The 'Cold,' Slow Death

The entire time I was watching tonight's episode of Cold Case, I had that pain in the pit of my stomach that's usually reserved for things like The Notebook or Stepmom (which incidentally, I refuse to ever watch again). You know where the story is leading, but the process to get there is actually worse than the end result. That pain in my stomach was two-fold tonight as we watched Jay succumb to his non-operable brain tumor and Lilly come to some sad resolutions regarding her mother (more on that later). CC is gifted with paralleling story lines without beating us over the head with the similarities, but tonight's outing was off the charts. I couldn't believe how perfectly they worked this one out. Not only were they beautifully congruent, but each made the other even sadder. Yes, these story lines had a symbiotic relationship that made this one even more powerful than it would have been without the double impact. As interested as I was to learn who had helped Jay end his suffering, I was even more interested in his mystery flashes involving "Louise" and the beach. Loved that it ended up being nothing more than a happy moment with him and his family. And I'm not sure why, but that last seagull at the end after Jay died made the entire scene that much more poignant. For some reason, I'm not a crier with this show (which is VERY weird because I cry at pretty much every sad movie -- I was convulsing at Stepmom, hence the decision to never watch it again). The thing about the sad movies, after they're over and I leave the theater, I'm pretty much over it. However, the problem with CC (despite the no-crying thing) is, these episodes stay with me a while and haunt my emotions. I'm just not sure which is worse. Either way, I walk away moved and impressed that an hour-long episode about characters I'll never see again (excluding the regulars, of course) managed to accomplish such a feat.

Lilly's "Mama Drama" (TM Look Again) is moving me more than I ever would have expected. The show has done a beautiful job developing this complicated, emotional story line. We know that Lil is big on only remembering the bad times -- it's her coping mechanism because it allows her to keep enough distance from the person so they're unable to hurt her in the future, however, I didn't think that she'd lie to her mother about not remembering the bedtime stories. All that resentment and anger has allowed her to cope, but it has also done her a huge disservice, and I think that her mother's (assumed) pending death and this case may have woken her up. I feel sad for Lilly because she's losing her mother and all she can do is stand by and watch. But, I'm also sad for her because she has wasted so many years filled with resentment toward the woman who, admittedly wasn't mother of the year and made a lot of mistakes, but at the same time loved her. You can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped, so Lil is forced to make the best of the time that she has left so she doesn't make the same mistake that Tommy did with his father. So, she opened the old box filled with happy memories and pulled out The Velveteen Rabbit to read to her mother just as her mother had done for her in one of those previously repressed happy memories. It just might have been the most poignant scene of the night, and that's saying a lot for an episode that kept that sad feeling in the pit of my stomach working overtime. Cold Case moves to 20-2-1 on the season with this exceptional outing.

I did want to give huge props to Kathryn Morris for her emotionally charged performance tonight not only during the scenes with Lil's mother, but also for that kick-ass interrogation scene at the end that deserved a standing ovation. She always brings the right amount of emotion without taking it too far, leading to a subtlety that makes the character that much more real.


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