Cold Case: ‘Boy Crazy’

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Warning: there are spoilers in this review.



Directed by Holly Dale

Written by Joanna Lovinger

Starring Kathryn Morris, Danny Pino, John Finn, Jeremy Ratchford, Thom Barry and Tracie Thoms – With Linsey Godfrey, Elisabeth Harnois, David Selby, Jonathan Keltz, Michael Constantine and Michael Oberlander


It is 1963. Samantha Randall, or Sam as she likes to be known, dresses “like a boy”. It is her first day in a new high school, having already been kicked out of two other schools because of her “alternative” behaviour. She is immediately bullied by her classmates and accused by the School Principal of inciting trouble because of her “anti-social” behaviour. She is later found dead by a nearby lake, wearing a dress. The cause of death is determined to have been suicide. Lilly Rush (Kathryn Morris, who seems to get paler and thinner with each passing season of the show) reopens the case some 44 years later when an old man, a former alcoholic hobo, claims to have been a witness to the body being dumped into the lake.

‘Boy Crazy’, the ninth episode of the fifth season of ‘Cold Case’, plays as a kind of mix of ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ and ‘Rebel Without a Cause’. It is not my intention to constantly review random episodes of ‘Cold Case’, but this one made me feel angry while I was watching it and I want to write down some of my thoughts about it.

It was not the episode itself that made me angry. That is a typical example of the long-established ‘Cold Case’ style, including tackling a “controversial” subject. It was the subject itself that caused my reaction. I did not know in advance what the subject matter was, although I did know it was set in the early 1960s and featured Elisabeth Harnois in a guest role. Harnois had the central role in what might just be my favourite television show, the short-lived ‘Point Pleasant’, and I like her very much in the handful of other things I have seen.

As the episode opens, Sam is seen nervously walking into a classroom and taking a seat. A group of teenage boys start to bully “him” and when one of them grabs at “him” and discovers, ooh-er missus, that “he” has breasts, the shock revelation is made that “he” is a “she”.

The problem here is that Sam looks like a tomboy, but is very obviously female. I guess what we need to remember is that we are looking back to a time that would commonly be described as more innocent. The other teenage girls in the classroom conform to a very specific mode of dress and look as if they have just walked off the set of ‘Grease’ or ‘Pleasantville’. However, throughout the remainder of the episode I wasn’t sure if there was enough of a focus to the message the story was obviously hoping to convey, although maybe that was deliberate because prejudice about gender is still a serious issue today.

Sam, we learn, has a gender identity disorder. She is described as a “boy” living inside the outer shell of a “girl”. Her classmates call her a “lesbo”. In fact, she has a crush on her one and only friend, Dom (Jonathan Keltz), another outsider, but he reacts badly when she tries to kiss him and the attitudes towards gender issues become further confused. Although every other character in the episode at one point or another gives the impression of believing Sam suffered from a genuine “disorder”, she makes the point in one scene that she is not ill, is not insane, and is, as should be obvious for all to see, “normal”. It is an important moment in the story.

When Sam is kicked out of her latest high school her father Archie Randall (Michael Oberlander) reluctantly agrees to send her to a psychiatric institution where she will be “cured” of her “sickness”. When she refuses to bend to the authoritarian regime in the hospital she is forcibly given electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) to such a severe degree that it effectively turns her into a zombie.

It was at this point that I began to feel angry and enraged – and also somehow helpless in the knowledge that although such barbaric “treatments” would not be permitted now, in many other ways our attitudes have still not changed very much.

Linsey Godfrey, who had a recurring role in the short-lived ‘Surface’, another show I enjoyed very much, is excellent as Sam. I also liked David Selby and Michael Constantine, playing the older Dom Barron and Archie Randall. Elisabeth Harnois has a relatively small role, playing Janey Davis, the spiteful girlfriend of one of the bullies. She acts as the “normal girl” to Sam’s “abnormal” character. What is perhaps most interesting is that Janey now (as played by Leigh Rose) is completely different and puts down her radical personality change to having, “lived through and experienced the women’s movement.” It is perhaps slightly heavy handed that in the closing montage she is discussing Joan of Arc with a classroom of high school students, but the message is received.

‘Cold Case’ is a product of Jerry Bruckheimer and we should not expect anything too hard hitting. However, it does genuinely tackle subjects that many people would consider to be controversial and even though it barely scratches at the surface of these issues, it does so in a generally responsible way. The very fact that I came away from ‘Boy Crazy’ feeling a sense of anger means, I think, that the episode successfully made its point.

Meredith Stiehm, who created ‘Cold Case’, was previously a writer and producer on ‘ER’, ‘NYPD Blues’ and ‘Beverly Hills 90210’. Joanna Lovinger, the writer of this episode, was the script co-ordinator on ‘Rome’ and ‘Six Feet Under’. Holly Dale, the director, has a long track record dating back into the mid 1970s, mostly on Canadian television.


Screencaps from cold-case.net
Elisabeth Harnois screencap from e-harnois.com



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