TVSquad

(S07E01) As the seventh season commences, the cases continue. Tonight it's a flashback to 1966 and the events on a ship known for suicides, but the real crux of the show was more current. What's going on with Lily Rush since her near-death experience last year? When the case against Kitchener seems to be going soft, her reaction makes me wonder if our Lily is contemplating going Dirty Harry (Harriet?) on us.

The case dominates, an interesting look at an independent young woman, Darcy Curtis, taking to the seas on the S.S. Atlantic's final voyage in search of adventure. How does she wind up in a red ball gown, dead in the bowels of the engine room of a scuttled cruise ship, and why did everyone believe she had jumped from the ship as a suicide?

The suspects pile up nicely, but as usual, the most obvious, an unctuous family servant, is just a red herring. While the look back at 1966 doesn't have the verisimilitude of a Mad Men episode, Cold Case does strike the right vibe. The pre-Women Lib days are palpable with Grace pushing Darcy to get married so she can be like her, and a reference to birth control pills which were just becoming popular.

The thing that really works to set the time on Cold Case is the music. The scene that epitomized the era, in fact, was an impromptu duet of "People Will Say We're In Love" (from Oklahoma) which seals the love story between Darcy and Duke. The romance was simplistic, so the music helped a lot. So did Michael Nader -- of Dynasty fame -- as the older Duke reminiscing about how he and Darcy had been swept away.

While the squad worked the angles, the Lily/Kitchener subplot festered. Lily has every reason to be ticked off. Kitchener forced her car off a bridge and left her to die in the cold waters of the river. Lily's eyewitness account should have kept the guy in jail till the trial, but he's out on bail with a court date eight months away. In his fatherly way, Finn warned Lil to accept the decision, but as the last shot showed, she's not listening to him. Lily doesn't have much of a life outside the job; she's been bound to lose focus and she has.

In subplot two, however, it looks like Bell figured out what Kat was looking for when he kissed her in the squad room. But there's something about Bell that's worrisome. He didn't seem very concerned that Kitchener's getting an easy time of it with the courts. Could there be something hinky going on? Hmm... guess we'll find out as the season plays out.

Check out AOL's new site SlashControl if you want to watch some Cold Case episodes from the first six seasons.