- Title: Stalker – Love Kills
- wiki: link
Stalker‘s first, and only, season comes to a close by focusing on the two cases introduced in last week’s episode. Beth (Maggie Q) returns to work to help out the Threat Assessment Unit investigate Janice‘s (Mariana Klaveno) theory that there is a serial killer at work in the city targeting various objects of desire mentioned at a stalker support group. Despite the department’s disinterest in reopening some of the cases which they have already convicted others for the crimes, the stalker’s growing need and increasing body count forces the police to take the threat seriously.
The other major storyline involves Vicky Gregg (Mira Sorvino) sticking around to look into the possibility that her ex-husband (Adam Kaufman) may have murdered his former mistress while the pair were still together. The circumstantial evidence begins to pile up and eventually ties back into the other investigation leading Vicky to suspect her ex may be the serial killer they’ve been looking for. Unlike the other storyline this one is left open-ended leaving the fate of Vicky (a character the show struggled to sell me on) in doubt.
Although attacked for its often bleak subject manner, Stalker was able to carve out its own niche in the crime procedural drama by focusing on both the crimes and the psychological effects of those crimes on their victims that are largely ignored by more mainstream TV-cop shows. I would argue the show did a better than average job on showcasing the damage such crimes inflict on victims while at the same time offering a strong female character using her own experience at overcoming great tragedy to attempt to prevent others from suffering similar fates. The final episode continues to build on Beth and Jack‘s (Dylan McDermott) new romance which would have been interesting to see explored further had the show returned for a Second Season.