Cold Case – Recap & Review – Free Love

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Cold Case
Free Love

Original Air Date: Apr. 11, 2010

Amanda – Sr. Reviewer
amanda@thetwocentscorp.com

Woodstock: three days of music, mud, and free love. Unfortunately for one young GI, it also meant a premature end at the hands of an unknown shooter. He might not have gotten much in the way of free love, but it appears that several of our detectives might be, as Lilly, Stillman, Kat, and Vera either explore new relationships or rekindle old ones. In addition to all this, we have not one, but two cases to cover. Confused? Yeah, me, too.

We begin with a flashback to 1968, where our GI, David, takes a seat on a bus next to an attractive brunette named Annabelle. At first, she’s far more interested in her book than in him, but she soon thaws. He’s shipping off to Vietnam, and she’s headed for Cornell, but she gives him her address in case he needs someone to write to. When next we see him, he’s at Woodstock, wearing flowers around his neck and dying from a bullet wound to the midsection.

We flash forward not to PPD as usual, but to the FBI field office in New York, where Lilly and Yates are answering questions about the Shepard incident. When all’s said and done, Yates receives a letter of reprimand and decides to take time off to visit her mother in Philly, and Cavanaugh seizes the opportunity to pick Lilly’s brain about our murdered GI. He reels her in by telling her it’s not just an excuse to hang out with him: there might be a job in it for her in the federal cold case unit.

Thusly roped in, Lilly gets the skinny from Cavanaugh: 26-year-old David Quinn was shot between tours of duty. The only lead at the time was Reuben Harris, leader of a group of militant hippies best-known for bombing a draft board office, who had a confrontation with David. When questioned, Reuben insists he was a pacifist, so their confrontation was verbal only. In a flashback, we see David surprising Annabelle at Woodstock and telling her he wants to spend the three days’ leave he has with her. However, Reuben catches them, sees David’s dog tags, and hurries Annabelle away. Reuben then has an interesting bombshell for our detectives: Annabelle is actually Congresswoman Annabelle Bennet.

Understandably, Annabelle is reluctant to talk, but when Lilly reassures her she just wants to solve a murder, she softens. Annabelle, who hadn’t known David was dead, recalls all the effort it took for him to track her down at Woodstock. In a flashback, we see the two of them catching up. She wants to know what it was like for David over there, but he doesn’t want to talk about it. Instead, he helps her climb a tree to get a better view of the concert. After some adorable flirting and a treetop kiss, it begins to rain, and they climb down and take shelter in a nearby barn. Annabelle recalls hearing that the farmer chased off some other kids at gunpoint.

When Lilly and Cavanaugh go to Woodstock and find the spot Annabelle was talking about, their conversation turns personal; she doesn’t talk about her past, but he confides that his fiancée was killed in a car accident two years ago. All of a sudden, it starts to rain…and they take shelter in the very same barn Annabelle and David found! No. Way. Their ending isn’t as romantic, though, as they’re instantly at the business end of a rifle. I’m guessing they’ve found the farmer!

Sure enough, Farmer Al remembers David as being different from all the other hippies. In a flashback, we see the ever-present Reuben confronting Annabelle, saying he knew about Xavier, but not about this. There’s a scuffle in which David hits Reuben and he storms off, and Annabelle follows him to talk. Al turns on David, but when he discovers David’s a soldier, all is forgiven.

At a bar that night, Cavanaugh tells Lilly that Xavier was Reuben’s second in command, who’d been arrested just before Woodstock thanks to a tip from an informant: none other than Annabelle. For some reason, this prompts Lilly to tell Cavanaugh about Saccardo, and he responds by telling Lilly that she reminds him of a young Yates, without the chip on her shoulder and the foot in her mouth. If he’s hitting on her, he’s got a really weird way of doing it. A bit later, Cavanaugh realizes he’s locked his keys in the car, and Lilly suspects him of doing it on purpose to get another few hours with her. Calling his bluff, she busts out the car window, but then they decide to make out anyway. Ohhhkay. Moving on.

The next day, Lil and Cavanaugh visit Annabelle again, and she tells them she snitched to expunge a pot charge from her record. She says she was lost back then, and David was the only thing that made sense. In a flashback, we see David telling her that the night they spent together in the barn was the first night he’s slept in a year. Not wanting to relive the horrors of Vietnam, he’s decided to sell his car to Farmer Al and use the money to go to Canada, and he urges Annabelle to come with him. He tells her to wait for him right here, at their tree. Annabelle tells the detectives that she waited for a couple hours until she realized how silly it was, but when Lilly tells her David died under that tree, having really come back for her, Annabelle regrets the chance she didn’t take.

Back to the barn they go, this time with a search warrant, having learned that Farmer Al was involved in a riot at an anti-war rally. After discovering David’s car under a cover in the barn, Lilly confronts Al with his service records: he was discharged for being unfit for duty, despite his desire to return to war. David, by contrast, was fully fit, but chose not to return. Al says he tried to reason with David, but ultimately couldn’t understand why someone would turn his back on his country. In a flashback, Al tells David that he’s discovered his orders, and offers him a lift to the base. David insists that isn’t necessary, and when Al figures out David isn’t going, he accuses him of being a coward. David reminds Al of the horrors they both saw, and says he can’t face them again, and besides, he’s got a girl waiting. None of this sways Farmer Al, who shoots David in the back as he turns to leave. In the montage, Annabelle sees David, and Lilly mulls over the FBI application.

While all this is going on, our crack team of Homicide detectives has turned their attention to…a break-in? Really? Actually, it all makes perfect sense: the robbery victim is none other than Megan Easton, high school sweetheart of the recently-returned Vera. She’s missing some jewelry, and, unhappy with the way the cops handled the case, she appeals to Vera, who welcomes having something to do while he’s on restricted duty. Vera’s first stop is Megan’s husband, Roy, who says he and Megan were just returning from their regular Wednesday night date and sealing a promise with a kiss when Megan saw someone in the house. While she called for help, he went in to scare off the intruder. Vera decides to send CSU to dust for prints.

Later on, Kat reveals that the prints belong to none other than Shelly Hewit, a co-worker of Megan’s with a penchant for shoplifting…but most of the prints were concentrated around the bedpost and headboard. Uh-oh. When Vera and Kat confront Shelly, she admits to being a bit of a klepto, but didn’t take Megan’s jewelry. Nope. Just her husband. In a flashback to the night of the break-in, we see Shelly waiting seductively in the bedroom for Roy, and she wants answers: is he really going to leave Megan for her? Roy decides to invent the break-in story and promises to take her somewhere special to get her to scram. Despite the fact that “somewhere special” turned out to be scenic Cleveland, Ohio, Shelly’s convinced she’s Roy’s true love. “Keep drinkin’ that Kool-Aid, honey,” Kat instructs her.

A surly Vera meets Roy at the diner, and Roy admits to his mistakes. Vera orders him to save it, and Roy accuses Vera of still carrying a torch for Megan. Vera doesn’t deny this charge, merely orders him to tell Megan the truth. In his next encounter with Megan, though, Vera sees that Roy hasn’t come clean, and so Vera has to rat Roy out himself. Megan isn’t surprised, and reveals the first part of Roy’s earlier flashback: she’d confronted him about all the time he spent at “work,” and his promise was to take her away somewhere special that weekend, and leave his phone at home. Gee, Roy, hope nobody in Cleveland recognizes you. In a very sweet moment, Megan bemoans having to start over at forty, saying her life didn’t turn out anything like she had planned. Vera can relate, and we see him in the montage repairing her busted front door while she smiles at him adorably. This show has never been great with romance, but for whatever reason, they always do well with Vera.

In other news, Yates is still hanging around, God alone knows why, although the show-given reason is that her mother has had a stroke. Stillman shows up at the hospital to comfort her, and she gripes about how she fought her entire life to be the opposite of her mother. I’m sitting here thinking her mom must have been some sort of monster, but nope: she was just a stay-at-home mother, proud of her choice in life. Well, gee, Yates, I’m sorry that someone devoting her life to your care wasn’t good enough for you. A little gratitude might be nice. Ahem. Sorry. It’s the pregnancy hormones. In any event, she and Stillman also discuss their past relationship, and in the montage, when the doctor delivers presumably bad news, she finds comfort in Stillman’s arms. Awww. Now go away, Yates.

Meanwhile, Bell tries to win back Kat’s affections by buying her coffee, but she shuts him down. In a reprise of his role as her life coach, Scotty calls her on it and waxes eloquent about all Bell’s amazing qualities. “He’s all yours,” Kat retorts, but in a scene with Bell in the kitchen, they come to something of an understanding, and apparently all’s well that ends well. Scotty, on the other hand, receives some unwelcome news from Detective Pierson: his mother’s rapist has taken a plea deal and will probably be free in eighteen months. I bet that sits real well.

Lots of stuff going on in this episode, and for the most part, I enjoyed it. I suspected Farmer Al, but it was nice to see that he really did have more of a motive than shooting hippies for making out in his barn. I don’t mind Cavanaugh, really, but I do question the wisdom of bringing in yet another new love interest for Lilly, especially since most of the fireworks the last two weeks were between Lilly and Yates. Personally, I’d rather have seen Vera and Jeffries in the last three episodes than Cavanaugh and Yates.

So that’s my TwoCents, but I’d love to know yours. Anyone else peg Farmer Al? Any opinions on all the coupling that seemed to take place this week? Does anybody out there remember Woodstock? Might Lilly actually join the Feds? Leave your TwoCents in the Comments section!