Missing: The Lucie Blackman Case · My Daughter's Killer
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We used to have a feature on Previously.TV called Show Down. We’d throw everything from summarily fired Law & Order characters (Logan versus Southerlyn) to pathetic TV origami swans (an ad from 2015 versus Patty Chase’s candy-wrapper version on My So-Called Life) into a theoretical battledome, and gauge which fighter emerged “victorious.” I think I even did a Blotter-branded one back in the day billed as “Battle Of The Crusading Lifetime-Movie Moms Played By Marcia Gay Harden”? I can’t find it in the archives just now1, but every now and then I consider dusting off the format for Best Evidence — “Dopesick vs. Painkiller in The Battle Of The Multi-Episode Awards-Bait Sackler Indictments” — and then it feels too flip, so I go a different way.
But in the course of recording a guest appearance on the estimable Crime Seen podcast late last week, CS co-hosts Sarah and Mari 1) agreed with me that Missing: The Lucie Blackman Case is frustratingly insufficient, but 2) had a lot of praise for the not-dissimilar My Daughter’s Killer…and I found myself once again considering a Show Down. The concern re: possible cutesiness still pertains, but my hope is that side-by-siding the two features gives me a little more insight into why one feels rote and tentative, while the other is idiosyncratic and compelling.
[cracks knuckles] Okay, understanding that you may find spoilers in the body of the piece, let’s get into…