Post by pakman on Jan 5, 2015 16:22:17 GMT -5
Alrighty, I think I'm ready to post my favorite and least-favorite episodes of 2004! These are listed in order of broadcast date and not by how I like/don't like them.
Favorites:
January 24, 2004
This episode had so much going on and yet it didn't feel crowded. It was one of the few episodes this year to have a fugitive during the COPS Credits, All-Points Bulletin was featured (including the first profile in several years of Larry Burns), a great capture was profiled (Pete Marron) and the fugitive recap highlighted almost every case profiled on the show that night. As a bonus, the episode was also the show's 750th, which was never mentioned on-camera.
February 21, 2004
A unique format that was revisited (to a lesser degree) in 2008 in "Chases," this episode featured chases on land, on the sea (Aguayo/Gugliatto) and even in the air (Hemp). This was also the first episode to feature the unknown internet pedophiles, which AMW had tremendous success with early on. The best part? This episode broke the capture dry spell which had been going on since January; Gianni Gugliatto, William Phillips and Scott Hayden were all caught off of this episode, while Angel Aguayo and Thomas Evered were direct captures off of later episodes. I believe this episode only has two unsolved cases as well; Gerald Hemp and Herbert Rodriguez.
May 15, 2004
The National Police Week episode. This was probably my favorite Police Week episode at the time (it would later be topped after AMW introduced the All Star Award). The show featured the capture of a cop killer (Tahua Rivera), the profile of a cop killer (Armando Garcia), the profile of a fugitive who shot at a cop (Carl Djusberg, who was caught within 48 hours of this profile) and a very nice Ray Farkas-produced documentary about the week. Also, this episode became a clean-sweep show rather quickly; Carl Djusberg and Robert Brown were both caught in 2004, the Unknown Brittany Fish Abductor and Winston Whittingham were both caught in 2005 and Armando Garcia was nabbed in 2006.
June 12, 2004
The Canada Special Edition. I wish all episodes used this as a template for how to do special editions. It started off with the capture of a fugitive wanted out of Canada (Dudley Forbes), profiled two fugitives who had just gone on the run (Wayne Cassidy and Stafford Lake), dedicated a whole segment to an unsolved Canadian murder (Unknown Cecilia Zhang Killer), profiled a couple other Canadian fugitives (Skerdi Zena and Richard Newman) and also profiled an American fugitive who had been spotted in Canada (Jesse James Hollywood). Overall, an excellent show with few complaints
June 26, 2004
The unofficial "amw.com Edition." If you asked me what I think the template for every episode should have been, this would be close to the perfect one. This episode introduced the newly revamped amw.com and featured John Walsh profiling a case from every section of the site (as I described earlier in the guide). It's not perfect simply because it lacked 15SoS and APB, but it's pretty darn close to my idea of what an episode should be.
July 17, 2004
The 800th Capture special edition. These are the types of episodes where I don't mind it if not many cases are profiled, because the show is celebrating a milestone. This episode is no exception, featuring not only the capture of Richard Newman, but also my favorite non-fugitive Ray Farkas documentary he ever did for the show - he went behind the scenes at AMW and captured parts of the show that most people had never seen up to that point. Bonus points for profiling AMW Cold Case Juan "John" Jiminez as well (I remember some on the old forums saying he was profiled in 1996).
July 24, 2004
The "Where Are They Now?" special edition. This was a very unique episode, and one AMW never did again, which I think is a shame. This episode caught up with some familiar faces from AMW's past, including Dave Navarro (mom Connie was killed by John Riccardi, Capture #134), Sonia Paine (jewelry store owner who beat up an FBI Top Tenner who tried to rob her) and Elizabeth Smart. And of course plenty of fugitives (Adolfo Sanchez, Artur Martirosyan and Anthony Smith included) were profiled as well.
September 11, 2004
18th Season Premiere, and yet another "clean sweep" show as of a month ago. Plenty of new cases were featured on this show and every single one of them has been solved. Not surprisingly, many of these fugitives were direct captures (Fowle brothers, Kevin Nolen, Darryl Williams) and even the ones who weren't were still impressive grabs.
December 4, 2004
After a month of seeing John Walsh driving in a Hummer and being the investigator of all these cases, it was refreshing to see an episode where he was inside the studio and talking about cases in a normal way. There's honestly nothing that stands out about this episode, and if it were any other year this would have been an average one, but due to the circumstances, I was just so happy to see a "normal" episode for once.
December 11, 2004
The BTK Killer Special Edition. Normally I'm not a big fan of the one-case shows or when John Walsh handles the investigation, but this one I honestly don't mind. It was a nice, in-depth look at BTK, his crimes and what he might have been doing while on the run. I also like to think this episode played a tiny role in Dennis Rader's capture, since BTK loved publicity and after this episode aired he started communicating with police non-stop until his capture.
But as the "Facts of Life" theme song said, "you take the good, you take the bad." There were also 10 episodes I wasn't a fan of that aired during 2004.
January 31, 2004
Like the December 4 episode on my favorites, there's nothing egregiously bad about this episode. It's problem lies in its placement; only five fugitives were profiled on this episode after several weeks that featured at least eight fugitives profiled per show. Like I said, there's nothing particularly bad about it, but it was a bit of a letdown to see the lack of fugitives after a month of huge shows and plenty of profiles.
March 13, 2004
Again, nothing terribly wrong with this episode, and as I've gotten older I've really found more respect for the two-part Colleen Perris story. Still, I wish they had found a way to profile more fugitives than the three they ended up airing. I think if they'd delayed either Angel Aguayo or the Stoneman/Kelley capture report a week, things would have been better.
April 10, 2004
This was the repeat of the July 12, 2003 episode, and while I really liked that version, the rerun of the rerun wasn't as good. They cut out Richard Bare's profile for no real reason (though he did end up being profiled a couple weeks later) and in its place aired an abbreviated Consensus Plan feature. There's also the fact that when this episode was reran, John Walsh was recovering from a broken ankle, so he's not really moving around too much in between segments.
May 8, 2004
The Chicago Special Edition. While I really loved the Tom Morris-produced story on Jason Tavares (Peter Cunningham), the rest of the show left a lot to be desired. Michael Alfonso and John Koutoumanos were the only Chicago fugitives profiled on the show, and Alfonso wasn't even wanted out of Chicago (his crime happened in Wheeling). Also, Alfonso had just been profiled two months before this profile, and nothing changed about his story. I feel like if Tracey Boyce and Shawn Bovee had not been caught there probably could have been more Chicago fugitives, but I'd rather they be caught if it meant the show had less cases.
May 22, 2004 and November 20, 2004 (tie)
The "Bad Girls" Special Editions. Boy were these disappointing episodes! The first one featured three "bad girls" in the APB, a female Break-Four Tease, and....that was it! Every other case profiled was either male or a "seeking information" update. On a personal note, my copy of this episode is horrible. Even though my family had satellite from Dish Network, I had to record it on cable because of a bad rainstorm that night which knocked out the signal. Half the episode has weather alerts on the bottom of the screen. To make matters even worse, I accidentally recorded over the first five minutes or so of the episode with some stupid VH1 show (after that I removed all the record tabs from my tape collection to prevent it from happening again). And don't get me started on the November 20 show. Calling that a "Bad Girls" edition is a misrepresentation if I've ever heard it. There were exactly FOUR female fugitives profiled on the entire show; none of them was longer than a few minutes. Most of the show was about Ran Mesika, which, while fascinating, should not have been aired on a Bad Girls episode.
August 7, 2004
The second "Ladies' Night" rerun and the third time this episode aired overall. To me, reruns should have had a limit on them; you could only give them one airing per year. That's one of my main problems with this episode; had it not been profiled eight months earlier, I think I would have been fine with it. There were other episodes that could have been reran in its place. But I'll say this; at least AMW actually did a decent job when this episode was reran in July 2005 (more on that when I do my 2005 guide). That's more than I can say about...
August 21, 2004
...the third rerun of the "Toughest Cops, Toughest Cases" Special Edition. This was the "Ones Who Got Away" rerun before that episode even existed. AMW didn't even bother updating the graphics of this episode; they left it the same as it was during its last four airings. I'll have to check and see if this or "OWGA" aired more often, but either way, these episodes didn't need to be aired that frequently. Thankfully, this is the last time the "Toughest Cops, Toughest Cases" episode aired, and the last time AMW did an episode without updating the graphics.
September 25, 2004
I will never forget the day this episode aired. AMW usually posted the week's new episode on Friday night, about 24 hours before the show aired. This one didn't get added until the day the show aired, and boy was I disappointed when I saw only three fugitives were profiled (technically only two as Lucian Kozminski isn't facing any criminal charges). What really disappointed me is that John Walsh said fugitives from Florida were going to be profiled and all we got was Damar Pink and missing person Mark Jackson. The other segments weren't bad, but they didn't belong on this episode.
November 6, 2004
If you want an episode that I would describe as "all over the place," this would be it. The episode's apparent theme was John Walsh tracking Arnulfo "The Riverbed Rapist" Vargas, but after the opening it immediately started into Gary Lasher's story. They then started talking about Vargas' story for about a minute before going into ANOTHER story. It was a complete mess, and if you want any clue as to how bad it was, just read my summary of the episode. As I stated earlier, until the February 17, 2007 show, this was the most sloppily-edited episode I'd ever seen.
Let me know what you think of the list!
Favorites:
January 24, 2004
This episode had so much going on and yet it didn't feel crowded. It was one of the few episodes this year to have a fugitive during the COPS Credits, All-Points Bulletin was featured (including the first profile in several years of Larry Burns), a great capture was profiled (Pete Marron) and the fugitive recap highlighted almost every case profiled on the show that night. As a bonus, the episode was also the show's 750th, which was never mentioned on-camera.
February 21, 2004
A unique format that was revisited (to a lesser degree) in 2008 in "Chases," this episode featured chases on land, on the sea (Aguayo/Gugliatto) and even in the air (Hemp). This was also the first episode to feature the unknown internet pedophiles, which AMW had tremendous success with early on. The best part? This episode broke the capture dry spell which had been going on since January; Gianni Gugliatto, William Phillips and Scott Hayden were all caught off of this episode, while Angel Aguayo and Thomas Evered were direct captures off of later episodes. I believe this episode only has two unsolved cases as well; Gerald Hemp and Herbert Rodriguez.
May 15, 2004
The National Police Week episode. This was probably my favorite Police Week episode at the time (it would later be topped after AMW introduced the All Star Award). The show featured the capture of a cop killer (Tahua Rivera), the profile of a cop killer (Armando Garcia), the profile of a fugitive who shot at a cop (Carl Djusberg, who was caught within 48 hours of this profile) and a very nice Ray Farkas-produced documentary about the week. Also, this episode became a clean-sweep show rather quickly; Carl Djusberg and Robert Brown were both caught in 2004, the Unknown Brittany Fish Abductor and Winston Whittingham were both caught in 2005 and Armando Garcia was nabbed in 2006.
June 12, 2004
The Canada Special Edition. I wish all episodes used this as a template for how to do special editions. It started off with the capture of a fugitive wanted out of Canada (Dudley Forbes), profiled two fugitives who had just gone on the run (Wayne Cassidy and Stafford Lake), dedicated a whole segment to an unsolved Canadian murder (Unknown Cecilia Zhang Killer), profiled a couple other Canadian fugitives (Skerdi Zena and Richard Newman) and also profiled an American fugitive who had been spotted in Canada (Jesse James Hollywood). Overall, an excellent show with few complaints
June 26, 2004
The unofficial "amw.com Edition." If you asked me what I think the template for every episode should have been, this would be close to the perfect one. This episode introduced the newly revamped amw.com and featured John Walsh profiling a case from every section of the site (as I described earlier in the guide). It's not perfect simply because it lacked 15SoS and APB, but it's pretty darn close to my idea of what an episode should be.
July 17, 2004
The 800th Capture special edition. These are the types of episodes where I don't mind it if not many cases are profiled, because the show is celebrating a milestone. This episode is no exception, featuring not only the capture of Richard Newman, but also my favorite non-fugitive Ray Farkas documentary he ever did for the show - he went behind the scenes at AMW and captured parts of the show that most people had never seen up to that point. Bonus points for profiling AMW Cold Case Juan "John" Jiminez as well (I remember some on the old forums saying he was profiled in 1996).
July 24, 2004
The "Where Are They Now?" special edition. This was a very unique episode, and one AMW never did again, which I think is a shame. This episode caught up with some familiar faces from AMW's past, including Dave Navarro (mom Connie was killed by John Riccardi, Capture #134), Sonia Paine (jewelry store owner who beat up an FBI Top Tenner who tried to rob her) and Elizabeth Smart. And of course plenty of fugitives (Adolfo Sanchez, Artur Martirosyan and Anthony Smith included) were profiled as well.
September 11, 2004
18th Season Premiere, and yet another "clean sweep" show as of a month ago. Plenty of new cases were featured on this show and every single one of them has been solved. Not surprisingly, many of these fugitives were direct captures (Fowle brothers, Kevin Nolen, Darryl Williams) and even the ones who weren't were still impressive grabs.
December 4, 2004
After a month of seeing John Walsh driving in a Hummer and being the investigator of all these cases, it was refreshing to see an episode where he was inside the studio and talking about cases in a normal way. There's honestly nothing that stands out about this episode, and if it were any other year this would have been an average one, but due to the circumstances, I was just so happy to see a "normal" episode for once.
December 11, 2004
The BTK Killer Special Edition. Normally I'm not a big fan of the one-case shows or when John Walsh handles the investigation, but this one I honestly don't mind. It was a nice, in-depth look at BTK, his crimes and what he might have been doing while on the run. I also like to think this episode played a tiny role in Dennis Rader's capture, since BTK loved publicity and after this episode aired he started communicating with police non-stop until his capture.
But as the "Facts of Life" theme song said, "you take the good, you take the bad." There were also 10 episodes I wasn't a fan of that aired during 2004.
January 31, 2004
Like the December 4 episode on my favorites, there's nothing egregiously bad about this episode. It's problem lies in its placement; only five fugitives were profiled on this episode after several weeks that featured at least eight fugitives profiled per show. Like I said, there's nothing particularly bad about it, but it was a bit of a letdown to see the lack of fugitives after a month of huge shows and plenty of profiles.
March 13, 2004
Again, nothing terribly wrong with this episode, and as I've gotten older I've really found more respect for the two-part Colleen Perris story. Still, I wish they had found a way to profile more fugitives than the three they ended up airing. I think if they'd delayed either Angel Aguayo or the Stoneman/Kelley capture report a week, things would have been better.
April 10, 2004
This was the repeat of the July 12, 2003 episode, and while I really liked that version, the rerun of the rerun wasn't as good. They cut out Richard Bare's profile for no real reason (though he did end up being profiled a couple weeks later) and in its place aired an abbreviated Consensus Plan feature. There's also the fact that when this episode was reran, John Walsh was recovering from a broken ankle, so he's not really moving around too much in between segments.
May 8, 2004
The Chicago Special Edition. While I really loved the Tom Morris-produced story on Jason Tavares (Peter Cunningham), the rest of the show left a lot to be desired. Michael Alfonso and John Koutoumanos were the only Chicago fugitives profiled on the show, and Alfonso wasn't even wanted out of Chicago (his crime happened in Wheeling). Also, Alfonso had just been profiled two months before this profile, and nothing changed about his story. I feel like if Tracey Boyce and Shawn Bovee had not been caught there probably could have been more Chicago fugitives, but I'd rather they be caught if it meant the show had less cases.
May 22, 2004 and November 20, 2004 (tie)
The "Bad Girls" Special Editions. Boy were these disappointing episodes! The first one featured three "bad girls" in the APB, a female Break-Four Tease, and....that was it! Every other case profiled was either male or a "seeking information" update. On a personal note, my copy of this episode is horrible. Even though my family had satellite from Dish Network, I had to record it on cable because of a bad rainstorm that night which knocked out the signal. Half the episode has weather alerts on the bottom of the screen. To make matters even worse, I accidentally recorded over the first five minutes or so of the episode with some stupid VH1 show (after that I removed all the record tabs from my tape collection to prevent it from happening again). And don't get me started on the November 20 show. Calling that a "Bad Girls" edition is a misrepresentation if I've ever heard it. There were exactly FOUR female fugitives profiled on the entire show; none of them was longer than a few minutes. Most of the show was about Ran Mesika, which, while fascinating, should not have been aired on a Bad Girls episode.
August 7, 2004
The second "Ladies' Night" rerun and the third time this episode aired overall. To me, reruns should have had a limit on them; you could only give them one airing per year. That's one of my main problems with this episode; had it not been profiled eight months earlier, I think I would have been fine with it. There were other episodes that could have been reran in its place. But I'll say this; at least AMW actually did a decent job when this episode was reran in July 2005 (more on that when I do my 2005 guide). That's more than I can say about...
August 21, 2004
...the third rerun of the "Toughest Cops, Toughest Cases" Special Edition. This was the "Ones Who Got Away" rerun before that episode even existed. AMW didn't even bother updating the graphics of this episode; they left it the same as it was during its last four airings. I'll have to check and see if this or "OWGA" aired more often, but either way, these episodes didn't need to be aired that frequently. Thankfully, this is the last time the "Toughest Cops, Toughest Cases" episode aired, and the last time AMW did an episode without updating the graphics.
September 25, 2004
I will never forget the day this episode aired. AMW usually posted the week's new episode on Friday night, about 24 hours before the show aired. This one didn't get added until the day the show aired, and boy was I disappointed when I saw only three fugitives were profiled (technically only two as Lucian Kozminski isn't facing any criminal charges). What really disappointed me is that John Walsh said fugitives from Florida were going to be profiled and all we got was Damar Pink and missing person Mark Jackson. The other segments weren't bad, but they didn't belong on this episode.
November 6, 2004
If you want an episode that I would describe as "all over the place," this would be it. The episode's apparent theme was John Walsh tracking Arnulfo "The Riverbed Rapist" Vargas, but after the opening it immediately started into Gary Lasher's story. They then started talking about Vargas' story for about a minute before going into ANOTHER story. It was a complete mess, and if you want any clue as to how bad it was, just read my summary of the episode. As I stated earlier, until the February 17, 2007 show, this was the most sloppily-edited episode I'd ever seen.
Let me know what you think of the list!
