Let me say, first off, that actress Mary- Pat Green is one of those actresses adept at doing both character drama and comedy. I have seen her do both.
Now, several days back, I wrote about how moving Emily Nelson was as Martha Puck in the 2006 "Cold Case" episode, "Lonely Hearts," based on the real Lonelyhearts Killers of the 1940's, Martha Beck and Raymond Fernandez.
Despite Martha's faults, I could forgive her. She had remorse and a conscience.
Eugenia Karpathian was the other side of the Martha coin. Where Martha always held out for hope, Eugenia had already given up with embitterness.
But she starts out trying to do Martha a favor--supposedly. She corners Martha and her roommate, Stephanie Levine, in the local supermarket, and tries to warn Martha about Ramon Delgado, telling Martha how he stripped her of her funds, and now she, a single mother, cannot provide for her son. Even though Eugenia has an underlying motive, revealed later, she is as sincere as she is capable of being in warning Martha. If Martha had listened, her death might not have happened.
Later, when Eugenia is interrogated, Lily picks up on the fact that Eugenia, despite what happened, is still in love with Ramon, and wants him for herself. What is sad and tragic about Eugenia is, while she delivers an impassioned plea that people with all kinds of looks need and want love, and that it is not her fault she is not Morgan Fairchild--and she is right!--on the other hand, she admits to loving Ramon, wanting to be his Bonnie to his Clyde.
Martha initially suggests the marriage scam thing to Ramon as a way of keeping him with her. But she is too good a person to tolerate this; even at the first killing, of Buella Stiffler, in 1989, Martha does not enjoy it, and is shaking afterwards. I don't think Eugenia would have shook. I think she would have reveled in it.
Martha reaches a point where she is guilt ridden, sympathetic to her victims, because she could easily have been one of them, and may very well be, eventually. So, she decides she will turn Ramon and herself in.
She meets with Eugenia, who first said to her, in the market, "We are both alike." But they are not. Martha is good, Eugenia is bad, only Martha does not realize it. When she tries to walk away from Eugenia, in an alley behind a pizza parlor, Eugenia shoots her dead, in the back, with a gun.
Poor Martha. And that bitch, Eugenia, looking more like a beans n' franks lesbian, gets her ass hauled off to the slammer, deservedly, for being such a bitch. Had her plan been successful, more lonely women would have lost their lives. Eugenia had no conscience.
But Martha did. Here is her ghost, as Lily sees her at the end, peacefully reading in the park, and filled with hope. This shot always gets me, because I remember when I used to do this very thing, And somehow, like Martha, I remained hopeful, and things eventually happened.
Martha says, at one point, that she lost her way. And she is right. But here, she will always be as happy and hopeful as she always was.
Unlike that bitch, Eugenia!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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