Cold Squad – Season 2

The second season follows up where the first left off but we have changes in cast. Ali McCormick still heads Cold Squad with Tony Lugozo but he has put in a transfer request after the controversy that McCormick had unearthed causing the inspector to resign. Jill Stone (Joy Tanner), a regular member of the cold squad is reduced to having a supporting role as she passes the exams to be a bonafide full fledged psychologist with the police department. She is featured from time to time when Allie asks her for her expertize. Two new members of the cold squad to be transferred there are rookie detective Eddie Carson (Bob Frazer) & the Internal Affairs officer, Det. Jackie Cortez (Lori Ann Triolo) who was investigating Ali & the whole mess and got caught up in it. Hence she “demoted” so to speak and now has to report to Ali and the two butt heads over procedure and difference of opinions.Peter Wingfield plays Insp. Simon Ross who replaces the previous head of homicide.

All the others are reduced to guest roles or minor roles, although Jay Brazeau will retain his small role as the forensic doctor.. Linda Ko barely makes a handful of appearances and that too for just a couple of minutes per episode. Ali is assigned a new partner Det. Derrick Clark (Clark Johnson) who is killed in their very first case as he investigates on his own. Among the guest stars we see a young Paul McGillon, Brian Markinson (well isn’t there a rule that Markinson has to be in every show?), Anne Openshaw & Dmitry Chepovetsky. Cold Squad also pushed the envelop  in some of their cases; they are one of the first shows to feature the case of a hermaphodite, killed by the bullied man who actually loved her. When a Chinese teenager is found hanging in a jail cell the morning after being arrested, Ali and Tony investigate the similarities with another jail cell hanging 20 years before, when the police department was being investigated for brutality – touching some nerves along the way. The team also check out the story of an informant who claims he knows who killed a tow truck operator in 1991. Their case turns on the testimony of a woman who was a drug addict then, and who is now a hyper-religious housewife. When an abandoned warehouse is being torn down, a headless corpse is discovered sealed in an interior wall. Tony concludes that the body is an industrialist missing since July 1972 and the investigation shines a light on the dead man’s two deranged spinster sisters.

When a young woman claims to have a 17-year-old “recovered memory” of her sister’s murder, the whole squad tries to sort through the family’s secrets. Meanwhile, Ali attempts to get a confession from a terminally ill man long suspected of being a hit-man. Firemen responding to a house fire find a child’s picture displayed on a computer. Ali’s attention is aroused when the child is identified as a boy who disappeared and was declared dead 15 years before, but in the picture he is older than when he disappeared. After a body is found at a construction site excavation, Ali and Tony look into the case of an Anglican priest missing for two years. Simon asks Ali out on a date after accompanying her to an official function. After a social worker asks Ali for her opinion on a possible child abuse case, Ali looks into the death of a little boy three years earlier in the same household. Against her objections, Ali is given the job of investigating a doctor, whose husband died in a hospice, after one of her patients dies under nearly identical conditions in the same hospice. After reading a letter from a recently deceased hit-man, Ali connects the murder of an elderly woman to the murders of several informants used in a drug task force Simon ran in the 1980s, and finds out there is an leak within the police force.

At the of the season Eddie is shot but not killed, even though he lost a lot of blood. The chief is the leak and she confesses to her crimes. Ali becomes persona non grata in the Vancouver police force top brass eyes. She also starts a relationship with Ross, although we don’t get to see how far they progressed beyond the couple of dinners a week and drinks some evenings.

To Be A Rock And Not To Roll

I though that Ann & Nancy Wilson, Jason Bonham & the band did a really good job! I don’t really like choir singing for a rock song. I felt that they detracted from what was otherwise a classic performance. People in the audience made me laugh a bit, especially that lady who looked liked she was in a gospel church singing and having a religious experience. Makes me laugh remembering what a lot of commotion was created about Stairway being about devil worship!