Funny / Cold Case

Funny moments in Cold Case.

As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

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Season 1

• In "Gleen", we have a flashback where the victim discusses how her mother-in-law is controlling and judgmental to the point of writing everything on a notepad, as though analyzing for anything her daughter-in-law did wrong. An example of the contents of her notepad: "Expired apple juice in the refrigerator".
• In "Sherry Darlin", we enter the present as Jeffries shares his story about a Jamaican case.
• "Glued":
  • The "No Drugs Today" scene: Scotty, Will and Nick sitting on a street corner in lawn chairs, munching on burgers and flashing their badges at every car that drives by looking for their regular drug dealers. At the end of the night, they're standing around a burn barrel and Nick's wishing for marshmallows.
    • One of the prostitutes who usually hangs around that corner goes into a hissy fit, and the detectives reflect on how her belly-aching will eventually smoke out the guy they're looking for.
  • Latrell Campbell's meeting with Stillman years later. They exchange insults about how the years have not been so kind to them.
    Latrell: Where'd all your hair go?
    Stillman: Same place as your teeth.
• In "Boy in the Box," we learn that Stillman doesn't know how to use the computer very well. After clicking a couple of times he askes Lilly if it is on.
• Will busting a move in the squad room at the end of "Disco Inferno", after being razzed about disco by his colleagues earlier in the episode.
• The one bright spot in the otherwise very dark episode "The Letter" is how they bluff the killer, an elderly recluse, into confessing by claiming they have a ridiculous-sounding DNA analysis device that can produce fantastic results in seconds. The guy, having probably not left his house in fifty years, believes them and gives himself up. Although, given that he also exec-produced CSI, this may actually be how Jerry Bruckheimer believes DNA evidence works.

Season 2

• The discovery that the Victim of the Week in "Daniella" turns out to be transgender causes quite a reaction for the team.
  Rush: Your kind of girl, Nick.
• In "The Sleepover", Tiffany asks Scotty if her former friend Brandi is still a mean girl, Scotty gives her a "what do you think?" look.
  Tiffany: I knew it! (lights a cigarette) God, what a bitch!
• "Creatures of the Night":
  • Most of the Ham-to-Ham Combat in the flashback scenes.
  • Also Nick really being into The Rocky Horror Picture Show, while Will is decidedly not.

Season 3

• When we switch between a suspect's present-self and younger-self, it's often sobering or dramatic. But in "Family", it's Played for Laughs at least once. The way it's delivered, it sounds more like a teenage girl's typical cellphone conversation.
  Present Angie: I'm like:
  Younger Angie: "Jimmy, it's a Corvette!"
• "Wilkommen":
  • The detectives bet on who's the murderer: Lilly on the play director, Jeffries on music director and Scotty and Vera on two separate cast members. Jeffries is correct.
  • The last scene has the detectives meeting in a bar and Vera singing, much to the annoyance of the other detectives.

Season 4

• Nick taking up reading romance novels in 'Lonely Hearts'. ^note  He had a habit of becoming interested in something that was an important part of a victim's life. For added bonus, he was often quite good at it. Milkmaids. That is all.
• Also from that episode, Scotty and Nick go to a quickie marriage chapel that was visited by the victim and her con-man husband in:
  Minister - I can do the ceremony but it won't be legal in this state.
• In "Saving Sammy", we have Nick and Scotty about to revisit Brent, the autistic boy who witnessed his parents' murder. Then Scotty tells Nick he can't go into the room where Brent resides. Why not? Brent hates the color yellow. And Nick's tie is yellow. Nick refuses to take off his tie just to accommodate Brent. Scotty gives a Death Glare. So a minute later, they both enter the room, and Nick clearly isn't wearing his tie.
• In "Fireflies", Dale was yelling at Melanie to hit Cherise. It's strangely amusing how the fight climaxes with Melanie hitting Dale with her lunchbox instead. Ironic, wouldn't you say?
• In the episode "The Blackout"^note Which is loosely inspired by Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None", the Victim of the Week and her daughter are arguing, peppered with zingers from the VOTW's son Tad:
  Tad: Told you not to take Mom's money.
  Lauren: Shut up, Tad.
  (later)
  Lauren: Don't you walk away from me!
  Tad: Mom's right, Ginny, run!
• In "Blood on the Tracks", Lt. Stillman calls Kat into his office as if he's ready to reprimand her, as it turns out he simply asks her to open his grandson's juice box.
• When Hilary gets shocked as she sees her boyfriend Huck with another girl in "The Good-Bye Room", her friend Karen asks if her water broke.
  • Hilary and two other girls singing "Where Did Our Love Go?" by the Supremes right beforehand.
• The victim's babysitter's boyfriend, Adam, in "Offender", is suspected to be a pedophile and Clayton's murderer after another suspect saw him cleaning blood off Clayton's underwear that day. He gives a far-fetched but true recount of what happened: Adam was raiding their liquor cabinet when he knocked over a glass. Just then, Clayton walked inside in his bare feet and stepped on a shard. Adam quickly grabbed a pair of Clayton's underwear from the laundry hamper to stem the blood flow. As he was washing off the underwear, he tried to calm the crying Clayton by telling him his father had season tickets to the Philadelphia Phillies, offering to take him as long as he didn't tell Tricia.
  Rush: Do you know how dumb that sounds?
  Adam: It's the God-honest truth, I'm telling you!

Season 5

• "Andy in C Minor" gives us Disabled Snarker Andy, who can be a sassy comedian in the flashbacks at his school for the deaf.

  Andy: (in regards to Emma's drinking problem) If you say anything weird, I didn't hear a thing.

  • Later in said episode Nick interrogates Andy's roommate who is later confirmed to be Andy's killer, he types on his phone "Your sign language sucks."
  • Scotty asks Nick, who's learning sign language, how to sign "You owe me $50 from poker" to which Nick responds by giving Scotty the finger.
• An old man in "World's End" calling Orson Welles a son of a bitch, while the same episode sees Vera get accused of being a dumb rookie by a witness for not believing in a conspiracy theory while Kat is loving the spectacle.
• Jeffries pretending to be God in "Thrill Kill" to get testimony from a delusional homeless guy.
• In "Devil Music" when Jeffries has a heart-to-heart talk with Scotty, who's frustrated over being tipped off to Internal Affairs and is taking it out on the other detectives, the two fake an argument to hide the nature of their conversation.

Season 6

• In "November 22", the gang discusses the day Kennedy was assassinated:
  Will: I was playing touch football at recess.
  Scotty: Recess? I thought you were, like, forty-five when that happened.
  Lilly: No, you're thinking of when Lincoln was shot.
  Will: Keep it up. See what happens.
  • Hillary Rhodes meeting Sharon Lertola:
  Sharon: Pittsburg's a drag, next time we got to land a mark ain't such a chatterbox like the Duke. (notices Hillary) Who's the brat?
  Hillary: His daughter, who's the tramp?
  • Hillary's interactions with most of the characters in general.
• Nick's continuing trend of becoming interested in something that was an important part of a victim's life, like Tupperware in "Wednesday's Women". For added bonus, he's usually pretty good at it.
• In "Mind Games", the episode after Will is shot, the other detectives are putting together a "get well basket" for him. Stillman and Scotty wind up bringing the exact same bottle of wine, deciding to sign both of their names to one and keep the other, while Nick's contribution is sea monkeys.
• In "Stealing Home", Scotty and the Victim of the Week's cousin/ killer exchange words in Spanish, they are interrupted by Lilly.
  Lilly: Hola, gringos? Chica.
• In "Roller Girl":
  • Will describing his trip to the evidence room and dealing with the lazy clerk, describing him as "Mr. Happy Meal".
  • Miller is anxious about a blind date her mother set up. She later calls Scotty late at night, drunk, for a ride. Scotty won't let her forget it.
• Likewise, "Wings" has Kat pretending to be a put-upon secretary to help Scotty secure a statement from a He-Man Woman Hater suspect.
• In "One Small Step", a bully was beaten up by a nerdy little boy for messing with his rocket. Years later, when the bully is in jail, he boasts about how the little boy beat up his nose so bad that it still whistles when he breathes through it.

Season 7

• The look on Vera's face in "Metamorphosis" when he has to adjust the camera from its normal angle to take mugshots of a Big Guy, Little Guy duo.
• Billy Sanders' Establishing Character Moment in "Soul" is playing the organ at his father's church and earns his father's (the minister's) ire and the rest of the congregation's amusement when he starts playing the rather secular tune "Son of a Preacher Man."
• In the series finale "Shattered" Lilly and Scotty interrogate a drug dealer on the whereabouts of Lilly's missing sister Christina. When they get the information they need they handcuff the guy to the rod in his closet until they can verify it, and Lilly throws a bag of chips into the closet advising him to "make 'em last". The dealer's incredulous response: "No dip?"
• The various amusing ways Kat tries stalling the villains' lawyers in "One Fall" while Lilly and Scotty try to get them to confess. Ethical police work? Probably not. Hilarious? Oh, most definitely.
  • I get a giggle every time this happens, after the so-called "good cop, bad cop" routine:
  Suspect: Lawyer called yet?
  Will: Not yet.
  Scotty: In the mean time, thought you could tell us what you were doing in Sil's car in Juniata Park the night Mick was killed.
  Suspect: I'm sure my attorney would love to do it. Why don't you go fetch him for me, ese.

  • Will raises his eyebrows while Scotty rolls up his sleeves.
  Scotty: Good cop, get out.
  Suspect: Wait, wait. Where are you going?
  Will: See if your lawyer called.
  • What makes this funny is that while Will is laughing while watching Scotty terrorizing the suspect, Kat can obviously hear the noise coming from the interview room, but still keeps a straight face while talking on the phone. Again, not ethical police work, but gives a good laugh.
• Vera's exasperation in "Dead Heat" at the fact that horse jockeys attract women like rock stars.
  • Another humorous flashbacking scene from "Almost Paradise".
  Younger Cole Austen: "I was always a Colester''."

General

• In one episode Scotty and Will cut off the end of Nick's best necktie. A couple episodes later Nick gets even as only he can: stapling Will's tie to the case file he's reading and taping a sign to the back of Scotty's shirt that reads "Ask Me About Erectile Dysfunction".
  Scotty: What's up, fellas?
  Vera: You tell me, Scotty.