A great, dark plot idea -- serial rapist/murderer who was never caught sends letter to cops saying he's going to strike again -- is kind of done an injustice here by the insensitivity of the execution. I like this show, but the subject matter required more gravitas and respect than was on offer; instead there were a bunch of clichés, unnecessarily graphic flashbacks of victims being pinned down and assaulted (and raped, presumably, soon after we cut away from them), and overall a sledgehammer tone when a scalpel was needed instead.
I liked that there was an effort to make this an old unsolved case that meant a lot to Jeremy Ratchford's Detective Vera; it was great to see his character get really fired up. But unfortunately there was too much doofiness with the victim's weirdly misogynistic boyfriend and another side character who is openly mocked by the detectives for her lack of intelligence near the end of the episode. The killer's motivation was corny and straight off of a bad pop psychology website; I get that it's based on the real-life case of the Center City Rapist in 2002, but that doesn't excuse the lack of subtlety.
And disappointingly, I just didn't "get the feels" from the ending montage, which is usually one of the biggest highlights in an episode of Cold Case. It's all too pat and perfunctory; the show seems to be suggesting everything is all right because the killer is caught, even though a bunch of women were still raped and one was violently murdered. "Heroes" by the Wallflowers seemed like way too triumphant a song for such bleak subject matter; I was left with a "broadcast network"-y, taste in my mouth when the credits rolled, and in this case that's not a good thing. Cold Case can be so much better than this.
