After a blogger and an unidentified man are found murdered, Mac follows up on a lead given to him by Reed Garrett.

Synopsis:

Mac is interrupted from his conversation with a beautiful woman in his favorite deli by a text summoning him to the site of a double homicide. When he arrives at the scene, he learns the two men have been dead for about twenty-four hours. Flack finds a wallet identifying one of them as Michael Paley, a popular muckraking blogger. Paley was shot, while the other man, who has no ID on him, was apparently beaten to death. Stella finds traces of gold near one of the bodies, and Danny discovers a four-leaf clover in a shoe impression. Lindsay finds an odd collection of junk: a spoon, a battery, and a glass container. Danny identifies four sets of shoe impressions and posits that the killer may have had an accomplice, especially once he works out that the gun slid under a cabinet during the murders and was apparently retrieved after the second man was beaten to death. In the morgue, Sid tells Stella that he compared their John Doe to a picture of Paley’s blogging partner, Cam Vandemann and determined Vandemann isn’t their unidentified victim. The coroner found vaccination levels of Hepatitis A and B, malaria, typhoid and rabies in the man’s system, suggesting he may have traveled internationally recently. Stella notices number impressions in the man’s head wound. In the lab, Lindsay identifies blue green algae on John Doe’s shirt while Danny finds the four-leaf clover is a variety native to Ireland. Mac gets a call from Claire’s son, Reed Garrett, a blogger himself, who asks Mac to meet him at the diner. Mac responds and Reed asks the CSI to meet with Cam alone. Reed maintains Cam is innocent and has information, and Mac reluctantly agrees to meet with the blogger. Before Mac leaves the diner, the owner, Phil, calls him over and gives him a message from the beautiful woman he met the night before: his kindness to her convinced her to stay in Manhattan.

In the lab, Hawkes and Stella are able to recreate the pattern from the murder weapon, and are shocked to identify it as a bar of gold bullion. Stella and Hawkes go to a bank that just received a shipment of gold that morning, and are shown to the vault by U.S. Treasury Agent Pangle. They are joined by Adam in their hunt for the murder weapon, and the lab tech is the one who comes across it first. Hawkes tests the bar and finds blood on it. Agent Pangle tells the CSIs that the bar came from a shipment from the manufacturer, Elemental Precious Metals. Lindsay gets a lead on John Doe when she matches the blue green algae to a type used by a bar in the city for making green beer for St. Patrick’s Day. She and Danny go to the bar where the bartender, Finnegan Hansard identifies their John Doe as Charlie Cooper, a cad he kicked out of the bar. Charlie promised Hansard an engagement ring for his girlfriend—then delivered a cubic zirconium one and proceeded to sleep with Hansard’s girlfriend. Back at the lab, Flack tells Mac that Paley’s apartment was ransacked, while Stella has learned that Charlie has been in and out of China. Charlie also worked for Elemental Precious Metals, which made a mint on melting down reclaimed gold and turning it into bullion. Mac is distracted, noticing a newspaper with a listing for an apartment in SoHo—something he recalls the beautiful woman he met at the deli had circled. Mac contacts the realtor and sends her a message asking her to meet him at the deli the next night at 8pm. Mac turns back to the case, questioning Tom Weir, the owner of Elemental Precious Metals. Weir claims he can’t think of a reason why anyone would kill Charlie—he got along with everyone. Weir denies involvement in either death. Both Mac and Flack don’t believe his excuses.

That night, Mac meets Reed and Cam Vandemann approaches cautiously, protesting his innocence. He tells Mac that he and Paley were working on a story about international gold fraud and got a tip from a Chinese source. Cam was late to the meeting, and when he got there, he saw Paley and Cooper get murdered. Thinking the killer had left, he went in to see what he could do, and he grabbed the gun from beneath the cabinet when the killer returned. The man left when Cam threatened him with the gun. Mac tries to get Cam to turn over the gun, but fearing it’s the only thing that proves his innocence, Cam flees. Reed tells Mac the reason for Cam’s paranoia: the killer was in uniform—he was a cop. Flack is skeptical when Mac fills him in; Paley was killed with a .22, which isn’t a standard issue police weapon. Mac and Hawkes turn to the collection of junk Lindsay collected from the scene and put together that someone was using the materials to test the authenticity of gold. Tracing the clover and a piece of limestone to the Irish Hunger Memorial in Battery Park, the CSIs are able to track down Vandemann and Flack brings him in—and gets the gun. Though the serial number is scratched off, Mac is able to recover it, and trace the gun back to Finnegan Hansard. Flack and Danny go to arrest the bartender, who runs—right through a St. Patrick’s Day parade—but Flack catches him. Flack interrogates the bartender while Mac and Stella question Weir: Weir’s company was trying to pass Tungsten off as gold and Paley and Vandemann were about to expose them. When Weir couldn’t get them to back off, he sent Hansard, dressed in a security uniform, in to kill the bloggers and their source. When Weir tells them they can’t prove he’s connected to the murders, Mac sends in Agent Pangle, who charges him with a litany of offenses, including counterfeiting and fraud. Reed thanks Mac, but Mac begs off on dinner, going instead to meet the woman in the deli, who introduces herself as Aubrey Hunter.

Analysis:

Halloween has always been the logical go-to holiday for CSI shows to build a murder around, but St. Patrick’s Day fills in pretty nicely here, even if at times the ties feel awfully coincidental—like the four-leaf clover and the limestone from the Irish memorial that happens to be right next to Paley and Vandemann’s home base. Still, there’s no arguing that it’s not fun to see Flack and Danny chasing a suspect through the big St. Patrick’s Day parade in Manhattan… in which their other suspect is marching. A fun bit of trivia: apparently the show went out and got LAPD officers to dress up as the NYPD officers participating in the parade, a nice tribute to the real life heroes.

There are two pieces of big news in this episode, the first being the return of Reed Garrett, last seen falling victim to the Taxi Cab Killer in “Taxi”, nearly fatally. An aspiring journalist with a popular blog, Reed worried Mac, and while he never quite crossed the line into complete irresponsibility, he took chances the taciturn CSI certainly wished he hadn’t. Reed appears to have mellowed somewhat here, though he’s obviously still on the blog circuit given that he’s close to fellow incendiary bloggers Paley and Vandemann. Though Mac is skeptical about meeting Vandemann alone, he trusts Reed’s judgment enough to go along with the plan. Vandemann, played sympathetically by Aaron Ashmore, also trusts Reed enough to agree to the meeting, despite believing he has a good reason to stay far away from the authorities. Reed does leave out a big part of the story as to why Vandemann is so spooked: the blogger believes the man he saw murder his friend and their informant was a cop. It’s not clear why Reed doesn’t fill Mac in on this, other than the fact that it makes for a terrific (albeit ultimately misleading) act out; even Vandemann seems surprised that Reed didn’t tell Mac. Regardless, it’s great to see Reed brought into the story in such an organic way, and it’s nice to see that he and Mac are still close.

The other big news in the episode in the episode is the introduction of a new love interest for Mac, played by the sparkling Madchen Amick. The challenge of introducing a love interest for Mac is that the woman needs to bring out the playful side of the character; otherwise, the supposed chemistry falls flat. Claire Forlani’s Peyton Driscoll managed to access that lighter side, and Kristen Dalton’s Quinn Shelby proved a great foil for the somber CSI, but sparks didn’t fly with either Jessalyn Gilsig’s Jordan Gates or Julia Ormond’s Gillian Whitford. There’s a remoteness to Mac, and a reserve that is hard to penetrate, and any actress cast opposite him has to contend with that. Mac might be a brilliant scientist, but like shy people so often are, he’s simply a little bit awkward when it comes to making new connections. Gary Sinise seems keenly aware of this barrier his character unconsciously puts up, and it’s a testament to his skill and consistency as an actor that he doesn’t simply morph the character to make romance progress smoothly.

I’m pleased that Amick’s character, Aubrey Hunter, was able to believably get through to Mac and even get him to make the first move. While not seeming as closed off as Mac, Aubrey is grappling with her own problems when she meets Mac: she’s burned out on Manhattan and thinking of throwing in the towel if she doesn’t encounter a single act of human kindness on her trip to the deli. It seems like an arbitrary ultimatum, but people teetering on the edge of a decision will often let it come down to something that might seem small and relatively insignificant to others. Aubrey’s decision is likely about to go the other way when we first see her—a woman shoves her out of the way to get to the number dispenser at the deli. When she drops her newspaper, Mac picks it up, hands it to her and then offers her his second number. That could have been the end of it, but because it was significant to Aubrey, she decided to leave a note for Mac.

What’s even more surprising is that Mac tracks her down. Recalling the circled SoHo apartment listing in the paper—not surprising for someone whose job requires him to be as detail oriented as Mac’s does—he sends her a note through the real estate agent showing the apartment and even asks her out… inspired by something Reed said to him in reference to Vandemann, about having to sometimes take a chance on someone else. Intrigued, Aubrey shows up, and they awkwardly exchange a few words before she sits down with him. For all of her obvious attractiveness, Aubrey seems to possess a reserve similar to Mac’s, and also a similar desire to be drawn out. She’s nothing like the vivacious Peyton—but when Mac met Peyton, he very much needed someone outgoing and assertive, someone who would be the aggressor in the relationship. Because of Peyton, Mac has been at least partially drawn out of the protective shell he built in the wake of Claire’s death. Can anyone imagine the Mac of season one or two asking a stranger to meet him at a deli? It’s nice to see he’s made progress, and I’m curious to see where this new relationship will go.

Flack seems to have mellowed out a bit since last week’s intense interrogation of a suspect in “Uncertainty Rules”, but I had to raise an eyebrow when he claimed that an Irish temper is “not really a problem for me.” That’s not quite an accurate statement, especially this season in the wake of his shooting of Simon Cade. Flack seems to be carrying a fair amount of anger around this season, as well as a certain world-weariness that he never seemed burdened with until his girlfriend was murdered and he executed her killer. Flack even seems to have washed his hands of Danny’s problems, which he used to relentlessly take on in previous seasons, even when met with resistance from Danny. Flack’s frustrated response upon learning that Danny’s badge had been stolen—and that Danny had avoided reporting it missing—in “Flag on the Play” was not followed up with a heroic attempt on his part to recover the badge—a notable change from his behavior in the past. Seeing Danny lag far, far behind Flack in their pursuit of Hansard made me wonder if Danny’s injury was slowing him down, or if it was the fact that he didn’t have a badge to flash when breaking through the parade participants (many of whom were NYPD officers). No good can come from Danny’s badge being missing this long—and probably in the hands of Shane Casey.

The humor in the episode comes from the always reliable A.J. Buckley, notably when Adam joins Stella and Hawkes in the vault and sees the gold bullion stacked in piles all around him. “This is what all the money in the world looks like,” the lovable lab tech sighs. “So pretty!” When searching for the bar that was used to kill Charlie Cooper, Adam is caught sniffing a gold bar by a scowling security guard. Adam’s excitement is always fun to watch, and it’s rewarding when he is the one to discover the bar the team is looking for.

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.

The Vegas team is on the case when the Rascal Flatts’ bassist is nearly fatally electrocuted during a concert.

Analysis:

Popular country group Rascal Flatts is performing in Las Vegas when bassist Jay DeMarcus receives a near-fatal shock while playing during the concert. Jay is rushed to the hospital, while jump bass tech Travis Murray steps in so Gary’s band mates Gary LeVox and Joe Don Rooney can continue the concert. Catherine examines Jay, who not only doesn’t remember the accident but doesn’t remember the Rascal Flatts—and claims to not even like country music! He’s more of a rap guy. From the nature of the electrical burns on his arm, Catherine realizes this was no accident. She and Nick question Travis, who tells them he does a shock test on Jay’s system before every concert. Noticing a bruise on Gary’s face, Catherine asks him about conflict with Jay, and the singer admits that Jay wanted to pursue his own projects. Though they fought, Gary calls the band a family and denies sabotaging Jay’s guitar. In the lab, Doc Robbins stops Nick from performing a guitar-topsy on Jay’s guitar, pointing out that there’s no burnt flesh on the strings—meaning this wasn’t the guitar Jay was playing when he was shocked. Greg and Nick ask Travis why he gave them the wrong guitar, and he insists that he thought the guitar was in the case. Greg learns that a groupie wearing a t-shirt reading RascalFlattsPsychoBitch.com walked out of the hotel with a guitar. Nick and Greg locate the fan, Marta Petrovich, who proudly shows off the guitar, which she found in the dumpster. She’s crushed when the CSIs claim it as evidence. Back at the lab, Nick and Greg recreate the circuit that caused the shock that wounded Jay. Tracing it to one of the 220 boxes, the CSIs lift prints off it—and match them to Travis Murray. The tech admits he just wanted to play with the band once, and that he never intended to hurt Jay—just give him a little shock. Jay triumphantly returns to the stage, incorporating his love of rap into a new song for the band.

The bloated body of an older man is discovered in a river, sans a boat. Langston surmises he’s been dead for at least 24 hours. Langston and Sara find some puzzling objects on the body, including a World War II-era watch, and a bottle opener with the CIA logo on it. In the morgue, Doc Robbins tells Langston the man didn’t drown, pointing out a non-fatal head wound, as well as the fact that the man had stage four prostate cancer. Sara finds blood inside the man’s vest, indicating he was dressed after being murdered. Langston runs the man’s prints and gets a hit to Vance Colton, a former deputy director of the CIA—and Catherine immediately gets a call from Craig Halliday, a CIA Associate Director, who wants to claim the evidence in the case. Langston and Sara continue to root around, learning that Colton directed Operation Blackwood against the East German Stasi. Catherine gets an address for Colton, but by the time Langston and Sara arrive there, they discover Halliday and the CIA already dismantling the house. The CSIs go out back and find a canoe rack missing one canoe and one paddle. Sara finds green plastic, possibly from a canoe, leading both CSIs to wonder if Colton was in a canoe at some point. Back at the station, Craig Halliday apologizes to Brass for the CIA’s interference, and is interrupted by the arrival of Larry Colton, Vance’s son, who claims his father hated him. At the scene, Langston and Sara find tire treads from Suburbans, indicating the CIA has beat them to area once again. They’re even more surprised to find they have another set of eyes on them: a pair of Germans.

Back at the lab, Hodges’ computer is hacked and a document starts coming out of the printer: “Confirm Nothing, Deny Everything: My Life in the CIA” by Vance Colton. While Archie tries to figure out who hacked Hodges’ computer and sent the document, Langston scans it and finds it contains a word for word conversation between the German police and a popular leader. Langston wonders if the Germans he and Sara encountered were after the original tape of the conversation. Henry runs a tox screen on Colton but it comes back negative—even for cancer drugs, suggesting Colton wasn’t treating his illness. Langston asks Henry to run a more specific panel, giving him three drugs often used in espionage to test for, including the poison Sarin. Archie traces the signal from the hack on Hodges’ computer to the Blue Siren Motel. Brass and Sara learn Larry Colton, Vance’s son, checked into the hotel several days ago—a day before Vance’s death. They rush to the room only to find Larry Colton gunned down—his computer missing. Sara finds pictures on the bed of Larry striking Colton with a canoe paddle: a message from the Germans to prove they didn’t murder Colton. Langston surmises that Larry sent the manuscript of Colton’s book to Hodges’ computer to cast suspicion on the Germans. Henry brings the results of the tox panel to Langston: there was a fatal amount of the drug Sarin in Colton’s bloodstream. It should have been enough to kill him instantly but Langston suspects it was given to him in capsule form, which would have delayed the effects of the poison. Langston meets with Halliday, who he is certain gave Colton the poison. Langston theorizes that Colton wanted to go out a hero, posting the manuscript so the Germans would read it and come after him. Impressed with Langston, Colton offers the CSI a job, but Langston demurs.

Synopsis:

“Unshockable” is a decidedly odd mix—while the A- and B-stories don’t have to go together (and indeed, if they end up converging too often it feels too convenient), it’s hard to think of a more awkward mash up than the country music concert shenanigans and the CIA conspiracy. Neither has a lot of gravitas, but the former is pretty light on plot, while the latter feels convoluted and confusing. Neither quite works. In the A-story, the Rascal Flatts’ bassist is sabotaged by a roadie who wants to take his place for just one performance. The motive is pretty weak—why didn’t he just ask?—but the point of the Rascal Flatts’ storyline is of course to showcase the band rather than offer a tightly plotted story. On that front, it works—the band gets to perform twice in the episode, and for anyone inclined to enjoy either pop or country music, their tunes are catchy and enjoyable.

The band members don’t turn in the kind of performance Taylor Swift did when she guested in “Turn, Turn, Turn”, but then the three are playing themselves, and their storyline is nowhere near as heavy as the one Swift was given. They’re not natural actors in the way Swift is, but then, that’s not really the point of their appearance. For fans of the band, it’s fun to see them in this lighthearted storyline. There’s a little jeopardy built in for the band: when Jay gets his shock, he forgets both the band and his band mates. What’s more, he has no memory of his love of country music, professing an affinity for rap instead. At the end of the episode, his triumphant return to stage begins with a rap about his ordeal. There’s also a poke at obsessive fans in the form of Ms. RascalFlattsPsychoBitch.com, who scores Jay’s guitar out of the dumpster and erects a shrine to it. When Nick and Greg confiscate the guitar as evidence, Nick offers her autographs instead, but her face falls as she points out that she already has their autographs—and the camera pans to reveal the Flatts have signed her arm.

Stunt casting has become a common occurrence on the CSI shows these days—all three do it, with varying degrees of success. Swift’s performance was a notable triumph; the spin-offs have featured more than a few duds, from LA Laker Pau Gasol on CSI: Miami to Kim Kardashian and Nelly Furtado on CSI: NY. Because the Rascal Flatts are playing themselves, it feels almost uncharitable to be too hard on them, and in the big arena scenes when they’re performing, they certainly excel. The plot is paper thin, but the script offers a few laughs, like the moment when Jay disdains country music in favor of rap, and in the dismay of the band’s biggest fan, who shows off her guitar only to lose it to the dogged crime scene investigators.

It’s easier to forgive the A-storyline its weaknesses than the CIA plot, which simply feels like a mess. Vance Colton, a former deputy director, is dying of cancer and decides to die on his own terms by employing Sarin poison, but wants to add some mystery to his death, so he leaks his memoir in the hopes that people will assume the Germans killed him. Sure enough, the Germans do show up, but don’t kill Colton—instead, they take out his son, Larry, who angrily attacked Colton with a canoe paddle… and presumably assumes he killed his father. The Germans kill Larry and leave pictures of Larry hitting his father over the head so that the CSIs will know they didn’t kill Colton… which if they’re going for a “we’re completely innocent” stance, they blew it by taking out Colton’s son. The real supplier of the Sarin—and therefore the real killer—is actually Colton’s CIA buddy, Craig Halliday, who killed his old friend out of compassion, because he was dying of cancer. Confused yet?

Rather than intriguing, the CIA plot is almost too convoluted to follow. As in the A-case, in which the bass tech stood out like a sore thumb and was immediately identifiable as the guilty party, Halliday’s call to Catherine immediately casts suspicion on him. The CIA is fast—but Halliday is all over Colton’s death, which makes sense in the end, when we realize he’s trying to create an aura of mystery and infamy around his friend’s death rather than simply cover up the true means by which he died, but it still points to him as the most likely culprit. Throwing in the Germans and the clichéd bitter, angry son, and the story just ends up going over the top—way, way over the top, in a manner that’s forgivable in the lighter A-story but not as much in this ostensibly more serious case.

The CIA naturally has the scoop on all of the CSIs, and at the end of the episode, Halliday offers Langston a job. More interesting than Halliday’s offer is Langston’s response to it. Halliday asks if Langston has found the right fit yet and Langston doesn’t respond. Halliday demurs with a “my mistake,” but I’m not sure there wasn’t more to the exchange than it appears. Did Halliday really read Langston’s silence as a refusal, or did he see it as an indication that perhaps the time wasn’t quite right to press Langston about a career change… yet. Langston isn’t one to play coy when he has a strong opinion about something, so I wonder if perhaps it’s something he would consider.

…But hopefully down the road, and not anytime soon. Laurence Fishburne had some big shoes to fill when he took over as CSI’s leading man and though response from the fans to the character has definitely been mixed, I definitely don’t think it’s time to throw in the towel as far as Ray Langston is concerned. He’s a different lead than William Petersen’s Gil Grissom, but he’s compelling in his own right, and it’s certainly not time to write him off—or out of the show.

Mac and the team must get to the bottom of a multiple homicide after a man is found in the street wielding an axe covered in the blood of his friends.

Synopsis:

A disoriented young man wanders into the street covered in blood and wielding an axe. The police take him down with tasers, and when Mac and Flack go to the hotel room he was staying in, they find the bodies of four people: two men and two women. Flack interrogates the young man, James Roberts, who claims he was attacked by clowns and doesn’t remember anything after that. Flack asks what kind of drugs James took, and though clearly high, James insists he doesn’t remember doing any drugs. Flack scoffs at James’ story of recalling swimming with sea horses and throws his hands up in disgust. Mac and Stella watch from behind the mirror and posit that James must have taken LSD. Stella tells Mac that James is a physics major at Chelsea University. Mac notices eleven missed calls from someone named Sara on James’ phone, and has the girl brought in. Sara insists that James has never done drugs in his life, and says he was out the night before with his two best friends, Mark Turner and Daniel Vaughn, to celebrate his 21st birthday. The girl asserts that James is not the partying type. Danny and Hawkes collect evidence from the hotel room, noticing a gap in the blood splatter pattern on the wall, indicating a person other than the killer was in the room. Hawkes also finds a gun. Danny is able to at least confirm part of James’ story: he finds clown masks in the room with DNA from James’ friends, indicating they surprised him in costume. The two women are identified as Jackie Wright and Lacey Deshane, but while all the men tested positive for LSD, neither woman did. Hawkes goes over the clothes, finding shampoo on James’ jeans and an unidentified substance on Mark’s shirt–but no blood splatter cast off on James’ shirt. Adam pieces together the order of events, and looking at the bathroom door, Stella notices there’s no blood on the edge, indicating it was shut at the time of the murders. She and Danny go back to the scene and find a shower curtain with sea horses, and, recalling the shampoo on James’ jeans, realize he must have been in the bathroom at the time of the murders. He’s not the killer.

Mac questions James, telling him he knows that he didn’t kill his friends. He asks James about where he met the two girls, and James swears he doesn’t remember. He tells Mac there’s no way he would have done LSD, and gets increasingly agitated. Stella, Danny, Flack, Hawkes and Adam try to piece together the order of events of the boys’ evening. Danny notes that DNA hadn’t yet come back from a bite mark on James’ calf, but Adam has managed to recover a photo from the evening: the three friends at an assisted living home. Danny and Flack pay the home a visit and learn that the boys played bingo with some senior citizens and won some serious cash: $25,000. When DNA from the bite matches Calvin Moore, a 3′9 wrestler, Danny and Flack track him down and are surprised to find Calvin admitting he “did it” for a grand—until they learn that Calvin merely agreed to wrestle James. Calvin says the boys weren’t acting like they were on drugs, and doesn’t recall any women with them. Mac continues to try to jog James’ memory, taking him out of the station for a cup of coffee when James spots a poster of a bull and freaks out. He tears it from a vendor stand, remembering that he rode a bull the night before—one without a face. Flack tracks down the bar James was at and the bartender recalls James and his friends—and the two women that were with him. She admits that the girls might have put something in the three guys’ drinks. Flack calls Stella to tell her the news, and she reports that the substance on Mark’s shirt as antifreeze from a taxi. Stella and Danny head to the cab depo where they find a driver, Gerald Gordon, dealing with a heavily damaged cab. Gordon admits that the boys were in his cab—and not just as passengers. He let one of them drive the cab for $100, which ended in a crash. The guys paid him $1500 for the damage.

Stella and Hawkes go over the footage from the video camera in the cab and discover that the boys stopped to pick up the two girls randomly. Stella posits that the women saw the kind of cash the guys had on them and drugged them intending to steal it. Stella notices Jackie slipping a gun in her purse. Danny and Flack go to the building where the girls were picked up and knock on the door of sleazy drug dealer Rufus Knox, who is nursing a nasty gunshot wound to the face. Danny and Flack surmise that the girls sold drugs for him and decided they wanted out, shooting him in self-defense to get out. Rufus insists he has “nothing but love” for the two women, and says he heard their killer was caught. Danny and Flack tell him that the guy they caught proved to be innocent, but they have nothing to arrest Rufus on… until Hawkes gets DNA results back on epithelials from the axe that match Rufus. Stella, Danny and Flack go back to arrest the drug lord, but he’s not at his apartment. Rufus and his bodyguard have tracked down Mac and James, and take aim, but Mac spots them first. He takes down the bodyguard and James gets a hold of his gun, recognizing Rufus as the one who killed his friends. He prepares to fire the gun, but Mac talks him down and arrests Rufus. Stella and Mac muse about the sad twist of fate: Rufus went looking for the women that James and his friends randomly picked up, and killed everyone but James, who was tripping in the bathroom. Mac reassures James, who feels guilty about what happened to his friends. Mac reunites the boy with his parents and girlfriend and watches as they leave the station together.

Analysis:

CSI: NY takes on The Hangover in this cleverly plotted entry, albeit with a much more tragic event anchoring it than last summer’s hit comedy. In The Hangover, three friends woke up in Las Vegas after a wild bachelor night with their soon-to-be married friend, whom they somehow managed to lose. The three friends had to retrace the night, none of which they remembered, using clues as varied as a hospital bracelet, a tiger in the bathroom and a baby in the closet. Here, the CSIs are the ones following the clues, trying to piece together what happened over the course of the night, and how James and his friends ended up meeting up with the two girls found dead in the room as well. Obviously with four dead as a result of whatever happened on James’ birthday, the tone of the episode isn’t very light, though there is some humor seeded throughout the hour.

There’s an obvious bit of humor when Danny and Flack go to question Calvin, the little person James wrestled with, and get their signals crossed. Danny and Flack think Calvin is talking about the murders, while Calvin’s answers are based on taking a grand from James’ friends to let him into the ring for a match. The increasingly baffled expressions on Danny and Flack’s faces as Calvin flippantly discusses the transaction definitely garner a laugh, as does Calvin’s own huffiness when he realizes they’re not talking about the same thing he is and asks, “What are you talking about?” It’s a great little scene, as is the one before it where Danny and Flack pay a visit to the retirement home, much to the delight of the elderly Mary Riesling, who is enjoying the parade of young men coming through the senior center. It’s fun to see Danny and Flack working together, something that has happened far too infrequently in recent episodes. These two play off each other too well for the show not to utilize their dynamic.

However, the funniest scene in the episode is one I suspect is completely unintentional. After it’s clear James isn’t guilty of the murders, Mac reaches out to the young man, trying to form a bond with him and get him to remember what happened the night of his birthday. In order to do so, Mac reaches out to the boy, finding a commonality in their love of science. Deciding to get James out of the police station for a little while, Mac takes him outside to get coffee and starts asking him about the paper he was writing, which James tells him was an open letter to Albert Einstein. Mac then starts to go on about Einstein and physics theories—and suddenly James takes off in a sprint. Now, I knew there had to be a reason James got spooked, but as the episode cut to commercial I couldn’t help chuckling, thinking that it seemed like James got so tired of hearing Mac drone on about physics that his only option was to make a break for it.

All joking aside, it is nice to see Mac reach out to James, and try to make a connection with him. Mac can be terribly awkward when it comes to relating to people, especially young people, but here he immediately gloms on to the fact that James is a physics major. When Mac realizes they’re both science guys, suddenly he’s much more at ease, which leads to him going on about Einstein and not picking up on the fact that James has seen something that upsets him until the young man has literally bolted out from under his nose. Because Gary Sinise is such an understated performer, the bonding scenes with James aren’t the over-the-top variety that procedural shows sometimes employ, where at the end of the hour, the cop and victim are suddenly bosom buddies. Indeed, at the end of the episode, Mac simply offers a few words of comfort and calls in James’ family and girlfriend, rather than behaving as though he’s fixed all of James’ problems simply by catching the person responsible for the death of his friends.

Given the similarity of James’ plight to Lindsay’s backstory, it’s a little surprising to see her completely absent here, but it was probably a wise dodge. Were Lindsay around, it would have been necessary to connect what happened to James’ friends to her in some way or another, and the quickest way to tank a storyline is to hang it on your weakest performer. Instead, James shares scenes with Sinise, and with Eddie Cahill, who in the initial interrogation of James channels such intensity that it bursts off the screen. Flack isn’t just disgusted—he’s actually angry that four people are dead in a hotel room because (he thinks) James partied too hard and took drugs that made him lose control. Flack’s rage gives weight to the deaths in the hotel room, and James’ explanations about clowns attacking him and swimming with sea horses only serve to further revile the literal-minded detective. Cahill is so good in this scene, so full of passion and fire, that he turns what could have been a routine interrogation scene into a fantastic character moment.

The only scene that’s a bit much in the episode is the one in which Rufus Knox and his bodyguard track down Mac and James and get into gun fight with them right in the middle of a busy Manhattan street. How did Rufus even find Mac and James in the first place? And how did Rufus know what James looked like if he never saw him in the hotel room? The whole shootout scene was nonsensical. CSI: NY tends to sit somewhere between CSI and CSI: Miami in terms of realism, and this out of the blue firefight was something I’d expect to see in a Miami episode, not a NY entry. Dominick Keating, virtually unrecognizable to those who knew him as the straight-laced security chief on Star Trek: Enterprise, turns in a memorable performance as the offbeat, sleazy drug lord.

Horatio and Delko take a trip to the City of Angels in the hopes of getting to the bottom of an evidence tampering accusation lodged against Jesse.

Synopsis:

Jesse Cardoza’s demons come back to haunt him when the Miami team is called to the house of Tony Enright, the successful pornographer whom Jesse is convinced is responsible for the murder of his wife. A party at Enright’s house ends in tragedy when a guest, Leslie Stultz, is murdered in the same room where Tony’s girlfriend, Anna, is passed out. A distraught Anna tells Natalia that Leslie starred in all of Tony’s films, and Natalia is concerned about Anna’s memory loss, suspecting she was drugged. Anna becomes agitated when she sees Jesse, and Tony and Jesse are practically at each other’s throats when they cross paths. Walter discovers a listening device hidden in the bedroom, while Jesse finds trace amounts of roofies in Anna’s glass. Dr. Loman notes that Leslie wasn’t roofied, and points out that the murder weapon was a pen—apparently a weapon of opportunity. Ryan and Calleigh match prints on the pen to Coop Daly, a former Miami Dolphins player who now works for Enright. Coop is unfazed by the CSIs’ suspicions, telling them that he was signing autographs the night of the party. Calleigh and Dave Benton follow up on the wiretap in Enright’s house, tracing it to the parking garage at the lab. Calleigh insists on going to investigate alone, and zeroes in on the car in the garage: Jesse’s. When Jesse shows up, Calleigh gets him to open the trunk, revealing the recording equipment inside. Jesse insists he didn’t break into Enright’s house to plant the device; he snuck in during a party. Jesse tells her he’s pretty sure the murder was recorded. The beleaguered CSI insists Tony Enright is the one who killed his wife, and Calleigh agrees to help him prove it.

Horatio plays the tapes from Jesse’s recording device for Rebecca Nevins, but she refuses to admit the tape as evidence, claiming Jesse is a dirty cop, based on an accusation of evidence tampering in Los Angeles. Horatio decides to go to L.A. to clear Jesse’s name, and Rebecca tells him she’s going to send someone from the State’s Attorney’s office with him: Eric Delko. After landing in L.A., Horatio and Delko meet with Captain Chris Sutter, whom Jesse used to work for. Horatio and Delko catch up on the case that tainted Jesse’s career: Jesse was the primary on the investigation of the murder of Tony Enright’s first wife, Victoria. A cufflink with the initials “A.T.” was found at the crime scene and documented by Jesse, but lost at some point before the trial. Enright’s lawyer, Darren Vogel, attacked Jesse on the stand, accusing him of tampering with the evidence by stealing the cufflink. In order to clear Jesse, Horatio and Delko must discover who actually took the cufflink. The two CSIs go pay a visit to Darren Vogel after discovering he purchased the cufflink found at the scene. Vogel planted the cufflink in order to create reasonable doubt for Enright’s trial. Going over the crime scene photos from the investigation, Horatio and Delko identify a photographer at the scene, Olivia Burch, and track her down in the hopes that her photos might reveal who removed the evidence from the crime scene. The two find what they’re looking for and clear up the photo, revealing that Captain Sutter himself was the one who took the cufflink.

Back in Miami, Natalia informs Anna that she was raped after being drugged, but that her attacker wore a condom. Natalia offers her help escaping her relationship, but Anna insists Tony is a good man. Calleigh analyzes the print on the pen, finding traces of lambskin in it–from a unique brand of condom. The trace matches the condom trace from Anna’s rape kit, connecting Coop Daly to both the murder of Leslie and the rape of Anna. Once he’s caught, Coop brags that Enright “gave” Anna to him, drugging her drink himself. When Leslie barged in on the assault, Coop killed her. Anna watches the confession, floored. Calleigh books Tony for his part in Anna’s rape and Leslie’s murder, and when he tries to appeal to Anna, she spits at him angrily. On her way out, Anna leaves a note for Jesse that simply reads, “Thank you.” In Los Angeles, Horatio confronts Sutter with the photo, asking him why he let Jesse take the fall for something he did. Sutter admits that he was afraid Enright would beat the murder charge because of the cufflink, so he pocketed it. Horatio tells Sutter he knows what he has to do, and the captain gives a press conference, clearing Jesse’s name and offering him his apologies. Horatio and Delko return to Miami, and Horatio is surprised to find Darren Vogel in town to represent Enright, whom he claims will never see the inside of a prison cell. After the lawyer departs, Jesse thanks Horatio, who modestly replies that Jesse would have done the same for him.

Analysis:

It’s not quite the spiraling shot that “Rio” opened with to announce Horatio Caine had arrived in the Brazilian capital, but is it any surprise that after the establishing shots of the Griffith Observatory and the Capitol Records building, we see Horatio standing tall, the Hollywood sign in the background as he and Delko wait for the arrival of Captain Sutter… who arrives by helicopter. CSI: Miami does nothing small, and Horatio’s trip to the City of Angels is no departure in that regard. That he meets Sutter on a helipad that just happens to overlook the Hollywood sign as opposed to say, in Sutter’s office at whatever police station he works out of is already a stretch, but then when Horatio confronts Sutter about taking the cufflinks, he meets the captain at the Hollywood Bowl. Though a stretch, the use of the landmarks is mostly forgivable—after all, this is television, and what’s the point of sending two of the characters to Los Angeles and not utilizing the setting?

Aside from these flourishes, the trip to Los Angeles is remarkably low key—Horatio and Delko don’t hobnob with movie stars or find themselves visiting a pornography shoot; aside from Sutter, the only Angelino they spend any serious time with is Enright’s slimy lawyer, played with true panache by Malcolm McDowell. Indeed, in addition to having Rob Zombie as a director, the episode is packed with notable guest stars, including McDowell, Michael Madsen as Enright’s slimy pal/employee, William Forsythe as the well-intentioned but misguided Sutter, and Paul Blackthorne as the slimy pornographer who killed his own wife as well as Jesse’s, and got away with both murders, at least thus far. Blackthorne and McDowell are standouts among the strong guest cast, the former convincing as a sociopathic killer who can turn from affable to scornful on a dime and the latter almost charming in his sleaziness. “You can buy a sense of humor,” he advises Horatio after the CSI has revealed that he’s on to Vogel’s scheme to plant evidence. Indeed, the lawyer is unfazed by Horatio’s disdain for him, showing up in Miami to represent Enright even after telling Horatio he was considering retirement.

Rob Zombie’s direction is clearly a good fit for CSI: Miami, and the opening sequence that culminates in the murder of Leslie Stultz definitely has a horror film feel to it. The episode opens on a lavish, sumptuous party featuring revelers in masks made creepy and forbidding by the lighting. The mood intensifies when Anna and Leslie go up to Anna’s bedroom, where a classic horror film is playing on the television. Images from the film are intercut with the assault on Anna and the murder of Leslie, making for a truly chilling scene. There’s a cinematic feel to the scenes in Los Angeles where Horatio and Sutter stand with the Hollywood sign and later the Hollywood Bowl as backdrops as well.

There are times when I wish Miami lived a little more in the grey area, and the introduction of Tony Enright is one of those instances. After the build up with the mystery of Jesse’s past and his interest in Anna Kitson, and then the revelation that Jesse’s wife was murdered, I was hoping Enright might have been a less obvious villain than this episode paints him as. After all, not only did he manage to get acquitted of the murder of his wife, but presumably he was able to either kill Jesse’s wife or have her murdered and not get caught for that—clearly this guy is good at evading the law. So why, rather than having him be a chillingly charming sociopath whom the audience believes could beat a murder rap, is he simply another mustache-twirling villain? Having him lose it with both Calleigh and Anna after she rejects him gives the game away completely. Sometimes subtle is better, and while I enjoyed Blackthorne’s performance, I wish the character had come off as a worthier adversary for the CSI team.

Enright’s involvement has some interesting ramifications for some of the CSIs, most notably Jesse, who is understandably livid when he comes face to face with Tony Enright, who is equally confrontational. Jesse accuses Tony of “killing every girl he comes into contact with” while Tony fires back that Jesse is “the guy who tried to frame [him].” Though it’s clear where the audience’s sympathies are supposed to lie, and at no point did I believe Jesse actually tampered with evidence, it’s revealed that Jesse did skirt the line by placing a recording device in Tony and Anna’s bedroom. Sure, maybe he didn’t actually break into the house to do it, but Rebecca Nevins calls it “dirty evidence” and she’s right. Even if Jesse was invited to that party (which I’m pretty sure he wasn’t), sneaking up to the bedroom and planting a bug still isn’t legal. If Enright’s lawyer is as good as he claims to be, he’ll have a field day with that when Tony has his day in court on the pandering and accessory to murder charges.

As soon as the recording device gets traced to the garage at the lab, Calleigh knows exactly whose car she’ll find it in, and she insists on going alone to the garage. Sure enough, her instincts are spot on. She’s clearly frustrated with Jesse, and while she doesn’t exactly go easy on him after she discovers the recording equipment in the car, she does agree to help him go after Enright, provided the pornographer is in fact guilty. Calleigh and Jesse got off to something of a rocky beginning—she was immediately suspicious of his admittedly suspect behavior, and he did everything he could to deflect her questions. But since she covered for him in “Show Stopper”, Jesse opened up to her about his interest in Anna, and the murder of his wife. The trust that’s gradually been building up between the two this season is really paid off when Calleigh offers to help Jesse prove Enright is a killer. Her only caveat is that Jesse had better be right about Enright—and by the end of the episode, we know he is.

After the glass Anna drank out of tests positive for roofies, Natalia reaches out to the woman, who is clearly in denial about the man she loves. Natalia, who left her own abusive husband, clearly empathizes with Anna, who initially denies anything is wrong, insisting that Tony is “not like that.” Natalia opens up to her, saying that she used to defend her husband, too. Not only is Natalia direct with Anna without being pushy, but she also displays a fair amount of savvy when she gets Jesse to back off. Though Jesse has good intentions, he’s clearly not the person Anna wants to see after she’s just learned that she was drugged and possibly assaulted the night before. By the end of the episode, Anna has seen Tony for what he is, and his attempt to worm his way back into her good graces by offering to take her to her favorite restaurant only elicits disgust from her.

With the news that Adam Rodriguez is going to be a regular on the show again next season (story), seeing Delko show up isn’t perhaps as novel as it was a few months ago, but it’s always good to have Delko back on the show working with his old team. In this episode, he’s brought in because Rebecca Nevins decides she wants one of her people to go with Horatio to Los Angeles. It’s a little amusing that she’d chose Delko, who not long ago worked for the very guy he’s supposed to be keeping an eye on, but it’s fun to see Horatio and Delko working together again nonetheless. It will be refreshing once the show no longer has to find excuses to throw Delko back in with his old teammates—presumably his return to the show will also involve him rejoining the lab.

The perpetrator in the rape/murder case is apparent practically from the get-go, paving the way for the investigation in L.A. to take the forefront. Still, Calleigh and Ryan have to dig up some effectively damning evidence in order to really nail Coop Daly. Though he’s something of a one-note slimeball, Coop does get one great zinger in Ryan’s expense, calling the CSI “Pint Size.” Ever the one to be prickly, Ryan shoots back that he’s 5′9, which just invites more ribbing from Coop, who tells the CSI that his “pants are 5′9.” Poor Ryan doesn’t handle it very well when people tease him, but it certainly offers a good laugh for the audience.

Mac faces heavy opposition from the city when he threatens to postpone a car race in order to investigate what caused one of the racer’s cars to go up in flames.

Synopsis:

An exhibition race between drivers Liza Gray and Davi Santos ends in tragedy when Davi’s car ignites and slams into a wall. The driver escapes with his life, but his lungs are badly burned and he falls into a coma. Flack and Mac arrive at the racetrack and learn that Santos was receiving threatening letters. The team owner, Connor Wells, tells Mac he didn’t see anything unusual, while Dwight Bernard, Santos’ crew chief, describes Davi as “hell on wheels.” Mac decides to put the New York 400—the first car race the Big Apple has seen in a while—on hold while he conducts the investigation. Danny, Lindsay and Adam go over Davi’s car, which Adam points out was designed to be fireproof. Danny finds the car is covered in gasoline, indicating the car itself was the bomb. In the lab, Hawkes matches the handwriting on the notes to Davi to a threatening letter sent to a congressman by a disgruntled political science professor, Josh Weaver. Flack questions the man, who had a beef with Davi’s sponsor, Cietro Spirits. Weaver’s brother and his family were killed by a drunk driver who was drinking Cietro at the time of the crash, but Weaver insists he was simply trying to get Davi to stop driving for Cietro—he never would have actually hurt the man. Danny, Lindsay and Adam dismantle Davi’s car and discover a single yellow wire that doesn’t seem to be hooked into anything. Adam also discovers tool marks on the fuel line, indicating someone wore it down, allowing the gas to leak out. Danny finds a print on the gas tank, which belong to Reece Turnball, the team’s test driver. Reece tells Mac and Flack that he was in charge of inspecting Davi’s car, and that he idolized the older driver. He inspected the car four hours before the race. The two detectives go to examine the trailer where the car was kept and find signs of forced entry. Mac finds a set of tools in the trailer and takes them, suspecting one of them might have been used to wear down the fuel line.

Back at the lab, Hawkes tells Stella that oil trace on the car is a unique blend used by Liza Gray’s team. Santos last raced Liza Gray two years ago, and her car crashed, putting her in the hospital with revenge on her mind. Mac and Stella question the young woman, who admits to breaking into Santos’ trailer, but only to get a look at what was under the hood of his car—she wanted to inspect his engine. She reluctantly turns over her cell phone with the pictures of Davi’s engine on it. Stella gets a call that Santos has woken from his coma, but when she gets to the hospital, he goes into cardiac arrest and dies before she can speak with him. She talks with Santos’ widow, Tanya, who tells Stella that Davi had promised her he would quit last season, but when the time came he went back on his word. Danny comes to Lindsay with the news Liza was most likely not the one who tampered with the fuel line: she had an interview fifteen minutes after she broke into the trailer, and wouldn’t have had time to wear down the line. Lindsay notices a picture of a generator among Liza’s pictures and wonders if it had something to do with Davi’s car going up in flames. In the morgue, Hawkes gives Mac the rundown on Davi, who was full of painkillers and had apparently been injured many times while racing. Danny identifies the the generator as a VIC engine, which would have given Davi extra speed, but when Davi pushed the button to activate it, it short circuited, causing the explosion.

When the CSIs discover video footage from the hotel Team Cietro was staying at revealing Tanya Santos meeting Dwight Bernard in a room and Dwight leaving the hotel thirty minutes later, their suspicion falls on the duo. Tanya and Bernard deny an adulterous relationship, but admit that in their desperation to get Davi to retire for his own good, Dwight went to short circuit the VIC engine, hoping it would slow Davi down and convince him to retire. Tanya insists the plan was simply to slow Davi down, not kill him. Hawkes comes up with evidence that exonerates them: team owner Connor Wells’ prints are on the wrench used to sabotage Davi’s fuel line. Mac questions the team owner, asking why he wanted to get rid of Davi. Wells tells the CSI leader that he thought Davi was getting slow—Reece was faster, but Davi refused to retire gracefully and give Reece the opportunity to step up. When he saw Dwight go into the trailer, Wells saw an opportunity and seized it. He insists he was looking out for the best interests of his company, to Mac’s disgust. With the case closed, Mac indulges a personal dream: heading to the track and driving one of the cars himself. Stella gamely joins him.

Analysis:

With three CSI shows on the air, there’s bound to be some overlap now and then, but two CSI shows dealing with some form of racing in the space of seven days feels like a bit much. While CSI’s episode “Internal Combustion” dealt with the dangers of drag racing and this entry involves treachery in the world of professional racing, anyone who doesn’t share Mac and Lindsay’s enthusiasm for the sport might find it a bit much. It’s more of a scheduling issue than a fault with either episode, but it’s one that probably should have been addressed. There’s no real continuity issue with either episode, no reference to the serial killer Dr. Jekyll in the CSI entry or any mention of Danny’s missing badge in the CSI: NY one, so it seems like at some point, one of the episodes could have been switched around so they wouldn’t air quite so close to each other. Of course, it could have been worse, had the New York episode aired the day before the CSI one!

As someone who is admittedly not much of a racing aficionado, I had the same problem with this episode that I did with CSI’s “Long Ball” in that it delved into a world with lots of insider savvy, but without a real hook for those not already fascinated by it. Hearing Mac and Lindsay wax poetic about fast cars and racing superheroes didn’t really perk my interest in the sport, and unlike “Long Ball,” none of the guest characters really elicited any sympathy. For racing fans, it was probably fun to see Danica Patrick show up, and she turned in a fine performance, though no one could save the clunky line at the end about the CSIs being “the real heroes” (a sentiment better alluded to subtly than stated flat out). Santos’ widow, Tanya, in particular was off-putting, with her quips about her husband’s death being “a long time coming” and “poetic justice.” I know I was supposed to feel sorry for her, but her attitude smacked of a postmortem “I told you so.” Was she right? I guess she was, though if she and Dwight Bernard hadn’t been so determined to end Davi’s career no matter what, he might not be dead. In the end, it feels patently unfair that Dwight is the only one of the two arrested for tampering.

Mac is under big pressure from the city to close the case in time for the New York 400 to take place. I imagine the fact that Mykelti Williamson is now a regular on 24 robbed the episode of what could have been an interesting scene between Mac and Chief Sinclair, who always managed to remain mostly sympathetic when towing the company line. As it is, we only see Mac’s side of the conversation, seeing him huff and puff somewhat self-righteously as he insists, city economy be damned, that the race will not go on until he’s finished his investigation. If Sinclair is out for the season, perhaps it’s best to bring in a new adversary for Mac, to keep him from climbing up on the high horse he likes to ride too often.

There are some cute scenes between Danny, Lindsay and Adam in the garage as they go over the car, most notably the one where Danny is explaining the VIC engine and what went wrong with it, and Adam interjects with a drawn out “booooom” and the conversation grinds to a halt. Adam looks shamefacedly at the group and apologizes to Danny: “Sorry, that was your moment, I thought you were going to ‘boom.’” Given how overused Danny’s “boom” has become, I certainly forgave Adam, but Danny, not one to be upstaged, managed to get it in anyway, practically in the next breath. Adam should know by now that attempting to out-attention-whore Danny is an exercise in futility.

I’m all for the show giving Lindsay more of a fun personality, but must everything about her inevitably be tied back to the fact that she is from Montana? Hearing her go on about race cars while Danny stood by and Adam proudly talked about his Playstation racing experience gave her some cred, until Danny opened his big mouth and said, “That’s my girl. You grow up in Montana, you love race cars!” I suppose I could be wrong about this, but somehow—somehow!—I suspect not every person from Montana loves race cars. Or fly fishes. Or grew up on a farm. The Montanaisms might be funny at this point, if they weren’t so condescending in the implication that because she’s not from New York, Lindsay is kind of a hick.

Mac shares Lindsay’s love of racing, but for some reason the characters are never brought together on screen to talk about it together, which might have been more fun than to just hear them talk about it to third parties. Sure, Danny was excited that his wife knows all about cool, fast cars and Stella patiently listened to Mac go on about his love of going to races as a kid, but what might have really brought the topic alive for the audience would have been to bring together the two characters who have a genuine enthusiasm for it.

The Miami team is shocked to discover their latest case involves a victim who appears to have been in space when he died.

Synopsis:

A carjacking in progress is interrupted when a man’s dead body falls on the car, crashing through the windshield. The CSIs quickly determine he crashed through the trees above, rather than falling from them, and the case gets more perplexing when Calleigh determines he was falling at terminal velocity–120 mph, meaning he fell from at least 2000 feet. She suspects he might have been a stowaway on a plane, but her theory is shot when air traffic control reports that only one helicopter was in the vicinity at the time the body fell. Calleigh and Ryan track down the helicopter and question its owner, Beau Lendell, who says he doesn’t recognize the victim when shown his picture. When Horatio and Ryan ask him why the helicopter was in the air without a flight plan, Beau says he thinks someone took it for an unauthorized ride, and claims he wasn’t the one piloting it. Horatio and Ryan examine the helicopter, and Ryan finds knuckle imprints on one of the seats. Back at the morgue, Dr. Loman has some shocking news: the victim’s blood cells indicate he was in zero gravity at the time of his death, suggesting he died in outer space. Jesse contacts NASA, but all of their astronauts are accounted for, causing him to turn to a private space tours company based in Miami: Prime Mover Aerospace. The owner of the company, Keith Palmer, recognizes the victim as Sam Gardner, a participant in the last ten-day tour into space. Palmer shows Horatio and Ryan the Lear jet he uses to take people into space, and Ryan notices a bullet-sized hole in the plane’s hull, which Palmer tells him was the result of micro-meteor damage. Horatio asks Palmer who else was on the flight with Sam, but he claims the passenger list is confidential.

Back at the lab, Calleigh shows Sam’s wife, Janet, a video that Sam made for her from the trip. Janet, bitter that her husband spent two million dollars on the extravagant trip, doesn’t want to see it, so the CSIs use the video to identify the other passengers: movie star Dominic Cross, and Beau Lendell, the helicopter pilot they questioned earlier. Dr. Loman is finally able to determine a cause of death: explosive decompression. The coroner tells Horatio that somehow Sam got out of the shuttle and into space. The CSIs question the three men who went up into space with Sam: Dominic claims he was sick and sleeping at the time, while Palmer asserts the airlock alarm came on—and that Sam had accidentally locked himself in the chamber and opened the airlock. Beau admits he pilots all of Prime Mover Aerospace’s trips, and claims that what happened to Sam was an accident. He took Sam’s body up in his helicopter and was going to dispose of him over the Atlantic—until a flock of gulls hit his helicopter and Sam’s body was thrown from it. Horatio tells Palmer the shuttle is now his crime lab, and sends Jesse and Calleigh to go over the ship. The two CSIs quickly discover the airlock can’t be opened from inside the chamber, invalidating Palmer’s story about Sam opening the airlock doors from inside the chamber. Calleigh lifts a print from the control pad in the main cabin, and it proves a match to Dominic. Dominic claims Sam was wearing an EVA suit to protect him from space, and that he locked himself in the airlock and insisted he wanted to be let out. Dominic reluctantly opened the airlock and Sam went outside—but apparently something was wrong with his suit. Calleigh decides to hold him for negligent homicide.

Horatio and Walter go over the EVA suit Sam was supposedly wearing at the time of his death, but they find no radiation on it—inconsistent with Dominic’s claims that he was wearing it when he was launched into space. Horatio and Walter discover a blood stain on the suit, and a looking at it under the black light reveals further splatter. Horatio and Walter head over to the shuttle, finding blood splatter all over the main cabin. Horatio sends Jesse and Walter up in a plane to recreate the zero gravity conditions aboard the shuttle to determine what weapon could have been used to create the blood splatter, while Ryan examines the hole in the ship caused by the meteor and discovers that it hit the air tank… and that the air would have been drained out of the shuttle in twelve minutes. Up in the air, Jesse and Walter try fruitlessly to recreate the pattern using a dummy, until Jesse thinks to fire his gun, which causes him to slam back into the wall but does create the splatter pattern. Though they can’t recover the bullet that hit Sam, the CSIs line up the three men to examine them and find a bruise on Beau’s lower back. Horatio puts it together—there were only three EVA suits, and four men on the shuttle. The three men turned on Sam: Beau shot him, Dominic opened the airlock and Palmer closed it again once Sam was dead, insisting they needed to bring four people back. Calleigh sits with Sam’s wife Janet and shows her Sam’s final message to her, in which he tells her he loves her and wants nothing more than to come home to her.

Analysis:

Sometimes, I think the CSI: Miami writers really have fun with the show’s reputation as the zaniest, most outlandish of the three CSI shows. Take, for instance, some of the goofy and hilarious titles of some of the later season episodes. Who can help but chuckle at the phonetic humor of “CSI My Nanny” or “Smoke Gets In Your CSIs”? Or enjoy the winks at pop culture with titles such as “Chip/Tuck” and “Dude, Where’s My Groom?”? This entry, “Miami, We Have a Problem” falls into the latter category, a play on the famous “Houston, we have a problem” transmission from the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission. The titles are fun, and really, what other CSI show could delve into space tourism with the same zest as CSI: Miami does? Part of the fun of watching the CSI shows is seeing cutting edge technology and watching the CSIs utilize equipment or run experiments real labs probably couldn’t dream of doing, if for no other reason than most labs aren’t nearly as well funded. What lab could afford the zero gravity experiment Jesse and Walter partake in just to explain the blood splatter? Probably very few, if any.

There are only three possible suspects in this case, and in a novel twist, it turns out all three are guilty. Once Palmer realized there were only enough EVA suits and back up air for three people, not four, it was clear one of the passengers would have to go. Dominic, the cowardly action star, protests that he’s too famous to go missing without notice, so that leaves poor Sam, who emerges as a sympathetic character through the recorded video messages to his wife. One logic quibble: Palmer insists that Dominic not open up the airlock and send Sam out into space, saying that four people went up, so he had to come back with four. But if he was going to have Beau dump Sam’s body in the Atlantic anyway, why not abandon him to space, where there was a lot less chance he’d be found?

The scene with Jesse and Walter in zero g is a treat because it’s obvious how much the characters are enjoying themselves. Or at least Walter is until he gets nauseous and ends up throwing up, providing a crucial clue but losing his lunch—or at least a morning’s worth of water—in the process. (Kudos to the crew for staging the least gross vomiting scene in recent memory; the only contents of Walter’s stomach seem to be water.) The projectile vomit splatter leads Jesse to make the leap to realize that the blood shot out of Sam’s body, indicating he was shot rather than bludgeoned or struck with a weapon. Walter is just such a fun character, with such a zest for what he does infused into every scene he’s in. Adding Omar Miller to the cast this season was a great move.

My favorite Walter quote of the episode is his comment Dr. Loman when he wonders if Loman is covering up the fact that their victim is an alien. “Unless Tom is an alien, too,” Walter reasons. “That would explain a lot.” Indeed, Christian Clemenson’s coroner is delightfully weird, on par with CSI: NY’s Sid Hammerback… and perhaps even a little stranger. Loman is clearly thrilled by the puzzling case, and the excitement coming off of him as he shows Ryan that the victim died in space is palpable. What coroner wouldn’t be more than a little intrigued by coming across a case where a man died of exposure to space? Like Walter, the oddball coroner is a great addition to the team.

Is it just me, or is Ryan Wolfe really copping a downright bitchy attitude this season? It’s a blast to watch, but sometimes it seems like Ryan has a bit of a chip on his shoulder. He’s awfully snide with Keith Palmer when he goes to cordon off the shuttle, telling the nervous businessman that he can’t fit “the whole ship in my crime lab” and promising to be “gentle” before removing the section of the shuttle damaged by the small meteor. Ryan also opts out of taking the zero g ride with Jesse and Walter, telling Travers, “I didn’t go up with them because it’s called the vomit comet.” Ryan definitely seems sassier this season than he has in the past, and his lines usually elicit a chuckle.

The mysterious deaths of two teens puzzle the Vegas CSIs.

Synopsis:

Doc Robbins and Ray Langston puzzle over the body of seventeen-year-old Trevor Beck, who dropped dead at Sagebrush Valley High School after a minor scuffle with a classmate. As far as the two doctors can tell, the teen wasn’t killed by a blow to the head. Trevor’s mother tells Brass her son wasn’t a troubled kid, but that he’d been grumpy and forgetful lately, complaining about losing his car keys and then finding them in the ignition of his car. She mentions that her son had just started dating a girl named Cindy the week before. The CSIs trace Cindy’s cell phone to Sagebrush Valley High, and question Renata Clarke, who shares a locker with Cindy. Renata tells Sara she’s been texting Cindy frantically, trying to get a hold of her, with no luck. Nick finds Trevor’s car in the school parking lot and discovers a fresh yellow paint scrape on the modified vintage car. Sara recovers Cindy’s cell phone from the car and finds pictures of Cindy with Trevor on it, and earlier shots of her with another guy, who her phone address book identifies as Miyamoto Takahashi. Brass finds Miyamoto at his job and questions the boy about a fight with Trevor the day before that Cindy recorded on her phone. Miyamoto insists that Trevor attacked him, and seems surprised to learn Cindy is missing. Back in the morgue, Langston determines that a pre-existing condition that caused Trevor’s brain stem to sit right up on his spine contributed to his death—most likely the boy had no idea he even had the condition. He confirms that the anti-depressants found in Tyler’s car could have contributed—as could some sort of trauma to the head.

The CSIs track Trevor’s car’s final trip and discover Cindy’s body along a road in a tree, both of her legs badly broken. Nick wonders if her body was dumped, and Greg observes that it’s as though she was dropped from the sky. In the morgue, Sara notes that the fractures are pedestrian ones, indicating Cindy was struck by a car, and could have been thrown as far as the length of a football field. Nick and Greg backtrack to find the site of the crash and discover two distinct tire treads. They’re able to identify one set as Trevor’s tires, while the other is a mystery. Nick concludes that the cars were involved in a drag race, and one swerved into the other—possibly causing it to hit Cindy. Catherine tracks down the kid who sold Trevor the anti-depressants and learns that the yellow scrape on Trevor’s car could have come from a car belonging to a member of the Demons gang—yellow is their color. Brass thinks to check the LVPD sponsored speed race that takes place on a weekly basis, and Nick and Sara head to the race and quickly spot a group of Demons there, standing around a yellow car, which belongs to Miyamoto. The boy tries to run when the CSIs spot him, but he’s quickly taken down and arrested. Nick and Greg go over his car, but Greg quickly eliminates it when he finds the headlights are plastic, inconsistent with the glass shards found at the scene from the headlights of the car that struck Cindy. Sara views footage of an LVPD race nine days ago and sees Trevor win a race, and then swerve his car, giving him whiplash and perhaps causing his unusual condition to act up. Catherine surmises his death was an accident. The CSIs are surprised when the identity of his opponent in the race is revealed to be Renata Clarke.

Sara and Nick go to the auto shop owned by Renata’s legal guardian, her uncle Gus Davis. Though Renata protests she was with friends the night of Cindy’s death, the CSIs impound her car, which the girl has been detailing. The CSIs track down the old parts Renata removed, and Greg discovers fibers from Cindy’s sweater on the car’s grille. The CSIs wonder why Renata would have raced Trevor again in an illegal race when Sara comes in with some interesting news: video surveillance from one of the roads the racers took reveals that Renata was actually at the wheel of Trevor’s car! A piece of gum stuck to the steering wheel of Renata’s car proves the key—it indicates her uncle, Gus, an admirer of old school racers, was behind the wheel of Renata’s car. Gus wanted to show Renata that it was the driver not the car that mattered in the race, and convinced her to have Cindy get Trevor’s keys so that Renata could drive Trevor’s car while Gus raced her in hers. Renata was in the lead, but Gus’s competitive streak came out, and he swerved the car he was driving to throw her off—and inadvertently hit Cindy. Gus swears he looked for her, but couldn’t find her. He convinced Renata to cover it up and swears she’s innocent, but both are charged with the crime.

Analysis:

A healthy dose of humor and team camaraderie distinguishes this entry, which, despite the fact that it deals with the deaths of two teens, never ventures into maudlin territory. The only time the humor seems a little off is at the end, when, after discussing how drag racing ended the lives of the two victims and will likely send Gus and Renata to jail, Catherine and Nick give in to the primal urge to have a race in the parking garage! It’s a funny moment, and a bit of lighthearted fun between the two characters, but it feels a little off tonally given the discussion the two were having right before getting into their respective cars. Perhaps that’s the point, that the urge to indulge in a race is just too much to resist, even when it’s perhaps not the wisest course of action.

Catherine and Nick aren’t the only CSIs to indulge in a little wicked behavior; Greg reveals to Nick that he went joyriding in his uncle’s car when he was twelve. Nick is heartily amused by the story, a grin plastered on his face as he teases Greg about being “a little car thief.” It’s a cute moment between the two, and highlights their easy rapport. George Eads and Eric Szmanda always play off each other well, and it’s fun to watch them joking around together. It’s nice to see the show take time for moments like this, for Greg to relate with glee his memories of driving around the block three times in his uncle’s car before almost running over his own foot. Anecdotes like this really make the show fun.

Wendy gets a good jab at Hodges in as Nick tells them to go over Renata’s car. When Hodges remarks that the car is pretty sophisticated for a teenage girl, Wendy quips, “Definitely more sophisticated than the ones you chat with on the Twilight message boards.” Oh Hodges! It’s so easy to see him hunched over a computer, dissecting the latest casting choice for the upcoming movie in the teen saga, or even getting into a nitty gritty plot point in one of the four books. Hodges, no doubt, is one who takes Twilight very seriously. I presume Wendy’s teasing also suggests Hodges has yet to come down to earth and take a chance by acting on their mutual attraction.

There is a point in each episode when I’m reminded of what a gifted actor Paul Guilfoyle is. It tends to be in the delivery of a line or a raise of an eyebrow, just a little reminder of how completely he inhabits the role of Jim Brass. This week’s moment comes in the scene where he gently questions Trevor’s distraught mother, trying to find out what might have led to her son’s death. When he lands upon Trevor’s new girlfriend Cindy, he asks Trevor’s mother if she has the girl’s phone number. The grieving woman does not, and Brass immediately reassures he, “That’s okay, we can find it, that’s easy for us.” Guilfoyle delivers that line with an easy assurance that’s both comforting and natural.

Both Trevor and Cindy’s deaths are ultimately accidental, and in Trevor’s case, possibly not one that could have been prevented. As Langston described it, Trevor’s condition was something of a ticking time bomb, more likely than not to be set off by something before being caught by a doctor. Cindy’s death is a different story—the girl stood in the middle of the road to judge a drag race between two very determined individuals. Perhaps her death couldn’t have been predicted—had Gus not swerved in anger to throw Renata off, Cindy might still be alive—but she was certainly taking a risk standing in the middle of a road during a drag race at night. But, as the final scene of the episode shows as Catherine and Nick race each other out of the garage, who among us is immune to taking a little risk now and then?

When the body of a young woman is discovered in a snowy park surrounded by blood, the CSIs come to suspect she may be the victim of a vampire cult.

Synopsis:

Mac, Flack and Hawkes stand over the body of a young woman whose excursion to Central Park on a snowy day to take photographs ended in tragedy. Hawkes suspects she bled to death from a puncture wound to the neck, and Mac notices part of her ear appears to have been bitten off. In the morgue, Sid confirms that the young woman died of exsanguination, and points out an unusual scar on her wrist, while Danny develops the photographs from her camera, including several of a young man the CSIs suspect was her boyfriend. Stella and Flack retrace the woman’s steps through her photographs and find the building where she lived. The doorman identifies her as Estelle Christensen, and the man in the photographs as Estelle’s boyfriend, Keith Borgese. He tells Stella and Flack that Estelle and Keith used to go to Central Park together every day. Mac questions Keith, who tells him that he and Estelle fought the day before, so he wasn’t with her in Central Park the day of her murder. Mac wonders if the fight led to violence, but Keith breaks down and says he should have been with her, that he could have protected her. Hawkes runs a fleck of dried blood found on Estelle’s body believed to be from the murder weapon and gets multiple DNA hits on it. One gets a hit in CODIS: a tattoo artist named Billy James. Flack and Hawkes question Billy, who sports a scar similar to Estelle’s on his wrist. Suspecting one of his tattoo guns might be the murder weapon, Hawkes confiscates them. He tests them out at the lab, but none of them match the mark the weapon that killed Estelle made, and Flack reports that Billy’s alibi checks out.

Estelle’s parents identify her body and tell Mac that they brought their daughter to New York as a young girl. She loved the city. Mac, noticing a scar similar to Estelle’s on her father’s wrist, vows to find her killer. Sid stops by Mac’s office later to share a theory: acting on a hunch, he looked up the scar on Estelle’s wrist and found that it was consistent with a cutting ritual by a group known as Sanguine or real vampires—people who look at vampirism as a kind of religion. They believe they discover a higher plane through consensual blood exchange. Danny and Flack go over Estelle’s apartment, where Danny discovers an exposed roll of film in the refrigerator. Danny develops the film and finds pictures of some sort of ceremony. He recognizes Billy James and spots Keith in one of the shots, and notices an older man in several of the photos, holding a blade of some sort. Mac pays a visit to Estelle’s father and asks him about the scar and the pictures. After an initial denial, he relents and identifies the older man as Joseph Vance, the master of the local vampire haven. He tells Mac that Joseph has known Estelle since she was a child, and that he asked Joseph to keep an eye on her. After Danny identifies the blade in the photograph as an ankh, an ancient Egyptian symbol for eternity, he and Flack crash the haven and arrest Joseph.

Joseph tells Mac he has never harmed anyone, and that all he did was offer Estelle love and support. Mac is skeptical, and disturbed by Joseph’s practices. When the missing piece of Estelle’s ear is found in Joseph’s apartment and Hawkes identifies some of the blood on Joseph’s ankh as belonging to Estelle, it seems like the CSIs have their killer. But Danny finds foreign DNA on the piece of ear, and Mac assembles the team to try to put Joseph at the scene of the murder. Stella mentions that Joseph is claiming innocence, and threatening to sue the crime lab, saying they planted the ear in his apartment. The team discovers a discrepancy when they realize Keith’s blood is on the ankh, but he didn’t have a scar on his wrist. Mac brings Keith back in and the young man breaks down, claiming that the haven changed Estelle. He followed her to the park that day and attacked her in a rage, killing her. After Keith is arrested, Mac meets Estelle’s father in Central Park and gives him her photographs.

Analysis:

There’s an elegance to “Sanguine Love” that suffuses the entire episode, giving the whole thing a very stylized feel. Director Norberto Barba lingers over images of the snow-covered park, while haunting piano music plays over many of the winter scenes, and a cello punctuates the scenes with the vampire haven. Despite the grim subject matter, there’s a real beauty in the imagery, whether it be the bright red blood on the snow or the softly lit room where the Sanguines gather. The episode’s languid pacing and lingering shots set it apart, and also give some weight to what could be a silly subject matter. Vampires are all the rage right now—from Twilight to True Blood to The Vampire Diaries, they’re everywhere, and hotter than ever. The problem with putting them in a crime drama is that it runs the risk of putting the story over the edge, into absurd territory—something this episode does manage to avoid.

That the episode is penned by one of the actors on the show only brings more scrutiny. Following last season’s less than successful effort by Melina Kanakaredes, “Grounds for Deception”, which took the show out of New York to Greece for an outlandish action adventure escapade, I can say that Carmine Giovinazzo’s first credit for the show is much more true to the tone of CSI: New York. Instead of taking some sort of dramatic trip into his character’s past or turning Danny into 24’s Jack Bauer for an hour, Giovinazzo has written a restrained, fitting entry. Somewhat surprisingly—and gratifyingly—Danny doesn’t even take center stage in the hour; rather, it’s an ensemble effort with Mac leading the charge. It’s so refreshingly free of vanity that one can forgive Giovinazzo for shoehorning a song from his band, Ceesau, into the scene in which Flack and Hawkes go to interrogate the tattoo artist Billy James. The catchy tune, while perhaps not as natural a fit for the hour as the haunting piano and cello music, isn’t out of place in the edgy tattoo parlor.

Though it’s admirable Giovinazzo avoided turning the episode into some sort of absurd paean to Danny’s awesomeness, I can’t help but wish there’d been a little something more for Danny here—not a storyline or a connection to the victim or her family (that is wisely left to Mac), but perhaps a flash of the passion and energy that made Danny so interesting in earlier seasons of the show. He’s thankfully free of his albatross in this episode, but the marriage of Danny and Lindsay has proved the old adage that happy couples don’t make for interesting television. Of course, it doesn’t help that Danny and Lindsay have none of the heat Eric and Calleigh do on CSI: Miami or any of the deep connection Sara and Grissom shared on CSI. I’m hopeful that the return of Shane Casey alluded to in “Flag on the Play” will spell the return of a more dynamic storyline for Danny, who really is at his best when he’s under duress. Certainly it will be more compelling that having Danny quipping that he gets to scour the lingerie football players’ website because he’s “married.”

Danny does have a great line about Adam, delivered as he talks to Stella after he’s developed the film from Estelle’s camera. He tells Stella that Mac had originally assigned Adam the task, but the “kid” had no idea what Mac was talking about. “The digital generation,” Danny shakes his head. The comment is doubly amusing given that Danny isn’t that much older than Adam, and there are no doubt many high tech devices that Adam knows his way around—like the credit card theft device in “Some Buried Bones”—that Danny wouldn’t have the first clue about. It’s too bad A.J. Buckley wasn’t around for this episode—he, Robert Joy and Anna Belknap are apparently contracted for fewer episodes this season than in years past—because I imagine he’d have a clever retort for Danny. Stella tells Danny, “I hope you hit him,” no doubt a little unsettled that the guy she spent the night with in “Epilogue” doesn’t know how to develop a roll of film.

There’s some fun had at the Sanguine’s expense, but not as much as one would expect, which is refreshing as well. Mac does cast a skeptical eye Sid’s way when the quirky coroner comes to him with his suspicions. “I’m no vampire!” Sid protests, citing his source as “the world wide web.” Sid admits he has his oddities, but “with everything that’s out there right now, the idea of ingesting another person’s unscreened blood is quite frightening.” Sid might not be into the practice himself, but he’s the perfect character to put it all together, and the look on Mac’s face whenever Sid shares some odd trivia or peccadillo is priceless. Flack’s snark as ever is right on target: at one point he asks a vampiric suspect if he’s going to bite him, and when searching Estelle’s apartment he says to Danny, “That’s a relief—she’s got a bed.” Danny replies, “What did you think? She’d have a coffin?” Flack can always be counted on for a laugh—even the edgier, darker Flack that has emerged this season isn’t above a wisecrack or two.

Mac himself isn’t immune to a bit of disdain for the Sanguines. When Joseph Vance tells Mac he’s “deeply disturbed by Estelle’s death,” Mac offers a quick retort: “You’re deeply disturbed—I’ll grant you that.” The casting of Carlo Rota, who made a splash on 24 as sullen Chloe O’Brian’s husband Morris, was inspired; he brings a gravity to the role of Joseph that a lesser actor wouldn’t have offered. Rota’s cultured accent and polished poise give Joseph credibility he wouldn’t have otherwise had. Charles Shaughnessy similarly brings a somber note to his role of Estelle’s father, and he and Mac share a nice scene at the end of the episode, when Mac joins him in Central Park and brings him some of Estelle’s photographs. Once again, I was gratified to see Mac take the lead, simply because it helped to demarcate the episode as a typical CSI: NY outing, as opposed to an ill-advised departure. For a first venture into writing for the show, it’s a solid one.

On a lighter note, while CSI has test dummy Ballistics Joe, CSI: NY has a seemingly endless supply of pig cadavers. One has to wonder how many (fictional) pigs have died to help out the New York City crime lab. In this episode, Hawkes gamely tests out weapons on a porcine cadaver, getting frustrated when none of the tattoo guns prove to be a match for the weapon that killed Estelle. Each of the CSI shows has a few hallmarks, some of them cutting edge technology—like NY’s virtual autopsy or CSI: Miami’s massive touch screen display—while others, like Ballistics Joe on CSI and the pig cadavers on CSI: NY, are surprisingly low tech, but in their own way, just as critical to the CSIs’ investigations.

Horatio and the Miami team have 24 hours to determine whether a man on death row was falsely convicted of murdering his wife and daughter.

Synopsis:

James Bradstone, a former doctor on death row for the murder of his wife Sarah and daughter Caitlin fifteen years ago, is granted a temporary stay of execution just in time after the key eyewitness in his case changes her testimony. Louise Russo, Bradstone’s elderly neighbor, tells a reporter on a national news show that she actually saw Bradstone kill his wife from her kitchen, not her living room as she testified in court—at the behest of the prosecutor, Evan Talbot. Now the State’s Attorney, Talbot sends new hire Eric Delko back to the CSI lab to help the Miami lab prove Bradstone did indeed kill his wife and daughter. Jesse Cardoza, who worked the case as a rookie, tells the team that in addition to Louise’s testimony, he also recovered the murder weapon with Bradstone’s prints on it. The only survivor of the attack, Bradstone’s son Todd, was seven at the time. Jesse is convinced Bradstone is the killer. Horatio goes to the prison to speak to Bradstone, who insists someone broke into his house while he was sleeping on the couch and killed his wife and daughter. He admits that he was selling prescription drugs illegally, and suspects one of his clients may have committed the murders after he stopped selling. Calleigh and Ryan interrogate Donald Newhouse, who bought drugs from Bradstone after losing his medical license. Newhouse claims he was at an addiction meeting at the time of the murders, but as Calleigh points out, the meetings are anonymous and there’s no way to prove or disprove his claim.

Delko questions the eyewitness, Louise Russo, who reaffirms she was in the kitchen but was told by the prosecutor that she should claim to have been in her living room because a tree blocked her line of sight from her kitchen to the Bradstone’s bedroom. She was reluctant to do so, but trusted the “young officer” at the scene—none other than Jesse Cardoza. Delko is angry upon learning Jesse changed the report at the prosecutor’s behest, but Horatio reminds the two men that there is another witness: Bradstone’s son, Todd, now twenty-two. Todd tells Horatio that he was dismissed as a credible witness because at the time he recalls hearing the sound of a train going by the house—impossible as there were no tracks anywhere nearby. He tells Horatio that he recalls seeing a man on top of his mother, prompting Delko, Natalia and Jesse to go over Sarah Bradstone’s clothes from the night of the murder. They find semen on the nightgown she was wearing that proves to be a DNA match to Donald Newhouse. When questioned again, Newhouse admits he was having an affair with Sarah Bradstone, but claims he fled out the bathroom window when he heard her husband come home. The CSIs poke a hole in his story when Natalia, Ryan and Walter go to the house—untouched since the murders—and find a blood trail from the bedroom to the bathroom indicating Newhouse stood over Sarah as she died. Calleigh and Ryan question him again, and Newhouse admits he went back for his wallet, which he’d forgotten, and found Sarah bleeding to death in the bedroom. Rather than helping her or calling the police, he fled—a cowardly action, he admits, but he maintains that he didn’t kill her.

Delko and Jesse show Newhouse’s picture to Louise Russo, but she says she’s certain the man she saw was Bradstone, not Newhouse. She walks off, but before she gets very far she’s struck by a car that speeds off! The driver is caught and identified as Phillip Hale—and the CSIs learn he worked at 40 Palms, a golf club Newhouse used to belong to. Newhouse maintains his innocence, and Walter finds corroborating evidence when he ties the gold bars Hale was paid with to a bank robber who shared a cell with Bradstone. Remembering Todd’s claim that he heard something that sounded like a train rushing by the night of the murders, Horatio goes back to the Bradstones’ house with Jesse and Delko—and a wind machine. The CSIs are able to generate a high wind that moves the trees blocking the view of the Bradstones’ bedroom from Mrs. Russo’s kitchen. After getting documentation from the weather service about the winds the night of the murder, Jesse and Delko take the evidence to Talbot. Horatio tells Todd that his father is indeed guilty, and Todd goes to see Bradstone before he’s executed. Horatio checks in with his own son, Kyle, who is fighting in Afghanistan.

Analysis:

It’s been a long time since I’ve been this engrossed in an episode of CSI: Miami. This one had me from the get-go, opening with a last minute stay of execution after a witness’s false testimony gets exposed on a national news show. Jesse is sure the guy is guilty, but reopening the case turns up another likely suspect, and Delko is having doubts. Both James Bradstone and Donald Newhouse seem like genuinely viable suspects. If the episode loses a little steam in the fourth act once it becomes obvious that Bradstone is indeed the killer, that’s only because what has come before is so genuinely suspenseful. The initial teaser hooked me right away, but even more importantly, what followed built on that, layering in doubts and creating genuine confusion—the good kind—in the viewer’s mind. Until those gold bars were traced back to someone Bradstone knew in jail, it was anyone’s guess who the killer was. That’s good plotting.

The teaser itself is a fun little treat for the fans, not simply introducing the case but also seeding in the kind of personal moments for the characters that the audience is always hungry for. Horatio is watching the news with keen interest, viewing a story about casualties in Afghanistan. It won’t be clear until the end of the episode why this story concerns Horatio, but the tense look on David Caruso’s face conveys that it means quite a lot to the CSI. Troubled Jesse is looking over a news story about Anna Kitson and her husband–the man he believes killed his wife. Jesse’s brow furrows as he reads about a reference to a “stalker”—presumably Jesse himself. And Calleigh shares a tender moment in bed with a man that is revealed to be none other than Eric Delko. Fans wondering about the state of their romance now have their answer—the hot duo seems to be “on again” almost in spite of themselves.

The memorable teaser leads into the reopening of the case, which quickly proves to be nowhere near as open and shut as it first seemed. Another suspect quickly emerges in the form of Donald Newhouse, whom the CSIs learn was having an affair with Sarah Bradstone. Newhouse seems to be tied in at every turn—first the CSIs learn he was getting prescription drugs from Bradstone, then that he was sleeping with Bradstone’s wife the night of the murder, then that he was in the room after she was stabbed and finally that he played golf at the same course where Phillip Hale, the caddy that hit eyewitness Louise Russo, worked. Newhouse definitely seems tied in with the murders, and unlike other cases where the evidence points to one suspect and then another and then another, in this case, the evidence keeps coming back to Newhouse.

Newhouse is played with a kind of apologetic sliminess by Nicholas Lea, well known for his role as Krycek in The X-Files. Newhouse seems credible if not especially admirable—especially once he admits to abandoning Sarah as she bled to death in the bedroom—but as the evidence against him mounts, it’s easier and easier to see him as the killer. Anthony Michael Hall’s Bradstone appears sympathetic in his early scenes, which creates further doubt in viewers’ minds. The case hinges on Louise Russo’s testimony, which the CSIs end up proving is accurate after all with the help of a wind machine and a look back at the weather on the day the murder was committed. Why Louise wouldn’t have remembered it was a windy day the first time she was questioned and that that was the reason she was able to see the Bradstones’ bedroom from her kitchen is a nagging little detail, but a mostly forgivable one in light of how enjoyable the episode is.

The case brings about some friction between Delko and Jesse, who worked the case fifteen years ago as a rookie. In a flashback, Jesse tells the prosecutor at the time, Evan Talbot (now the State’s Attorney Delko is working for) that the case is his first murder investigation. Talbot is able to bully Jesse into changing the documentation of Louise’s statement after the young cop witnesses Talbot talking Louise into saying she witnesses the murder from her living room rather than the kitchen. This obviously eats away at Jesse, but he quickly tires of the skepticism Delko directs his way, snapping that he’s “not to blame for everything that went wrong in this case.” For his part, Delko is frustrated by the obvious discrepancies and mishandling of the case fifteen years ago. What makes it work well is that neither man comes off as the bad guy–Delko is trying to get at the truth and Jesse is attempting to make up for some rookie mistakes.

Perhaps not unintentionally, Delko’s return feels more natural here than it did in “Delko for the Defense”. Not only has Delko found a job that suits him, but he and Calleigh have resumed their relationship—at least in the bedroom. At the end of the episode they talk briefly about how they keep promising it won’t go on… and yet it does. The scene in the teaser between Delko and Calleigh perfectly delineates the sizzling chemistry between the two, and with Adam Rodriguez returning to the show now and then for guest appearances—and Delko still working in the CSIs’ orbit in Miami—it makes sense to keep playing out the complicated relationship between them. Is an off camera happy ending, a la Grissom and Sara on CSI, too much to hope for? Possibly, but it’s nice to see that as of now, Delko and Calleigh are still very much entangled.

Natalia’s hearing issues seem to be resolved for now; apparently the doctor she saw in “Die by the Sword” got her a hearing aid, which allows her to hear Ryan and Walter talking behind her back as they go to check out the Bradstones’ house. Given that the doctor suggested Natalia’s hearing problems originated not with the blast in “Count Me Out” but from spousal abuse that happened during her marriage, I suspect that the hearing aid fix won’t be the last of Natalia’s hearing woes. For now, the hearing aid fix seems to do the trick, and Natalia is in good spirits, even laughing as Ryan and Walter gently poke fun at her.

This episode also clues the audience in on where Horatio’s son, Kyle Harmon, has been this season. Last seen working as an assistant in the ME’s office last season, Kyle was nowhere to be seen this year, and we now know why: he enlisted in the army and has been fighting in Afghanistan. The news explains Horatio’s worried look in the teaser, and paves the way for a touching conversation via video chat for the two at the end of the episode. It’s nice to see Horatio and Kyle—who were once at odds with each other—having such an affectionate chat. The scene is just one of the many things this episode gets exactly right.