Season 1, Episode 4 of Cold Case.
Directed by Mark Pellington
Written by Meredith Stiehm
Lilly reopens the 1990 case of Mitchell Bayes, husband and father of a deeply religious family, who was found dead in a van parked in the alley of a bad neighborhood, half-naked and surrounded by drugs.
Tropes
- Abusive Parents: Charlotte.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Charlotte, literally. Every flashback shows her as a prim and modestly coiffed and dressed woman—who was an abusive drunk who eventually murdered her husband.
- By-the-Book Cop: See also Police are Useless below. While Lilly has good intuition and knows how to question subjects well, a lot of what she uncovers is found simply because she did her job properly (checking inventory, asking appropriate witnesses questions) that the previous detective did not do.
- Chekhov's Gun: Subverted. Some emphasis on the wine bottle, and we know Mitchell was stabbed. The murderer actually grabs the wine bottle as a weapon, but then switches it for a metal spike, which becomes the murder weapon in the end.
- Churchgoing Villain: Even before the revelation that she was an abusive drunk, Charlotte seemed pretty obsessed with portraying the family as the typical Christian nuclear family.
- A Deadly Affair: Although she'd been smacking him around for a while, it's learning of her husband's infidelity that makes Charlotte finally kill him.
- Defective Detective: Sherman in 1990.
- Domestic Abuse: A great deal.
- Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: Averted. Charlotte's behavior is portrayed as just as horrifying and ultimately deadly as it would have been were the genders reversed.
- Gaining the Will to Kill: Charlotte would usually be controlling and abusive, but eventually gains the will to murder.
- Hiding Behind Religion: Charlotte Bayes promotes her family as the perfect Christian home, and uses that to cover up her husband’s murder. When the police came to inform her that his naked body was found in a place where druggies and hookers hung out, she put on a tearful act and pretended like she couldn’t believe Mitchell would do such sinful acts, saying that they were “churchgoing people”.
- High-School Dance: Ryan is supposed to go to one the night Mitchell dies. He has a date that night. Charlotte teaches him how to dance in preparation.
- Plot-Inciting Infidelity: The murder occurs because Mitchell is cheating on his abusive wife.
- Police Are Useless: In 1990, Sherman did little to nothing to solve the case. It was a fairly straight forward case with a lot of clues that he missed. He later admits he was drunk and sloppy from 1988-1994.
- Scatterbrained Senior: Charlotte has Alzheimer's in the present. Ryan cares for her.
- Shoot the Messenger: Not literally, but Ryan takes the second phone call from Judy (who was fairly confident she didn't make a second phone call). When Charlotte finds out, she controls Ryan and says he can't go to the dance.
- Slowly Slipping Into Evil: Charlotte starts off a normal housewife, but drinks. Then she's physically abusive when drinking. Then eventually murders her family member.
- Stepford Smiler: When we first meet the family, they appear to be the epitome of a nuclear Christian family. It turns out that the mother is an abusive drunk and they're all terrified of her.
- Sympathetic Adulterer: Mitchell. One cannot help but feel for him. Falls into the Pay Cheating Unto Evil category.
- The Mistress: Potentially Judy. It is unclear how long the affair has been going on for, but she definitely expects Mitchell to park and enter the motel when he arrives.
- Til Murder Do Us Part: Charlotte.
- The Unfair Sex: Averted a lot. Charlotte is clearly portrayed as the abusive, controlling murderer that she is.
- Unstoppable Rage: Leads to the murder.
