According to CSI Files sources, “Spring Breakdown” opens with spring break in full swing. Hot young people are partying on every beach and in every club. Paul Arnett is driving women wild at a wet t-shirt contest by the pool at a hotel. Brad Donner is leading two lovely ladies through the hallway of the hotel, heading for some fun. Alexis Wilkes is in a club, tossing back drinks and crowd-surfing. Everybody’s having the time of their lives. By the next morning, however, the party is dead—and so are our three party-goers.

A hotel cabana boy sighs as he looks around at the detritus from the pool party the night before. It’s a huge mess, and he’s stuck cleaning it up. One of the cabanas by the pool is missing its cover. He looks up to see the canvas dangling from the trident of a statue of Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea. The cabana cover isn’t the only thing impaled on Poseidon’s trident—the body of Brad Donner is also skewered on the three-pronged spear.

Elsewhere in Miami, workers in a laundry facility are cleaning sheets from hotels all over the city. One of the workers pauses when she hears a strange sound coming from one of the industrial washing machines. She goes over and looks through the clear window to see what’s being tossed around inside: it’s the body of Alexis Wilkes!

A lifeguard is driving his truck onto the beach, and he swerves in time to avoid hitting a round object in the sand. He gets out of the truck and moves closer to see what it is. The object turns out to be the head of Paul Arnett. He’s buried in the sand up to his neck, and he’s clearly dead.

The team splits up to deal with all three murders, and it’s not long before Dr Loman finds himself very busy in the morgue. Paul Arnett drowned, Alexis Wilkes was hit over the head with a blunt object, and Brad Donner was shot with a flare gun in addition to falling onto the sharp points of the Poseidon statue’s trident. Despite the different methods of murder, the separate investigations reveal a common link: all three victims can be traced back to the hotel where Brad’s body was found.

Please note that the above plot details have not been confirmed by CBS, Alliance Atlantis or Bruckheimer Films, and until such time you should treat this information as you would any other rumour. The above information comes from early script drafts and the details of the episodes are liable to change before the episodes are shown.

“Spring Breakdown” will air April 12 on CBS.

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Starting out the week on Monday at 10:00pm ET/PT, CSI: Miami will re-air “Hostile Takeover” from earlier this season. Newcomer Jesse Cardoza (Eddie Cibrian) returned to Miami—just in time to become a hostage when the lab was attacked.

On Wednesday at 10:00pm ET/PT, CSI: New York will air a repeat of this season’s “LAT 40° 47′ N/Long 73° 58′W”. Skeet Ulrich made his first appearance as Hollis Eckhart, the Compass Killer who led the team on a chase through the city as they tried to find him before they found another victim.

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation will be preempted by the NCAA Basketball Tournament on Thursday.

Before getting together with Eric, Calleigh didn’t have much luck in love. “Calleigh has poor taste in men,” Procter told Zap2It. “She’s the child of an alcoholic. She has an alcoholic father. She picks terrible people for herself.” She added, “One’s dead; one got married. Jake [Berkely (Johnny Whitworth)] disappeared, but I think he’s coming back. Then there was the guy that I rode out into the sunset with, that we never saw again. He rode off into Cougar Town. That’s true, he did.”

Calleigh isn’t the only one whose relationships usually end in ruin—leading man Horatio Caine (David Caruso) has had some romantic woes of his own. “If I were a Floridian, I would not date either Horatio or Calleigh. It would not be a smooth move,” Procter said.

Putting Horatio and Calleigh together wouldn’t be a smooth move either, she explained. “The only reason I could guess that they didn’t put the two of them together would be that he’s a really mystical character,” she said. “If you had him in a personal relationship, inevitably he’d have to expose some of himself, and I just don’t think that, as a character, it works.” Or, she added, “maybe it’s because it was important that he always have really beautiful girlfriends that got killed.”

The romantic development between Calleigh and Eric was not a surprise for the actress. “We both watch TV,” she said. “There’s wish fulfillment in entertainment. Let’s face it, we, the humans, watch other humans being human for entertainment. It’s a big, fat zoo. Why wouldn’t you want to see love in there? I mean, it’s the most powerful thing of all.”

“I think it would be fun if it turned into a Mr and Mrs Smith thing,” the actress continued, referring to the possibility of her character marrying Eric somewhere down the line. “It’d be nice to see them at home, with children, trying to balance having a job like this.” She added, “I always think that when you can take the reality of a situation and add the fantasy to it, it’s good.”

A meddling receptionist is murdered during a fire drill at an ad agency.

Synopsis:

A fire drill at Tabula Rasa ad agency almost disrupts the plans for a surprise birthday party for the office assistant, Valerie Metcalf, but the party goes as planned… until Jeffrey Lipton gets in the elevator and is hurt in an accident, which also reveals the body of receptionist Renee Dorsett, tangled in the elevator cords, an ax sticking out of her head. When the CSIs arrive on the scene, Horatio surmises that the fire drill was pulled as a distraction. Calleigh notices that the alarm contained an identifying liquid that would have sprayed the hands of whoever pulled it. Calleigh and Walter test the employees on the 19th floor and Valerie’s hands are the ones that test positive for the liquid. Valerie admits that she pulled the alarm to buy herself time to pick her boyfriend up from the airport during work hours. Though she denies killing Renee, she describes the woman as the “office Nazi,” who was always out to criticize people. Valerie suspected she was getting people fired. Ryan believes he’s found a lead when he discovers a broken piece of a ceramic mug with a child’s face on it. There’s a picture of the same child on Kent Ackerman’s desk, but Walter opens the frame and pulls the picture from it—revealing that it’s actually a page from a magazine. Kent admits that he faked having a family in order to be able to take time off from work for supposed familial obligations, and not get stuck working late like the single people at the office are expected to do. Renee confronted him and told him he needed to come clean—the mug broke during the confrontation. Kent swears he had nothing to do with her murder. Horatio and Jesse are interrupted from going over Renee’s desk by a noise in the ceiling. They follow it and are surprised to find Teddy Enwald crashing through the ceiling. The Tabula Rasa employee admits he’s been living in the corridor above the ceiling to save on rent. He ran to avoid getting found out, but the CSIs become suspicious of him when they search his living space and find bloody paper towels among his possessions.

Calleigh matches the blood on the towels to Renee in the lab, but Teddy professes his innocence. In the morgue, Calleigh asks Dr. Loman to remove Renee’s nail polish and discovers mees lines on her fingernails, indicating Renee was being poisoned. When low levels of arsenic are found in Renee’s system, Calleigh tests a food wrapper from Teddy’s hideout and find it has arsenic in it. The CSIs question Teddy, but he claims he simply takes other people’s leftovers and is disturbed to find he’s been ingesting poison. Valerie is the one who distributes the lunches. Calleigh obtains a warrant and finds the poison among Valerie’s possessions. The office assistant admits she was poisoning Renee—but only a little bit. After Renee brought up Valerie’s herpes medication in front of a bunch of their co-workers, Valerie decided to get revenge, but just by making her sick… not actually killing her. Calleigh informs Valerie that what she did is just a felony. Ryan finds a threatening letter written to Renee tucked away in one of her books reading: “You ruined my life. You’ll pay for what you’ve done.” Horatio notices the postmark on the letter is dated July 2007—before Renee came to work for Tabula Rasa. Calleigh, Ryan and Jesse go to Renee’s house to get some background on her and are impressed by the size of her abode, given her meager salary as a receptionist. Calleigh and Ryan are surprised to find a diploma on Renee’s wall from a prestigious MBA program, and the pair discovers that in 2007, Renee worked at a big investment firm as a broker. Ryan discovers that in 2007, Renee started making monthly payments to a local cemetery. Back at the lab, Jesse gets Travers to run some motor oil he found in Renee’s front yard, near tire treads from a vehicle that apparently drove on her lawn. Travers reluctantly runs the test and finds the motor oil is from an older car, likely a classic model. Horatio and Tripp find the classic car owner among the Tabula Rasa employees: Mark Bullock. They discover lemon trace from Renee’s lemon trees in Mark’s tire treads, confirming he was the one who vandalized Renee’s property. Mark admits he went to confront Renee after getting a call from HR. He assumed Renee ratted him out for bringing his dogs to work, and that he was going to be fired. But when he confronted Renee she covered for him, telling their boss that the dogs were service dogs—she was riding the employees to save their jobs, not sabotage them.

The graveyard proprietor, Luis Velasquez, tells Horatio and Ryan that Renee was paying to maintain the grave of Paige Shorehaux, who died at the age of 28. Renee visited her grave every Friday, apparently with a guilty conscience. Calleigh asks Dave Benton to look up Paige’s death report and learns the young woman committed suicide. When Calleigh sees the handwriting on the suicide note Paige left, she recognizes it as the same writing on the note Ryan found in Renee’s book. A little more digging reveals that Paige was fired from her job by Renee shortly before killing herself. Calleigh also learns Paige was engaged—to Jeffrey Lipton, who worked with Renee at Tabula Rasa… and found her body in the elevator. Calleigh and Walter try to question Jeffrey, but he puts them off. The CSIs realize they need a warrant, and Jesse finds a reason for one on Jeffrey’s clothes from the elevator. His shirt is covered in blood splatter from when Renee’s body fell into the elevator, but Jesse discovers a blood drop that isn’t like the others: it’s medium velocity splatter, from when the ax connected with Renee’s head. Horatio and Tripp confront Jeffrey: he killed Renee during the fire alarm, then dumped her body down the elevator shaft—only to be shocked by the body falling out on him in the elevator later. Jeffrey relents and admits that he took the job at Tabula Rasa to figure Renee out. When the fire alarm went off, he confronted Renee and accused her of killing Paige—and then attacked her with the ax. After he killed her and dumped her body, he cleaned up the blood and left the bloody paper towels up in the ceiling. Jeffrey is arrested and the CSIs go to leave for the day… and opt out of taking the elevator.

Analysis:

Workplace woes take center stage in this satirical outing, which offers more than a few chuckles that anyone who has ever worked in an office can likely relate to. Part of the reason The Office (both the British original and the U.S. version) is such a successful comedy is that pretty much everyone who has ever held a job can relate to having an annoying co-worker, a trying boss, or personal details that one wouldn’t want trotted out in front of office mates. Which is why the extremes of The Office and “Getting Axed” make us laugh. Who hasn’t been tempted to sneak a longer lunch or to unload on a devious co-worker? “Getting Axed” takes these desires to the extreme: Valerie pulls the fire alarm to allow herself enough time to pick her boyfriend up from the airport, Kent fakes a family so that he’s not unfairly overburdened by his boss, Mike drives his car into Renee’s prized lemon tree when he suspects she’s sold him out to HR. And then there’s poor scorned Teddy, who literally takes up residence in the ceiling and lives off his coworkers’ leftovers in order to save money. Valerie resorts to poisoning Renee after Renee spills the beans about her STD in front of the entire office. These are definitely extremes, but no doubt everyone can relate to one or more of these irritations—which is exactly what makes the Tabula Rasa employees’ reactions so funny.

The CSIs can’t show any sympathy, of course, but some of their reactions provide laughs as well, as when Calleigh questions Valerie after learning she’s the one who poisoned Renee. Valerie insists she wasn’t trying to kill Renee, and was simply using a “teensy weensy” dose. Calleigh retorts that it’s a “teensy weensy” felony. Each employee thinks he or she is justified in cheating the system. Kent is indignant that people with families get to cut out of work early or aren’t expected to work hours as long as those the single people work, so he invents a family and decorates his office with kids’ drawings that he’s done. Teddy is disdainful of his coworkers who actually shell out money in rent every month; why bother when there’s a perfectly good living space in the ceiling above the office. It’s perfect—unless a coworker commits murder and hides some of the evidence in the middle of your “living room.”

After doing a pretty good job of painting Renee as the “office Nazi”—she exposes Valerie’s STD to the office, she uncovers Kent’s fake family and takes him to task for the deception—the episode does a 180 and reveals that in fact Renee has been trying to get her coworkers in line so that they won’t be fired. After thinking she sold him out, Mark Bullock learns that Renee covered for him after he brought his dogs to work, claiming they were service dogs. We learn Renee is carrying a fair amount of guilt from her days as a high-powered investment broker, when she was forced to fire an underling who went on to kill herself. Wracked with guilt, Renee apparently decided to get off the corporate ladder altogether and opts instead to take a receptionist position. Renee’s actions are mostly explained away by her desire to protect her coworkers, save for when she calls out to Valerie that her herpes medication is ready. Was she just trying to get everyone to go back to work quickly and stop taking time away from work to flirt with the pretty office assistant, or did she perhaps dislike the calculating young woman?

The teaser has the feel of a horror movie; there’s an immediate sense of foreboding. First Valerie is summoned to the conference room by Kent and Mark, and the flash of a knife makes the audience think that this summons will spell doom for her. Fake out! It’s a surprise birthday party. Then Jeffrey Lipton heads for the elevator, leading the audience to suspect he’s the victim—especially when the elevator starts to malfunction when he’s inside. It’s another fake out—an ironic one, since Jeffrey is in fact the killer. The elevator falters and Jeffrey is knocked down—and the body of Renee comes plunging through the hatch in the ceiling, dangling from the elevator cord. As Tripp puts it in the end to the killer: “you got the surprise of your life.”

The elevator offers plenty of opportunity for humor. Ryan processes it as Dr. Loman works to detangle Renee’s body from the elevator cords. After he’s finished his task, the coroner asks Ryan to get a ladder to help him get down, but the preoccupied CSI simply wanders off, his focus on a lead rather than helping the coroner get down. At the end of the episode, Tripp steps into the elevator at the lab, ready to leave now that the case is closed. Jesse, Ryan and Walter rush to catch the door before it closes and hop on the elevator with him. The elevator quakes just a little bit, and Tripp makes a split second decision to opt for the stairs. Walter follows him, and Ryan is close on Walter’s heels. Jesse seems to be the lone hold out—until the lights on the elevator flash slightly and he, too, disembarks and heads for the stairs. It’s a cute end to the episode, an endearing little character moment—something we happily have been seeing more of this season on Miami.

Voting is down to the final five contestants, which will run through March 15 at 9:00am PST. After that, fans will be able to vote for the best impression out of the final three from March 15 to March 22. Vote now!

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Horatio’s son will return in the next episode, “Dishonor”, which airs on March 22 at 10:00pm ET/PT. Kyle wants his father’s help uncovering the truth when a fellow soldier is accused of murder. The character will also have a role to play in the lead-up to the season finale. “Kyle is part of the conclusion of Season 8,” co-executive producer Barry O’Brien told TVGuide.com. “Horatio is going to deal with Kyle becoming a man in a truly dramatic way. … We get a chance to have a glimpse into the heart of the man behind the sunglasses.”

For more detailed ratings information, including other Monday night programming, visit PI Feedback.

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