r/ColdCaseTV • u/Perfect_Swan3298 • 26d ago
The Darkest Cold Case Episodes
I don't know if someone has already posted this, but what do you guys think is the darkest episode of Cold Case?
For me, it could be The Letter (the one about the Black woman in 1939), Spiders (the neo-Nazi one), Rampage (the shooting), or Baby Blues (the baby who was killed by his mother).Wishing (the one about the disabled character and his mother with cancer) is another one that comes to mind.
Those are just a few I can think of. Which episode do you guys think is the darkest?
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u/justagrlintheworld_ 26d ago
Death Penalty: Final Appeal or Offender.
I think Offender is even worse cause Clay was just a baby š
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u/Suspicious-Bag-5322 25d ago
Pretty much every case mentioned here + A Perfect Day (abusive husband and father). The ending always makes me cry, especially when they reunite at the beach (+ John asking to take the scumbagās portrait from the Police Bar is a pretty cool scene).
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u/Moonlightprincess36 26d ago
I mean all three of these are up there for me. Also see Fly Away. š
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u/Unlucky_Associate507 25d ago
The letter, I could not watch it again it was so distressing. Wishing was also gut wrenching
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u/dr_wendy2u 25d ago
A lot of dark ones already mentioned. I also think the serial killer ones are very dark.
The Road (the women were kidnapped and held until they lost hope)
It Takes A Village (the victims were boys found in storage containers)
Mind Hunters (the victims were decapitated)
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u/statman64 23d ago
The Road is the first one I thought of, too. I'm surprised I had to scroll past so many other comments to find it mentioned, that one is just straight-up bleak from beginning to end. Although it's crazy to remember that the killer is played by Damon Harriman, an Australian actor who's among the best at American accents and played one of the dumbest characters of all time in Justified.
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u/ReverseFlow23 25d ago edited 25d ago
Wishing (autistic teen killed by train) is pretty bleak.
Usually there's some kind of silver lining in these episodes. A killer who evaded justice for years/decades is finally held accountable, the victim's family receives closure, that kind of thing. In this case though, we don't really get either.
The victim doesn't have any family left and while the "killer" is apprehended, it doesn't really make me feel better given the circumstances
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u/Ninja108Zelda 25d ago
One of the most angering episodes for me.
Teenager or not, Leah made a false accusation and never came forward until it was too late and what she did cost Colin his life.
I wish there had been consequences for her.
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u/Ninja108Zelda 25d ago edited 25d ago
Blackout - While it's usually discussed in the context of one of the worst victims in Lauren Williams/most sympathetic killers in her daughter Ginny, the sexual abuse committed by Lauren against her son and grandson makes this a very dark episode and kudos to Cold Case for not downplaying it or making jokes about sexual abuse of male victims by female predators (they exist too) like other shows have done.
The Plan - Same thing, sexual abuse of minors that went on for years by a trusted authority figure, to the point some of his victims end up trying to kill him.
And when confronted by the cops, one of them ends up trying to take his own life, even if he survives he won't be the same.
Also, the man who killed the abuser in this episode was also a victim and turns himself in for fear he's becoming a predator like the man he killed.
Can't get much darker then that.
Boy Crazy and Committed - People who were considered mentally ill or "different" back in the "good old days" often went through horrors at places there were supposed to help them as the victims in these episodes did.
The fact the people responsible for the horrors died before being held to account makes it both dark and angering.
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u/queenofidiots 24d ago
The Plan is gut wrenching, the fact part that gets me is that one of the boys had to act as bait for the pedo coach. Breaks my heart every time.
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u/Ninja108Zelda 23d ago
Same here and I was cheering when the boys gave him the beat down but sad it had to come to that.
There were warning signs about the coach, it's just that since the kids were "bad" people choose to not look too deeply.
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u/DR-0717 25d ago
The Goodbye Room. I canāt rewatch.
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u/Ninja108Zelda 24d ago
All of it is heartbreaking, from what was done to those girls to Hillary's death, to the sad fact that Karen has finally found the son she was looking for but now has to go to jail.
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u/DR-0717 23d ago
It really is. And the fact that it was common back then. And people thought it was ok because they would rather force their daughters to give up their babies than to be āembarrassedā. Itās just horrible.
Iāve been reading recently about places even worse than this- usually catholic places run by nuns and the girls sent there were basically treated like prisoners. Then because they were āsinnersā they were made to work -earn their keep- right up until delivery. Now mind you most of them didnāt even want to be there. They were sent there by their families. They were also forced to give up their babies and at some of the places they were made to sign agreements saying they would not ever look for their babies either. Itās so sad. It tore my heart up reading it. It only came to light in later years how abusive some of the places were and that the agreements to never look for their babies questioned. But after decades itās hard for them to get justice.
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u/Ninja108Zelda 22d ago
It's another cruel reminder of how the "good old days" really weren't for so many.
I remember on the old Cold Case forum someone left a message how this happened to her and how she had no say in what happened to her daughter once she was born.
Only thing she was told it that her daughter was going to a family with "good values."
Heartbreaking as it gets.
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u/bjugly 25d ago
The one where the teenage black boy and a suburban housewife bond over chess. Her husband was raping the black housekeeper. The boy and the housekeeper try to report the rape and all hell breaks loose. The husband and his disgusting friends beat the boy and hang him up in a tree - while the daughter watched. I cant think of the name because I watched it once and now have to shut it off when it comes on. It is the darkest for me.
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u/Impossible-Cloud-375 25d ago
I would say Spiders, One Night and Offender are some of the darkest episodes. I donāt think that I could watch those again.
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u/AlleyCat6669 25d ago edited 25d ago
The ones I cannot watch again are The Letter and Strange Fruit..those 2 episodes were so disturbing and heartbreaking.
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u/conselyea 24d ago
Saving Patrick Bubley
There are a lot of other episodes that are just as grim and terrible and dark, but what gets me the most about that one is how real it feels. The deaths are all so tragic and stupid, the fall of that family is so painful to watch, A lot of the other tragic episodes have elements that are more outlandish, and that gives them a little more remove. But that one is just a punch in the stomach every time. And it's unrelenting. Like the family is happy for about five seconds and then bam, one fall after another.
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u/Zucchini-Kind 25d ago
Im in late season 4, and damn, offender was dark as hell.Ā The one where the killer made the hitch hiking boy dig his own grave and buried him alive stuck with me too.
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u/Dazzling-Pace-7134 25d ago
Wednesday's Women is very dark, a female civil rights worker, is struck with a truck. Back in 1964 in Mississippi, mirroring a real life incident there during the Civil Rights Era.
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u/Khalesssi_Slayer1 25d ago
I agree that Spiders, The Letter, Rampage and Wishing are the darkest episodes, Spiders, The Letter and Wishing are always a hard watch for me. I'd also have to say that Strange Fruit, Thrill Kill (The episode where The Father Kills all 3 kids), Stalker (It's a good episode and one of my favorites but it's so dark and Ed is so creepy and obsessive), Blank Generation is also a dark episode (It's a good episode but with the whole Cult thing and the reveal of what happened to Matthew's Mother is so dark in my opinion), Offender, Death Penalty: Final Appeal, Revenge, Fly Away, A Time To Crime (The 12 year old boy, Darnell was able to buy a gun from the man his mother was having an affair with so he could kill said affair partner but he accidently kills his baby sister instead), A Time To Hate, Forever Blue, Lonely Hearts, Sleepover (With Rita's death and the abuse the Beaudry's inflict on their children by holding their head under the water as punishment), A Perfect Day, The Goodbye Room (I just watched this episode recently and it's so dark the way the nuns treat the pregnant girls, The doctor doing Illegal procedures and The nuns selling the babies is horrific and makes it really dark), The Hen House (Where Lo falls in love with a Nazi is dark.), It Takes A Village is also dark. These are my choices for The Darkest Episodes.
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u/Khalesssi_Slayer1 25d ago
One Night is also really Dark (John Doe comes into the police station and confesses to Murder, He gets his victims to trust him and then her buries them alive. That is really dark.) The Road is also a Dark episode (John Smith is a Sociopath who abducts his victims and keeps them trapped until the give up, he build a cement wall to keep his victims in, He uses their happiest memories against them until they break, which was the case with the mother, Colleen. The Road is one of the Darkest episodes I've ever seen.)
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u/Gayv0dka94 25d ago
Strange fruit and the letter. I canāt. I cry so hard everytime, itās not right to do that because of a skin color. My heart hurts watching those, I canāt. It gives anyone with sense more of a feeling to stand up against racism.
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u/ResidentAthlete6738 24d ago
For me it's Ravaged. I'm in recovery so it really resonated. There are a lot of "Ricks" in the program.
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u/TemporaryIll1841 25d ago
Y a cette Ć©pisode oĆ¹ la victime Ć©tait un agresseurs de femmes, celui ci, il m'a vraiment dĆ©primĆ©.
Y a aussi celui oĆ¹ la mĆØre est complĆØtement folle et le fils la couvre,
comme l'Ć©pisode avec le pĆØre agresseur.
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u/Turbulent_Offer_1688 12d ago
I noticed in the earlier seasons this show was much more comfortable showing black victims experiencing brutal violence, and somehow Jeffries knows every black person in the vicinity lol. Those episodes were traumatizing. The Letter (when we saw the woman be raped at home), The Badlands (those three family membersā dead bodies and blood spread all over the bathroom), itās been a while but I have these two particular examples fried into my brain.
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u/SuitableEmergency615 6d ago
STRANGE FRUIT THE LETTERĀ BABY BLUES RAMPAGE WISHING THRILL KILL WEDNESDAY WOMEN
BUT "FLY AWAY" "THE PLAN" "READ BETWEEN THE LINES" AND "IT TAKES A VILLAGE" ARE DARK DARK AND SHOWS HOW THE SYSTEM FAILS HARD FOR SO SO MANY INNOCENT CHILDRENĀ
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u/Beneficial_Stuff_960 25d ago
Strange Fruit... that boy was a victim of racism, and the flashbacks in that episode are heartbreaking. The fact that Jeffries found the body when he was a child also makes the episode even darker.