Waking The Dead : What Happened and Why in
Burn Out

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The team is in the midst of investigating a cold case but it turns out that it is easily solved when they realize it is a case of a cold. Luckily, Boyd literally stumbles upon a hot case when he comes across a young woman setting fire to a car.

The episode opens with Boyd inside of a church lighting a candle to connect with his lost son. Marina Coleman is outside lighting a car to connect with her lost father. The episode struggles in an attempt to maintain some sort of parallel between Boyd and Marina's situations but it is never very covincing. Boyd spends most of the episode trying to save Marina, even if at times he does not know from what. Marina spends most of the episode resisting all efforts to be saved, most likely because she is quite capable of fending for herself.

Marina dumps water from a petrol container over the car. She then lights it. I am not convinced this would work but notwithstanding my misgivings she manages to produce a blaze. She then films the burning car with a small video camera. Boyd passes by and rushes over to "save" her from the flames. Marina resists his attempts to shield her and yells at him that it is only water. She grabs a fire extinguisher that she has stashed nearby and douses the flames. When she tries to walk away, a very annoyed Boyd stops her and arrests her.

At the police station, Boyd begins to regret having arrested Marina, whether this is because time and space have allowed him to reassess the seriousness of her actions or that Marina is such a difficult individual and he simply regrets ever having met her, is unclear. Boyd tries to play nice by saying that she may get away with a caution, but Marina seems uninterested in his gesture. Marina's mother, Gwen and uncle Mike arrive. Boyd then learns that Marina has done this fire trick before. Her father died in a car accident in that very spot nine years earlier. He had been an award winning photographer, best known for photographs of the aftermath of a massacre of innocent people in a hospital in Yugoslavia's war zone.

As it turns out, Marina had been conducting her own brand of cold case investigation. Marina would make a good investigator because, well let's face it, she's right about pretty much everything but also because despite her understandable dolefulness, she has analyzed her father's case, noted inconsistencies, replicated the incident and has tried to find plausible explanations for what she has observed. The Cold Case Squad could learn a few things from her. Although, Marina has been doing a good job of with her investigation, she knows she needs help and turns to Boyd for assistance. She tells him that the coroner recorded an open verdict in the case. It is unclear what basis the coroner used since there does not seem as if there were any open issues left to resolve. Boyd agrees reluctantly.

The case in and of itself errs on the side of confusing rather than complex. Marina's father, Perry Coleman, was involved in a single vehicle car accident. His car did not make a turn properly and smashed into a wall. The car burst into flames and Perry perished. Based on the fact that five minutes passed from the moment of impact to the time when the car was consumed by flames, Perry breathed in smoke and that Perry turned on the hazard warning lights after the crash, the initial question is whether this was an accident or a suicide attempt. Mike and Gwen reveal that five years ago they found a suicide note. It is assumed that they kept the note secret because otherwise the family would lose Perry's insurance benefits. Boyd delivers the news to a devasted yet disbelieving Marina. She tears up the note and dumps the pieces on Boyd's desk. Frankie chastises Boyd for allowing Marina to not only touch the note but destroy it. Boyd is unphased by Frankie's rebuke empahazing fully with Marina.

Frankie repairs the note and takes the initiative to test it for authenticity. She discovers that the note could only have been written after Perry's death. This along with Grace's fuzzy assessment that Perry would not have committed suicide in this manner gets the team to think that Perry did not commit suicide and furthermore that Mike Coleman knows more about his brother's death than he is letting on. That same night, someone comes into the Coleman household and lops Mike upside his head. The only attempt to explain this occurence does not make enough sense for me to dwell on it here. It does make for an odd scene as Boyd arrives at the house to find Gwen crying over Mike and a half sleep Marina staring at all of them. There is no real explanation for why Boyd shows up at the Coleman household so late at night. It is unlikely he wanted to confront them with the information about the authenticity of the note because he does not have enough information at that point.

Boyd brings Mike and Gwen in for questioning. Not surprisingly, Gwen seems perplexed and Mike refuses to tell them anything. Frankie searches the Coleman home but Marina tells Spence that Mike has thrown out everything of interest. She retrieved the items from the dump. These are things that the police returned to the family from the crash. I'm not sure why the Colemans or Mike choose to hide this stuff?

Boyd tries to rattle Mike by having his brother's body exhumed and forcing Mike to watch the autopsy. Mike never seems phased by this but Boyd is insistent. Frankie puts an end to the charade by telling Boyd quite succinctly that he may not use her laboratory for his games. Boyd goes off to sulk until Spence appears with what he thinks is the smoking gun. Spence is often overly excited about each piece of a puzzle he finds. Spence still has much to learn about what constitutes breaking the case. He tells Boyd that they have evidence of Rod Brogan's involvement in the massacre and that they have located Brogan in the country. Boyd is pleased but he is puzzled as to why Brogan would return to England and moreso why Mike Coleman would help him.

Boyd tricks Mike into calling his accomplice so that they can get his address. They search an empty boarding room and find negatives of Marina and Boyd. Boyd says that Brogan is following him. Why?

Frankie tests the DNA of the body they exhumed and finds that it does not match Marina's DNA. The two explanations are that either Perry is not Marina's biological father or the body is not Perry Coleman. On the scale of simply bizarre, inexplicably, Boyd decides that Perry cannot be Marina's father because there had been a positive identification of the body nine years ago. They know that the identification was based on dog tags and a watch but somehow that's more persuasive than dna. Was this just a case of Boyd's wishful thinking that Perry was not really Marina's father? Certainly it would be easier to compete with a mercenary rather than an award winning fearless war photographer. In any event, Frankie stopped him before he said anything to Marina about her parentage. She finally tested the body's DNA against the DNA from Rod Brogan's blood sample provided by the army and found a match.

At this point, they know that Brogan is dead, Perry Coleman is most likely alive and most likely the person responsible for Brogan's death. The recent negatives of Marina and Boyd were taken with Perry Coleman's Leica. They suspect that Perry has returned to town to stop Marina from discovering the truth about the car crash.

Boyd, along with bullet proof vest clad, Spence and Mel rush off to warn Marina but during that time Perry Coleman appears in her living room. He does not seem all that paranoid but maybe those things wear off or maybe Grace was making things up to have something to say. Anyway, Marina is miffed that Perry let her believe that he was dead. She tells him that have to leave or risk being discovered. Perry does not want to run. Marina gets him to leave and they drive off just as the cold case squad arrives. Boyd puts his hand on some blood, presumably ruining his gloves. This is fitting since he muddied his overcoat when he first met Marina. We know Mel had no intention of taking his coat to the dry cleaners so perhaps that was ruined as well.

Boyd returns to base to contemplate his navel. Mel and Spence go to interview Mike and Gwen. Spence is told for the twentieth time that Perry was not perturbed by Gwen's relationship with Mike. There is no reason to believe he is convinced but the episode will end soon so he will not have an opportunity to say it again.

Boyd has one of his Joe Boyd moments spurred on by one of Grace's less than compelling pyscho babble. She asks what would you do if someone you thought was dead suddenly reappeared in your life. The answer seems to be to return to the place where you last saw the person. Grace concludes that they will return to the scene of the accident. The assumption must be that Marina is now in control, although it is unclear why they decide that. Grace is probably not to blame but rather the continuing lame attempt to connect the Joe Boyd saga to Marina's story. It is best not to spend much time thinking about it.

In a much more realistic moment, Boyd and Grace leave to go the the alley but Frankie stops them to say she has the results Boyd wanted. Boyd does not remember what tests she is talking about. Of course when he told her to rush the tests because they were very important he was just using a tactic to get his worked bumped ahead of anything else she might be doing. Frankie might have been more annoyed had it not turned out that she did discover a vital bit of information, Perry Coleman is dying.

At the scene of the car crash, Perry confesses to Marina that he is not the hero she believes him to be. He did nothing as Brogan slaughtered innocents. He crashed the car into the wall and slid an unconscious Brogan into the driver's seat. He put his dog tags and watch on Brogan, locked the car doors and ran away leaving a screaming Brogan to burn to death. Marina is trying to disgest this bombshell when the team arrives. Marina's first instinct is to try and protect her father. She holds the team at bay by holding a lighter over an open gasoline tank. Mel and Spence pull out their guns and train them on Marina. Why? If they shoot her she could drop the lighter and set off the gas tank. If they miss they could hit the gas tank and ignite it. Boyd has to tell them repeatedly to put their guns away. Marina is not a criminal. The only reason they want to shoot her is because she is holding the lighter. The only reason she is even holding the lighter is because they are there, if they back off it will remove all reason to hold the lighter. As if the scene were not odd enough, Boyd says to Marina that she should ask Perry why he has returned and why he is not running away now. Boyd knows it is because Perry has a terminal illness. Boyd also knows that Marina would rather face the truth even if it is painful. Grace becomes hysterical in an attempt to prevent Boyd from saying anything. Why? We may never know.

To the extent that this episode works, much of the credit is due to Angela Griffin's portrayal of Marina Coleman. She does a very nice job showing Marina struggling to control the torment that threatens to take over her life. She lets us see that Marina is more defiant than independent and hints that the mystery of Perry's death is holding her back from moving on with her life despite the appearance of progress.

As for the regular cast, not much stands out. Spence and Mel are fairly indistinguishable throughout the episode. Frankie manages to establish that she loves challenges but she loves equally being recognized for her successes. Grace says a lot of things that do not ever have to be confirmed and she never has to say why she says these things. We get glimpses of tension among the team about how and why they are doing their jobs which ideally need to be worked out for the sake of drama but in actuality merely dissipate.

Overall, an okay episode but fortunately better ones follow.

copyright Ella R. 2002 All rights reserved.