Flashback to the '60s....the real '60s...not just the romantic reminiscence you sometimes hear about Woodstock...or the unbridled roar of muscle cars...or the activists' idealism ... that's what this particular episode of Cold Case offers the viewer...while it's by no means complete (you can't do a detailed account in an hour show, especially when you have to make room for the story line) the episode does a pretty good job of showing what life was life for the average young person just trying to live their life back then...which if you were male often consisted of avoiding getting shipped to Vietnam and coming back in a box, wheelchair, state of permanent mental derangement, etc....while females pondered the idea of a new way of life for them...for the average young person in this country one can see that it was a much rockier road than the aging hippies would have us believe...and a lot less freer for that matter... yet in spite of it all true love flourished as it always does...and those in that state kept those memories for the rest of their lives and for them as for others in the past true love came but once in a lifetime...
and the Vietnam vets came back with mixed feelings towards the draft resistors....knowing themselves how traumatic the war was and how the WWII romantic images they might have had in war had no basis in reality yet harboring at least some amount of contempt towards those who did not answer the call...and all this added to the multiple schisms in society that left the comparatively cohesive, conformal '50s behind....this episode illustrated it all quite well...
As with other episodes, this one used periodical music...and for the most part the choices were quite good---except for the last song---"I Say A Little Prayer For You"....it seems strange that this innocuous love song would be used in the aftermath of the chain of events of this episode....especially considering that the hit version by Dionne Warwick was not used but a lesser known more modern sounding version by Aretha Franklin....a better choice would have been "Crystal Blue Persuasion" by Tommy James....this song departs from the bubble gum topics of his previous songs to take a pained look at the past and a hopeful, healing view to the future and would have matched the mood created by the series of events in this episode a whole lot better...other than that it was quite a thought provoking episode.
and the Vietnam vets came back with mixed feelings towards the draft resistors....knowing themselves how traumatic the war was and how the WWII romantic images they might have had in war had no basis in reality yet harboring at least some amount of contempt towards those who did not answer the call...and all this added to the multiple schisms in society that left the comparatively cohesive, conformal '50s behind....this episode illustrated it all quite well...
As with other episodes, this one used periodical music...and for the most part the choices were quite good---except for the last song---"I Say A Little Prayer For You"....it seems strange that this innocuous love song would be used in the aftermath of the chain of events of this episode....especially considering that the hit version by Dionne Warwick was not used but a lesser known more modern sounding version by Aretha Franklin....a better choice would have been "Crystal Blue Persuasion" by Tommy James....this song departs from the bubble gum topics of his previous songs to take a pained look at the past and a hopeful, healing view to the future and would have matched the mood created by the series of events in this episode a whole lot better...other than that it was quite a thought provoking episode.
