The Key

I always enjoy the music in this show. Often wonder how they pick which songs from a particular era to use.I wonder if the writers get too choose the songs that they liked from the year. Anyway...I can't come up with who sang the song at the end and it is driving me crazy. I was 22 then and I recognize it but can't place the artist. I liked the overall show but wonder how often these key parties really took place. On another note, why do they make Lilly's character so unable to be in a relationship. It seems like she doesn't even try. Do they want to always keep open the option of having a love interest in a case. Is the show really shot in Philly? Well, I hope someone can help me out with this, I'm usually pretty good at "naming that tune" but not tonight.

It is the height of the sexual revolution and a man bored with his schoolmarm wife pushes her into a 'key party'. Never once did it enter his head that another man might want her. Never once did it enter his head that she might blossom into a babe which she does. Never once did it enter his head that 'open marriage' cuts both ways. Never once did it enter his head that she would get the 'better deal' instead of him.

Annie Wersching does a remarkable transformation here from rejected wife who thinks she has kinda missed out on life by always playing by the rules and doing what was expected of her to 'liberated swinger' and back to responsible mom. Libby Bradley remains profoundly sympathetic throughout because she brings more generosity of heart to this situation than any of the other 'swingers' do. Unlike her husband and unlike her new lover she is a giving person. I am glad to see that Annie Wersching went on from this to "General Hospital" and will be starring in this season of "24".

The story line clearly disapproves of their actions. The fashionable at the time belief that sexual exclusivity in marriage is a 'hangup' which the truly liberated can just outgrow was on a collision course with reality. The authors of the '70's "Open Marriage" book which touted all of this themselves acknowledged in their follow up book that they got buckets of mail from people who tried it and ended up either in divorce court or going back to monogamy. It is massively "too much information" for the children to handle and much damage is done out of sheer carelessness.

In its episodes, Cold Case frequently presents a historical survey of selected time periods....the issues, trends, consequences and resulting aftermath that led to the next time periods' reactive changes in response...and is seen through the life philosophies of those who lived in that time....in this episode we have the Swinging '70s....as one who was a young person then and in the 80's that followed, I have to say that the portrayal was quite accurate in many ways....

...Swinging burst on the scene sounding like a heck of a lot of fun at the time...a way to be freer as an individual and not tied down by rules of the past...here it is portrayed as a response by men to the women's liberation movement of the '60s...and there was some truth to that(BTW I'm a man writing this)...however it didn't take long before some reactive consequences reared up...the children were the first to show how uncomfortable, bewildered, and eventually contemptuous they were about actions of their elders which destabilized their families...then the swinger participants themselves realized how a lack of expectations led to a lack of the security, comfort, and stability in their lives which after all things considered they really couldn't do without....and then finally some couldn't handle the emotionally crushing psychological devastation that resulted...one because she was too naive to know what had really been happening around her and the other because he was too young and too full of adolescent libido to really process what an older, more experienced person would have realized was a reactionary flirtation, not a demonstration of genuine sexual interest....

....yet just like the 70s, the aftermath led to some favorable changes in one's awareness....our once repressed schoolteacher finally comes to realize that she had spent her whole life following others' footsteps and that true self actualization was realized not by holding on to someone else but within her own self, and she had to do this on her own. This reflected the change in thinking that occurred from the 70s to the 90s with many people in the USA.

As in previous episodes, the music really set the stage....again here I would have used a different song for the end, however..."Landslide" by Fleetwood Mac would have been a better choice although it was already the closing song for another episode (Fireflies)...another good choice would be "Songbird" again by Fleetwood Mac (a band which made a career of making record-selling albums dealing with individual instability from failed relationships)....Or for a really unique music application, try "Winter" by the Rolling Stones....a little known track off the otherwise mediocre "Goat's Head Soup" album of 1973... a song which takes a wistful look back at the mixed results of the past and a dimly hopeful wish for the future...

I thought this show was a really good one and the casting was great. I love how they match the younger & older actors of the same characters. The topic was interesting too, you don't hear too much of that anymore, not to say that it doesn't happen. I did feel bad for the kids of these families on the show. Knowing that their parents weren't hiding their lifestyles of drugs, alcohol and open marriages. Too much information for me if it were my parents. I'm also glad that they had Scotty & his brother come to a decision on how to go forward. The music always takes me back. I can't remember the last time that I heard the song Makin' It by David Naughton. By the way, to answer a previous comment, the last song of the show is: Broken Hearted Me by Anne Murray.

The song that is played at the end of the show - where they show the montages of the characters switching back and forth between how they look today and in '79 - is "Broken-Hearted Me" by Anne Murray. It came out in 1979. Someone also asked if the show is shot in Philadelphia. Certainly at least some of the outside shots are, perhaps all of them. But I don't believe all of it is shot in Philadelphia - as was the case with the recent series "Hack" with David Morse. I think maybe the indoor scenes are shot in Los Angeles or wherever, but not here. I think I would have been hearing more about the show locally (I live in Philadelphia).