Unsolved Mysteries has returned with another short, six-episode season on Netflix. Why they just don't do one twelve-episode season is still a mystery, but the good news is this second season is just as good as the first, which is to say, quite good.
There's a strong mix of true stories, ranging from who murdered a U. S. government official to whether a woman whose death was ruled as a suicide was in fact murdered. But I'll just say a few words about my three favorite episodes:
- Tsunami Spirits is the closest these six episodes come to science fiction, or maybe fantasy, as in life after death. But this ghost story almost could be a serious piece on the anthropology of how people in a community deal with a mass death. In this case, it's a town in Japan hit by a tsunami, leaving many of the survivors with the feeling that spirits of the departed were still at hand, and communicating with the living. The priest interviewed for this episode was especially instructive and memorable in his thoughts and comments. He was and is determined to take these survivors' stories of interacting with the dead seriously, even though that might go against the specific tenets of his religion.
- A Death in Oslo tells the story of a woman who checks into a posh hotel, only to be found dead in her room of a gunshot to her head a few days later. The gun's at hand, but seems in the wrong place for the suicide that this death is initially thought to be. The woman's identity is not known -- in retrospect, her check-in was suspicious -- and the people who investigate, especially a guy who has devoted decades of his life to finding her, realize their first job is to identify her. They do, eventually, get her DNA. And there the story ends. My question: wouldn't 23andMe and like-DNA family tracers be helpful in locating this woman's relatives? (See my review of Sergio Pistoi's DNA Nation for more.)
- Stolen Kids is a story of just what it sounds like, and heartbreaking. Two unrelated tots around the age of two are kidnapped just a few months apart from the same park in Harlem, NYC. That happened decades ago, and age progression images are the best hope the police and the families now have of reuniting with their now-adult sons. The episode ends with a whole series of age-progression images of little kids who were kidnapped. I hope that helps get some of those families reunited.
