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Tuesday 10 July 2012

Without A Trace 3.5 American Goddess Review


American Goddess Lynette Shaw (Elizabeth Berkley) 30.  Bookkeeper at a restaurant.  Weight 152 pounds. Height 5’8” 13 surgeries over 3 months and gym 1200 calories a day diets. 120 hours.  Collagen injection.  Cheek augmentation.  Skin dermabrasion.  Brow lift.  Laser refinishing.  Face lift.  Chemical peels.  Liposuction.  Upper lip implant.  Rhinoplasty.  12 porcelain veneers.  Neck lift.  Chin implant.  Tummy tuck.  Breast augmentation.  Diet and work regimen.  Laser mole and freckle removal.  Liposuction of thighs and knees.  Buttocks augmentation.  Elbow lift.

Lynette was crowned American Goddess; an opportunity of a lifetime and never felt better.  A woman heckles her, she looks like a freak, she’s plastic pieces.  She disappears from her trashed dressing room.

2 Hours Missing
Bruce Kaplan (Evan Handler) was her manager for 6 weeks.  She didn’t have any problems with stalkers.  There are prints on the door knob.  Danny (Enrique Murciano) doesn’t watch such rubbish.  Maria lets Jack's (Anthony LaPaglia) daughters watch.

3 Hours Missing
Martin (Eric Close) watches her tape.  Viv (Marianne Jean Baptiste) says there were no complaints filed with the NYPD concerning stalkers.  Martin thinks it’s about Lynette.  She’s never had a boyfriend.  Guys will hit on her and she’ll think she’s hit bigtime if someone buys her a drink.  The show made her a star.  Angie Bowman (Katharine Powell) brought charges against the show.  Lynette told them Angie was bulimic and gave her the number for Crestview.  Crazy people make for good TV.

4 Hours Missing
Sam (Poppy Montgomery) and Danny check out her apartment.  Danny tells Sam about one of his old girlfriends going on about being fat.  Sam finds a receipt for the cleaners who have her dress for stain treatment.  There was a message on her answer machine from a man who called 3 times.

5 Hours Missing
Jack finds Angie was angry over being disqualified.  But she didn’t have any problems with Lynette.  She dropped the lawsuit and attended Crestview.  They had lunch together and she showed her her engagement ring.  A man asked for her autograph and asks why she couldn’t get her ears done?  Lynette then became obsessed with her ears.
She’s also obsessed with asking out a man and went on the show because of him; for him.

Bruce is Lynette’s mother’s fiancĂ© and say Lynette was hospitalized for depression 5 years ago.  Her mother, Irene (Cristine Rose) didn’t want her on the show.  Lynette wanted a promotion at the restaurant as a hostess but didn't get it as she wasn’t pretty enough.  Her mother got her eyes done.  Danny can’t believe her mother told her she wasn’t pretty.  Sam finds naked photos of Lynette in a magazine stand.

Sam gets the dress from the cleaners and her hotel keycard.  Viv says forensics found the prints on the door belong to Paul Pfeiffer, (JD Walsh) a patient at Crestview and he called her apartment.

6 Hours Missing
Paul tells them they’re not dating.  They’re friends and wanted to talk to her in her dressing room.  He’s always been there for her and she’s moving on.  She was beautiful no matter what.

7 Hours Missing
Lynette had  a crush on Dr Singh (Kris Lyer).  She saw him for a consultation as she wanted her ears done.  She was his best work.  But he told her no surgeon would operate for fear of a lawsuit because of the amount of surgery she’s had already.

9 Hours Missing
She ate at Casadora’s so her guy is probably someone who worked there.

10 Hours Missing
 Shirley tells Danny Lynette had eyes for the manager, Hal (Brennan Elliott). They weren’t dating.  Lynette wanted him to cater for a party and asked him for a drink.  She told him about photos of her Playboy shoot in advance but he didn’t meet her.
The photographer was Bruce.


24 Hours Missing
He took her photos and came onto her.  He was her part time manager.  He could get 20 years to life for kidnapping and 5 years for lying to the FBI.  He only lied because she’d tell her mother.  He’s already told her.  She says Lynette threw herself at him.  She came home 7:30 so she had it out with her.  Lynette tried to tell her it was Bruce so he slapped her for lying.  Danny says she may have been raped and if her mother had bothered to ask she’d know this.
Sam shows photos to the hotel clerk.  Paul was at the Litton Hotel bar.  They were meant to watch a movie so he followed her there.  Paul confessed he loved her and Lynette turned him down.  She wanted to be with someone else all her life.  Danny watches the interrogation.  The hotel clerk identifies the man as Hal.

28 Hours Missing
Hal says he wasn’t interested in her.  There was semen on her dress.  Hal calls being with her a horror story.  The night was okay but the next day she told him she’d change for him.  He was disgusted with her.  Danny says all she wanted was to be loved and everyone in her life rejected her.  He says the surgery didn’t change her life and thinks she trashed the dressing room because she couldn’t take it anymore.  She was trying to escape.  Danny remembers Shirley told her about getting half price liposuction in Queens.

30 Hours Missing
Lynette underwent surgery yesterday and had everything undone.  Dr Varrick (Gregory Wagrowski) was meant to send her to the Recovery center but she didn’t check in.

31 Hours Missing
Viv finds Varrick was arrested 5 years ago in North Carolina after a patient died on the operating table.  He has no licence to practice in Queens.  His credit card was used in Chinatown.

32 Hours Missing
Danny and Martin find her and Varrick.  She asks for Paul.  Danny tells Paul Lynette’s in hospital and  should see her.  He gives a dirty look to Hal.  Lynette suffered an allergic reaction to the anaesthethic and wasn’t taken to hospital because he didn’t have a licence.

Sam tells Danny he won’t be so tough on those girls now.  On her video Lynette says nobody sees her on the inside.

This episode: a commentary on reality shows and how they can go too far.  Seems Lynette was messed up in several ways, falling for the wrong man, needing a man in her life, saying she'd change for them.  No woman should have to do or say things like that ever.

Danny: “I don’t watch that crap.  Do you?”
Jack: “My wife lets my kids watch it sometimes.”
Danny: “Well that’s good if you want your daughters to think plastic surgery’s the answer to everything.”  You’d think Maria would be more responsible as a parent.

Martin: “This girl is so desperate to be loved.  Before American Goddess  she was invisible – now she’s a celebrity.”
Viv: “for 15 minutes.”
Viv: “So we’re looking for a scumbag in New York City.”  That’ll narrow the search down!

Danny: “This girl takes Fit’n’Thin.  Equals high maintenance.  Usually comes with a cat, a fat best friend and a daddy complex.”
Sam: “Your compassion is overwhelming.”
Danny: “Look all I’m saying is life’s too short.  I dated a girl that takes this stuff – she used to spend her days talking about how fat she was and then she’d spend her whole night in front of the refrigerator scoffing down cold pizza.”  Here they don’t give him a very positive attitude or opinion towards these girls and that changes at the end. Thank goodness, Danny can't be that shallow.  He can say life’s too short but he wasted a lot of his when he was younger going off the rails, so to speak.

Danny: “maybe it’s blood.”
Sam: “according to you it’s pizza sauce.”
Isn’t it always the case that women get turned down for jobs because of their looks first and their qualifications second!

Danny: “You told your daughter she was average.”  Even her mother doesn’t think much of her own daughter so who would.

Danny: “I never suggested you had done anything to her.”  Well, not killed her, at least.

Martin can’t keep his hands and eyes off of Sam!
Viv’s desk is still empty of any personal effects.

Wasn’t Paul Pfeiffer, the character name, Kevin’s best friend in The Wonder Years?

Viv has her hair done in the scene she visits with the doctor.
Jack: “They want you to pose for Miss November?”  That’s a sexist comment coming from Jack and so soon after he takes his job back.

Danny: “I mean you’ve gotta admit if I could’ve gone there, I would’ve gone there.  Couple of Scotches, you bang the American Goddess – I mean that’s a story right?”
Danny: “was it a long night?”  Danny doesn’t know what he’s talking about because he would never treat a girl like that but men like Hal are a dime a dozen and would!

Danny: “I was just thinking that in the 12 hours before Lynette went missing she was rejected by her mother, her best friend, the man of her dreams and her plastic surgeon.  I mean, all this girl ever wanted was to be loved.  I mean that’s why she went on that damn show in the first place.”  Paul didn’t reject her.

There wasn’t much media coverage over the missing American Goddess. Again Danny was on a case where it affected him where he criticized Lynnette’s mother for taking the diet supplement then learned what her life was really like – but didn’t feel outrage or disgust towards her since he commented on her mother calling her average to her face.
Sam: “Guess you won’t be so hard on those Fit’n’Thin girls now – huh?”

This episode was directed by Tony Goldwyn; who played the twins Rick and Greg in season 2 and season 3.  Also better known as the murderer in the movie Ghost and more recently seen in ABC's Scandal.

Someone should have pointed out Danny’s watch!  In the space of this episode it went from his left wrist in the apartment with Sam, to his right in the interview room, with his bangle now on his left wrist. At the restaurant it was on his left wrist now.  On the scene with Lynette’s mother his watch is on the left and then with Hal it’s back on the right and then back on the left gain.  When he finds Lynette and the doctor at the end it’s now on his right wrist and when he tells Sam about Lynette at the end it’s on his left wrist.  If anything else, at least you can now tell which scenes were filmed in which order and what days!  Yes I'm very observant like that! ha.

This episode was especially "ripped from the headlines" from the Fox reality show, The Swan.

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