"Cold Case"
Hubris (2004)

Director:

Agnieszka Holland

Writers:

Stacy Kravetz (writer)
Kim Newton (writer)

TV Series:

"Cold Case" (2003)

Original Air Date:

11 January 2004 (Season 1, Episode 11)

Genre:

Crime | Drama | Mystery | Thriller

Plot:

Plot Keywords:

Pop Music | Grudge | Murder Investigation | 1930s | Female Detective

Cast

Kathryn Morris	...	Lilly Rush
Danny Pino	...	Scotty Valens
John Finn	...	John Stillman
Jeremy Ratchford	...	Nick Vera
Thom Barry	...	Will Jeffries
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Stacy Arnell	...	Trish
Larry Brandenburg
E.J. Callahan	...	Archie
Kaitlin Doubleday	...	Holly Richardson
Mary Kathleen Gordon	...	Susan Rickter
Elizabeth Greer	...	Monique
Josh Hopkins	...	ADA Kite
Robert LaSardo	...	Jesus Torres
Jeffrey Nordling	...	Roy Minard
Lisa Dean Ryan	...	Barbara
Blake Shields	...	Barry

Soundtrack:

Don't Look Back In Anger

Superior episode with an aesthetic bent

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

The crew try to solve a decades old murder of a coed undergraduate who was having an affair with her art history professor. The case hinges on recognizing a particular picture by John Everett Millais, leading light of the English nineteenth century avant-garde artistic group, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. In the late lamented series "Inspector Morse," one episode (season 8, episode 1, "The Way Through the Wodds") similarly revolved around a picture by Millais, who has unwittingly, and very much posthumously, become a favorite for TV mystery writers on either side of the Atlantic. Lucidly directed by Agnieszka Holland, and featuring particularly committed performances by Kathryn Morris and Danny Pino, the episode aims for an enlightened sense of aesthetics, and even weaves in a discussion of ideas of post-modernism to the plot. That being said, a scene with the detectives reading various Shakespeare plays with stupefying levels of general ignorance, is gratuitous and largely unnecessary in advancing the plot -- it is simply there to further set them off from the educated professor. If Chief Inspector Morse, or Detective Jane Tennison, assumedly know their Shakespeare, there is no real reason why five detectives in Philadelphia, home to excellent theaters and a thriving arts scene, should be portrayed as so thick.