By Jennifer Larson

The rhetoric of pop culture can make people do crazy things. In 1938, Orson Wells put on a radio show that nearly ended the world. In fact, it was called “War of the Worlds,” and people thought this radio show was real. Imagine millions of people who really believed a show that was meant for their entertainment was a real broadcast about aliens invading Earth. When entertainment strives to be as realistic as possible, it can make some people do insane things. In tonight’s episode of COLD CASE, Lilly Rush (Kathryn Morris) and her team get a little taste of the insanity that can be brought on by entertainment, when they investigate the apparent murder of a women who disappeared while trying to outrun those aliens.

This is quit an interesting premise. I mean, COLD CASE isn’t real, it’s a show, and it’s airing an episode about people who died running from the imagined invasion of aliens that came from one of the premiere entertainment artists in modern history, Orson Wells. But, that’s how far TV programming has come. While we should all understand it’s not real, they get some of their best material from real life. Take LAW AND ORDER for example; their tag line is ‘ripped from the headlines.” Pretty much every episode is based on a real life incident. That being said, it is just entertainment. And with COLD CASE, it’s particularly well-done entertainment at that.

In all fairness to the people of the time, the radio broadcast was extremely realistic. I can see how so many of them believed it was real, especially if they came in after the beginning commentary that explained it was just a show. Sure, the couple in this episode looked and sounded a little sheltered … to say the least, but it was a much different time than it is today. Apparently, the murdered woman in this installment of COLD CASE became part of the ‘War of the Worlds” legend herself, at least around Philadelphia. It seems as if her disappearance was big news, and given the atmosphere after the broadcast, people still believed it was possible that Martians invaded and abducted the young mother. That was but one of the many fables that went around surrounding her disappearance, but the sad truth is that she was dead the whole time. But now that the cold case squad is investigating, the mystery of the missing women will break wide-open. Sadly, the end result will be rather mundane and dull, compared to all the rumors that floated around at the time.


But there was something else going on in 1938 besides a radio broadcast; it was also the time of the great depression. Apparently, there was quit a strain put on the murdered victim’s marriage because of the terrible economic times, which means the husband is suspect number one. Being that he currently has Alzheimer’s disease, you would think he wouldn’t have much to say, but he’s a perfect example of somebody’s old memory being clearer and sharper than the ones he made yesterday. Unfortunately that isn’t saying much since all he knows is she went missing and he looked everywhere for her. That means it’s on to suspect number two.

The next step in the investigation leads the detectives to a 1930s dance hall. The victim took a job as a dance hall girl, in order to put food on the table. I guess it wasn’t such refined job at the time, which means there were some nefarious characters from the past that need some looking into. Of course, if the victim’s hard-ass husband knew about the job, we could be heading back to the old-folks home he currently resides in. He didn’t seem like the type of man that would have any part of his wife working, especially in a job that was practically akin to prostitution. And if he found out about the rich man that bought up all his wife’s dance tickets just to have the pleasure of her company, he certainly would have gone off the deep end. But who’s more evil, a jealous and controlling husband, or a lonely man who can’t get you out of his mind? That’s exactly what Lilly and the team is so great at finding out.

And find out they did. It turns out that the victim had fallen in love with her dance hall stalker, and when her husband found out, the you know what hit the fan. After losing his work in the depression, he couldn’t take losing his wife to another man. Even old, feeble and losing his mind, the victim’s husband has a fiery temper, and it was that temper that killed his wife. So you see no big mystery. Just a man whose ego couldn’t take it anymore and he took his weakness out on his wife. Yet another happy ending on COLD CASE.