2x11 Goodbye Charlie
Millennium (1996)
2x11 Goodbye Charlie, written by Richard Whitley, Michael R. Perry and Erin Maher, directed by Kenneth Fink.
quote
Let us go in; The fog is rising.
-- Emily Dickinson, her last words. 1886.
Frank and Lara are after a serial mercy-killer. He's not that hard to find. His early victims seem unwilling, but at the end he has a group of patients who all want to die.
To each location he takes a painting of ancient Greeks eating walnuts. Frank says "In Greek mythology, walnuts symbolize the gift of prophecy".
More oddly, the killer brings a karaoke machine to each event and sings his "patients" out, selecting "Seasons in the Sun" (good grief) and "Goodbye Charlie" (Bobbie Darin again).
He seems easy going and personable and quite sincere, if tending to grandiosity: "I could have relieved your unrelenting pain, and propelled your soul on to the other side. If God in his infinite wisdom wouldn't come for you, you could have gone to God".
We find that he also has a terminal illness.
Frank and Lara debate him and he has answers to all their objections.
quote
Frank: What if everything you're saying could be proved, absolutely, beyond a shadow of a doubt. There is still the law. Without the law, there's chaos. The end of order is the end of the world.
Steven: Obeying immoral laws is the end of the world.
At the end as Frank and Lara leave the final "event":
quote
Lara: Frank, how would you answer the question?
Frank: What question?
Lara: The Millennium Group's question. Should we have arrested, or assisted?
Frank: I don't think that's a question they really want answered.
Lara: All right, so what's the question they really want answered?
Frank: Was he from heaven, or hell?
"Steven Kiley" is played by the prolific Tucker Smallwood -- Space: Above and Beyond.
Notes:
"Steven Kiley" was the James Brolin character in Marcus Welby, M.D.
Lara's voice passphrase to her Millennium Group computer is "Open the pod bay doors, please, Hal". Roedecker has been there.
She wear a "Ramones" t-shirt.
A walnut in the mouth is better than a moth pupae in the throat.
