Recap / Cold Case S 4 E 20 Stand Up And Holler

Directed by John Peters

Written by Kate Purdy

The team looks into the 1997 death of a 16-year-old cheerleader, Rainey Karlsen, previously ruled a drug overdose, after an anonymous note confessing to her murder turns up. Their investigation uncovers disturbing secrets about the school's Popularity Food Chain.

Tropes:

• Abhorrent Admirer: Casey tried to hit on Rainey several times despite her obvious distaste and the fact that he was technically dating Becca.
• Alpha Bitch: Head cheerleader Becca Abrams was this during her youth. As an adult, she doesn’t seem to have grown out of it. In that department, it's greatly deconstructed, as it's implied to be the reason she can't hold down a job or have a successful marriage.
• Armor-Piercing Question: While interrogating Becca about what happened the night Rainey died, Rush asks a question that implies her intentions to hurt Rainey are more severe than her story implies.
  Lilly Rush: And Celeste handed you the drink? [Becca is silent.] You sure about that, Becca?
• The Atoner: Zigzagged with Mr. Pruitt. He was motivated by Rainey standing up to him and her death not long after to be a better teacher. On the other hand, he seemed fine with continuing to cover up the past crimes committed by the football team and cheerleading squad under his watch, including Celeste's rape, likely to protect himself. He even admits to the police that he's lucky Rainey died before she could report him.
• Beta Bitch: Becca had two unnamed ones in high school, one of whom was just credited as "Cheerleader #1".
• Blatant Lies:
  • In the present day, Becca insists she's perfectly happy with her life. Detective Rush begs to differ, as she knows Becca can't hold down a job and has had two rough marriages "going on three".
  • A more tragic example with Celeste. Despite her claims otherwise, it's clear that popularity didn't give her the fulfillment she hoped for, considering her unresolved guilt and trauma from high school.
• Broken Bird: Celeste, as a result of being bullied by her fellow cheerleaders and gang-raped by the football team, topped off by covering up Rainey's murder when her friend genuinely wanted to help her. In adulthood, she's still haunted by what happened, and she doesn't need much convincing to tell the police the truth.
• Calling the Teacher Out: Rainey doesn't take it lying down that Mr. Pruitt would give Becca a good mark on her so-called "report" just to be one of the cool kids. She also blasts him for letting the football team and cheerleading squad get away with their cruel hazing.
• Commonality Connection: Rainey and Celeste became Best Friends in sixth grade when they bonded over and helped each other through their respective family troubles — Rainey's father died while Celeste's parents went through a messy divorce.
• Cool Kid-and-Loser Friendship: According to Celeste, Rainey was "the kind of girl who had no idea how special she was." Even when they both made the cheerleading squad, the popular kids blatantly favored Rainey while dismissing Celeste, who was automatically at the bottom of the pecking order.
• Creepy Gym Coach: Downplayed. Mr. Pruitt doesn’t molest his students or anything, but he’s far too obsessed with trying to be In with the In Crowd that he got way too involved in their lives. He even let the football team and cheerleading squad get away with underage drinking, rape, and failing classes, just so he could be seen as one of them.
• Cruel Cheerleader: Head cheerleader Becca and the rest of her squad are bitches to the bone. When Rainey joins the team, Becca puts pressure on her to act dumb in class, dress like a slut, and behave like a bitch.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Joe may have dressed in black leather as a teenager, but, in reality, he's far nicer than the cheerleading squad and the football team put together.
• Dramatically Missing the Point: Of the one-dialogue-two-conversations variety. For a hazing initiation, Becca dares Rainey and Celeste to kiss each other. Rainey refuses, prompting Celeste to argue it would be "stoopid". Thinking she meant "stupid", Rainey tells her, "That's exactly the point." This, unfortunately, gives Celeste the mistaken permission to go through with the kiss. By Rainey's expression, she's taken aback by how Celeste is too blinded by the promise of popularity to see they're being played for fools.
• Embarrassing Old Photo: In the ending, Vera and Kat are seen showing each other embarrassing pictures of themselves back in high school.
• Formerly Fat: According to Becca, Celeste used to be overweight in Junior High, which the former still uses as her default insult towards Celeste.
• Future Loser:
  • In 1997, Becca Abrams was the head cheerleader and the most popular girl in high school. Since then, however, she’s been unable to hold down a job and has two failed marriages at 28 with her third on the verge of falling apart as well. Interestingly enough, Rainey accurately predicted that Becca wouldn't get far in life when all she had going for her was her looks.
  • The same goes for Becca's then-boyfriend Casey Evans, who the years haven't been so kind to. In less than a decade, his appearance has declined even though his lust for women is as strong as ever.
• High-School Rejects: Lilly mocks that Becca's life peaked at her high school prom and has gone downhill ever since.
• Humiliation Conga: Becca gets one in the ending montage where she is escorted out in cuffs by Lilly in front of her former classmates during the high school reunion that she was in charge of and trying to use to relive her Glory Days.
• In with the In Crowd:
  • Rainey struggles with this as the head cheerleader pressures her to act like a dumb slutty bitch, drink, and make out with other girls. In the end, she realizes that being popular is not worth it if it means becoming someone she’s not.
  • Celeste is the opposite. She was so desperate to keep her newfound popularity that she let her best friend die to save the cheerleading squad from disbandment.
  • Coach Pruitt was unpopular back in his own high school years. His enabling of the football players and cheerleaders’ twisted hazing and passing them for poor schoolwork is his way of making up for it so he can run with the cool kids.
• Ironic Echo: "Don't move a muscle... bitch." Becca yelled this line at Rainey in an attempt to make her stop when she started to leave, leading to her indirectly causing Rainey's death. In the present time, Rush says this to Becca as Becca starts to walk away from what is essentially her arrest.
• Irony: Joe was the one who wrote the anonymous note confessing "I killed Rainey Karlsen". Yet, all the other suspects are either guilty of killing Rainey (Becca and Celeste) or guilty of another crime altogether (Casey for the "hazing rituals", and Mr. Pruitt for enabling it). Joe's the only one who is innocent in both departments.
• It's All My Fault: Joe did not kill Rainey, but he blamed himself for persuading her to quit the cheerleading squad, believing that this act of defiance is why she was killed.
  • Spanner in the Works: This sense of guilt actually is what kicks off the investigation of Rainey's death, leading to all guilty parties facing justice. Otherwise, if it hadn't been for Joe's note claiming "I killed Rainey Karlsen", everyone who played a part in her death would've continued to walk free.
• Jerk Jock: All the football players apparently, in conjunction with the cheerleaders.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Celeste, the one girl on the squad Becca mistreated, acts as a witness to the latter forcefully pouring beer down the victim's throat. It's also implied Celeste's testimony could lead to the arrest of Casey, Mr. Pruitt, and the others involved with what happened to her and Rainey.
• Manchild:
  • Mr. Pruitt has a teenager variation of this trope. Rather than mind his students as just that, he tries to be the "cool teacher" in the form of being permissive to the cheerleaders' and football team's going-ons. Rainey standing up to him and calling him a "joke" is what leads to him overcoming this trope, putting an end to his tendency to try to be "one of the kids".
  • Becca also has this trope bad. It's one thing to go through school thinking popularity is all that matters, and you need to be dumb, promiscuous, and cruel to keep it. But in the span of 10 years, Becca has kept this mindset throughout her adult life, with disastrous results.
• Murder by Inaction: While it's not to say Becca isn't mostly responsible for Rainey's death, Celeste is ashamed to admit she played a part by not getting any help for her friend while she died of a drug overdose.
• Popular Is Evil: Rainey and Celeste are thrilled to become cheerleaders and popular. But when they get in, they find that Becca and the other cheerleaders are Sociopaths for making them go through humiliating rituals and pressuring them to drink and be bitches. Rainey realizes it’s wrong, but for Celeste, the pressure to keep her new status drives her to leave a poisoned Rainey on the field to die.
• Rape as Backstory: New cheerleaders are gang-raped based on a die roll as part of their initiation. Becca went through it. Celeste resented Rainey for leaving her behind to be raped even though all she had to do was run from the locker room like Rainey did.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Rainey gives an epic one to Becca when Becca points out many girls would die to be in the cheerleading squad.
  Rainey: (calmly) Let them. I don't want it if it means the prize is being you.
  Becca: Being me?
  Rainey: You're the meanest, most manipulative, most vapid person I have ever known. Every girl wants to be you because every guy in school wants to bang you. Good luck holding onto that for the next 40 years because that's all you have. I want something more.
• Red Herring: Played With; Joe actually invokes this trope by posting a note saying “I killed Rainey Karlsen” in her mom’s art exhibit, accompanied by a drawing of the atom he drew on her leg, hoping to get the police to reinvestigate. But he’s not entirely lying—he feels partly responsible for Rainey’s death because he encouraged her to stand up to Becca.
• Reunion Revenge: Becca is arrested for Rainey's murder during their high school reunion.
• Rule of Three: A minor example. When Rush counters Becca's claim that she's happy with her life, she lists that on top of everything else in Becca's life that's gone wrong since high school, she's had two unsuccessful marriages "going on three". This is meant to imply that Becca's bad luck with marriage isn't simply a rough patch: it's a pattern that strongly correlates to her inability to outgrow her queen bee attitude.
• Shadow Archetype: Celeste is this to Rainey. In the beginning, Rainey was gunning to stay a cheerleader as much as Celeste, as exemplified when she fretted at Becca so much as saying she turn in her pom-poms for trying to be intelligent. But as the episode progresses, Rainey grows more and more disillusioned as she sees the perils that come with being a cheerleader in Becca's squad. Meanwhile, Celeste continued to be exactly what Rainey would have been if her eyes weren't opened: a sad, scared puppet whose identity revolves around being a cheerleader. And it didn't help that poor Celeste was raped by the collective football team, meaning it was circumstances that Rainey kept her self-confidence while Celeste lost hers.
• So Proud of You: In the ending, Rainey's mother is seen adding a note to her art-piece where Joe's note was found. She wrote "My daughter is my hero."
• Stealth Insult: When Rainey calls out Mr. Pruitt's class (minus Joe) for being hollow and vapid and storms out, Becca's response is a flippant "Someone needs to take a chill pill, bokay?" To that, Joe also leaves, but not before saying, "Bokay, dye!" Not only is he making fun of the Malaproper nature of Becca's catchphrase, but he just low-key told her to drop dead.
• Sunk Cost Fallacy: Celeste went through so much hell to become popular, including being the victim of a gang-rape by the football team. Because of this, she decides to let Rainey die from a forced drug overdose because the latter was going to reveal incriminating information that would have destroyed the football team and cheerleading squad. Otherwise, her efforts would've been wasted. Not to say she doesn't regret it later.
• Was It Really Worth It?: In the present, Celeste looks back on everything she went through to become part of the cheerleading squad, from the cruel hazing ritual right down to letting her friend die in order to protect Becca and the squad from criminal charges. At the end of the day, Celeste tearfully admits to Will and Scotty that she gave up everything to be a cheerleader, and she paid too high a price for it.
• Wisdom from the Gutter: By high school societal standards, Joe is the lowest of the lows, being but a humble outsider stoner punk when compared to the popular kids and collective student body. Yet, not only does he recognize that fitting in and being popular in high school is insignificant, he assures Rainey that standing apart isn't so bad.
• You Are Not Alone: In a flashback, during a conversation that clears the air between them, Rainey confides in Joe that the only reason she wants to join the cheerleaders is so she can fit in somewhere. To this, Joe gently lets her know that everyone who goes to high school also wants to belong.

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