CBS' "COLD CASE" CANCELLED - ON MY TV (Teen Lesbo Makeout Scene Is Last Straw)

Back in 2004, singer Linda Ronstadt, who was romantically linked in the seventies with Democratic then-California Governor Jerry Brown but had never previously displayed any signs of traditional celebrity political activism, began ending her concerts by dedicating the song "Desperado" to Michael Moore, the blame-America-first filmmaker/author. When she did so at the Aladdin hotel in Las Vegas, a mini-riot ensued, and she and her band was escorted from the premises shortly afterward by the hotel's miffed manager.

Less than a week later, Ronstadt was interviewed before an upcoming concert in San Diego about whether she would continue honor Moore after witnessing the anger of hundreds of her own fans. According to WorldNetDaily, she told the San Diego Union-Tribune:

Now that there are so many performers who are not shy about the way they feel about right-of-center Americans (or Americans in general, even if they are Americans themselves), consumers have to make a choice: Should I sponsor and support people who have made it crystal clear they would just as soon insult me as entertain me?

Recent events made it necessary for me to ask that question regarding one of my favorite remaining TV shows, CBS' Cold Case. A detective show that relies heavily on vivid flashbacks of witnesses to unsolved crimes, Cold Case was one of the few cop shows that I have been able to see through an entire episode. I had outgrown the Spelling-Goldberg shows (The Rookies, Starsky & Hutch, T.J. Hooker, etc.) years before, and Quinn Martin (Cannon, Barnaby Jones, The Streets of San Francisco, etc.) and Jack Webb (Dragnet, Adam-12) are long gone. I hadn't bothered with the genre since the Steven Bochco (Hill Street Blues, NYPD Blue) and Dick Wolf (the Law & Order franchise) redefined it.

With the exception of 24, there doesn't seem to be a dramatic or comedic program that I know of that gives anything resembling fair and equal treatment to fictional characters who aren't liberals. Knowing that, I don't eschew every program that has a homosexual character or takes a moment to gratuitously bash Bush or Christians or the GOP. That would make it difficult to turn the set on at all. So the reason for dumping an enjoyable and ostensibly decent program would have to be heavier than isolated incidents of discomfort with the writers' biases.

For example: many years ago, I cut The Cosby Show loose from my life after the writers apparently decided that there should be a feminist undercurrent in every single episode. It was unbearable; there would be a bit of dialogue in each show in which one of the male characters would thoughtlessly mouth classic Male Chauvinist Pig dogma, and Clair Huxtable (Phylicia Rashad) or one of the Huxtable daughters -- even little Rudy -- would put him in his place posthaste. It was as reliable as watching an automatic pinsetter at a bowling alley, setting up the male ego for a noisy toppling over. If I had wanted to see that, I would have watched reruns of Maude.

My problems with Cold Case weren't that consistent, but they were increasing in frequency exponentially. The show's first season contained an episode about a young boy whose body was found on the grounds of an orphanage run by a sadistic Catholic headmistress (SPOILER: She wasn't the kid's killer.) That episode was well-written and touching, and although it revisited well-worn stereotypes about Catholics, it wasn’t a video dart board with the pope at the center, as many TV dramas have been in recent years.

Near the end of the second season, things turned a little unusual – some would say strange. An episode began with a late 70’s flashback about a slender Latina teenage runaway girl who looked like a streetwalker. She was picked up by two rowdy teenage boys, and was later found dead of a gunshot wound to her head. Fast forwarding to today, the case was re-opened as a woman who was divorcing her husband implicated her soon-to-be ex for the murder, and presented as evidence what appeared to be a snuff film, showing the girl being assaulted, restrained, and begging for her life at gunpoint, before the film ends.

Indeed, that was the girl, but the ex-husband -- one of the teens in the car, and the owner of the film – didn’t kill her. In fact, the other guy in the car ended up apologizing to her, and subsequently fell in love with her. She and The Other Guy had plans of going to New York City to chase her dreams, but there was an intimacy problem between the two of them – she kept pushing him away. Finally, she told her deep, dark secret – she wasn’t really a girl.

This, surprisingly, turned out not to be a deal-breaker to The Other Guy, who was still in love with "her," until his mean ol' abusive bigoted father found out about their plans to run away together, and The Other Guy reluctantly abandoned “her.” Losing "her" only chance at love, she shot "her"self in the head. There was no murder.

OhhhhhK, I thought – I can’t ask all of the shows to reflect my values all the time. I continued watching the show.

Three weeks ago, the series focused on a serial killer played by Barry Bostwick, who is due for release from prison after serving a plea-bargained twenty-five year sentence. The detectives scramble to find another murder that he hasn’t been prosecuted for, and come up with the 1977 killing of a doorman whom the killer saw as the impediment to his relationship with a girl who participated in the infamous midnight performances of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the bizarre underground musical phenomenon that celebrates sexual obsession (the then-unknown Bostwick and Susan Sarandon co-starred in the film as a white-bread American couple that learn to love bisexuality and promiscuity).

By the way, the killer, who said that upon release he would continue to murder those upon whom God has marked for death with “his light,” is specifically identified as Mormon, and his middle name is Brigham. Flashbacks of his domineering and sanctimonious mother feature her calling him by his full name, as if we might have taken a bathroom break and missed the point that the crazy serial killer is a Mormon. Everybody got that? He’s a Mormon! Meanwhile, the Rocky Horror kids are portrayed – as always – as free-spirited and delightful.

By now, I am starting to notice a pattern. The girl impostor was strike one; this is strike two.

The episode that aired two weeks ago opened with the flashback of a plunge of a truck full of moonshine off a rickety bridge under repair. The skull of one of the passengers turned up in the truck, excavated after 70 years in the watery deep. The skull was that of a teenage black girl, who dressed up like a gangster complete with suspenders, slicked back hair and a fedora. Initially, it was thought that she was driving the truck, and struck by one of the bullets that didn’t end up piercing the truck, but as it turned out – hang on to something – she was the girlfriend of the little sister (teenage white girl) of the late teen/early twenties bootlegger who ran the operation.

See, it starts with the fascination the little sister had with the style and boldness of the black girl, which leads her to the speakeasy the black girl frequented. The Black Girl is reluctant to let the White Sister hang around because she thinks she’ll get in trouble with her lover, an adult black woman who is insanely jealous. Eventually, White Sister makes into the club where the black lesbos hang out, and is dancing with Black Girl when she runs into Big Brother Bootlegger delivering moonshine to the joint. Oops. After trying to drag White Sister out, the other lezzies physically threatens Big Brother Bootlegger. He backs down, of course, but makes it clear that she is not to return.

A subsequent flashback shows Black Girl being savagely beaten by local yokels, not so much for being black, but for dressing up in men’s clothes. Black Girl seeks White Sister for shelter, and in the midst of White Sister’s tending to the bruises on Black Girl’s head and upper torso, White Sister removes Black Girl’s jacket, and they declare their love for each other. They talk about running off together to the safety of New York (again with NYC?), but, says Black Girl, they don’t have any money. White Sister suggests they could appropriate some of Big Brother Bootlegger’s hooch to pay for their life together. At this point, with Black Girl already partially unclothed, she and White Sister begin what could accurately be described making out as the scene fades. That’s right; although their lips never touched, and there wasn’t any visible fondling, at about 8:30 pm on Sunday, during the so-called “family hour,” actresses portraying teenage girls were unmistakably going at it.

At this point, I know that this is the end of this series for me, but I wanted to know how far they were willing to go with this. So I continued watching, and taped the final ten minutes.

In other flashbacks: Big Brother Bootlegger catches Black Girl stealing the booze, and grabs her by the throat. White Sister begs him to let her go, because she loves her. BBB says, “You don’t know what she is!” White Girl says, “Yes, I do. I know her through and through.” BBB, sputtering about how he's failed to keep White Sister on the right track, tells her to get his shotgun because he’s going to “put [Black Girl] out of her misery.” White Sister gets his gun, and points it at BBB, who lets Black Girl go. White Sister and Black Girl get into the truck, and head for tolerant New York. Pursued by BBB once the gun is off him, he fires his revolver at his stolen truck. White Sister, not realizing the bridge is under repair, goes in the wrong direction. Black Girl says, “We ain’t gettin’ away from him now!” White Sister, realizing that Black Girl is good as dead once she gets out of the truck, says “He’s not taking you away from me!” Continuing toward the barricades closing off the bridge the conversation goes like this:

White Sister floors the truck, it crashes through the barricade, and plunges into the water. Seconds later, White Sister emerges, calling out for Black Girl. But, of course, Black Girl is dead, trapped in the truck where her remains would be discovered seven decades later.

White Sister, now pushing 90 and feeling guilty that she survived the crash, never admitted to the Cold Case crew that she was a lesbian until she was confronted with poetry she had written about Black Girl’s tragic loss. Old White Sister moaned softly to Det. Lilly Rush (series star Kathryn Morris): “I wondered if it was wrong, the feelings that I had for her.” Lilly replied, “No...it was just...the wrong time.”

Cold Case’s trademark ending, where the younger versions of the figures in the deaths reemerge in a symbolic, dreamlike sequence, finishes this episode with BG’s insanely jealous girlfriend, old and gray, waving approvingly at a couple of black girls walking hand in hand. Old White Sister, sitting on a park bench, sees Black Girl’s hand extended to her. As Old White Sister stands, she is transformed into Young White Sister, and she and Black Girl walk arm-in-arm.

If the producers and writers of Cold Case had let their personal biases and political leanings show every so often in little, almost inperceptable ways, I might consider continuing to give them the favor of my viewership. But they have become so aggressive, excessive, and obsessive about spitting all over traditional sexual mores that it damages their show's entertainment value. They have, like Linda Ronstadt, made themselves perfectly clear: they don’t like me. They don’t care if I am offended by their blatant promotion of transgenderism and homosexuality, and their contempt for those who don’t approve of them on religious grounds. They would rather not know that I am out there.

Well, you don't have to worry anymore, Executive Producer and writer Meredith Stiehm, and producer Jerry Bruckheimer. I won't be out there anymore. As far as I am concerned, Cold Case the series is just like the cold cases in the show -- stored away in a dark room in a forgotten cardboard box, never to be looked at again.

Didn't the lead actress play the wife in MINORITY REPORT? She looked so different as a brunette.

You are correct. I first decided to check out Cold Case after catching Kathryn Morris on Late Show with David Letterman. Unlike most of the actresses there for the first time, she wasn't a bit nervous or intimidated. I think she may have intimidated Dave a little bit.

I think she may have intimidated Dave a little bit.

Ha! I'd like to have seen that.
Bet she was a weeee bit more interesting
than Paris (uh...I dunno *giggle giggle*) Hilton
the other night on Letterman.

Thanks for the link. She was also the femme fatale
in PAYCHECK, taking full advantage of Ben's Afleck's
soon-to-be mooted memory.

Her acting skills are wasted on that glum Cold Case
character, IMO.

Bet she was a weeee bit more interesting than Paris (uh...I dunno *giggle giggle*) Hilton the other night on Letterman.

Everyone's more interesting than Paris Hilton. But she is smarter than she looks. She has to be. She's capitalizing on her dumb blonde image and raking in the cash -- all her own, not daddy's.

Although it's not a must-see for me, I have watched The Simple Life a few times, and have laughed myself sore. People who hate the show seem to be under the impression that it's real; I don't think it is. I think the show is part reverse Beverly Hillbillies, part Candid Camera, and part Punk'd. Heiresses Paris & Nicole, in the midst of trying to do things "real people" do, act as outrageously as possible, and the cameras show how everyone around them react.

I am laughing right now remembering how in the original series shot on an Arkansas farm, when the girls -- after getting fired from a dairy after trying to cover their wasting of fresh milk by filling out milk bottles with water -- returned to the family farm where they were living. They took off their dirty clothes, put on some bikinis, and headed for the hot tub. Upon seeing them there, the family patriarch, about to return to the fields, sarcastically said, "You girls mind if we work while you relax?" Paris & Nicole, simultaneously: "No."

Everyone's more interesting than Paris Hilton.
But she is smarter than she looks. She has to be.

I agree.
It takes a lot of work to stay that stunning.
She'll probably never 'out' her intelligence, tho,
any more than Norma Jean did.
I like your comment about this being her money she's earning
and not Daddy's.

Never saw The Simple Life.
Good review!

You did better than I. I found it too offensive way before you did. When the show began, I was excited, thought it was a great idea. But every single show was about political correctness -- showing stupid, bad people in the past being politically incorrect ("wrong") and showing how the star & her crew were so much more advanced. Heaven Forbid they just tell an interesting story!

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