Cold Case – Recap & Review – The Crossing

photo: cbs

Cold Case
The Crossing

Original Air Date: Sept 27, 2009

Amanda—TwoCents Senior Reviewer
amanda@thetwocentscorp.com

Welcome back! I hope you’ve all had a wonderful summer. We kick off the season to the music of Ray Charles as the detectives investigate the 1966 death of a young woman on a cruise ship, and it looks like Lil’s got her hands full with the psycho who tried to kill her last spring. So, without further ado, all aboard!

Our story begins with the discovery of the body of Darcy Curtis, presumed to have jumped overboard, in the engine room of the USS Americana. An interview with her cabinmate and childhood friend, Grace, reveals that Darcy had received an engraved necklace, and later a proposal by telegram, from her boyfriend, Henry (also the cousin of Grace’s husband, Chester). Thinking there was more to life, Darcy refused, also via telegram, and Grace was urging her to reconsider when Darcy discovered a ship employee robbing her stateroom and stealing the necklace. Darcy got the necklace back, Grace says, but she doesn’t know how.

Lilly tracks down the thief, Cotter Doyle, a pathological kleptomaniac who cops to stealing the necklace, but says Darcy chased him down and got it back. In exchange for her silence, he promised to get her anything on the ship. Her price is steep: she wants admission to the Captain’s Ballroom. With the right shoes and the right attitude, he says, he can get her in.

The man who decided these things, one Geoffrey Manning, is now a maitre’d at a snooty steakhouse, and an eager Vera pounces on the interview, saying he’s been trying to get a reservation there for years. Manning pegs him as a cop right away (“It’s the shoes”), then says Darcy was there that night, flirting and performing an impromptu duet with a dashing man who claimed to be the “Duke of Wilkes-Barre.” Manning also recalls Grace being falling-down-drunk and leaving with a stranger, as well as Darcy running after her.

Scotty and Kat have a second conversation with Grace, who admits to cheating on Chester aboard the ship. She says Darcy didn’t judge her, and was making some fairly significant changes of her own, including buying birth control pills. Grace expressed some reservations, saying she hoped Darcy was thinking it through. “I’m not,” Darcy replied. “And that’s what feels so damn good about it.”

Meanwhile, the “Duke” has been located; it’s actually Tucker Benton (“Tucker?!?” In the 1960s?!?), an Americana employee who was engaged to Millie Gibbs, daughter of the ship’s owner. He tells Scotty and Stillman that he and Darcy, on a whim, decided to get married at sea. The captain, he says, allowed them the use of the ballroom, and he sent the steward, Manning, to tell Darcy the news.

Confronted with this, Manning tells Vera and Jeffries that he was looking out for Tucker and urged Darcy to reconsider the wedding. He sympathized with her “anything can happen on a ship” mentality, telling her of a time in his own life when he fell in love, but let the woman go because it wasn’t right. Darcy insisted she and Tucker were different, but Manning told her it would end in pain for everyone involved. Jeffries figures out that the woman in question was Millie, and that Manning didn’t want her heart broken, even if his own heart was. Manning says he didn’t kill Darcy, but found her shoes on deck and didn’t report them. This, it so happens, was a full half an hour before Darcy’s rejection telegram to Henry was sent.

Lilly and Scotty confront Grace with the telegram, as well as evidence that her husband, Chester, who’d been cheating on her since their wedding, had finally left her shortly before the cruise. They figure out that Grace was clinging to her fantasy that the four of them could have a happy life together, and Darcy’s marriage to Tucker would wreck that. Grace insists that if Darcy had married Henry like she was supposed to, then there would have been another wedding, and Chester would have remembered his vows. (Yeah, right). She urged Darcy to come back home where she belonged, but Darcy told Grace to wake up: “Chester’s gone.” Unwilling to face the truth, Grace, predictably, shoved Darcy over the rail to her death.

In other news, it seems that Kat and ADA Bell have had their date, but nothing since. When confronted, she admits it was because he didn’t kiss her, so she thought he wasn’t interested. Bell’s very much interested, a point he emphatically proves with a kiss then and there, and she’s good with that. Vera, meanwhile, gets a kickin’ new pair of shoes and a meal with the crew at his long-coveted steakhouse.

On a more chilling note, Moe Kitchener, who ran Lilly off the road last spring, has his bail hearing. Despite Lil’s testimony against him, he’s released until his trial, which is eight months away. Stillman urges an understandably furious Lilly to let it go, but we later see her in her car stalking Moe. Ohhhh, boy. This can’t end well.

Cold Case is always visually appealing, but I found this episode extra-beautiful. The romance of the ship was expertly captured in the dazzlingly colorful flashbacks…and Tucker sure didn’t hurt anything, either. The murder was really, really contrived, but I’ve come to cherish these arguments-turned-fatal-shoves with the same affection as one gives doddering, semi-demented old relatives: they’re peculiar, and sometimes annoying, but you love ’em anyway.

Kat in a relationship is pretty adorable, and although I think she could do better, it’s really nice to see her smiling. Lilly, though…yikes. I’m thinking she might be going off the deep end, figuratively this time.

So that’s my TwoCents, which, aboard the USS Americana, might have paid for part of a telegram back home to tell everyone how much fun I was having. I’d love to hear yours!