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.

After a lingerie football player is found dead in the team’s locker room, the New York CSIs must determine if her death is connected to that of a teammate who died six months ago.

Synopsis:

A triumphant celebration for lingerie football team Manhattan Rapture is cut short when one of the players finds the star quarterback, a no-show for the game, dead in a whirlpool bath. Flack tells Mac the girl’s name is Kristen Melvoy, while Sid determines she was killed between 7 and 10am that morning—and that she was already dead when she hit the water. The team’s trainer, Alex Martin, tells Stella and Danny that Kristen didn’t have any enemies—just normal rivalries with the other girls on the team. Stella is skeptical of that after she finds a crumpled photo of Kristen that was clearly hanging in her locker. She also finds Kristen’s wallet and clothes, indicating she was killed in the locker room. In the morgue, Sid tells Mac that Kristen died of anaphylactic shock caused by an allergic reaction. Sid also tells Mac that he was approached by Leanne Baldwin, the mother of another player on the team, six months ago. Leanne’s daughter Natalie was only 22 when she died of a heart attack, and her mother was certain something was amiss about her death. The girl’s father refused to allow an autopsy, and Sid looked over the case results and found them sound. He’s now having second thoughts about that determination. Lindsay goes over a fleck of metallic paint from Kristen’s sports bra while Hawkes finds DNA from Kristen on a syringe from the trash in the locker room. He discovered traces of lidocaine and another substance in the syringe. Sid looks at Kristen’s medical records and finds the girl was allergic to lidocaine, confirming that the injection was what killed her. Sid and Hawkes find the injection site just above her left breast. Sid meets with Leanne Baldwin and gets her permission to exhume her daughter’s body.

Stella gets prints from the photo from Kristen’s locker and matches them to the second string quarterback on the team, Meredith Muir. Mac questions Meredith, who works part time as a dental hygienist and has access to lidocaine. Meredith admits to a rivalry with Kristen; she was jealous of the other girl because she was a phony and prone to bragging. Meredith denies killing her, but Mac has his doubts, especially when Meredith tells him she hated Natalie Baldwin, too, because Natalie was sleeping with her boyfriend. When Hawkes identifies the other substance in the syringe as human growth hormone, the CSIs’ suspicions turn to Alex Martin, the trainer, whose career in professional football ended because of steroid use. Flack and Danny question the trainer, but he insists he learned his lesson and isn’t doling out drugs to the women on the team. Lindsay follows up on the paint trace while Flack tells Mac that Meredith’s alibi checks out, and Alex Martin also has one, though his is his four-year-old daughter. Danny finds a picture online of Kristen wearing someone else’s triathlon medal, leading him and Flack to a pawnshop where Kristen bought the medal. They learn Kristen pawned her engagement ring for ten grand recently, but that a week later it was reported stolen, to the pawnshop owner’s dismay. Danny finds another stolen item among the wares at the shop: his grandfather’s Korean war dog tags. Flack immediately asks him what’s going on, and Danny admits his wallet and badge were stolen a week ago after acupuncture. Flack gets upset when he finds out Danny hasn’t reported the theft.

Stella and Lindsay learn that Scott Coleman, Kristen’s former fiancé, is the one who reported the ring stolen. Stella and Lindsay question Scott, who tells them that his engagement to Kristen broke up when they moved to New York and she started drastically changing her appearance with cosmetic surgery. Wondering if the connection between the two women’s deaths is cosmetic surgery rather than football, Sid begins the autopsy of Natalie and finds that there are massive amounts of silicone in her body, which is what caused her death. The silicon got into her blood stream and caused a clot, which caused the heart attack. Sid and Stella break the news to a shocked Mrs. Baldwin, who agrees to turn over Natalie’s cell phone. Hawkes finds the number of a “Dr. Alphonse Portero” in the recent calls list, and Lindsay traces the metallic paint to a plastic surgery clinic in Brooklyn. When Mac and Flack go to the clinic, the receptionist says she’s never heard of a Dr. Alphonse Portero, saying the only Al there is Allen Greenway, who works on the cleaning crew. When Allen sees Mac and Flack coming, he runs but Flack catches him in a tackle. In interrogation, Allen denies having anything to do with the deaths, but Mac mentions stolen Botox and Restylane packages found in his apartment, as well as the recycled syringe which has a print on it—which Mac is certain will match Allen. Allen finally gives up and insists Kristen’s death was an accident, that he had no idea she was allergic to lidocaine, but Mac has no sympathy for him. Leanne Baldwin thanks Sid for giving her closure, and offers him a football signed by the Manhattan Rapture players that belonged to Natalie. In the lab, Danny runs the prints he finds on his stolen dog tags and is shocked to find they match Shane Casey, a serial killer Danny helped bring to justice several years ago.

Analysis:

“Flag on the Play” is an episode filled with red herrings—perhaps one too many. First there’s Meredith, the lingerie football player who has a problem with not one but both of the dead girls. Then there’s the trainer who has a history of drug abuse but swears he isn’t supplying the women on the team with anything illegal. Then there’s the triathlon medal that leads the CSIs to the pawnshop (where Danny lucks into finding one of the items stolen from his locker in “Criminal Justice”), where they learn Kristen was engaged and pawned her ring. And then there’s the ex-fiancé, whose relationship with Kristen didn’t end well, but no–he didn’t kill her either. Yes, every episode has a few red herrings, or else the mystery would be over pretty quickly. But most episodes don’t leave me feeling strung along for three out of the four acts. I knew right away that the metallic paint sample Lindsay was agonizing over was the key to the whole thing—we just had to wait through most of the episode for the results of her search to come through, conveniently at the same time Natalie’s silicone-ridden body was exhumed. When the evidence points suddenly to cosmetic surgery gone wrong, it feels like a sharp left turn rather late in the game.

That aside, there’s plenty to enjoy here, most notably a personal storyline for Sid Hammerback, who too often is relegated to  simply relating funny anecdotes in the morgue over the latest corpse of the week. Robert Joy is very good at delivering Sid’s sharp lines with just the right amount of quirky flair, so it’s nice to see him take center stage in an episode. Natalie Baldwin’s case has obviously been weighing on his mind; though he deemed the other coroner’s findings sound, Leanne Baldwin’s insistence that something doesn’t add up about her daughter’s death obviously stuck with him. Sid is finally able to offer Leanne the closure she’s been seeking, even if the news that her daughter was undergoing extensive cosmetic procedures comes as a big surprise to her. Sid is obviously sad he can’t offer her more, but when she makes a note of how hard his job is, he comes back with a somewhat cheesy and pat line about parenthood being the hardest job there is. It might be true, but it’s a clunker of a line nonetheless.

Also somewhat on the saccharine side is the final scene of the show, when Sid offers to show Mac his football, but only if Mac “goes long.” Coming after what is a truly shocking reveal in Danny’s storyline, the moment not only feels out of place, but somewhat trite as well. I like cute team moments as much as the next viewer, but this one should have come before the big reveal that Shane Casey has apparently found a way to insert himself in Danny’s life—if it had to come at all. The scene between Sid and Leanne Baldwin would have been a much more powerful way to end the episode if the desire was to have it go out on an emotional rather than a chilling note. As it is, the unnecessary scene between Mac and Sid takes away from the shock of Casey’s return and also just a bit from the focus on Sid’s relationship with Natalie’s mother—and the lighthearted tone of it just doesn’t fit given the previous two scenes.

Shane Casey’s return is indeed Big News, sandwiched awkwardly between two emotional scenes or not. Introduced in “Hung Out to Dry” as a serial killer with an axe to grind with the system and last seen in “Raising Shane” when he framed Hawkes for murder and focused his bid for a fair assessment of his brother’s case on Danny, Shane is one of the most compelling killers ever to surface on any of the CSI shows. Played with a mixture of seething resentment and heartbreak by Edward Furlong, Shane lashed out at the people he believed were responsible for his brother’s wrongful conviction and subsequent suicide. In “Raising Shane,” Danny took on the unenviable task of proving to Shane that in fact his brother was guilty of the murder for which he stood accused. Danny, who like Shane has a troubled older brother, reached out to Shane after he and Flack arrested the young man, telling him he understood what it was like to want to defend a troubled sibling. Shane latched onto this moment of compassion from Danny, telling Mac in “Raising Shane” to send Danny to meet him at the scene of the murder his brother committed. Danny went, and managed to convince Shane to stand down. The last we saw of Shane Casey, he was taken away in handcuffs.

After the prints on the dog tags come up as a match to Shane, Danny seems genuinely baffled, recalling aloud that Shane is supposed to be serving a life sentence for the murders he committed. Given that Shane managed to escape from custody once before, you’d think Danny would be a little more worried that not only does it appear Shane has somehow gotten out of jail, but that he’s also fixated on Danny for some reason. I sincerely hope this storyline won’t lead to some clichéd nonsense about Shane kidnapping Danny and Lindsay’s child, or targeting Lindsay. Shane’s obsession with Danny is interesting in that it stems not from the fact that Danny arrested him but from a simple act of kindness, a few heartfelt words Danny spoke to Shane when he could have stayed silent and said nothing. I hope that whatever reason he has for coming after Danny now is as interesting and complex as Shane’s motives were in the previous two episodes.

I find myself just as frustrated as Flack seems to be with Danny’s refusal to report his badge missing. It was surprising to see Flack, who seems to have endless reserves of patience when it comes to Danny, lose his cool after Danny tells him he doesn’t “want to make a big deal” out of his badge being stolen. “It is a big deal, dammit,” Flack positively seethes, and actually storms out. Has Flack finally run out of patience for Danny’s endless problems? He certainly isn’t acting like the guy who chased Danny all over Manhattan after Danny’s gun was stolen in “All in the Family”. In his most recent CSI Files interview, Eddie Cahill said of Flack in the wake of Angell’s death and Flack’s shooting of her killer: “I just think he’s changed. I think sometimes we tend to nip it up and close it, and we have to, I understand that, but from a personal standpoint, I think he changed and now he’s different.” I can’t help but wonder if this is one example of how Flack is different; in the past, he’s dropped everything to help Danny, but here he seems to be washing his hands of the whole situation based on Danny’s absurdly childish response. I’ll be curious to see whether or not Flack ends up pressing Danny about the missing badge later on, or if he really is going to leave it to Danny to handle his own mess this time around.

Danny’s refusal to report his badge missing is incredibly childish, and shows that for all his supposed growing up when he became a husband and father, he still hasn’t totally changed. What’s much more baffling than Danny’s refusal to report the badge missing is Lindsay’s complicity in it—for a character who is such a by-the-book type, she’s being awfully lax about something that could have serious ramifications, especially since Danny has waited to report the theft. Lindsay presses him about it a bit early in the episode, telling he has to report it because it’s been a week, but doesn’t go any further with it. I imagine being married to Danny can’t be easy given how stubborn he is, but I’m surprised to see Lindsay just letting the issue go knowing what could be at stake. At worst I would expect Danny to be reprimanded for leaving his badge in an unlocked locker, but it seems like the consequences for not reporting it missing and having it used by someone like, say, Shane Casey, would be far, far worse. Now that Danny knows who has his badge, hopefully he’ll hightail it to Mac’s office and tell the CSI supervisor what happened. I can’t wait to see where this is going, and hope the return of Shane Casey injects some needed excitement and urgency into the season.

‘CSI: NY’’s Detective Flack discusses his character’s emotional journey this season with CSI Files’ Kristine Huntley in an exclusive interview. Light spoilers inside.

Eddie Cahill’s character, Detective Don Flack, went through the wringer at the end of last season, when his girlfriend was shot and killed—and in turn, Flack killed her murderer. Cahill shares his thoughts on the storyline with CSI Files, as well as where he thinks Flack is in the grieving process.

CSI Files: This has been an exciting season for Flack so far. Were you surprised by the trajectory his grief and guilt after the death of his girlfriend Jessica Angell (Emmanuelle Vaugier) took him on?

Eddie Cahill: Maybe in retrospect, I’m surprised. I wear a certain set of blinders when I go in and look at things and it’s only after doing it, when it’s finished, that I look back and go, oh holy shit, that’s kind of different for the character and any sort of involvement that my character has ever had on the show. With some of the stuff that’s been going on this year, I’ve been slightly more included than I have been in years past, just in terms that people will mention, “Oh, something’s going to happen. This is coming up for you–we’re thinking of this or we’re thinking of that. We’re not sure how it’s going to play out but this is kind of what’s getting kicked around.” So by the time story gets to me, it just kind of feels, yeah, this is what happens next. But when I look back at it now, I’m almost surprised at the nature of this story arc. We do things so concisely–there’s very little room to put air in our show, so to get an arc across like that is a bit of an undertaking, and I’m quite happy with how it turned out.

CSI Files: Most storylines are resolved within the space of a few episodes–either in a row or spread out–but Flack’s ordeal really lasted for the first part of season six.

Cahill: Yeah, and I’m happy that they didn’t shy away from a fundamental component of it. At the end of last season, it was so obvious that this guy’s girlfriend had been killed that people kind of looked over the fact that he killed somebody! That, for my money, was really the defining moment going forward. Mourning the loss of anybody sucks, don’t get me wrong, and certainly the closer they are to you, the harder [it is]. That’s its own re-identification process in dealing with that. But killing somebody? That’s a line very few people cross. So in some respect—no disrespect to the memory of Jessica Angell, God bless her—that took a little bit of a backseat because it wasn’t a choice he made. People get defined by their choices, not in what happens to them.

CSI Files: Were you surprised when you learned that Flack was going to kill the man who murdered his girlfriend in “Pay Up”?

Cahill: No, not really. To me, Flack kept it together not because he was somehow morally superior, but because he believed that “that’s what I have to do, that’s the right thing to do”–and then suddenly all that gets thrown out the window. He’s not a psychotic person, he doesn’t wake up every morning and repeat the mantra, but he was doing what he thought was right. And he believed in it it. That was his way of doing things, and then that got shattered. And the cool thing about what happened at the end of last season was that we get a dramatic moment where everything changes in an instant. For me, I got to come and do some totally different things, entirely new kinds of stuff.

CSI Files: How did you feel about how he handled the repercussions of what was essentially a murder?

Cahill: I don’t think he’s done. I don’t know how we’ll see it. I don’t know if it will be addressed again—my feeling is that it’s put to bed for the series, but from just a human standpoint, I don’t think he’s done. I just think he’s changed. I think sometimes we tend to nip it up and close it, and we have to, I understand that, but from a personal standpoint, I think he changed and now he’s different.

CSI Files: He has a really powerful confrontation with Mac (Gary Sinise) in “Cuckoo’s Nest” after Mac approached him several other times to no avail. What do you think it was that got him to finally open up to Mac?

Cahill: I think it was Mac holding his own gun in his face. “I found this.” There again Flack had a moment where he couldn’t deny what he was doing. Before he could say, “Don’t worry about it, we’re good, I’m good.” Then that is that. I think it was that moment. If the character were to go in the other direction in that moment, then he’s really changed. Now he’s bad. Now you’re actually doing the wrong thing. For redemption, you gotta own up.

CSI Files: How do you think Flack reacted to Mac cutting him off in his office before Flack said anything about shooting Simon Cade?

Cahill: I think he knew what Mac was doing. In my mind, that’s better for both of them. Mac being who he is, he’s just letting it go: “I kind of know what happened, but if I hear any more about it, then we have to put it on paper. We have to do some things I don’t necessarily want to do.” That’s one of those moments where you really want to tell one of your friends or someone you really have respect for, but that person can’t know that information for whatever reason—then you just take the high road. “I badly want to get this off my chest but I understand how that puts both you and me in a terrible position, so I’ll just leave that one for the shrink’s office.”

CSI Files: Is there anyone you think Flack can confide in about what happened?

Cahill: I don’t know that he’s necessarily looking for a confidant. Yeah, I’m sure there is, but I don’t know why, apart from seeking professional help, he would tell anybody. Anyone that we know in his world kind of knows. There was that moment when it happened and Danny (Carmine Giovinazzo) passed by. I think everybody knows.

CSI Files: What did you think about the fact that it was confidential informant Terrence Davis (Nelly) who helped Flack out when he was in danger on the train in “Cuckoo’s Nest”?

Cahill: I really like working with Nelly—he’s a lot of fun to have on set—so selfishly speaking, I thought it was great that it was Terrence. And with regards to that relationship, what a great payoff from that first storyline (in “Turbulence”). He’s truly a great guy to work with, a lot of fun to be around, and the whole crew of us just [love working with him]. He brings an energy that just makes the day a little more fun. And he’s very good in the role. That role paid off from the end of his first storyline when he said to me, “You and I are going to be friends.” I love it.

CSI Files: How do you think Flack felt when he sobered up and was fully aware that Terrence had really helped him out?

Cahill: If we really want to dig into it, there’s that moment where Flack is cleaning himself up in the mirror and he starts to make digs at Terrence. I think he was embarrassed by it. He would have to be. I do believe there was a way Flack might have held himself a little bit above people. I don’t think he was very excited about it.

CSI Files: Flack has hit the bottle a few times this season on his own. Do you think Flack has a problem with alcohol?

Cahill: I think he has a complicated relationship with alcohol. I think that this was a perfect time in his life for him to seek the comfort of our fermented friend. I don’t think he’s still struggling with that. I don’t think that was part of the problem yet. It wasn’t like whatever happened to him happened and he fell off the wagon–he wasn’t a sober guy. He had that relationship with booze.

CSI Files: He drank afterwards in “Manhattanhenge” when the team went out to celebrate at the end of the episode.

Cahill: You know, I brought that up, kind of half as a joke, and then it became a little bit of an issue. But if you had the character drinking a diet soda at this moment, then he’s an alcoholic. You’ve just said he’s an alcoholic.

CSI Files: Was there ever any talk of Flack becoming an alcoholic over the course of the storyline?

Cahill: No. There was mention of using alcohol as the device, like the scruff. When the scruff was on, the drink was an escape. I think it was just a device. And it’s a good one to show retreat, to show withdrawal. We don’t have a lot of time to put a lot of air in, so sometimes you have to go big, carnival big almost. You might think, oh wow, I didn’t realize he drank at all and now suddenly he’s got a full beard and he’s drunk on the F-train. Well, we gotta do it, because it isn’t going to be around in the next episode.

CSI Files: In addition to Angell getting shot and killed, Flack’s best friend Danny was shot at the end of “Pay Up.” What was Flack’s reaction to that?

Cahill: It’s almost unfortunate that so much happened because it just drove a wedge between characters. Not intentionally, but from a story point, we had to focus on Danny’s shit or we had to focus on Flack’s shit, and the two never really came together. Because we didn’t have storylines where it ever played out, I don’t really know. I didn’t put any thought into it, just because the two experiences were so mutually exclusive. I think because the storylines were so focused on each character, with their own separate worlds, that there was no opportunity to bring it together. But if we did bring the two characters together, then we would have two characters consoling each other, and you’d lose the experience of what happened to them as a result of [the separate incidents]. If he gets shot and I lose my girlfriend, and then in the next scene we’re there having moments over it, then you start to think they’re dealing with it. As oppose to this guy spun off this way, and this guy spun off that way and look what happened. If they were leaning on each other the whole time, it takes some of the severity out of the journey. And then Mac has that half-disciplinary thing with all of us. That character can kind of step in and say, “Hey guy, watch yourself.” With Danny and Flack, there are no checks and balances in that relationship.

CSI Files: How serious were Flack and Angell at the time of her death?

Cahill: I chose to just play it as if they were a lot further along than any of us ever knew. It was somehow more effective. It helped the ending of it play. In some ways it felt like I met Emmanuelle three days before she was shot and killed on the show! There was very little interaction between the characters. Suddenly we flirted and then the next thing I knew we were talking to IAB and our relationship came up, and then she’s dead. That was pretty much the extent of the relationship in a nutshell. Sometimes you have to exaggerate on things to get the personal storylines. So I just chose that whatever happened between the characters happened off camera. And then there was that intimate moment towards the end where they were making out to bring the audience there. We kind of teased the idea, we played with it, so here’s where we are. I think they were together. They were three months away from being engaged.

CSI Files: They were a fun couple, but the audience didn’t see much of them on screen.

Cahill: No, you didn’t. It was a shame, too, because it was kind of getting fun.

CSI Files: What was your reaction when you heard the plan was to kill off Flack’s girlfriend?

Cahill: Honestly my first reaction was for Emmanuelle. I felt bad. It’s so nice to have a job, but they’re all going to end. That’s the nature of what we do; all these jobs are temporary. When you see one end prematurely for yourself or a colleague [it's sad]. So that was my first reaction, the one that really hurt and stayed with me. I think she was great, I thought she was really good on the show. But from a dramatic standpoint, it was great.

CSI Files: Where do you think Flack is in the grieving process right now?

Cahill: I think he’s in the grieving process. Something probably reminds him of her everyday, but that doesn’t necessarily ruin the day. He’s probably got a couple somber breaths throughout the course of the day. He’s not one to burden the world with his feelings.

CSI Files: Can you tease anything that’s coming up for Flack or on the show in general?

Cahill: To be honest with you, I think we’ve gotten through most of what’s big as far as I know. That was a lot for the character. I can pretty well guess based on what’s coming up, I think Danny might find himself in a precarious spot based on something. But I think the attention will turn away from Flack for a minute.

The Compass Killer takes another victim, but Mac has another problem on his hands–Flack has gone AWOL.

Synopsis:

A disgruntled ex-employee shoots his former boss on a boat party for the company and is about to shoot another partner in the company when the body of a man falls from the bridge above. When Mac joins Stella at the scene later, he notices that Flack isn’t there and Stella admits the detective simply didn’t show up. Hawkes finds the ID of the jumper, Richard Caldrone, on the bridge above, along with several pictures and a necklace with a cross on it. Mac calls on Danny–who is now back on his feet and walking without the assistance of the cane—to go to Flack’s apartment and his usual haunts. Mac makes excuses to Flack’s commanding officer, Lt. Sythe, who realizes Mac is covering for the errant detective. In the virtual autopsy room, Sid shows Stella that in addition to breaking almost every bone in his body, Richard Caldrone was shot, suggesting his death was a murder, not a suicide. Hawkes goes diving for the gun in the Hudson while Mac and Stella wait in a boat above. Danny calls Mac to tell him Flack isn’t at his apartment, but that his service weapon is. Hawkes doesn’t find a gun at the bottom of the river, but he does uncover a compass—pointing east. The Compass Killer is back. Stella spots a man watching them and Mac calls for back up, but when he and the cops mount a search of the bridge, the man is gone. Mac finds a note he left behind reading “I should have stayed awake. I’m sorry.”

Flack sits in a subway car, drinking, until two men board the train and, seeing him as an easy mark, attack him. One steals his wallet and the other pulls a knife—until Terrence Davis jumps on the train, grabs Flack’s gun and drives them off. Terrence brings Flack back to his apartment and drops him on the couch, noticing Flack’s phone as it rings. Flack makes it to the bathroom to throw up, but he and Terrence are interrupted by a knock at the door from two of Terrence’s former cohorts. Terrence gets them to leave before they spot Flack, but when Flack scoffs at the company Terrence keeps, Flack finds a familiar face waiting in the main room of the apartment: a disgruntled Mac Taylor. Flack tries to brush off Mac’s concern, prompting the detective to throw him against a wall and tell him the efforts the team has made to search for him. Flack starts to tell Mac about Simon Cade, the man Flack shot in cold blood after learning he was responsible for Angell’s death, but Mac cuts him off, saying he just needs to know he can count on Flack. He storms out, leaving Flack to consider what he’s said.

Stella and Danny follow up on a lead: trace from Richard Caldrone’s body, which was found to be a special organic insulation used in a psychiatric ward. The two question Louise Duke, who runs the facility, and she recognizes the Compass Killer as Hollis Eckhart, a paranoid schizophrenic suffering from PTSD who escaped a month ago. She shows them to his room, where the CSIs find sketches of his victims and his wife, Calliope, who was murdered two years ago. Back at the lab, Flack shows up for work and apologizes to Mac. After the lab confirms Hollis Eckhart’s blood matches a sample from the Compass Killer found on his first victim, Flack digs up the 911 call Calliope Eckhart made the day she was murdered. Calliope was visiting Hollis at the surveyor’s office where he worked at the time when the receptionist’s boyfriend ended a heated argument with a shotgun—and proceeded to shoot up the whole office. He shot Hollis in the face, leaving him scarred, and killed Calliope. The team recovers Caldrone’s car and finds signs of a struggle in the back. They get traces of gasoline and a water-cleaning agent off rope shavings, allowing them to trace the Compass KIller to a tour commemorating the World’s Fair in Queens. Mac and Flack go the fair and spot Eckhart, but the killer manages to escape, despite the area being surrounded by cops….

Analysis:

Flack hits rock bottom in his struggle to come to terms with his execution of Angell’s killer in a dramatic way–one I can’t help but wish was foreshadowed just a bit more. We’ve seen shots of Flack drinking a beer off duty twice since he shot Simon Cade in “Pay Up”, and he hesitated to fire his gun at a suspect in “Dead Reckoning”, but other than that one instance, we’ve not seen him messing up on the job or just not showing up. While it doesn’t take away from the shock of seeing Flack acting so out of character, it does make Mac’s reaction seem more than a little extreme. Mac has been trying to figure out what’s going on with Flack since the season began, but he’s only approached him once, in “Dead Reckoning,” after Lindsay told him Flack froze up. The audience is more or less told in the exchange between Mac and Flack’s commanding officer, Lt. Sythe, that this isn’t the first time Flack has screwed up, but I can’t help thinking the confrontation between Mac and Flack might have been a little more understandable from Mac’s point of view if this hadn’t been the first time we saw Flack drinking heavily and shirking his duties.

That being said, because Flack’s problems have been hinted at but not completely revealed up until now, seeing Flack drunk on a train and really out of it is a powerful reveal. Though the expression on Flack’s face as he drunkenly regards his fellow passengers is a funny one, seeing him so out of it immediately alerts viewers that Flack is definitely in pretty bad shape—even before he gets his ass kicked by two random thugs. Terrence showing up when he did was pretty darn lucky–not quite as lucky as it would have been if Danny had found Flack in the nick of time after searching the city for him—but still pretty damn lucky. It’s an interesting choice, too—since Terrence became a confidential informant last season, we’ve seen him and Flack growing closer. Before this episode, it might have been a leap to call them friends, but there was definitely a rapport between them. Now, after what Terrence does for Flack here, it’s impossible not to think of them as friends—even if Flack might be reticent to admit that they are.

Terrence doesn’t just save Flack from the muggers—rather than leaving the drunk detective to fend for himself, Terrence drags Flack back to his place and hides him in his apartment, standing by as Flack throws up and then chasing away some of his former associates, knowing full well the danger he and Flack will be in if Flack is discovered in his apartment. Flack, not one to get sentimental with an ex-con, jokes to Terrence afterwards that he “should get some new friends—your boys are walking parole violations.” The line illustrates that Flack is feeling like his old self again, at least for the time being. It elicits a chuckle, but it also shows how adept Flack has gotten at hiding his emotions. No doubt if Mac hadn’t shown up, he would have glibly thanked Terrence and headed back to his apartment, or maybe even into work.

Pulling Terrence in is an interesting choice, one I think totally paid off. Ethical, righteous Flack wouldn’t have been caught dead in a thug’s apartment before this season. It shows how far Flack has fallen in his own eyes that he’s more or less able to laugh it off afterwards (at least until Mac walks in). Flack is no longer able to think of himself as better than the perps he hunts down, because after all, isn’t he guilty of the same thing that they are? Flack has always looked down on the criminals he arrests, and his crisis of faith this season seems to be coming from the fact that he can no longer look at himself as a man of unimpeachable morals. For the man who arrested his own mentor in “The Fall”, this is quite a blow. And yet, it also explains why he feels more at ease with Terrence, who seems to be in the process of trying to make good. And if Terrence can make good, maybe Flack can, too.

I have mixed feelings about Mac’s confrontation with Flack. On one hand, what we see in this episode definitely sells the fact that Flack is in crisis and needs to get his act together–even if the episodes leading up to it haven’t seeded that as well as they might have. Not showing up for work, riding the subway drunk and sporting a gun—these are actions that would be of concern no matter who was doing them. The fact that it’s grounded, judicious Flack who is falling apart this way is even more alarming. Flack’s flippant response when Mac confronts him is understandably infuriating, and remarkably similar to the way Flack dismissed Mac’s concerns in “Dead Reckoning.” After covering for Flack with Flack’s boss—and taking on some risk himself—Mac has every reason to be angry with Flack for brushing off his concerns and his attempt to help. The moment when Mac tells Flack he’s tempted to take off his badge and deal with this the old-fashioned way was quite a shocking escalation, and a totally believable one. Mac is furious—perhaps more so than we’ve ever seen him—and he’s not letting Flack get away with his reckless actions this time.

And yet, the part that I wrestle with is that Mac didn’t want Flack to confide in him. Indeed, when he finally breaks Flack down—not with his anger, but with the mention of Stella triangulating his phone and Danny searching hospitals–and Flack starts to tell him what’s been eating away at him, Mac cuts him off. “What you did is between you and your god,” Mac snarls. “I’m not your priest.” And it’s not just that Mac is fed up with Flack in the moment; when Flack comes to apologize to Mac, Mac tells him that he knows there’s something else, saying, “I don’t need to hear about it—just know that you dealt with it and it’s done.” Whether Mac is protecting himself or Flack—or most likely, both—I’m not sure, but he is making it clear to Flack that Flack can’t confide in him about Simon Cade’s murder. Indeed, it’s very clear that when Mac lays into Flack, he’s confronting him not as a friend but as a colleague. Mac doesn’t know exactly what’s going on with Flack—though he has a strong inkling by the end of the episode–but his concern is with getting Flack to straighten up at work, not counsel him through whatever is eating at him.

And though that might be understandable, it also comes off as fairly cold on Mac’s part. I imagine it’s that Mac would feel obligated to turn Flack in if he knew for sure that Flack had shot Cade in cold blood and that is his reasoning behind cutting Flack off before the detective confides in him. And that’s understandable—though he was able to let the grieving mother who hired the hit man in “Greater Good” go, Mac is not generally one who gives people free passes, even those he cares about. Still, the way Mac spits out, “I’m not your priest!” feels unduly harsh, especially given that in “Dead Reckoning” it did seem like Mac was urging Flack to confide in him. Mac is prone to coming off as overly righteous at times, and this is definitely one of those times. Yes, he covered for Flack, but he didn’t seem to be willing to help Flack in the way Flack really needed help. And that brings me to my biggest problem with the episode—the too neat wrap-up between the two men. Not unexpectedly, Flack comes running back to work, tail tucked between his legs and plenty contrite, telling Mac he’s “dealing with” his issue and wanting nothing more than to regain Mac’s trust. Flack is a proud man, and though I’m sure he’d want to make things right, the implication that he’ll deal with it and everything will be fine now feels a little pat. This is obviously a major crisis of faith for him—I can’t really believe that one wake up call from Mac Taylor made everything more or less okay, especially when Mac didn’t even want to hear his confession.

All three actors involved in Flack’s breakdown in this episode are phenomenal. Nelly shows a sensitive side to Terrence without getting sentimental or out of character in the slightest. Terrence is still a tough, slick guy, but he’s concerned about the normally straight-laced detective–perhaps a bit to his surprise. The expression on his face as he apologizes to Flack for letting Mac in conveys that his concern is indeed very genuine. Gary Sinise is excellent during Mac’s confrontation with Flack—really, does anyone do angry with quite as much passion as Sinise? He makes it obvious that Mac is way past the point of concern—he’s simply livid, especially when he makes the trek down to retrieve Flack and finds the detective as blasé as ever. But this is Eddie Cahill’s chance to shine and he runs with it, segueing with subtle grace from a defensive flippancy to genuine pain over the fact that his two closest friends in the department have been desperately searching for him. Flack isn’t a man who shares his pain and guilt easily, and Cahill makes this clear even as Flack is brought to the brink of confessing all to Mac. Cahill is equally adept at handling Flack’s drunk scene, conveying so much with his expression and wisely not overplaying the inebriation. Flack is the kind of character in whom still waters run deep, and it’s wonderful to see Cahill get the opportunity to peel back the layers of his reserved character.

With everything going on with Flack in this episode, it’s definitely a good thing that this is the middle episode of the three devoted to the Compass Killer, and that the big news on that front is the team learning his identity. Hollis Eckhart’s story is achingly tragic, and after hearing it I’m definitely more invested in his story and finding out what his victims did to warrant the brutal revenge he’s exacting. I’m relieved he’s not just another crazy evil guy like the Taxi Cab Killer in season four turned out to be, and I’m eager to find out what will happen when the team finally catches up with him in the next episode—or if he’ll somehow slip through Mac Taylor’s fingers once again. And who will his final victim be? Unless I’m mistaken, Stella and Danny didn’t find any clues to the person’s identity in Eckhart’s room.

Danny is walking without the aid of a cane and seems to be more or less back to normal—at least physically. Emotionally, he still seems more reserved and less energetic than he used to be, and I’m not sure if that’s because his accident and having a baby at home have slowed him down or if Danny is just depressed. His life has changed a lot in the last year, and the only times he’s seemed genuinely happy have been when he’s with his daughter or talking about her. Lindsay is completely absent from this episode—the second time this season that she hasn’t appeared at all (the first being “Battle Scars”). Though the character is no longer offensive in the way she was in the heyday of her screechy, painful-to-watch emotional outbursts, I don’t think the show would lose anything if Lindsay decided to be a stay-at-home mom. Lindsay has never really become an integral part of the team, and these days she’s little more than Danny’s love interest (which, given that her storylines always lead back to him, is really all she’s ever been). Given the choice, I’d definitely rather see more of Adam and Sid.

The case of a missing Miami girl brings Vegas CSI Ray Langston from Horatio Caine’s city to Mac Taylor’s.

Synopsis:

After a car and a truck smash into each other head on, Flack finds a dead girl in a barrel that came from the truck. Inside the truck, Danny and Lindsay find evidence that the driver, who fled the scene after the collision, was keeping someone prisoner in the back. The CSIs recover a container of urine and notice the door was locked from the cab side of the truck. Back at the morgue, Sid shows Mac that the girl in the barrel bled to death–after her liver was removed. Mac realizes she was the victim of an illegal organ trafficker and goes to find out who in the city with the same blood type as the girl–AB–is receiving a liver. Lindsay gets a match to prints found on the steering wheel of the truck: an ex-con named Casey Steele. Flack finds a man Steele carjacked in the hospital: Joseph Winston stopped to help Steele after the accident and Steele pulled a gun on him, shoved a terrified girl in his car and forced him to drive ten miles before shooting him and leaving him for dead, taking his car, cell phone and wallet. Lindsay gets a DNA hit on the girl from the back of Steele’s truck, identifying her as Madeline Briggs, a girl who went missing in Miami. She discovered a sedative in Madeline’s urine–and the pregnancy hormone. Adam has found evidence of multiple women being held in the back of Steele’s truck, many of whom are in the missing person’s database. Adam pulls up the pictures of the women and Lindsay recognizes the dead girl among them–Debbie Menzel from Atlanta. Stella interrupts to tell them that Ray Langston is on the video phone. Mac takes the call and Ray tells him about his time in Miami and his vow to Madeline’s mother that he’d find her. Mac invites him to New York, and Ray rushes to join him.

Ray arrives by helicopter and discusses the case with Mac, telling him that the Zeta gang is behind the abduction of young women ages 19-25, who are then used as sex slaves, surrogates and eventually organ donors. The two bond in front of the World War II memorial, both remembering their fathers. Hawkes tracks down a patient with type AB blood who was waiting for a liver who was removed from the organ donation waiting list the day before. Flack goes to the clinic where he’s being operated on and catches the doctor, Harvey Fuller, right before he goes into surgery on the man. After the surgery, Flack arrests him and brings him to the station where Fuller tells him and Hawkes that he would make a call to a number and leave a message saying what organ he needed and it would show up. Hawkes lays into him, accusing him of betraying his Hippocratic Oath as a doctor. Fuller insists he’s never seen Casey Steele before. The team gets a hit on Joseph Winston’s stolen phone and traces Steele to a local pharmacy. Flack and Hawkes race to the scene, but Steele escapes. The team finds the car he’s been using and Lindsay recovers soil from the brake pedal, which the team compares to reference samples and matches the soil to Corona Scrap Junkyard. Mac, Langston and Flack race to the junkyard and find Steele, whom they apprehend after a chase. Langston urges him to take a deal, but Steele refuses to give them any information. Langston calls Madeline’s mother to tell her the girl is still missing. Mac reassures Langston that he will find Madeline, who as they speak is in the back of a truck headed to Las Vegas…

Analysis:

Following CSI: Miami’s “Bone Voyage”, the second entry of the big CSI crossover adds some depth to the ongoing story even while hampered a bit plot-wise by being the middle of the three episodes in the trilogy. If the overarching story isn’t advanced all that much–Madeline, the girl who is becoming the poster child for human trafficking is missing at the beginning of the story and remains missing at the end of it–the episode still manages to offer up an entertaining yarn for an hour, albeit one with a somber tone. The black market organ trafficking had me more intrigued than anything else has in this storyline thus far, in part because it’s so dark and inhumane, and in part because it adds another angle to the same old sex trafficking story we’ve seen done over and over again in the CSI shows.

CSI: New York is the most character-driven of the three CSI shows, and indeed, something about the conversation between Mac and Langston in front of the WWII memorial feels unique to the show. The conversation lasts several minutes and doesn’t serve to advance the plot in any real way; rather, it establishes an immediate bond between Mac and Langston, offering a rationale behind why the two take to each other straight away instead of just making it a given. Mac isn’t a man given to trusting outsiders right off the bat, but seeing Langston at the war memorial and hearing a bit about his father gets Mac to open up about his own father, and how he was the inspiration for going into the military. It breaks the ice between the two men, and brings Mac to comment on how burdened Langston feels. If there’s anyone who can relate to taking a case personally, it’s Mac Taylor. It’s nice that we get to see this moment between the two men, and that a bond is established between them before the action kicks into high gear. Like David Caruso in Miami, Gary Sinise shares a nice rapport with Laurence Fishburne, and it’s fun to see the two CSI leads interact. Like Barry O’Brien did in the Miami entry, scribe Peter Lenkov does a great job of keeping Langston in character throughout the episode.

The episode definitely deepens the arc in that it establishes that this case has become personal for Langston. He’s made a promise to Madeline’s mother that he’ll find her, and though this is a reason we often see motivating the CSIs–especially for Horatio in Miami–it’s a completely believable one. As Flack told Danny in “…Comes Around”, a lot of times the CSIs have to take their motivation from the occasional thanks they get for finding a loved one’s killer. And during their conversation by the war memorial, Mac shares a story about a mother who thanked him through tears for finding her child’s killer. It’s gut-wrenching business, and it’s clearly starting to wear on Langston. Mac reassures Langston that he’s doing everything he can, and the moment reminds the audience that Ray is still a relatively new CSI. He hasn’t been doing this for years the way Mac and Horatio have. Langston’s connection with Madeline’s mother, and his determination to find the girl alive give the case more of a personal hook than it had in the first outing.

Most of the New York team takes a backseat more to the plot than to Las Vegas visitor. Danny, Lindsay, Adam and Sid don’t have much to do aside from processing the evidence, though Danny is given an out of place, throwaway line to clue viewers tuning in for the crossover that he and Lindsay are married. When Lindsay asks what Danny is thinking about in the truck, he quips, “That you and I never had a honeymoon.” It feels like a complete non sequitur, one that wouldn’t be needed at all if these two generated an ounce of romantic chemistry together. Adam’s quirky behavior is sidelined as well, which unfortunate because he brings a unique element to the show. If the crossover did cause viewers of the other two shows to sample CSI: NY, it’s unfortunate that they weren’t treated to some of the more engaging character elements the show has, like Adam’s goofiness, Flack’s biting wit, Danny’s emotional outbursts and Sid’s off-beat stories.

Viewers who watch the show regularly know exactly why Flack is more somber than usual, and it fits into his arc this season: his grief over the death of his girlfriend and his pangs of guilt over killing the man who murdered her in cold blood. Indeed, for a guy who is usually quick with an off-the-cuff scathing remark or sarcastic retort, Flack is notably muted in this episode, though he does have one joke in the opener about “putting my Mac on this morning,” which, as he tells Stella, is better than Spidey-sense. Though he takes a backseat to Hawkes in the interrogation of Dr. Fuller, the look of disgust and revulsion on his face as Hawkes interrogates Fuller says it all. Though he’s a master of delivering those sharp lines of Flack’s, Eddie Cahill can also say a lot without uttering a word. Flack’s expression says it all.

Hawkes is equally horrified by Fuller’s actions, and really lays into the doctor, reminding him he took an oath to do no harm. What kind of doctor calls a phone number to request organs and sees them show up days later–and truly expects this could be in any way legitimate? Fuller doesn’t, of course, but because he has no contact with anyone directly, he’s able to avoid giving too much thought to where the organs he obtains came from. Hawkes, who in last week’s entry, “It Happened to Me”, was so riddled with guilt over not recognizing that a patient he saw in Central Park on volunteer duty had been poisoned, is a man who takes the oath he took very seriously. Hill Harper offers an impressive intensity in the scene where Hawkes goes after Fuller, making the interrogation a memorable one.

Michael Massee, who played the sinister Ira Gaines in 24’s first season, brings some swagger to his role as the villain of the piece, but in the end the character is no different from the villains of the other sex trafficking case–he’s just unrepentantly evil. And this is the problem with the sex trafficking stories–they fall into the helpless women/sniveling bad guys cliche all too easily. Indeed, all we see of Madeline in the episode is that she’s tied up and helpless. Steele is good at evading capture, but once the CSIs finally get him, all he has to say is that he doesn’t recognize any of the girls because there are so many of them. Evil, sure, but in a way that doesn’t really delve into his psyche. And Madeline is really just a representation of all of the helpless girls who are forced into the sex trade. Topical, perhaps, but worthy of being the subject of the first CSI crossover involving all three shows? So far, I can’t say I think it is.

Hawkes is wracked with guilt after a man he treated while volunteering turns up dead a few hours later.

Synopsis:

A man lies dead in a crosswalk in the middle of a New York street, surrounded by a pool of his own blood. When the CSIs arrive, Hawkes is surprised to recognize the man, though he doesn’t say anything at the scene. The man’s wallet IDs him as Mark Stafford, the CEO of a small financial firm. Stafford apparently bled to death through his nose and ears, leading the CSIs to suspect he was poisoned. Later in Mac’s office, Hawkes confesses he encountered the man earlier that day working as with a volunteer medical unit in Central Park. A young woman with Stafford called for a medic, but when Hawkes examined the man, he noticed both he and the young woman were tipsy, and dismissed Stafford’s problem as a minor nosebleed–which it seemed to be at the time. Sid examines Stafford’s body and can’t find any evidence of the poison in his system, indicating it was absorbed quickly. He posits that it was ingested orally. He recovers granular trace from Stafford’s shoulder, and a piece of linguine from his inner thigh–under his clothes. Danny recovers prints and hair from the linguine, and learns that Stafford’s company went under recently and he filed for bankruptcy. Mac sends Danny over to Stafford’s apartment.

When Adam finds the prints and hair on the linguine all belong to different people, he offers up a theory: Stafford was “sploshing”–experiencing food in a sensual way at a trendy Manhattan locale. Flack and Stella pay a visit to a the restaurant that hosts the sploshing parties, but the hostess says Stafford wasn’t a member of the group. Flack spots Danny across the street in Stafford’s apartment and realizes that Stafford lived nearby. Danny peers through a telescope aimed at the restaurant when Flack calls him, and recovers a bootie in the sparse apartment. Danny gets samples from the liquids in the apartment, and Adam finds the culprit when the orange juice sample ignites when he tests it. Outside, Hawkes’ friend Brian Hamilton approaches him and tosses him an extra set of keys to his place. Hawkes thanks him, and Brian reassures the CSI he’ll get back on his feet.

Lindsay is able to identify the powder from Stafford’s shoulder as insect chalk made by a Chinese import company. Danny and Hawkes go over the YouTube videos of the sploshing party, and Hawkes spots the girl Stafford was with in the park on the video drawing something on the window. When he and Danny go to the site, they see an arrow drawn on the window pointing up, and head to the roof, where they find champagne glasses and a charm with a name on it: Tracy. Adam discovers the orange juice in Stafford’s apartment contained Dimethylnitrosamine (DMN), an incredibly potent toxin when ingested. Mac theorizes that after the invite from Tracy, Stafford mixed the orange juice and vodka and brought it over to the roof, where they drank it and hooked up. Lindsay is able to get Tracy’s full name by linking her with the purchase of the insect chalk: Tracy Wallace. Mac, Hawkes and Flack rush to her apartment, but it’s too late: Tracy is lying dead in a pool of water from her overflowing bathtub.

Sid confirms Tracy died from the same poison Stafford did, and together he and Danny perform an experiment to determine how long ago the poison was put in Stafford’s orange juice. Comparing the crystallization on the glass, they estimate it was about 48 hours ago. The CSI team discovers there was an open house at Stafford’s apartment, which was up for foreclosure, at that time. Dawn Higgins of Repo Luxe led a tour of ten people through the apartment, but when Stella looks at the sign-up sheet, she notices an eleventh name: Thelonious Cross. Stella takes the pen Dawn used to have everyone sign in, but finds too many prints on it to isolate just one. Across town, Hawkes is sleeping on his friend Brian’s couch when he’s woken by an unexpected knock at the door at 2am and several police officers burst in and arrest his friend Brian for grand larceny. Flack confronts Hawkes at the police station, but Hawkes denies any knowledge of Brian’s felonious activities–and refuses to elaborate on why he was on Brian’s couch, to Flack or Mac. Stella is able to isolate a print on the pen when she finds a foreign compound on it, identifying John Simmons–a former employee of Stafford’s company who lost his job when Stafford went bankrupt–as Thelonious Crook. Mac, Hawkes and Flack rush to his residence, and Simmons runs, about to jump off the fire escape out of guilt over his actions. Hawkes tries to talk him down, revealing that he too lost everything by trusting a crooked financial advisor. Mac and Hawkes catch Simmons just as he slips. When they return to the precinct, Mac tosses Hawkes his spare keys, telling the CSI he’s got an extra room–and it’s not up for discussion.

Analysis:

It’s about time Hill Harper got another juicy storyline thrown his way. After masterfully laying bare a past hurt in last season’s moving “Help”, Harper now gets to show Hawkes in another vulnerable situation, albeit a much different one. Sheldon Hawkes is not a rash man–he doesn’t act impulsively in the way Danny, Stella and even Mac are prone to, which is why he’s so thrown when he learns he made a bad call, and why he doesn’t reveal that he’d seen Stafford earlier that day right away. He might have made a split second decision about Stafford, but it was one based on his medical savvy. How many doctors would have seen Stafford and assumed that his nosebleed was indicative of a deadly and fatal poison? Probably not many. The episode goes out of its way to exonerate him–even noting that had he diagnosed Stafford correctly, there was nothing he could have done to save him–but no one really blames him for the understandable misdiagnosis.

His mistake is in not telling Mac about his prior encounter with the victim right away, but because he’s a man who gives care and consideration to everything he does, he has to go over what happened in his head a few times before going to his supervisor. Not only that–he also tries to do what he can to further the investigation, talking to Stafford’s neighbors to see if anyone can identify the girl he was with. It’s as though he doesn’t want to come to Mac empty-handed; he’s clearly hoping to contribute something alongside his confession. To his credit, Mac–who later admits to Stella that he was indeed angry–keeps his cool and doesn’t chew Hawkes out. He doesn’t offer comfort either, taking the matter-of-fact approach instead by telling Hawkes he can’t go back and save Stafford–all he can do is catch his killer.

Hawkes is wracked with guilt throughout the episode, imagining both Stafford and Tracy sitting up and saying to him, “You could have saved me.” The flashes are abrupt and jarring, physical manifestations of the sharp pangs of guilt Hawkes feels as he looks at the two victims. At the end of the episode, Hawkes is given a chance to redeem himself when John Simmons is ready to jump and Hawkes actually does act impulsively by opening up about the secret he’s been keeping for an entire month: that he lost a great deal of money to a crooked financial advisor. Hawkes’ split second decision to open up to Simmons gives the man enough pause that Mac and Hawkes are able to make it to him in time to pull him to safety. Saving a life–albeit not by medical means and in a way that’s quite unexpected for Hawkes–is just what the good doctor needs to restore his faith in himself.

Hawkes is definitely a proud man, which is what makes it so hard for him to ask anyone for help. Rather than turning to Danny, who expresses concern anytime he notices Hawkes is down, or Mac, who might be a hard man in many ways but has always expressed care for his colleagues and friends, Hawkes calls on an old graduate school acquaintance he isn’t close to, because it’s easier to explain his troubles to and ask for a favor from someone he’s not as close to–someone who, after he does get back on his feet, he won’t have to see on a daily basis and be reminded of the difficult times. Indeed, when he is confronted by the people he works with, he clams up, refusing to tell Flack, who takes the hard line with him, or Mac, who is more gentle but equally straightforward, what’s going on.

It’s Stella who is the most thrown by Hawkes’ actions–she’s always looked at him as someone who is both reliable and upfront. Stella tells Mac she’s not sure what to say to Hawkes–a common theme for her this season, it seems. Flack is one of her closest friends, but she hasn’t said anything to him about his out-of-character behavior, commenting about it to Mac instead. She’s queried Hawkes and Lindsay about Danny’s condition rather than asking Danny himself how he’s doing. While Stella might be more passionate and reactive than Mac, I think she’s equally uncomfortable around raw emotion–which is part of the reason she and Mac get along so well. She can confront Mac about bottling things up because she does the same thing–whereas confronting someone like Danny, who will pour his heart out at the slightest invitation is much more difficult for her. She’s able to talk to Hawkes once she’s made aware of exactly what’s going on with him, but she wants to know what she’s walking into.

But it’s Mac who does something truly unexpected when he tosses Hawkes the keys to his apartment, pointing out that he’s got a spare room–and that it’s not up for discussion. That’s a far cry from the Mac in season two’s “All Access”, who offered to get Stella a hotel room after she was attacked–rather than opening up his own home to her. Mac has been slowly opening up as a character throughout the series, growing more comfortable with emotions he once held at bay. Oh, he’s still plenty righteous and judgmental at times, but he’s a lot less rigid than he used to be, and more understanding. Would the Mac Taylor of a few seasons ago have resisted the urge to let his anger show when Hawkes came to him after the fact to admit he’d seen the victim? Probably not.

Danny seems cheerier this week than he has since the season began: he’s even able to crack a joke about his condition. After Mac tells him to go check out Stafford’s apartment, Danny quips, “I’ll hobble my way over.” Though he’s developed the somewhat irritating habit of calling everyone “buddy” or “bud”–he does it with both Flack and Hawkes here, and did with Flack in the previous episode, “Battle Scars”–it’s nice to see him more chipper… and it certainly beats out the overplayed “Montana.” Ever sensitive to the moods of others, Danny expresses concern for both Hawkes and Flack here, albeit the latter in a much more roundabout way. Noticing Hawkes’ pensiveness, Danny asks him if he’s okay and tries to make the good doctor laugh with a joke about the sploshing being “a disgrace to Italian cuisine.” With Flack, he’s much more subtle. Before he hangs up the phone with Flack, Danny ventures, “You be careful over there, buddy.” Flack, used to being the one concerned about Danny, and not accustomed to or comfortable with it going the other way, retorts, “Who, me?” Danny persists with a simple, “Yeah.” In their friendship, where Flack is so often the one checking up on and caring for Danny, the small exchange is significant.

Flack remains noticeably troubled–clearly grossed out by the sploshing (Flack has always been particular about his food and doesn’t seem to care for experimentation or tampering of any kind) and hostile with Hawkes after he brings him back to the station from Brian’s apartment. And yet when Flack spots Danny in Stafford’s apartment, an unabashedly wide grin spreads across his face. The only other big, genuine smile we’ve seen from Flack was in “Battle Scars”–again, directed at Danny as he’s arresting Al Santiago. I can’t help but hope that Danny plays some part in pulling Flack back from the ledge he appears to be teetering on. Eddie Cahill–who is doing such a marvelous job with Flack’s gradual downward spiral–and Carmine Giovinazzo have really made Flack and Danny’s friendship one of the most believable, deep relationships on the show. Their friendship is one of the few things Flack still seems to be able to find joy in, and it would be nice to see that pay off with Danny being able to get through the wall Flack has built up in the wake of Angell’s death.

Poor Adam is in distress this week after finding newbie lab tech Haylen Becall has rearranged the lab–which he thinks of as his. After nearly losing his job last season, it’s understandable why Adam feels so threatened by the new lab tech, who was pushy about getting her job, even after learning in “Epilogue” that it could come at the expense of Adam’s. Haylen’s presence is chipping away at the newfound confidence Adam seemed to be gaining after surviving the shooting in the bar, and sleeping with longtime crush Stella. Though that encounter is apparently being left as a one night stand (story), it’s a little surprising to see no residual sexual tension between Adam and Stella. Though I can understand why pursuing yet another coupling between regular characters might not be desirable, it does beg the question, why go to that well in the first place?

Sid gets out of the morgue for a bit to perform an experiment with Danny in the lab. It’s fun to see the quirky coroner in a lab coat working alongside one of the CSIs. Robert Joy injects a delightful curiosity into Sid that’s apparent in all of his interactions, and it’s gratifying to see him be able to offer up some non-autopsy-related help in solving the case.

November sweeps is here, and the big news in the CSI franchise is next week’s three show crossover, which brings Ray Langston (Laurence Fishburne) to Miami and then New York. In an exclusive interview with CSI Files, CSI: New York Executive Producer Peter Lenkov talks about the New York installment of the trilogy, as well as the big serial killer storyline and Detective Don Flack’s (Eddie Cahill) continued battle with depression.

CSI Files: The big CSI crossover is next week! What can you tell us about the CSI: NY entry?

Peter Lenkov: Well, obviously we’re the bridge between the beginning in Miami and the end in Vegas. And what we wanted to do in our installment was brand it in a certain way. Give it a true identity so you knew you were watching a NY episode. For that, we shot a lot of scenes in New York. We also ramped up the stakes and gave Ray a bit of an arc. It was also important for us to add a new dimension to the story, so we just didn’t continue what happened in Miami, but added something significant to the storyline. Another piece to the puzzle. But what makes me most proud of this ep is the action component. It’s CSI: NY on steroids. Lots of hero moments. Hope the fans enjoy it as much as we did making it.

CSI Files: What can we expect when CSI: NY lead Mac Taylor (Gary Sinise) teams up with Ray Langston?

Lenkov: Besides the immediate bonding, there’s lots of action from this dynamic duo.

CSI Files: Sweeps will also see the return of the Compass Killer. What can you tease about his reappearance and the team’s pursuit of him?

Lenkov: All I can say is you won’t see the twist coming. This is a story where you might think you know the villain — but you don’t.

CSI Files: Last season ended with a bang, literally, when shots were fired into the bar where the team was toasting Angell’s (Emmanuelle Vaugier) life. When and how was it decided that Danny (Carmine Giovinazzo) would be the one who got shot?

Lenkov: About midway through last season, we discussed the idea of Danny getting shot, and perhaps learning to walk (again) at the same time as his daughter is taking her first steps. It just morphed from there.

CSI Files: Was there ever any talk of killing the character?

Lenkov: Danny? Never.

CSI Files: Danny went from a wheelchair to walking in four episodes, after being given a ten percent chance of walking again. Why did his recovery take place in such a short amount of time?

Lenkov: Four episodes don’t necessarily translate into four weeks, in the same way four episodes of 24 don’t translate into four weeks, but four hours. I think we did enough research on the injury and recovery to justify our storytelling.

CSI Files: Will there be any other ramifications of the shooting for Danny?

Lenkov: Absolutely. It’s something we’re addressing.

CSI Files: Lindsay (Anna Belknap) was back in action in “Dead Reckoning” in a way we haven’t seen her since season two. Can we expect more of that?

Lenkov: We love it when Lindsay gets to mix it up in the field… so yes, it’s something we want to continue with.

CSI Files: One of the most compelling stories this season has been Flack’s struggle with Angell’s death and his execution of her killer. It’s very clear he’s not okay–will his struggle continue to play out?

Lenkov: Absolutely. Eddie’s got a great arc this season with regard to his grief. You’ll see this come to a head in 608, a really powerful episode written by Zach Reiter and newcomer Aaron Thomas.

CSI Files: Up until this season, Flack has arguably been the show’s most grounded character. What factored into the decision to send him over the edge?

Lenkov: Exactly that… he was the most grounded and dealing with the situation this way felt very real. We all knew that seeing Flack in this condition would be a shock, but all that stems from the fact that Eddie has given so much to that character.

CSI Files: What was the reasoning behind the introduction of crime scene cleaner turned lab tech Haylen Becall (Sarah Carter)?

Lenkov: We have always looked to start new seasons with something fresh. That could be a new lab, new arc, or new recurring character.

CSI Files: We’ve heard Hawkes (Hill Harper) has a big storyline coming up–can you tease that a bit?

Lenkov: This is also the year of Hill Harper. He’s got multiple big stories ahead. I’d rather let the press department unveil those as they see fit… but we are very proud of his character development this season.

Synopsis:

Deborah Carter’s murder of her husband Kevin appears to be an open-and-shut case. After Kevin returned from a business trip, Deborah cooked him his favorite meal for dinner and greeted him with passion–only to discover a ring and a card from another woman in the pocket of his jacket. Deborah made good on her vow to kill him if he ever cheated on her, stabbing him seventeen times. The next morning, Deborah turns herself in. When Stella discovers another woman’s DNA on swabs taken from a piece of bread Kevin took a bite out of and the murder weapon, she calls Mac to tell him Deborah had an accomplice. Mac and Flack vigorously question her, but Deborah vehemently denies that anyone helped her. After Mac leaves the room, Flack asks her if she regrets the murder, and she tells him she doesn’t. Danny struggles in physical therapy and gives up for the day–only to receive a lecture from Hawkes, who tells him he needs to push himself if he wants to get out of the wheelchair. Sid finds a partially digested dinner in Kevin Carter’s stomach, while Haylen Becall notices that the food Deborah made him was never touched. Stella and Mac surmise he was having an affair, which might explain the woman’s DNA on the bread, but not the knife.

Hawkes searches the database and finds a shocking 21 hits in CODIS from the DNA from their mystery woman. The team has a one-woman crime spree on their hands. Hawkes ties her to eleven homicides, eight burglaries, and two robberies–in seven different jurisdictions. Chief Brigham Sinclair urges Mac to come up with a suspect–he’s under pressure to give a press conference about the case. Stella and Flack search nearby buildings for Kevin Carter’s mistress and are surprised when a pretty young woman named Zoya who tells them Kevin is her husband. When they question her, she’s shocked to find her husband of one year was actually married to someone else. Flack tells Mac he buys her story: Kevin used his dead brother’s social security number to create two separate identities for himself. Zoya’s DNA proves to not be a match to their killer’s, forcing the CSIs to look elsewhere. Lindsay gets a lead when she finds three of the victims received packages from a company called World Send with cocaine from the same batch in them. All three were delivered by the same World Send employee: Marcia Vasquez, who has a criminal record.

Flack and Lindsay track down Marcia, only to have her flee. Flack corners her in a restaurant but she grabs a knife and holds him off. Despite her threat that he’d better shoot her or she’ll kill him, Flack is unable to pull the trigger. Lindsay tackles Marcia from behind, taking her down, but at the police station she tells Mac that Flack froze. While Stella interrogates Marcia, Mac confronts Flack, who insists he’s fine. Mac notices Marcia get distinctly uncomfortable when shown the pictures of the drug dealers, but she doesn’t react to the photos of the other victims, and denies knowing the Carters. Haylen finds evidence that clears her of one of the other crimes: she was delivering a World Send package at the time. She couldn’t have been in two places at the same time. Stymied, Mac catches sight of a lab worker using a white cotton swab, and gets an idea. He heads to the factory in Brooklyn and discovers one of the young women working there touching the cotton without gloves. The “Phantom Killer” is nothing more than a factory worker contaminating the swabs the CSIs use with her DNA. Sinclair tells a relieved press that there is no serial killer. Haylen cleans up the Carters’ apartment and is confronted by a distraught Zoya, who tells her if Deborah hadn’t killed him, she would have. While Flack drowns his troubles in alcohol at a local bar, Lindsay wakes up to discover Danny in Lucy’s room, holding their daughter–standing up.

Analysis:

Well, here’s one we haven’t seen before! The CSIs hunt a woman on a crime spree only to discover the “Phantom Killer” isn’t a killer at all but a girl working in a factory that makes the swabs the labs use contaminated a whole bunch of them because she wasn’t wearing gloves when she handled the cotton. Kudos to writer John Dove for coming up with a story we haven’t really seen before in the CSI franchise–and building a strong story around the biggest of red herrings. It’s fun to watch the team scramble around as the case grows bigger and more perplexing only to find their diabolical suspect isn’t a vicious killer at all, but a diminutive girl whose hands were irritated by the gloves.

My only real quibble with the episode is more of an overall problem with the show: the near-divine wisdom of Mac Taylor. To see him look across the lab and notice a tech using a swab and have an a-ha! moment rather than say, going through the boxes of evidence and finding all the DNA was collected using cotton swabs or even reaching for a swab himself to examine, feels ridiculously convenient. Yes, Mac is sharp and observant, but lately he feels like the second coming of Horatio Caine, who can practically tell a guilty party just by looking at him or her. With prescience like that, who needs forensics? The original managed to avoid this problem (at least until the departure of Grissom; the jury is still out on super-CSI Langston), but the spin-offs tend to make their leading men unrealistically infallible.

The rest of the episode is pitch perfect, starting with Mia Kirshner’s brilliant turn as a woman scorned. I loved her calm certainty–she didn’t have a single regret about stabbing her two-timing ex-husband to death. “Was it that many?” she asks absently when told that she stabbed her husband seventeen times. Not only did she kill him, but afterwards she took herself to the Ritz, had some wine and stayed the night–and then woke up the next day and turned herself in. She’s definitely a cool customer, to the point that after Mac leaves the room, Flack asks her if she would do it again. “All seventeen times,” she answers, going on to tell him regrets are a waste of time and that it’s impossible to change the past. Flack tells her that when she closes her eyes, it’s going to haunt her.

Flack knows what he’s talking about; he’s haunted by two deaths–that of Jessica Angell and that of her killer, whom Flack shot point blank. Though he seemed dead certain of what he was doing when he shot Simon Cade in “Pay Up” after realizing Cade was the man who killed Jessica, that shooting has been eating away at him this season. There’s no question Flack is different, but Eddie Cahill manages to get that across without changing his mannerisms in a way that’s too extreme. Flack is more tense, angrier, and in some ways more thoughtful than he was before. Flack has never been a character that has much use for grey areas, but lately he’s been living in one–how else could he justify what his old code of ethics would define as murder?

His question to Deborah isn’t the only indication that the shooting of Cade is weighing on him: when he confronts Marcia Vasquez, who is wielding a knife and threatening him, he finds himself unable to shoot her. I’m not sure the situation was as dire as Lindsay paints it to Mac–though Marcia was verbally threatening Flack and wielding the knife, it’s not like she lunged at him or made a move to stab him. Indeed, knife versus gun at that range seems like a fairly uneven standoff. It’s not clear how it would have ended had Lindsay not tackled Marcia, but I’m just not sure about her assertion that Marcia “easily” could have killed Flack.

When Mac confronts Flack, the detective is cagey and defensive. He’s irritated that he’s being “second guessed for not killing someone.” Mac tells him if Lindsay hadn’t acted, he and Flack might be having the conversation in the emergency room–or not at all. Despite Mac’s appeal, Flack retreats behind a professional shield, saying to the CSI that unless he wants to make it official, he’s got nothing else to say. Flack isn’t an easy person to get to open up if he doesn’t want to, and Mac isn’t especially skilled at initiating deep heart-to-heart conversations. Stella and Danny, the more emotional, warm characters on the show, are much better at reaching out in that way than Mac is. But Mac tries anyway, because it’s pretty obvious that Flack is not okay, though he does a good job of pretending he is. Unlike Mac, whose anger can get out of control, or Danny, who just falls apart, Flack puts up a pretty good front.

The episode leaves Flack at a bar, drinking a beer alone. While seeing a character in a television drama drinking alone is never a good thing, I don’t get the feeling Flack has fallen too far… yet. He’s drinking a beer, which hardly feels like the choice beverage of an alcoholic. But he’s drinking alone, isolated, wrestling with feelings of anger and guilt. Flack is going down a dangerous path, but gradually–and realistically. People like Flack, who pride themselves on being in control of every situation, rarely come apart all at once. Rather, they come apart piece by piece, slowly but eventually–if they don’t stop themselves–totally. The writers and Cahill deserve praise for giving Flack’s plight the gradual build it needs.

If only the same was true of Danny Messer’s recovery from the gunshot wound that left him paralyzed in “Epilogue”. A mere three episodes after finding out Danny was shot and wheelchair bound in the aftermath of the shooting in the bar, Danny is in physical therapy–and already walking again. It feels too soon–a storyline that had plenty of promise being rushed. When I saw Danny in a wheelchair in the first episode of the season, I expected his recovery would make for a big arc for the season, and to see it compressed into the space of four episodes–two, really, since we didn’t see him making an effort to walk until last week’s outing–feels rushed. It’s not much of a journey for the character to have him struggle through a few episodes only to more or less be walking in the space of a month or so (from the audience’s perspective). I have a feeling he’ll be walking by next week’s episode, and it just feels like it’s coming too quickly. Surely there was more to play in this arc than just a few scenes between Danny and Lindsay in which he’s dejected and she’s supportive, and one kick in the butt from Hawkes?

That being said, what we do see here is very compelling. Danny struggles at physical therapy and then gives up when it gets too hard, prompting Hawkes to give him a good talking to. Hawkes refuses to let Danny feel sorry for himself, telling Danny that he’s seen plenty of trauma patients who would gladly trade places with Danny. Danny sulks and talks about how much pain he’s in, but Hawkes refuses to relent, telling him about a fireman whose back was broken who managed to recover. Though Danny tells Hawkes to take him to work, later we see Danny go back to physical therapy and says he’s done whining: he’ll do whatever it takes to get out of the chair. Hill Harper and Carmine Giovinazzo play off each other well during the confrontation–though Danny and Hawkes are each irritated with the other, they’re good enough friends that they’ll listen to each other, even if they don’t see eye to eye.

After Danny gets back to the lab, he and Lindsay share an enlightening scene that highlights how different these two really are. While Lindsay wonders, amazed, how Deborah could stab her husband seventeen times, emotional Danny gets it, pointing out that if she hadn’t loved him, Deborah would have tucked the ring back in Kevin’s coat and shared a dinner with her rich husband. Lindsay cracks a joke about it being “obvious” that Deborah stabbed her husband because she loved him. It’s an interesting way to show how they don’t quite speak the same language. While Danny is all passion and emotion, Lindsay is logic and reason. Not to say Danny would ever stab someone he loves to death over a betrayal–indeed, unlike Flack, I don’t think Danny is capable of murder in any form–but Danny understands, better than anyone, actions based solely on strong emotion.

It is Danny’s passion that gets him through physical therapy and to the point where, at the end of the episode, he’s able to get up out of his wheelchair and lift his daughter into his arms and hold her–standing up. In what is an undeniably sweet scene, Lindsay wakes to hear Lucy crying on the baby monitor and goes to check on her, only to find Danny standing with Lucy in his arms. Anna Belknap deftly conveys the pure joy Lindsay feels in the moment as she takes in Lucy’s smile and Danny on his feet for the first time in months. Standing in the darkened room holding his daughter, Danny looks both vulnerable and happy, realizing it is indeed possible that he’ll be able to walk again.

New lab tech Haylen Becall is apparently pulling double duty, working at the lab by day and continuing to clean up crime scenes by night. After working the Carter murder case, she’s stuck cleaning up the scene after the book is closed on it. She’s surprised when Zoya Carter, Kevin’s other wife, walks in to look at the apartment and confesses that if Deborah hadn’t killed him, she would have. Haylen says nothing during Zoya’s confession, which is frustrating given how little we know of the character. It seems like her response could have provided some insight into her, but perhaps her lack of one indicates she’s not totally prepared for the part of the job that brings CSIs into contact with the families of victims–or suspects. It’s still hard to get a read on the character–so far she’s still just the eager newbie trying to prove herself. I hope future appearances shed more light on her.

Thanks to Messers fan on TalkCSI for the heads up.

The New York team tracks a killer who makes his murders look like suicides–and leaves a compass at each scene; Flack continues to struggle with Angell’s death.

Synopsis:

An apparently deranged man paces in an apartment, writing a note that ends with “I’m sorry” and grabbing a length of rope. The next morning, a tour group on Ellis Island comes across the body of a man hanging in a former powerhouse. The man is Dario Gonzales, a night shift custodian at the facility. A note reading “I shouldn’t have tried to make a fast buck. I’m sorry.” is found with his body. His death appears to be a straight up suicide, until Flack tells the team that Gonzales received a call from his wife at 8 AM. His wife said he picked up but all she heard was crying. Hawkes looks at Gonzales’ body temp and tells the team it’s impossible that he picked up a call at 8 AM: he died around 3 AM. Mac realizes Gonzales didn’t kill himself–he was murdered. The team scours the area: Mac finds a compass with a scratched-off engraving on its back in the victim’s pocket, Stella finds evidence of a struggle and Hawkes finds smudge prints where the rope was tied–and evidence the killer wore gloves. Flack recovers the victim’s phone from Battery Park and turns it over to Danny, who prepares for physical therapy while he processes the phone. In the morgue, Sid tells Mac that Gonzales was strangled before he was strung up, and that the killer was likely very strong. Mac returns to the crime scene, where he encounters crime scene technician Haylen Becall, who once again asks him for a job at the lab. She persuades him by showing him she’s won a grant that will pay her salary as a technician for a year.

Flack does a little digging and discovers Gonzales was turning card tricks in his free time–and made an enemy doing so: a man named Curtis who did eight months in prison for assaulting Gonzales. Flack and Stella hunt him down, but the man denies killing Gonzales. They retrieve a handwriting sample from him, but neither his handwriting nor the victim’s match the handwriting on the suicide note. Danny finds DNA from the killer on the phone, but gets no hits in CODIS on it. He notes that the fluid he found on the phone is from tears. At the precinct, Flack runs into Cliff Angell, Jessica’s father, who invites him over for dinner on Sunday–the day that would have been Jess’s birthday. Hawkes is able to uncover the engraving on the compass, which reads: “Happy B’day. Yours 4ever, C.E.” While the compass appears to be from the nineteenth century, the engraving is new. Lindsay has uncovered a watermark on the paper and matched it to Preston Pen Company–but she’s determined it’s over forty years old. Mac gets a package from the killer with a compass inside. This one is pointing north, leading Mac to believe there may be a second victim. Lindsay notes that the postal stamp is from the Bronx, indicating the killer might have left the victim in that area. The killer takes his medication and greets a beautiful woman: his wife. He apologizes for being tense. She reminds him that as long as they’re side by side, they’ll always be going in the right direction.

In the lab, Mac and Haylen, with Adam standing over them, examine the compass and find trace from a special orchid on it. Adam is able to locate an observatory in the Bronx that houses the orchid–and notes that the particular building the plant is kept in is closed for construction. Mac and Flack rush to the scene, but they’re too late: the body of a woman is hanging from a rope inside. Flack gets an ID on her: Carol Hillcroft, a 40-year-old widow who patronized the observatory. Mac finds a piece of asbestos in her mouth, and Stella discovers a men’s size eleven shoe print near the body. The note found with the woman reads: “I should have written the letter when I had the chance. I’m sorry.” Mac gathers his team and tells them every effort must be made to find the killer. Flack drives to Cliff Angell’s house but finds himself unable to go inside. Mac gets a message from Sid telling him Carol Hillcroft’s grief-stricken husband paid a visit to the morgue. Recalling that Carole was a widow, Mac rushes down to the morgue. The killer is gone, but he left behind a compass sitting on the table, spinning wildly.

Analysis:

The Compass Killer arc gets off to a decent start, one more promising in what’s to come than it is in this entry. Plot-wise, it feels a bit light: two bodies are discovered, we learn vaguely what the first victim’s transgression might be but nothing of the second, and we find out the killer likes/has access to old things. We also get to see him, and learn that he’s both visibly unhinged and yet has a wife who is completely devoted to him. Some of these puzzle pieces are more interesting than others, but ultimately they add up to an episode that feels like it’s setting the stage for future, hopefully more thrilling outings.

There are times when I wish CSI: NY was more of an ensemble show than it often ends up being. It’s hard to get excited about Mac and his umpteenth quest for a killer that is getting under his skin personally. Didn’t we just see that last week in “Blacklist”? And the week before that, in “Epilogue”? And why do so many killers feel the need to give Mac clues or personally involve him in one way or another? Last week Gravedigger called Mac because he was dying of the same disease Mac’s father died of. This week, the Compass Killer mails off a compass to the NYPD (thankfully, not directly addressed to Mac himself) because even though he goes to great lengths to make his murders look like suicides, he also wants to leave clues for the police. He’s also bold enough to visit the morgue, pretending to be the husband of the widowed victim, and leave a compass behind. Clearly, this latest killer isn’t all there upstairs–but then, I guess we know that from the flashes we’ve seen of him.

Skeet Ulrich doesn’t have much to do aside from act crazy, which he does fairly well, although I’m not sure I buy that his wife wouldn’t realize there’s something seriously wrong with him based on his behavior. Lindsay posits that he’s killing people he believes should have killed themselves, which is a good a theory as any. He doesn’t seem particularly malicious, and also appears to feel a fair amount of remorse, so I am curious as to what his motives really are. I just hope it’s not a big letdown like the resolution to season four’s Taxicab Killer arc, which built up serious momentum before totally fizzling in the finale, which revealed the killer to be nothing more than a religious fanatic nut job. I hope the continuation and eventual conclusion to this case will be much more novel and inventive.

With the case lacking a certain intensity, the personal stories for the characters in this episode prove much more compelling, particularly Flack’s on-going struggle with Jessica Angell’s death at the end of last season. He’s by turns disheveled, angry and forlorn in this episode–all things not typical of the normally composed and together Flack. There’s always been something of a smooth toughness to Flack–he cares about justice and his friends, but very little actually gets under his skin. All that changed with Angell’s death. Stella points out to Mac that Flack “used to shave everyday,” but his uncouth appearance is only a symptom of the bigger problem. Mac brushes aside her concern, telling her that Flack will be fine, which seems pretty shortsighted given that Mac himself has expressed concern for Flack in the aftermath of Angell’s death. Is Mac burying his head in the sand, or is he simply taking Flack’s word that Flack is indeed okay? Mac probably wouldn’t buy that from emotional Danny, but Flack has always been remarkably even-keeled. While Mac might be playing ostrich a bit given Flack’s appearance and manner, he’s also probably basing his conclusion on his years of experience with Flack. Fair enough–I think he’s wrong, but fair enough, for now.

Flack is able to put on a good front when Cliff Angell, Jessica’s father, pays him a visit at the precinct and invites him to dinner on Sunday. Before Cliff can even mention what the occasion is, Flack jumps in: he know it would have been Jess’s birthday. In the end, Flack actually makes it so far as driving to the Angells’ house, but when he sees the merriment inside, he can’t bring himself to go in. He recalls his first flirtation with Angell in “Commuted Sentences”, when he busted out his “game” on her and she called him on it–and then went on to say his line wasn’t half bad. Though it feels a little off to see her family laughing and  celebrating while Flack sits outside still mourning, the flashback highlights what a lively and joyous person Angell was. Her family is most likely embracing those memories of her–which Flack doesn’t seem yet able to do.

Though it couldn’t be further from the way we’re used to seeing him, Flack looks good in wrinkled shirts and sporting a few day’s worth of stubble. There’s a darkness to his character, an edge that hasn’t been there before. I’m a little surprised Stella didn’t react more strongly to him, given his evident anger both when they were chasing down Curtis and during his interrogation. The writers are giving the gifted Eddie Cahill some fantastic material to work with this season, and it’s no surprise that he’s running with it, revealing layers to Flack that we’ve never seen before.

Danny is taking a much more positive attitude with regards to his trauma: Lindsay comes into the lab to find him doing pull ups, attempting to prepare for physical therapy. Initially she seems concerned about him getting his hopes up in case he simply isn’t able to walk again, but in the face of his hopeful determination, she decides to simply be supportive. Danny is endearingly earnest in the scene: he mentions that Lucy is ten months old and about to walk… and that he wants to make sure he’ll be walking right alongside her, ready to do everything from chase away would-suitors to dance at her wedding. It’s not surprising that Lucy is Danny’s primary motivation for wanting to walk again–almost since the moment he learned about Lindsay’s pregnancy in “The Box”, Danny has been completely focused on being a father. It makes sense that his goal isn’t to chase suspects again but to run with his daughter in the park.

There seems to be a major timeline problem with Lucy’s age, though–if “Epilogue” takes place only one month after “Pay Up” and this episode is only weeks after “Epilogue” (according to Haylen Becall), how did Lucy get to be ten months old? Was there really a gap of months between “Greater Good” and “Pay Up,” when there was only one episode between them? Realistically, Lucy shouldn’t even be six months old yet–let alone ten. Hopefully she won’t get aged up too quickly–the last thing we need is a bratty adolescent Lucy next season, or a surly teen Lucy in season eight.

Haylen Becall finally wins the position at the lab she made a bid for in “Epilogue,” and thankfully it’s not at the expense of Adam’s job, though it’s enough to make him extremely wary. A.J. Buckley brings back some of that nervousness he’s had in previous seasons to his performance as soon as Adam learns Mac has hired Haylen. Though the more confident Adam has been fun to watch in the past few episodes, it’s nice to see the character hasn’t undergone a complete change–that insecure nerd is lurking right there beneath the surface. Haylen remains a stereotype in her second outing–we still no nothing about her aside from the fact that she really, really wants to work in the crime lab. I hope she proves more interesting in coming weeks, because right now it feels like there’s little to justify her presence on the show.