Cold Case: Bombers

I had two strong thoughts about “Bombers” in general, outside of the plot.

Well, okay, I had three.

First: Wow, was this ever a continuity-heavy episode. For a show that really allows you to catch it from week to week without too much digging into the past, present, and future of the show, this one had an impressive number of plotlines that didn’t rotate around the center mystery. For the first time, I had to scramble around online, looking for information about the other characters.

I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. I love continuity, and adore characters that grow and change. But after two episodes of A plot and minor B plot, this episode just had a lot going on.

Including, as it turns out, the implication that that the main character on “Cold Case” might have done something very, very bad.

Second: I’d love to sit in the writer’s room at the start of each season of “Case,” as they struggle to come up with ideas that haven’t been done before. At first blush, the idea of graffiti tagging seems like a bit of a reach, but it was such an interesting choice for a story universe that I kind of wished it had been a two-parter.

Third: I can’t tell you how happy I was to see Rick Gonzalez taking the role of Tut. If you’ve never seen him before, he did hilarious work as the character of Ben on the TV show “Reaper.” To my mind, “Reaper” was a show that never quite found its footing, but Rick made the show worth watching most of the time.

As for this episode? Well, with all the subplots going on at once, it almost felt a little short to me. The last couple of episodes, we’ve had… what, four or five suspects? This time, we wound up with three, and I honestly felt like it could have used at least one extra twist.

(I think this is mostly because the killer just seemed way, way too obvious to me. And since I’m generally bad at sussing out mysteries, I figured it had to be really easy for other people. Your mileage may vary.)

I will say, however, that I’m very interested to see where the subplots end up. There are at least two major subplots to resolve before the end of the season, and I’m terribly curious to see where they both go. And perhaps the most important thing this week wasn’t “Whodunnit?” but, “I bet you’re going to come back to find out what the implications of that final short are.”