Cold Case

Libby: I just finished reading The Feminine Mystique and I just don't get it, Alison. I'm not some kind of man hater. Alison: (sarcastically) 'Cause there's so much to love. (sees their husbands horsing around) Ugh. Libby: I'm proud of being a housewife, a mother. I don't hate my life. Alison: Well, hating your life isn't Betty's point. Libby and Alison are discussing Betty Friedan's 1963 book The Feminine Mystique, which can be viewed as the starting point for the contemporary women's movement. The book attacked the notion that women can only find fulfillment in life through childbearing and homemaking.

Det. Jeffries: Kids camping out, having some sort of Blair Witch scarefest. The Blair Witch Project is a low-budget horror film made in 1999. Promotion for the movie suggested that the story was real, and this fact was further emphasized by the movie's storytelling: it is presented as a (fake) documentary of three film students being lost in the woods while making a within-movie documentary of the Blair Witch, a mysterious creature that supposedly lived in the woods.

Bill Huxley: I thought you were in bed. Jed: It's hard to sleep in Studio 54. Studio 54 was a legendary New Your City disco during 1977–1986. It was known for being frequented by hand-picked celebrities, sexual encounters, and flagrant drug use.

Alison: I was popping mother's little helpers by the fistful. Mother's Little Helper is a 1966 song by The Rolling Stones. It talks about housewives putting on a shiny facade while (ab)using prescription drugs to get through their lives.

Joe: We've decided to have an open marriage. An open marriage, popular between 1970–1975 is a marriage in which the partners agree that each is free to have sexual relationships with other partners.

The song heard in Helena's birthday party is the theme song from a short-lived ABC sitcom called Makin' It, performed by David Naughton who also starred in the show. The show had just started airing in February 1979, and although it lasted only for eight episodes, the Makin' It theme song became a minor hit. It reached #5 on the charts in July 1979.

Title: The Key The episode title refers to the infamous "key parties" (or swingers' parties) made famous in the 1970s. This is when guests at a party would exchange their keys as a way to find sexual partners. Usually the husbands would place their house or car keys in a bowl. The wives would then pick a key from the bowl and go home with the owner of the keys.