Sunday night marked the 100th episode of the CBS crime drama "Cold Case" which has been a top 20 hit since its debut back in the fall of 2003. There from the very beginning has been Danny Pino, who plays Det. Scotty Vallens opposite Kathryn Morris' character of Lilly Rush. They are a formidable pair of Philadelphia police detectives working unsolved "cold cases" for the department's homicide squad.
The show, which usually features music from the year the unsolved homicide took place, is one of the many scripted TV hits that face a shortened season if the writers strike that began on Monday stretches on over several months.
"Our writers are pretty incredible," Pino told me last week at an event at the Television Academy in North Hollywood. "They come up with so many imaginative ways to make an investigation interesting and at the very end, to deliver the emotional impact of death and an untimely death and how people have had to deal with either their love one dying or being a person who killed a victim and having to either hold it for so many years or finally being able to give that up. That guilt sometmes eats away at them. It's a fascinating balance that the writers find and I'm constantly in awe of what they're able to do."
Prior to the series, the actor had made quite an impression on FX's "The Shield" where he had a recurring role as notorious drug lord, rapist and gang leader Armadillo Quintero. He had just come off portraying Desi Arnaz in a television movie, "Lucy," about the relationship between Arnaz and Luciile Ball, when "Cold Case" began its run of five seasons and counting.
"I don't think you ever think, 'This is gonna be a huge hit.' I think you think, 'Well, we'll give this a shot and hopefully it does well and we'll see how it goes," he said.
"And thankfully, it's turned out in our favor. You don't hear of shows being successful too often anymore and so to be one now, is definitely something that makes me feel very lucky and very grateful."
But there is a down side for the married father of two young kids: "To be on a successful show, there aren't many negatvies other than the fact that you don't see your family all that much and that is a huge negative for me being so familiial."