What does this part of the opening disclaimer mean? To keep "the innocent" from being tracked down and harassed by unstable viewers, some names and minor details have been changed? Giving Lt. Joe Kenda a bigger role in cases he might have only been tangentially involved in? I do believe this happened toward the end of the nine year series' run. Or are there occasions where "artistic license" is taken to blend fiction with fact? In the case of "Drive Thru Murder" I think this last one happened.
Let me take a step back though. I began watching and became a fan of Homicide Hunter about halfwalf way through it's run on Investigative Discovery, say 2015. Recently I became a subscriber to NBC's Peacock streaming service and was pleased to see the first three seasons of HH(I wish it were all of them though) carried. Even with watching marathon broadcasts/binging from time to time, many of these oldest episodes I have not seen.
So I ended up watching Season 2, Episode 6, "Drive Thru Murder". There are a few things I did not care for. These are: gratitious crime scene photos; and scenes that seemed contrived and/or filler.
True crime is true crime, but to me I prefer whodunit instead of many gory pictures of dead bodies, although I understand sometime such photos are part of the story. Homicide Hunter overall is great in this regard, usually relying exclusively on reenactments and not real images. However this episodes keeps showing and showing two explicit crime scene photos of the victim, a murdered young woman who was an assistant manager at a fast foor restaurant. Also there are similar murder scene recreation photos of the actress playing the victim, so things get a bit confusing.
Now for the seems contrived. The first suspect is a former police officer, whom the narrator tells us lost his job because of the murder victim. And what did this former cop do? He screwed up by filing out a report on a fender bender the deceased was in! I suppose so, but it seems like a stretch, both the firing and a revenge killing over this. In any case, he has an alibi and is dropped as a suspect.
Kenda also checks out a teen-aged girl who worked at the fast food joint who had told others the assistent manager, words to the effect, she was a *the b-word*. C'mon! I know all leads must be checked out, but is this a serious suspect? What high schooler working a minimum wage job does not think their boss is a *the b-word* and/or a jerk? Anyway, she was quickly cleared. Filler to me.
Finally, two more plausible suspects get on the radar, so this is good.
However, when these more solid suspects emerge later in the show, Kenda tells us that cell phone location records help nail the quilty party. But as user reviewer arficus says in their review, cell phones were rare in 1994 when this killing to place. A quick search on Yahoo finds they did not come into common usage until the early 2000's. From my own memory of 1994, a beeper(?) maybe, a cell phone(?) probably not. They were around, but were so expensive (both the phone, and the "air time") that non-rich people or those without corporate expense accounts rarely had them. So this part is very much at variance with the ways of that time.
Finally, when Kenda does determine who the actual killer is(I wont say who no spoiler here) it is because this person is a complete idiot who early on (both before and after the murder) easily gives themselves away. So much so that a great deal of the show is superflous to me.
Trivia: The actor who plays Kenda, Carl Marino, his real life wife Ilona, appears as a travel agent in a non-speaking role.
Let me take a step back though. I began watching and became a fan of Homicide Hunter about halfwalf way through it's run on Investigative Discovery, say 2015. Recently I became a subscriber to NBC's Peacock streaming service and was pleased to see the first three seasons of HH(I wish it were all of them though) carried. Even with watching marathon broadcasts/binging from time to time, many of these oldest episodes I have not seen.
So I ended up watching Season 2, Episode 6, "Drive Thru Murder". There are a few things I did not care for. These are: gratitious crime scene photos; and scenes that seemed contrived and/or filler.
True crime is true crime, but to me I prefer whodunit instead of many gory pictures of dead bodies, although I understand sometime such photos are part of the story. Homicide Hunter overall is great in this regard, usually relying exclusively on reenactments and not real images. However this episodes keeps showing and showing two explicit crime scene photos of the victim, a murdered young woman who was an assistant manager at a fast foor restaurant. Also there are similar murder scene recreation photos of the actress playing the victim, so things get a bit confusing.
Now for the seems contrived. The first suspect is a former police officer, whom the narrator tells us lost his job because of the murder victim. And what did this former cop do? He screwed up by filing out a report on a fender bender the deceased was in! I suppose so, but it seems like a stretch, both the firing and a revenge killing over this. In any case, he has an alibi and is dropped as a suspect.
Kenda also checks out a teen-aged girl who worked at the fast food joint who had told others the assistent manager, words to the effect, she was a *the b-word*. C'mon! I know all leads must be checked out, but is this a serious suspect? What high schooler working a minimum wage job does not think their boss is a *the b-word* and/or a jerk? Anyway, she was quickly cleared. Filler to me.
Finally, two more plausible suspects get on the radar, so this is good.
However, when these more solid suspects emerge later in the show, Kenda tells us that cell phone location records help nail the quilty party. But as user reviewer arficus says in their review, cell phones were rare in 1994 when this killing to place. A quick search on Yahoo finds they did not come into common usage until the early 2000's. From my own memory of 1994, a beeper(?) maybe, a cell phone(?) probably not. They were around, but were so expensive (both the phone, and the "air time") that non-rich people or those without corporate expense accounts rarely had them. So this part is very much at variance with the ways of that time.
Finally, when Kenda does determine who the actual killer is(I wont say who no spoiler here) it is because this person is a complete idiot who early on (both before and after the murder) easily gives themselves away. So much so that a great deal of the show is superflous to me.
Trivia: The actor who plays Kenda, Carl Marino, his real life wife Ilona, appears as a travel agent in a non-speaking role.