off and Verdict are two of my preferred shows this season, though their fate has yet to be determined.

 To briefly sum up my favored shows:

Monk is one of those shows that is truly fascinating, but never gained the appeal it deserved.  Thankfully USA picked it up after I believe it was NBC gave up on it.  (Note to television studios: instead of canceling a show outright, will you PLEASE try these shows in dead or slower time slots first?  Placing a brand new show against a popular show like Lost or CSI is a silly idea to start with.)  Anyway, Monk is a slightly neurotic, definitely obsessive complusive man whose deduction skills and strange habits always break the case.

 CSI is set in Las Vegas.  You have a team of crime scene investigators working on brutal crimes.  There are the two other shows–Miami and New York City–but I don’t watch them as often.

Cold Case is a branch of the Philadelphia PD that works solely on solving cases that have been pushed aside or forgotten because the leads ran dry.

Without A Trace is also set in New York.  Here a team of agents work to solve missing person cases.

Law & Order has three shows.  The original solves basically any crime.  The show focuses equally on detective work and the court aspect.  The first half hour focuses on the crime, the second half hour turns to the court trial.

Law & Order SVU (Special Victims’ Unit) deals with sex crimes.

Law & Order CI (Criminal Intent) covers any crime, but focus on the psychological aspect (killer’s mind) is key.

 Close To Home is a courtroom drama that starts with a crime and then jumps into charging and trying the suspect.

NCIS is the spin-off of JAG.  Here the team of investigators work for the Navy.  Solving crimes is their key.

Verdict is a new show and it starts with a crime.  The key players in this show are a team of defense lawyers who must prove their client is innocent.  The show ends with a playback of what really happened.

Stand Off is based on hostage negotiators who have to go in and save hostages by dealing with the captor.

I grew up watching Barney Miller, Moonlighting, Hill Street Blues, and Quincy.  So from my youth, crime drama intrigued me.  My own personal enjoyment comes from watching detectives sift through clues and crack the case.  I’m a puzzle girl, always have been.  Logic problems are a fun way to spend a few spare minutes.  That is why detective shows are so fascinating.  In my mind, detective work is like solving a logic problem.  You have the clues, but you have to figure out how they eliminate each other, how they go together, or if they are dead ends leading you to nowhere.

 Every day, you will find me discussing the previous nights shows, including spoilers.  So if you fall asleep and miss a show, I may be able to help you out.  Providing I watched or taped that show.

Please feel free to drop me a line and state your favorite shows.  Sometimes other recommendations can get me hooked on a new show that I otherwise would miss!

See ya tomorrow!