Most TV shows that portray religious people as nutjobs tend to show them as generic.

The characters usually belong to some unnamed Christian faith. Or pains are taken to identify them as, say, "non-practicing" Catholics or Baptists or whatever.

So why does it always seem to be open season on the LDS Church?

Characters identified as Mormons in episodic TV shows are rare. Programs that joke about Mormons in some fashion are common, but LDS characters more often pop up in TV movies than TV shows.

But last Sunday's episode of the CBS series "Cold Case" was something new for a mainstream TV series — the most mean-spirited attack I can remember seeing.

If you haven't watched "Cold Case," it's sort of "CSI" meets "American Dreams" — a contemporary police procedural with period flashbacks to unsolved murders.

Last Sunday's show flashed back to 1977 and was played out with broad, cartoonish strokes, an apparent attempt at campy comedy.

The main story in this episode revolved around a serial killer being released early and openly declaring he will kill again because that's what God tells him to do. His name is Roy Brigham Anthony, and he's referred to early on as a "Mormon kid."

Turns out Roy was a repressed — and I mean super-repressed — 21-year-old from Provo when his rigid military father took him to Philadelphia in 1977 to live with his equally rigid spinster aunt.

Roy finally cracks when a young woman takes him to "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," undressing herself and then him on the stage.

After this incident, his aunt tells Roy to listen to the voice of God in his head. "I thought the voice meant I was crazy," Roy says.

The aunt replies, "Joseph Smith heard an avenging voice, so did Brigham Young, your namesake."

Roy says, "And they weren't crazy." But the implication is clear.

Of course, nowhere is there any distinction between average LDS people and the wackos being portrayed. At one point, someone says that Roy is "from Utah, kind of an oddball," as if that explains it.

Later, Roy offers this weird comment out of the blue: "Our god is from another planet, near the star Cola" (which is probably supposed to be "Kolob"). That too is explained away in the next breath by his companion: "Roy's a Mormon."

On the show, the killer's equally nutty father and aunt are the only other Mormons depicted.

To be fair, there is a printed precede to the episode: "The following story is fictional and does not depict any actual person or event."