Cold Case

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1

Just watched my first episode last night (15-year old popular girl is murdered at Lover’s Lane). Excellent show. Tivo-d it, but apparently, it conflicts with my wife’s must-see Desperate Housewives, so I’m not sure how many I’ll get to see.

Anyways, if you’re a crime drama fan, but getting a bit bored of CSI/Law and Order, it’s well worth checking out. The technique of flipping frequently between the ‘now’ versions of the actors/characters and the ‘then’ versions is especially well done.

Edit - Also, don’t confuse this with the similarly named ‘Cold Case Files’, which is a cable (A & E?) documentary re-hash of old, real cases. This latter show is not particularly good, IMO.

2

I’ve tried watching this show several times. I think the only crime-drama I hate more is Crossing Jordan.

Seriously, the messy-haired blond whose facial expressions are limited to those of a stroke patient just kills it for me. The supporting cast is quite good, which is a shame. I like the concept, I like the writing, I just can’t get past the lead actress.

3

Man, I dig the lead actress, although she tries a little hard on the wannabe-Meg-Ryan bit. I like the case a lot, although it’s handy how everyone just confesses at the end of the show to save the whole evidence thing from screwing things up.

My favorite crime-drama shows, in order:

NCIS
CSI
Cold Case
L&O
CSI:NY
L&O:SVU
Crossing Jordan (cheezy, but love the dialog)
L&O:CI (“psychotic Columbo”)
CSI:Miami (blech)

4

If she was Meg Ryan, I’d agree with you. Meg Ryan was my first love.

NCIS - I’d like it more if Bellasario could avoid inserting his stupid fleshy-faced girly boy character he always has to have… like “Bud” on JAG

L&O- my favorite show on tv, though it’s not as good since Jerry left.
CSI:NY - when does she start talking to dead mother? pass.
L&O:SVU - I can’t watch it, subject matter makes me angry
Crossing Jordan - I keep waiting for a wormhole to open up to an alternate world… maybe it will be home.
L&O:CI (“psychotic Columbo”) I love it.
CSI:Miami (blech) I usually hate everything he does that isn’t NYPD blue, but Caruso seems to have grown on me here.

5

Still a great show with good casting. Pauly P’s character is fun, and I’m attracted to Sasha Alexander for some disturbing reason.

L&O- my favorite show on tv, though it’s not as good since Jerry left.

It’s had a great run. I guess the only thing that irritates me about the show is the “pulled from today’s headlines!” sensationalist angle. Irksome. The constantly rotating cast is hard to keep up with, but the fact that the show concentrates on the cases and not on the characters is a plus.

CSI:NY - when does she start talking to dead mother? pass.

I give most shows a 4 episode mulligan as they all get their groove on.

L&O:SVU - I can’t watch it, subject matter makes me angry

It’s a very difficult show to watch, that’s for sure.

Crossing Jordan - I keep waiting for a wormhole to open up to an alternate world… maybe it will be home.

Still, the dialog is great, very Gilmore Girls’esque.

L&O:CI (“psychotic Columbo”) I love it.

I don’t even bother watching unless nothing else is on my TiVO. And I have a LOT of shit on my TiVO =)

CSI:Miami (blech) I usually hate everything he does that isn’t NYPD blue, but Caruso seems to have grown on me here.

Good God, Caruso DRIVES ME NUTS on this show. His ham-handed melodrama, and his signature move:

“Put on sunglasses, look into the distance, say something intense, hands on hips”

gag Oh, and the pause. In the script it would be like this:

HORATIO: “And that --”
HORATIO LOOKS DOWN THOUGHTFULLY, PUTS ON SUNGLASSES
ZOOM OUT
HORATIO LOOKS INTENTLY INTO THE DISTANCE, HANDS ON HIS HIPS
HORATIO: " – my friends, is exactly what we are going to find out."

[THE WHO: “YEAHHHHHHH!!!”]

6

I know, Caruso is the worst actor ever. And he’s a skinny pale red head who tries to act like a tough guy. It’s awful. But for some reason I enjoy watching that show… maybe even more than original CSI with its far superior cast.

As for the dialogue from Crossing Jordan, I especially enjoyed the pretty young blonde doc they killed off… so she could do her “Committed” sit-com, which I actually really enjoyed as far as first episodes go… you should check it out.

7

What’s NCIS?

8

Navy Criminal Investigation Service, show on CBS with Mark “I was an 80’s god” Harmon.

I like Cold Case. Kathrym Morris is easy on the eyes. I remember her as Tom Cruise’s wife in Minority Report, and she had a small role in AI.

9

NCIS is the show that moved Jag to Friday’s, dammit.

10

I like this show when I remember to watch. Really inconvenient timeslot Sundays, and I don’t even watch DH. I like the lead actress, very hot in a recent movie love scene but she was more memorable than the movie whose title I can’t remember!

11

Dammit ? Jag is shit. has been for many many years. Sure, NCIS isn’t the much better… but Jag? :wink:

I’d say most of our Free To Air TV in Aus is mostly crime shows and home renovations (oh , and that show about fat people… that started last night).

Now that Jerry is gone from Law and Order I don’t even think I could watch that now.

12

No love here for Without a Trace? I just discovered it recently and it’s a new favorite in our house.

Troy

13

Without a Trace is great, and Poppy Montgomery is easy on the eyes. I also like Anthony Lapaglia (“Empire Records” and “So I Married an Axe Murderer”).

The main thing I dislike about WaT is when they start getting into the soap opera bullshit, e.g. Malone’s affair with Samantha and the divorce and custody blah blah blah. Like I care. More of that, and it’s going to be NYPD Blue 2.0

14

I like Without a Trace once I get past the strange and unbelievable concept that the FBI has an entire team devoted to a Missing Persons case within hours of the disappearance!! :roll:

15

Pretty much all modern detective stories demand suspension of belief WRT personnell assignment. i.e. in Law & Order, the same 2 detectives’ cases are always assigned to the same 2 assistant D.A.s. in CSI, the CSI’s seem to do half the suspect interrogations on top of their CSI duties. (And wouldn’t real CSI’s be more sub-specialized - lab guys, DNA guys, etc?)

My biggest CSI pet peeve is that apparently the Las Vegas CSI department is too poor to afford lightbulbs for their offices. When you spend your whole day closely inspecting minute objects for details and trace evidence, you might want to turn on the lights every now and then.

16

This is no different than any fictional show. Look at office sit-coms, where you have a fairly arbitrary core group that are apparently single-handedly running the entire office (WKRP, News Radio, that one with Laura San Giancamo I can’t remember).

in CSI, the CSI’s seem to do half the suspect interrogations on top of their CSI duties.

Yep, although to the Vegas squad’s credit, they try to get Brass involved in most of the interrogations. CSI:Miami has gotten so ridiculous that Caruso’s character actually tends to be the guy charging into suspect’s homes with gun drawn.

(And wouldn’t real CSI’s be more sub-specialized - lab guys, DNA guys, etc?)

CSI does this – you have mostly field guys, but the DNA and Trace guys are different, and the coroner is a separate character. Crossing Jordan doesn’t do this, and basically has the ME act as CSU, since Nigel and Bug do autopsies AND entymological forensics…:roll:

NCIS has got the perfect mix. They have a coroner, three special agents (detectives), and the lab tech, so it’s an interesting mix of field work and forensics, whereas Jordan and CSI 75% forensics and L&O is 75% field work.

My biggest CSI pet peeve is that apparently the Las Vegas CSI department is too poor to afford lightbulbs for their offices.

My biggest pet peeve is that they dispatch an entire CSU team whenever a car blows a flat or someone stubs their toe.

Oh, wait, the BIGGEST bitch I have, which has been done on EVERY single one of these shows without exception, is the magical “I can take a shitty VCR capture image and somehow refine it to 1600 DPI so what was a blurry mess I can now identify as a 1998 Mercedes SL500 with license plate A74BBN and mismatched tires”.

17

Oh, wait, the BIGGEST bitch I have, which has been done on EVERY single one of these shows without exception, is the magical “I can take a shitty VCR capture image and somehow refine it to 1600 DPI so what was a blurry mess I can now identify as a 1998 Mercedes SL500 with license plate A74BBN and mismatched tires”.

Las Vegas abuses this the worst. Apparently, they have instant access video to every single nook and cranny in the joint, from which, they can zoom in pictures to roughly the molecular level. Then they run their facial recognitions and get a hit in approximately 0.4 seconds. The CIA/FBI wish they had it 1/10 as good.

18

I also love how all these shows do the N-point fingerprint match and show all the failed hits visually. In the real world, there would be a progress bar. I can imagine searching my e-mail and having the client show me every single message it’s looking at – that would be SUPER efficient.

19

http://www.tpd.tno.nl/Pics/DII/gigazoom/Delft2.htm

try that. ( Press the ‘+’ down the bottom and wait a second )

20

I can deal with Caruso´s acting, but what makes this CSI unwatchable for me is the yellow filter they always seemed to be using. I felt ill watching it, wondering if Caruso had developed a horrific case of jaundice or some other skin colouring disease.

The original CSI cannot be beat for me, the cast just seem to have personality that the cast from the other shows do not.

I don´t get CSI:NY, perhaps its because I don´t understand the New York culture it seems to be steeped in - to me as a foreigner at least.