# Without A Trace "White Balance" 5/11/06 *spoilers*



## Kamakzie (Jan 8, 2004)

So the white girl survived and the black kid died? I am confused...


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## johnspalm (Dec 24, 2002)

Kamakzie said:


> So the white girl survived and the black kid died? I am confused...


They didn't really reveal who died. They just kept the audience guessing. I suppose that was the point.


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## Church AV Guy (Jan 19, 2005)

They deliberately did not reveal which one lived, and which one died.

I'm not exactly sure why Viv was so mad at Malone. He was pushing from his very first scene to get equal press coverage for both cases. The press ran with the girl's story, so he had lots of leads and had to assign agents to cover those leads--makes sense. It was Malone's supervisor, and the press that made the value judgement. Malone railed against it at every opportunity. He wasn't interested in reducing the girl's coverage, because it was helping, but not at the expense of the boy's press coverage. Malone does not, and cannot control the press. He was essentially powerless to change things. He was as upset about the situation as she was.

Wow, Sturgis has sure fallen on hard times!

The boy's mother SHOULD have taken Vivian's advice. She should have made a scene in front of the cameras. I know it was only taped, but it would have sent a message to that jerk reporter.

If I were to guess, I would speculate that since it was Elena that made the positive identification remark, and she was working on the girl's case, that it was the girl who was dead, but that is pretty flimsy.


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## Amnesia (Jan 30, 2005)

Church AV Guy said:


> I'm not exactly sure why Viv was so mad at Malone. He was pushing from his very first scene to get equal press coverage for both cases.


Yeah, but she didn't know that.

Perhaps he felt it would be copping out to put the blame on his superiors...


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## Ladd Morse (Feb 21, 2002)

Amnesia said:


> Yeah, but she didn't know that.
> 
> Perhaps he felt it would be copping out to put the blame on his superiors...


Agreed, but while watching I kept hoping he would say something like "I'm getting reamed by the people upstairs on the subject of what to do vs what's right, so I don't need a lecture from you, too".


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## joits (Feb 8, 2006)

i don't know what kind of story gimmick they were trying to pull... but it's so disatisfying not to find out who died and who lived. i had a feeling it was the black kid who died and it was the white girl who lived. i mean... the white girl was allowed to leave the room.... the black kid was in a fight with that other white kid who wanted his money back. but i would have preferred some kind of confirmation. i even thought next week's preview would have the aftermath of this episode... but looks like it's a completely new episode with brandon walsh becoming a suspect or some junk.

its more than disatisfying... it's frustrating.


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## dolfer (Nov 3, 2000)

We often criticize TV and movie writers because they rehash the same ideas and follow the same story arcs. 

So in defense of WAT's writers, I thought the ending was great. You shouldn't always have a nice, tidy resolution. Plus, it's the kind of ending that actually encourages conversation, debate and speculation.


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## newsposter (Aug 18, 2002)

malone was absolutely only looking at the white mom while he headed down that hallway, i didnt' take my eyes off his eyes. What it means, dont know. 

The black mom was indeed being walked all over. I believe she got a raw deal but at the point where viv told her to make a scene, i would have gone to a rival tv station and made a bigger deal and granted them an exclusive. Or called some big equal rights advocate atty. They are always looking for good press. She'd have 2 stories, discrimination plus her sons. 

I also think it was this show (or was it law and order) that did something like this last year


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## philw1776 (Jan 19, 2002)

Great episode. Well drawn characters and just the right ambiguous ending.


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## Church AV Guy (Jan 19, 2005)

newsposter said:


> malone was absolutely only looking at the white mom while he headed down that hallway, i didnt' take my eyes off his eyes. What it means, dont know.


I don't know if it means anything, but I noticed that in one of the two cuts where the camera was on the two mothers at the end of the corridor, the white mom was more toward the center than the black mom. As I said, what significance that may hold is totally unknown. The second cut, when he is closer, the two mothers are equally close to the center of the screen.

I think it's great that they didn't tell us. Since the way the show was written it could have gone any way: both dead, both live, either boy or girl live or dead, the writers would have just flipped a coin to see who lived and who died. It's best that they left it open than to have ended it so arbitrarily.


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## Bookworm821 (May 19, 2006)

joits said:


> i... but it's so disatisfying not to find out who died and who lived...
> its more than disatisfying... it's frustrating.


I'm with you on this one!!  I like to know how things finish and it bothered me that they didn't finish this one. My husband said that was the point -- they wanted to give the message that it didn't matter who lived or died, whether they were black or white -- the point was that a child died, and that what was so sad. But I'm the type of person who needs to "KNOW" and it bugs me!! LOL Oh well. Great show though...with a great point.

I'm not sure why Malone didn 't let Viv know that the pressure was from the top. Maybe he did feel it was a cop-out to blame the top for having to handle things with the press that way. Interesting to me that his superior was Black, and she insisted that the white girl get the press. They say that sh*t rolls downhill, so perhaps that was the case here!!

Either way its one of my favorite shows. I just can't stand not knowing!!!


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## jeff125va (Mar 15, 2001)

OK, I'm a little behind here obviously, but wanted to throw in my $0.02.

I sorta liked how they left it open. Sure I wanted to know, but I think it made for a better show for them not to reveal it.

But I do think that for several reasons, it was far more likely the girl. First, the agent who was looking in the trunk was the Latino chick (forget her name) who hadn't been working the boy's case the entire episode. Second, there was far more motive for her killer than the boy's: the scumbag who liked the virgins had no reason to keep her alive, and she had nothing to lose by turning him in. I don't think the prep school punk kid would have killed the other boy; that wouldn't have gotten his money back, and Darnell would have also gotten himself into trouble over the grade-fixing thing.

It was interesting to see this sort of self-criticism from the media. Granted it could be seen as the entertainment media criticizing the news media, but they're mostly the same companies. I do think they took the example to an extreme if they were trying to make a point about the race factor though. If they were both white, I'd still expect the missing girl to get more coverage than a missing boy. The "women and children first" sentiment isn't a bad thing, IMO. Of course, that wouldn't matter a lick if it were your son and the coverage were as lopsided as they portrayed it in this episode. I'm just saying in terms of the episode as a commentary on the media and society, it's a bit of a mitigating factor that they seemed to ignore.


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## Shinmeise (Oct 13, 2010)

Amnesia said:


> Yeah, but she didn't know that.
> 
> Perhaps he felt it would be copping out to put the blame on his superiors...


 Viv did know that Malone was going about the cases racially by trying to set them equal to one another. Viv got mad because she felt that Malone was letting everyone walk over the case of the African American boy. From keeping track into the episode, Malone is trying to receive a promotion and move to a more upper body level of his job. To be honest if we have paid more attention I'm am positive the White girl died because of her advertisements all over the news, someone was bound to find her one way or another (so Ironically the whole situation of the missing girl backfired on the press and the mother).


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