Click the images to see them full-size. It is the exclusive property of CBS Broadcasting Inc. and may not be archived, leased, sold or distributed in any fashion without consent from CBS. It is released for one-time editorial use only.

“Sinner Takes All” — A high stakes poker game is disrupted by a masked assassin, leaving one player dead and the CSIs baffled, on CSI: MIAMI, Sunday, Nov. 6 (10:00-11:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network. Pictured: Emily Procter as Calleigh Duquesne Photo: Cliff Lipson/CBS ©2011 CBS Broadcasting, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

“Sinner Takes All” — A high stakes poker game is disrupted by a masked assassin, leaving one player dead and the CSIs baffled, on CSI: MIAMI, Sunday, Nov. 6 (10:00-11:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network. Pictured: Christian Clemenson as Tom Loman (left) and Emily Procter as Calleigh Duquesne (right) Photo: Cliff Lipson/CBS ©2011 CBS Broadcasting, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

“Sinner Takes All” — A high stakes poker game is disrupted by a masked assassin, leaving one player dead and Horatio (David Caruso, left) and the CSIs baffled, on CSI: MIAMI, Sunday, Nov. 6 (10:00-11:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network. Drea de Matteo (The Sopranos) guest stars as Evelyn Bowers, one of the poker players. Photo: Cliff Lipson/CBS ©2011 CBS Broadcasting, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

“Sinner Takes All” — A high stakes poker game is disrupted by a masked assassin, leaving one player dead and the CSIs baffled, on CSI: MIAMI, Sunday, Nov. 6 (10:00-11:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network. Pictured:David Caruso as Horatio Caine (left), Ben Hollingsworth as Jason Huntsman (center), and Drea de Matteo as Evelyn Bowers (right) Photo: Cliff Lipson/CBS ©2011 CBS Broadcasting, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

“Sinner Takes All” — A high stakes poker game is disrupted by a masked assassin, leaving one player dead and the CSIs baffled, on CSI: MIAMI, Sunday, Nov. 6 (10:00-11:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network. Pictured:David Caruso as Horatio Caine (far left), Jonathan Togo as Ryan Wolfe (second from left), Ben Hollingsworth as Jason Huntsman (second from right), and Drea de Matteo as Evelyn Bowers (far right) Photo: Cliff Lipson/CBS ©2011 CBS Broadcasting, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

“Sinner Takes All” — A high stakes poker game is disrupted by a masked assassin, leaving one player dead and the CSIs baffled, on CSI: MIAMI, Sunday, Nov. 6 (10:00-11:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network. Pictured:David Caruso as Horatio Caine (left) and Omar Miller as Walter Simmons (right) Photo: Cliff Lipson/CBS ©2011 CBS Broadcasting, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

The team investigates a double homicide and discovers that one of the victims was involved in an online relationship with a teenage girl.

Synopsis:

Walter, Horatio and Ryan arrive at the crime scene where two people have been shot and killed. Marvin Hill is on a bench, and Rebecca West is behind the wheel of a car. The car hit a fire hydrant, and water is destroying the scene. They work to preserve as much of the crime scene as possible before the water washes it away.

Marvin was shot in the temple, which suggests that he shot himself. The team wonders if this is a murder/suicide, but there’s no obvious connection between the victims. Horatio retrieves a gun that was washed into the drain on the street, and Ryan takes it to Calleigh to compare to the shell casing Natalia found at the scene. Dr Loman retrieves a bullet from Rebecca’s neck, which was stuck beneath the skin. It was a low velocity gunshot. There’s no exit wound on Marvin Hill’s head, so Tom says he’ll look inside to dig out the bullet.

Calleigh confirms that the bullet came from the gun found at the scene, so it’s definitely the murder weapon. Natalia and Eric look at Marvin and Rebecca’s clothes, and they notice that the clothes smell bad. The purple fire hydrant at the scene uses non-potable water, which isn’t fit for human consumption. Natalia finds a black lace thong in the pocket of Marvin’s jeans, and Eric asks Marvin’s widow whether he was having an affair. She doesn’t know anything about a possible affair, and she’s never seen Rebecca before. Marvin told her he was going on his morning walk.

When he analyzes Marvin’s skull, Loman discovers that the entry wound is also the exit wound. The bullet ricocheted in Marvin’s skull and exited his head before traveling over to kill Rebecca as well. Walter re-creates the scene, and he proves that Marvin was killed while standing, and he was shot by a previously unknown third person at the scene. This person shot Marvin, and Rebecca was merely an innocent bystander who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Eric and Ryan talk to Marvin’s wife again, telling her he was the intended target. She admits that he’d been spending a lot of time online, but she tried not to think about it because at least he was coming home instead of spending time with women in motels. Calleigh looks through Marvin’s computer and finds a hidden partition on the hard drive. Marvin created a fake profile and pretended to be a 19 year old Marine named Sean, and he was having an online relationship with a teenage girl named Ashley. They were planning to meet in person in Miami. They find more pictures of Ashley on Marvin’s computer, including a picture of her in a cheerleading uniform that helps them identify the young woman.

Horatio and Eric speak to Ashley Chandler and her parents, but Ashley says she doesn’t know ‘Sean’ and doesn’t chat online because she’s only allowed to use the computer for schoolwork. Ashley’s father Larry gets upset by all of the questioning, so they test him for gunshot residue and find out that he recently fired a gun. The man says he used it to shoot armadillos in the yard. He shows them his guns, but one is missing from the safe.

Larry has an alibi—he was at the DMV all day. However, he has a gun missing, so they need to figure out if he knew about the relationship to establish a motive. They find teen tracking software on the family computer, which kept track of everything Ashley did online. They find a chat log with Sean, where they were planning to meet face to face. After Ashley stopped chatting with Sean, a guy named Justin Carson logged on. He said Sean wasn’t good enough for Ashley and told her she deserved better. He also threatened Sean’s life. Walter tries to set up a meeting with Justin, but the younger man sends a decoy when he realizes it’s a trap. The decoy tells the team that Justin was driving a car with New Mexico plates, which helps them track him down and arrest him.

Justin says he was just trying to protect Ashley. She met up with Marvin already, and she found out he was an old man. He kept harassing her, and she was scared, so Justin took care of it. He doesn’t regret killing two people for a girl he’s never met because he says they’re soulmates, and she told him they could meet in real life once Marvin was out of the picture. Justin says Ashley left her father’s gun in his motel room after he got to Miami, so Walter looks through the surveillance footage and sees Ashley’s mother dropping off the gun. Diana Chandler was the one chatting with Marvin online. She manipulated Justin, and the team arrests her and forces her to face the consequences for what she’s done.

Analysis:

“F-T-F” tackles a serious issue, although it doesn’t take the storyline in the most obvious direction. “To Kill A Predator” during season six centered around grown men preying on teenage girls over the internet, but “F-T-F” takes a different route. The episode deals with two adults who are pretending to be teenagers online and end up finding each other, and things spiral out of control from there. The truth comes out when the team arrests Diana at the end after seeing her on the surveillance footage. She says it was exciting at first, talking to a young man who was interested in her. She eventually knew she had to tell the truth, but she didn’t want to admit who she was on the computer. They agreed to meet “F-T-F”, face to face, and that’s when she learned that she and “Sean” were playing the same game. She was relieved to find out Marvin was also lying, but he was angry. He called and threatened her at all hours, and she couldn’t imagine having her family find out. When Justin offered to help her out, she left him the gun and set up a meeting with Marvin. She was hoping she could go back to her old life, but instead she’s going to spend the rest of her life in prison.

Marvin is the more obvious predator from the beginning, with the underwear in his pocket, the hidden partition on his computer to hide his online activities and the elaborate, fabricated character of “Sean”; in the end, however, we learn that Diana is just as bad. She uses her daughter’s name and appearance to pretend she is a teenager, and then she manipulates a kid into becoming a killer. She even provides Justin with a murder weapon. I want to have at least some small amount of sympathy for her getting in over her head with a lie that took on a life of its own, but I can’t. Her actions destroyed the lives of innocent people.

We don’t know much about Marvin, but it’s obvious that he created the persona of “Sean” specifically to go after young girls. Diana’s motive is less clear. She seems more desperate and lonely, and it may have started with a simple desire to feel young again, but by the time she started sharing pictures of her daughter with strangers on the internet, she’d gone way too far. In fact, by pretending to be Ashley to interact with teenage guys online, Diana actually made her own daughter a target for predators on the other end of the internet connection, like Marvin. If the MDPD can see a picture of her cheerleading uniform and figure out which school she attends, a predator could do the same thing. All they would need are a few casual details tossed out during a chat session, and they’d be able to track her down. Intelligent, resourceful people aren’t always good people. That doesn’t happen in this episode, of course, but it’s easy to see how the situation presented on the show could have a variety of horrible outcomes.

Justin’s reaction to being arrested for murder is disturbing. He doesn’t even seem to understand that his actions are real and have very real consequences. It’s only once he’s confronted with “Ashley’s” true identity that he starts to realize what he’s done. He killed a man and an innocent bystander because he thought he loved a girl he didn’t even know. Not that people can’t form real friendships or relationships online, but the person on the other end of the internet connection could be anyone. There are far too many young people (and older people too, for that matter) in real life who take everything and everyone at face value online, and it’s a dangerous mistake to make. Even if most of the people we chat with on the internet are just average, everyday people like us, predators like Marvin and Diana exist, and we have to be aware of it so we can take simple precautions to protect ourselves. Young people are especially vulnerable, and it’s scary to hear about stories on the nightly news where kids get hurt because they spoke to the wrong person online.

The non-potable water from the purple fire hydrant is certainly an interesting plot device. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, non-potable water is “water that is unsafe or unpalatable to drink because it contains pollutants, contaminants, minerals, or infective agents.” At the start of “F-T-F”, water from the fire hydrant soaks the crime scene, as well as Walter, Ryan and Horatio. It provides a funny moment early on, when Calleigh has to tell Ryan he stinks, but it also provides a key piece of evidence later in the episode. Natalia and the new lab tech, Rachel Brooks, compare diatoms found on Justin’s clothing to diatoms on the victim Marvin Hill to confirm that he was soaked in the same source of non-potable water.

Rachel fills in for longterm recurring character Michael Travers (Christopher Redman) this week. Despite her introduction as the “new girl”, this is Natalie Knepp’s only appearance on the show. Rachel and Natalia share a nice scene when they test for diatoms, and Rachel seems excited to be working with Natalia. They studied her at the academy, Rachel explains, and she says that’s a very good thing. The character seems nice enough, but there isn’t much to make her stand out. Quirky characters are more memorable in such small, easily forgettable roles. Travers has certainly had his quirky moments in the past, and this week we discover that he’s a bit of a player. Rachel’s presence is explained by Travers taking an impromptu romantic weekend with one of his girlfriends.

Several of the regulars have great scenes this week as well. I love Walter and Dr Loman, so any scene where they interact is an automatic plus. I can’t help but laugh when Walter heads into the morgue and is immediately confronted with Loman pulling a boiled skull out of a pot. Walter’s reaction is priceless, and I love that Loman is so excited about his job. He doesn’t even seem to realize how morbid he can be, sometimes—or he’s too eager to care. As he says this week, “It’s way too exciting for etiquette, Walter.” Loman is always a hoot, and Christian Clemenson and Omar Miller make fantastic scene partners.

Frank also has a great scene this week, when he calls around trying to find the rental company used by the killer, Justin. There’s a quick montage of him speaking with various companies without success, and he seems frustrated and incredulous with most of the people who answer the phone. “New Mexico is not a foreign country,” he tells one of them, and he ends another call with “Jiminy Christmas”. When he’s on the line with Odyssey Car Rentals, the man on the other end gives Frank a signal that Justin has approached the counter. Frank urges him to stall long enough for the cops to arrive, and he suggests that the man tell Justin that his credit card won’t go through. The man hands the phone over to Justin, and Frank pretends to work for the credit card company. He tells Justin the computers are acting up, adding, “When those little boogers go down, they go down.” It’s a tense, exciting scene, and it’s nice to see Frank do something a bit different. His last line is classic, though; when the police pull up and move to arrest Justin, he offers a parting phrase over the phone: “We hope you have a good day.” It’s doubtful that Justin can even hear him at that point, but I love it. Rex Linn’s delivery is perfect, and I always look forward to scenes where he’s at the center of the action—even if it’s just over the phone.

See also: “F-T-F” episode guide

The team tries to track down a murder suspect and his missing victim, but they soon discover that they’re in the middle of an elaborate charade.

Synopsis:

Neal Marshall is clearly out of place in Bar 212, but he befriends a waitress named Olivia just in time to defend her against a jerk who threatens to get her fired. Neal and the other man, Braden, get into a fight, but Braden leaves when Olivia says she’s going to call security. Neal goes to clean himself up in the bathroom, and another patron walks in to see him standing over Braden’s dead body. The team arrives at the scene to discover that the suspect and the victim are both missing. Horatio speaks to Neal’s wife Jenny, who is surprised to hear that her husband was supposed to meet his brother Dean at a bar. Dean says Jenny keeps her husband on a tight leash, and he was looking for a little bit of freedom.

Neal’s car is found across the street from Olivia’s home address. Eric goes to speak to Olivia while Frank and Natalia discover a dead body matching Braden’s description in the trunk. Eric finds Neal in Olivia’s apartment and arrests the pair of them, but Neal insists that he’s being set up. The elevator breaks down, and Eric has to uncuff Neal and Olivia so they can help pry the doors open. Eric climbs out, but the elevator falls before he can pull the others out. He runs down the stairwell, but he finds the elevator in perfect working order at the ground floor—and empty. A switch was placed on the control panel to create the breakdown and then reverse it to give Neal and Olivia a soft landing.

The body in the trunk has been dead for several days, and it shows signs that it has been held in refrigeration—it’s a medical cadaver, not Braden. They find an RFID chip in the cadaver’s arm that leads back to Silas Biotech. The receptionist says the body was misappropriated, but they haven’t filed a report because they weren’t sure the body had been stolen. It was taken during transport from the hospital.

Neal calls Horatio and says Olivia is dead. He doesn’t know why someone is doing this to him, but he says he can’t trust the cops or anyone else. He leaves before they arrive, and they find Olivia’s dead body on the hotel floor. There is evidence that she was in a fight, and the fall broke her neck. Olivia’s fingerprints reveal that her real name is Lisa Blackhall. She charged the hotel room to a Silas Biotech company card, but Natalia and Horatio return to the company’s building to find it completely abandoned. Natalia finds some shredded paper in a trash chute, and Dave Benton is able to get an address for where the Silas Biotech bank statements were sent. When they go to this address, they find all of the witnesses from the bar. The so-called receptionist is actually Wendy Colton, the CEO of the LIVE Corporation, and she shows them the man Neal fought with—Braden is very much alive. She tells the team they can speak to the company’s lawyers about the cadaver and the false investigation, but she’s shocked to learn that Lisa is dead. Lisa took Neal to the hotel because it was part of the script to make it look like they slept together. Wendy gives the CSIs a folder including information about who set up this little “game”.

Horatio gets a phone call—Neal has broken into his own house. He’s holding a gun, and he’s telling his wife they have to leave. Horatio arrives, and there’s a brief standoff before Neal’s brother Dean says they’re taking this too far. He tells Horatio that Neal’s gun isn’t loaded and begs him not to shoot the man. Neal is confused—he always keeps the gun loaded. Dean has to tell the truth: he set up the game with the LIVE Corporation as a way to get his brother to step outside of his comfort zone. Nobody was supposed to die. Unfortunately, Neal called his wife while he was at the hotel with Lisa, and she thought her husband was having an affair. Jenny arrived to see Lisa at the door, and she forced her way into the room. Lisa was thrown back by the door and hit her head, which killed her instantly. The CSIs have no choice but to arrest Jenny for manslaughter.

Analysis:

“GO” certainly has an interesting premise. The LIVE Corporation exists to “solve the problem of virtual reality” by setting up elaborate games in which their clients—or their clients’ unsuspecting victims—are immersed in a scenario that feels all too real. In this case, Neal’s brother Dean thinks he needs to loosen up and learn to step out of his comfort zone since Neal’s responsible nature is hurting business at their investment firm. Dean hopes the LIVE Corporation will turn Neal’s life upside down and give him a reason to take risks and be more confident. Everything goes according to the script until reality collides with virtual reality. Neal’s wife Jenny, confronted with evidence that her husband may actually be cheating on her, tries to force her way into the hotel room and accidentally kills Lisa in the process.

Setting up games to bend the lines between fiction and reality can be a slippery slope. If clients sign up for it themselves, that’s one thing—they know what they’re getting into. However, Dean’s decision to set up a scenario with Neal in the middle of a supposed murder investigation just seems like cruel and reckless manipulation. People who are put under that kind of pressure can do desperate and/or stupid things. At the end of this episode, Neal is pointing what he thinks is a loaded gun at a police officer. There are so many ways this scenario could go wrong. Neal may be in the middle of the game, but he doesn’t know the script. He has no reason to believe that it is anything other than a terrifying reality. The LIVE Corporation may be confident in their ability to set up these games, but they can’t control how unsuspecting people might react. Neal is being accused of murder, he thinks he’s being set up, and he spends most of the episode being encouraged to run away from the police—is it any wonder someone gets hurt?

Poor Jenny, she has every reason to believe that what’s happening is real, and she sees her marriage falling apart right in front of her eyes. Her relationship with Neal has been strained lately as it is—helped in no small part by Neal’s irresponsible brother—and she isn’t going to sit idly by when she hears a woman’s voice over the phone. Why is this even part of the game? Scaring Neal to increase his confidence and encourage him to take risks makes at least a bit of sense; what good does it do for him to think he’s cheating on his wife? Dean may think that Neal got married too young, but I’m not sure what the goal is with this part of the scenario. Is it supposed to drive a wedge between husband and wife? If so, Dean is a really crappy brother and uncle. If two people choose to get a divorce on their own, that’s their business, but what kind of brother tries to hasten the process along knowing that it’s not just the adults who are affected? Neal and Jenny have three young daughters, and it seems cruel to put unnecessary strain on a fragile marriage just because he doesn’t like it. That may not have been his intention, of course, but it doesn’t seem likely that he was trying to bring Neal and Jenny closer together. Did Dean even know what the plan was before he handed over the money and signed the contract, or did he simply take Wendy at her word that their little game would work?

As interesting as the reality-meets-virtual-reality premise may be, having a flawlessly-executed “game” requires more than just planning; there would have to be a lot of luck involved. The scene where Eric arrives at Olivia/Lisa’s apartment and arrests the pair of them is a good example. There could only be one cop at the apartment—otherwise Neal and Olivia/Lisa would remain handcuffed together in the elevator while the officers pry the door open. Plus, one or more of the cops could stay in the elevator while the cop in the hallway reaches in for the suspects, compromising the plan to escape once the elevator reaches the ground. The LIVE Corporation also has to know Neal won’t freak out and get himself shot—and he almost gets himself shot several times, so it’s a good thing the MDPD isn’t trigger-happy. It’s all well and good in theory, but in reality there are a lot of elements to take into consideration. Actors can adhere to a script, but Neal and the police (not to mention Neal’s wife) are unknown variables in this situation.

I also can’t help but wonder whether Neal was ever supposed to find out the truth. It seems inevitable that he would have to know about the game, especially since he’s being accused of murder. Did the script include a Big Reveal in which the LIVE Corporation explained its purpose and what Dean was trying to do? Did Dean think Neal would be grateful for the experience? Does Wendy really think a fleet of lawyers would negate any ill effects of lying to police, faking a murder and leaving a medical cadaver in the trunk of a car? Even when she learns that one of her employees is dead, she seems surprised that she’s going to be arrested for her part in this so-called game. She sets up scenarios that would blur the line between reality and virtual reality, but does she really expect to avoid facing real consequences? Overall, the episode is entertaining, but the premise doesn’t hold up under much scrutiny.

“GO” devotes the majority of the hour to pushing the plot forward, but there are some nice scenes for several of the characters. Natalia is not happy when she realizes that she’s being played for a fool, and she’s determined to figure out the truth. I particularly like the scene where she and Dave Benton scan shredded strips of paper to locate the bogus Silas Biotech company. Earlier in the episode, Eric shares a great moment with Walter and Ryan after the thrilling experience in the elevator. The scene is mostly centered around the plot, but the rapport between the three characters is evident—even with Ryan communicating via cellphone from a different location.

Dr Loman is one of the unsung heroes of Miami. I love the way he seems so excited about unusual discoveries (such as the fact that the body found in the trunk of Neal’s car is actually a medical cadaver), and he brings a real energy to morgue scenes that could seem rote. The scene later in the episode where he looks at Olivia/Lisa’s body to determine cause of death is much more subdued, and Christian Clemenson brings compassion to the character as he laments that she was denied a long life. Clemenson has been a great asset to the cast over the past two seasons, and I hope we see a lot more of him in season ten.

See also: “GO” episode guide

The team is on the hunt for evidence to link a diabolical killer to an attack on the lab that claimed a CSI’s life in the season nine premiere.

Synopsis:

Picking up where “All Fall Down” left off, a frantic Delko tries to revive Calleigh. He carries her towards the elevator but eventually stumbles and falls, overcome by the toxin in the lab. Horatio arrives just in time, and realizing there’s something in the air, shoots out one of the windows. He and Delko are able to revive everyone but one person: Jesse Cardoza. In the morgue, a somber Dr. Loman tells Horatio that everyone in the lab would have been dead if Horatio hadn’t shot out the window. He posits that Horatio wasn’t able to revive Jesse because Jesse hit his head when he fell and may have suffered a subdural hematoma. Knowing killer Roger Starling is behind the attack, Horatio and Tripp confront him, but Starling simply promises more violence. Natalia tries to talk to Starling’s PhD student, Melissa Walls, but the young woman blows her off. Back at the lab, the team tries to link evidence from the attack to Starling. Horatio and Delko discover someone set up three canisters of Halon gas to be pumped through the air conditioning system. They trace the gas back to Dade University, where Starling was a professor, but when Delko and Ryan determine the time it was released, they realize Starling was in class when the tanks were set up, meaning he had an accomplice.

In the morgue, Walter cleans off Jesse’s face and discovers glass in his head wound. He goes back to the lab to determine what Jesse was working on before the gas was released. He finds Starling’s camera with a shattered lens and takes it to Dave Benton to recover the deleted photos from the camera. Horatio and Delko go to Melissa Walls’ apartment to question her, only to find her tied up inside with a gun pointed to her head. The gun’s trigger is attached by rope to the front door, so Horatio breaks in through a window and rescues her. Grateful for Horatio’s interference, Melissa tells him she didn’t see her attacker. The serial number on the gun is registered to Keith Garwood, a janitor at Dade University. Melissa tells Horatio that Garwood idolized Starling. Horatio and Delko chase down Garwood, who runs as soon as he sees them. They catch him, but back at the lab Calleigh finds something puzzling: the bullet from the shotgun was filled with sand rather than gunpowder. Keith refuses to talk, so Horatio turns to the “They All Fall Down” note sent to him by Starling and uncovers hieroglyphics written on invisible ink between the words. Natalia and Delko translate the hieroglyphics to “Man marks Earth ruin,” which Travers recognizes as being from a poem by Lord Byron. Piecing the quote together with other things Starling has said, Horatio concludes the killer has left a bomb on Pier 25.

Horatio and Delko rush to the pier to find a red cooler sitting unattended. After evacuating the pier, Horatio gingerly opens it… only to find it’s a fake. The bomb was a diversion to distract from Starling’s escape attempt during his transport from the police precinct to Miami West prison. Tripp, who is escorting Starling, is shocked when someone opens fire on his car. Starling escapes in the melee, just before Horatio arrives at the scene. When the team searches for Starling’s accomplice, all they find is a rigged gun. Walter and Dave Benton find the clue to Starling’s accomplice’s identity when they finally recover the pictures from Starling’s camera, which reveal him kissing Melissa Walls. Horatio pressures Melissa, telling her all the evidence points to her, and that she’ll go down for a cop’s murder alone unless she gives them Starling. Melissa agrees to make a deal, and leads Horatio to the boat Starling is planning to escape on. Starling realizes she’s wearing a wire, but is caught off guard by Horatio and Tripp, who arrest him for Jesse’s murder. The team joins Walter for a game of basketball in honor of their fallen colleague.

Analysis:

The Miami team bids farewell to Jesse Cardoza in the ninth season opener, which manages to be both heartrending and thrilling. I’ll say straight off the bat that I was sorry to see Jesse go; the addition of Eddie Cibrian, Omar Miller and Christian Clemenson as Jesse, Walter Simmons and Dr. Tom Loman respectively, really invigorated CSI: Miami in its eighth season. Between the new characters and a strong batch of stories, the show had a freshness it had lacked for a while, and I think season eight was by far one of Miami‘s stronger years. Jesse in particular had a compelling backstory: his wife was murdered by a suspect he was investigating, and Jesse was determined to bring the man to justice, even if it meant crossing some lines. Jesse tangled briefly with his nemesis in “L.A.”, but the storyline was decidedly unresolved. Though it’s still possible that the storyline could be continued at some point, Jesse won’t be around to see the killer, Tony Enright, brought to justice, and there’s something more than a little sad about that.

Though the return of Adam Rodriguez‘s Eric Delko to the team likely necessitated the elimination of one of the newer cast members, I can’t help but wish there’d been some sort of workaround. Jesse was certainly a character with a lot of potential, and Cibrian had a great rapport with the rest of the cast. That being said, Jesse is given one of the best send-offs of any departing CSI from any of the three shows in the form of a touching monologue from Walter, who sits by Jesse’s body in the morgue and gently washes his face. He reminds Jesse they had a basketball game that afternoon, and jokingly tells the Jesse he was going to “kick his butt.” Then Walter turns serious, telling Jesse he called his mom and that she wants him back in California. Walter vows he’s going to make that happen, and he tells Jesse he’s going to miss him. Miller handles the material masterfully, conveying Walter’s heartbreak over his friend’s death with a beautiful, moving sense of sorrow.

Eva La Rue also gives a powerful and moving performance when Natalia tries to revive Jesse and realizes he isn’t waking up. Her heartrending shock makes the loss of Jesse immediately palpable to the audience, and gives the scene a great deal of emotional weight. Over the course of season eight, Natalia and Jesse grew fairly close. Natalia developed a crush on the handsome CSI, and it seemed like he might be moving towards reciprocating, though he was very obviously still grieving over the loss of his wife. After Jesse stood her up in “Kill Clause” while pursuing what he hoped would be a lead in his wife’s murder, their flirtation hit a stumbling block, but it’s easy to see how something might have developed between the two characters down the road.

Much as I like Delko, and enjoy his romance with Calleigh and his friendly rivalry with Ryan, I am a little disappointed his return to the show full time was at the expense of a new character, and I wonder if the show will feel as fresh and rejuvenated this season as it did last if the focus is going to shift back to Horatio and Delko out on the hunt while the other characters are mostly relegated to lab duty. Save for a few instances here and there, Horatio has never regained the empathy and down-to-earth attitude that made him such an appealing character in the show’s early seasons. I miss the Horatio who used to sit with his team and go over evidence with them. Though we saw that happen a few times last season, in this episode Horatio can’t even be bothered to pick up a book of hieroglyphics to help out Natalia and Delko, who are poring over the books in hopes of finding hieroglyphics that match the ones on the card sent by Starling to Horatio. The computers are down, making the search more time consuming and tedious than it otherwise would have been, but Horatio simply stands by while Natalia and Delko do all of the work! The scene only serves to make him seem more removed from those he works with.

The team is certainly up against one of the most fascinating and creepy villains they’ve ever come across: devious, homicidal mastermind Roger Starling. Played with a sinister menace by Roger Bart, Starling’s disillusionment after not getting tenure at his university gives way to a full out homicidal mania. Sure, he’s an over-the-top villain in pure Miami style, but the creativity put into Starling’s evil acts definitely keeps the CSIs on their toes—and the audience completely engaged. As Starling’s equally deviant PhD student and lover Melissa Walls, Kristen Hager is every bit as compelling as Bart. Though I had my suspicions about Melissa when Horatio managed to rescue her from Starling’s supposed murder attempt, Hager was incredibly convincing when Melissa tearfully thanked Horatio for saving her, despite her unwillingness to help the CSIs. Here’s hoping we haven’t seen the last of this sociopathic duo.

The episode ends on a touching note, with Walter on the basketball court alone, keeping his appointment to meet Jesse. He plays a solitary game until the rest of the team shows up to join him. Though Horatio’s line, “This is for Jesse” as he shoots a basket is cringe-worthy cheese, it’s always fun to see the team in action together. Ryan immediately opts to be on Walter’s team, a nod to the strong friendship that has built up between the two over the course of the last season. Delko naturally passes the ball to Horatio, who of course goes on to make a perfect basket after uttering the aforementioned line. The team must go on, as will the show, but I have a feeling the loss of Jesse Cardoza will be felt for some time.

The CSI: Miami co-executive producers preview the end of the show’s eighth season and look ahead to its ninth. Spoilers inside!

CSI: Miami has had a whirlwind year, with the introduction of three new characters and the return of Adam Rodriguez‘s Eric Delko. As the show rushes towards a big cliffhanger finale, Co-Executive Producers Marc Dube and Barry O’Brien offer a preview of what’s to come in the final episodes of season eight, as well as a glimpse of season nine, which promises the return of a reviled nemesis and a love interest for one of the characters! Spoilers ahead…

CSI Files: The last four episodes of the season sound pretty action-packed. Can you preview them?

Marc Dube: I love the variety of these episodes coming up. Each has a very distinct feel and tone. There’s pulse-pounding action as well as heartwarming performances. From the high speed causeway chase of May 3rd’s “Meltdown” to David Caruso’s gut-wrenching performance in May 10th’s “Mommie Deadest” in which a suburban family is thrown into upheaval by the death of an overbearing mother. In May 17th’s “Time Bomb”, Delko’s investigative probe leads to a desperate cover-up act and the death of a city official. The jeopardy of these final four episodes will force Delko to do some soul searching and eventually return to help his fallen comrades. The finale, airing May 24th, “All Fall Down” reveals the most intelligent pathological killer our CSI’s have ever faced. Our CSIs are trained to solve a murder after it’s happened, but in the finale – each victim’s life depends on our CSIs’ ability to decipher clues that have arrived at the lab like deadly breadcrumbs. That very ability or inability to understand a riddle or solve a puzzle can save a life or seal a fate. Horatio realizes his nemesis is in a different league when he receives a clue that says his entire lab is going down next. “All Fall Down” will, without a doubt, leave you wondering who gets up next season.

CSI Files: Horatio is going to be facing a personal betrayal. How will this affect him?

Barry O’Brien: Yes, Horatio Caine does face a personal betrayal in episode 823 that goes right to his soul as a law enforcement officer. Horatio is the keeper of the flame. He is in a neverending fight for justice — a character with, truly the highest ethical standard as a police officer. The source of this betrayal, the last person you’d expect… let’s just say it rocks Horatio’s faith in his team. Everyone’s integrity is called into question. Everyone’s. And, when the betrayal is revealed, it has a galvanizing effect. The team that remains will be stronger than ever!

CSI Files: Adam Rodriguez is going to be rejoining the show full time next season. Can you hint at how he’ll be reintegrated into the team?

Dube: Eric Delko returns to CSI:Miami in May, but when valuable evidence disappears from the lab and suspicions flare, we begin to realize that Delko is now answering to a different master. When deep-seeded corruption within the department is exposed, Delko is saddled with the unenviable task of investigating Horatio’s team. Nobody’s immune to the in-house finger-pointing. This group has learned to trust each other with their lives, so when Delko presses for the ugly truth, it’s fascinating to watch these very careers, reputations, and friendships pushed to the brink. Not to mention how it strains his promising relationship with Calleigh! Detectives from Horatio’s past surface in the turbulent Miami-Dade witch hunt, culminating in a shocking takedown of a key, enduring member of the CSI:Miami family.

CSI Files: With Adam returning, will another member of the cast not be back next year?

Dube: One never knows. We write these cliffhangers to generate speculation over the summer. All the more reason to check back with us in September.

CSI Files: Ryan is going to land in hot water when he’s suspected of stealing valuable evidence from an evidence locker. Why is Ryan the go-to guy on the show for ethically questionable situations?

Dube: Ryan has often been pegged with much of the wrongdoing over the years. Why? Jonathan Togo plays it well. He’s the every man struggling through every significant life decision like the rest of us. Does he make the right choices? Quite often, no. But those miscalculations create great television and make Ryan Wolfe all the more endearing when he’s finally able to right the wrong.

CSI Files: Rumor has it Walter has a secret! Can you hint at what that is?

O’Brien: Omar Benson Miller has been a fabulous addition to our cast. We knew Omar was a big talent, what we didn’t know is how perfectly those talents would fit into our series. Omar took the character of Walter Simmons from the background right into the forefront of our story telling. Walter definitely has a powerful secret. He has a rich and complex past. The only hint I can give is that when light is shed into Walter’s background, we will understand why he has dedicated his life to police work. We will be delving into all of that from the very first episode of season nine. Look for big things, big story reveals, compelling story arcs from Walter Simmons in season nine and beyond!

CSI Files: Will Natalia’s hearing problems be revisited? What’s coming up for her?

Dube: Natalia’s hearing aid indirectly becomes a major component in exposing Delko’s covert investigation, and it winds up being the root of a growing conflict between our CSI’s.

CSI Files: Will Tony Enright be back before the season ends?

O’Brien: Tony Enright, Jesse Cardoza’s nemesis, is in a world of legal hurt. He’s facing murder and conspiracy charges, fighting for his life and his freedom. That fight will tie him up through the end of season eight. But, look for Tony to make bail and regain his freedom early in season nine. He will re-ignite his ongoing and deadly battle with Jesse. This is a dual that will have a decidedly shocking conclusion.

CSI Files: Jesse is convinced Enright killed his wife. Will we find out more about Mrs. Cardoza, and the circumstances surrounding her death?

O’Brien: Yes, we will finally learn the truth about Jesse’s wife’s murder. I can’t reveal the answer to that question without giving away the story. Suffice to say the murderer is not at all who we expect. When the truth about his wife’s murder is revealed, it will truly shock Jesse. It will give the audience an invitation to what’s behind his stoic exterior. Jesse’s struggle to deal with the events that led to his wife’s death will greatly humanize his character. Eddie Cibrian is a highly skilled and disciplined actor. In season nine, we’ll be peeling the onion, so to speak, and learn what’s behind his interpretation of the character. Jesse Cardoza is a man in pain. And we will come to know that pain far more intimately in season nine.

CSI Files: Will we see Kyle Harmon again this season?

Dube: I enjoyed our time with Kyle Harmon this year. He always brings out the best in Horatio. I can’t imagine we’ve seen the last of him. There’s always Season 9.

CSI Files: Will Christian Clemenson‘s quirky coroner be back next season?

O’Brien: It’s with huge pleasure that I tell you that Christian Clemson will be back in every episode of season nine! Christian’s portrayal of the quirky Tom Loman has been a revelation! Forgive the pun, but Christian has brought new life to the autopsy theater! Christian is a real gift to the writers. He can take what appears to be an ordinary line of dialogue and give it nuance, spin and complexity that we writers never imagined! He makes us look good! We will be spending more time getting to know Tom Loman next season. Learnng what’s behind his dedication as a pathologist. Taking a peek at what he does when he’s not working. An extremely quirky hobby or two may be revealed. And, can you say love interest?

CSI Files: Can you tell us about the finale cliffhanger?

O’Brien: I can honestly tell you that the cliffhanger at the end of season eight is, by far, the most shocking, high octane and jaw dropping that I’ve ever seen! All I can tell you as of this writing, is that no one is safe. No one. Every single one of our characters finds themselves in in a life and death struggle for their very survival at the conclusion of season eight. Metaphorically and physically, “they all fall down.” And, not every one will get up. No one is safe. Stay tuned!

On CSI, approximately 40% of the corpses in the morgue are portrayed by actors, according to Matthew W Mungle from the special effects and makeup department. When Doc Robbins is slicing into a corpse with a scalpel, he’s usually working with a silicone mannequin. Sometimes, however, the show will apply a fake stomach to a thin actor—giving the coroner something to cut into for extra realism. The organs you see in an episode of CSI are most definitely fake, and the ‘blood’ is a mixture of raspberry Jell-O and Karo syrup. “Believe me, I’ve seen the real things, and these look so close to it, especially in a morgue shot in blue light,” Hall told USA Weekend.

Over on New York, the lab received a new crime fighting gadget in season six: EDNA, a sampling library with a robotic arm that helps the CSIs identify unknown substances. (Check out this previous article with a behind-the-scenes video about the device.) “It’s operated by two [crew members] down below [the floor],” Buckley explained. “I thought for the first two episodes we used it, ‘Cool! How does it know where to go?’ I had a scene where I was over against the glass wall looking at it, and I look down below and two grips are sitting on a chair turning the wheel. They’re really big grips, hunched down in this little cubbyhole, rolling back and forth.”

Miami moves tables when they need to shift bodies around in the morgue. “Sometimes we have two tables, sometimes three,” Clemenson revealed. “Sometimes they face one direction, sometimes another.” Playing a coroner requires Clemeson to wear a lot of latex gloves, which isn’t always easy. “I’ve got big meat hooks,” the actor said. “The challenge is to find every single finger hole. If I’m in a scene and I have to [put on my gloves] halfway through, I will sort of surreptitiously wipe my hands on my sides just before I have to slip the gloves on just to help in any way I can.” In order to make the motion of putting on gloves in the middle of a scene seem effortless, Clemenson always puts the left glove on the bottom and the right glove on top before filming. Talcum powder also helps, he said, adding, “Sweaty palms are death.”

The Miami team has their hands full when spring break revelry produces three victims at a posh hotel.

Synopsis:

The Miami team has their hands full with three dead people at the swanky Ciel Blue hotel: a young man is impaled on a poolside seating area, a young woman turns up dead in a washing machine and another young man is found drowned, buried up to his neck on the beach. Ryan wonders if the victim on the beach died accidentally, the tragic result of a prank by friends, while Walter wonders if the impaled man committed suicide. Calleigh is horrified that someone tossed a young woman into a washer. She recovers several items from the machine’s debris collector. In the morgue, an overwhelmed Dr. Loman determines the impaled man was shot with a flare gun, and glass found in the wound suggests he was shot through a window. Horatio and Walter find a room at the Ciel Blue with a broken window. The man staying there, Dean Butler, tells the CSIs he shot at someone with a flare gun the night before—a belligerent guy who wouldn’t leave his party, but he didn’t hit him. When the CSIs show him a picture of the man who was impaled, Dean doesn’t recognize him. Horatio takes the flare gun and performs an experiment to determine the trajectory the victim took, concluding that he fell from the roof—and happened to get shot by the flare gun on the way down. In the morgue, Dr. Loman tells Calleigh that the female victim was dead before she was thrown in the wash, likely from a blow to the head. He recovers a room key from the girl’s pocket, and the CSIs learn that the room it’s for belongs to Courtney Haywood. Tripp and Calleigh question Courtney at the hotel bar, but she doesn’t recognize the girl, though she admits she’s been pretty drunk for the past few days. She tells them she dropped her key on the beach at some point.

Ryan and Jesse are surprised to hear Dr. Loman pronounce their case a murder: the young man was kicked in the head and knocked out before he drowned. Loman also points out a burn mark on his ear, identifying him as the guy Dean Butler shot with the flare gun. Dean recognizes this guy, telling Jesse and Ryan that he introduced himself as Paul “The Program” at the party. An ID bracelet from Walter’s victim and a print on a bead from Calleigh’s victim’s shirt lead them to the same place: the site of the Manic Beach Party. There, they talk to bouncer Ricky Halprin, whose prints were on the girl’s bead. Ricky recognizes her picture, telling the CSIs he had to kick her out of the party the previous day because of her drunken antics. He gives Calleigh the credit card she was running a tab on, identifying her as Alexis Wilkes. He also recalls her leaving with a hot blonde girl. Calleigh and Walter go to Alexis’s hotel room and find a large pool of blood—along with a picture of Alexis and the other two victims. Realizing they all went to the same college, the CSIs are finally able to identify the two men: Brad Donner was the one who was impaled, while Paul Arnett died on the beach. The CSIs get into Alexis’s social networking account and find a video showing Brad sleeping with a heavy blonde girl—and then mocking her, joined by Alexis and Paul. The bracelet found on Brad’s body leads the team to blonde Hillary Swanson, who tells Horatio and Walter that Brad and she fooled around—and then he got violent and punched her when she changed her mind. She denies killing him, telling the CSIs that the other girl, who stuck around after she left, might have. She identifies the other girl as Courtney Haywood. Courtney denies killing Brad.

Dr. Loman shows Calleigh the marks left by the weapon used to kill Alexis, and Calleigh is able to match the marks to an iron from Alexis’s room. Ryan recovers a blonde hair from Paul’s shirt, and Calleigh recalls the bouncer at the beach party mentioning Alexis left with a blonde woman. Courtney gives a DNA sample, but when Walter tries to get a swab from Hillary, she refuses, claiming she fears a false positive. Travers analyzes the blonde hair from Paul’s shirt, noting that it’s badly degraded by bleaching and dyeing. Travers opines that the three victims didn’t sound like very nice people, and Tripp notes that Jill Quinn, the girl from the video, filed a complaint against Brad after the incident. Travers finds evidence that the person the hair belonged to took acne medication and was using an appetite suppressant, leading Tripp to wonder if Jill might have changed her appearance. Dave Benton takes an old picture of Jill and alters her weight and hair color—and Tripp and Ryan recognize her as Courtney Haywood. Horatio confronts Courtney, who first tries to deny it, pointing out that she’s not blonde. When Jesse points out she was before she dyed her hair that morning, she relents, saying she pressed charges against the three, and nothing was done, so she took matters into her own hands. When Horatio asks her if spending the rest of her life in prison is worth it, she answers, “It is.” “Fair enough,” Horatio says, as she’s led off to prison.

Analysis:

With a combined twenty-four seasons between them, the CSI shows are bound to repeat a few storylines, but this one is awfully close to CSI: New York‘s season four episode “Personal Foul”, in which a pretty cheerleader who used to be heavy arranges for a former tormenter to win a chance to shoot a basketball on the court during halftime at a game, allowing her to plant a fatal kiss on his lips. At the end of that episode, one of the CSIs tells the killer, “I hope it was worth it.” That sentiment is echoed here by Horatio, who asks Courtney if spending the rest of her life in prison is “worth it.” I’m sure the writers of this episode probably didn’t see that episode of CSI: NY, and even if they did, didn’t recall the New York CSI’s final line, but it does illustrate how similar the spin on it is here. Apparently, fat girls are spurred into losing weight not to feel better about themselves, but to get the opportunity to gain the upper hand over their tormenters—and then kill them… thus throwing away all that hard work. Sure, it could be argued that the girls expected to get away with it, but Courtney is downright defiant, holding her head up high… until she actually lands in the jail cell.

Travers does have a point when he points out that the three victims were pretty nasty people—while no one would argue that they deserved to die, it is nice to hear some discussion about it, and a dissenting viewpoint. It presents a nice contrast to Calleigh’s disgust over Alexis being tossed carelessly into the washer like a discarded doll. Both have valid points: the victims’ deaths don’t automatically qualify them for sainthood, but just because they were nasty pieces of work while they were alive doesn’t mean they deserved to be murdered. Even Horatio seems to have mixed feelings about Courtney’s actions, not coming down as hard on her as he usually does when he catches a killer, nor offering much disdain. When she maintains that it was worth it, his response is a relatively mild, “Fair enough.” He doesn’t agree with her, but he’s not going to push it.

Having three victims turn up in the teaser, separate but clearly connected from the get-go, is a novel start for an episode. It’s no fun for poor Dr. Loman, who is overwhelmed at having three bodies land in his morgue all at once. He prioritizes accordingly, starting with the one that seems to be a real mystery, Brad Donner. Did he jump, or was he pushed? Next he turns to Alexis, who was obviously murdered, literally peeling back Alexis’s face to reveal the marks made on her skull by the murder weapon. Paul is last, because initially his death seems accidental, but when Loman takes a closer look, he discovers evidence that Paul was kicked in the head, meaning that his friends didn’t bury him as a joke and then leave him, not realizing he was in danger. Christian Clemenson has fun with Loman’s prickly personality; he’s truly a unique figure in the world of CSI: Miami.

Ryan, who is equally prickly in his own way, doesn’t appreciate Loman’s attitude, at least not in this episode. When Ryan calls Loman for an update on Paul, Loman huffily reminds him that he’s having a busy morning—and Ryan hangs up on him! Ryan is equally bullheaded about his belief that Paul’s death was an accident, the result of a drunken prank on the part of Paul’s friends. When did Ryan become such a know-it-all? He’s become increasingly arrogant this season, and his assurance here feels simply dismissive rather than as though it’s based on any real read of the evidence. Ryan takes a look at Paul buried in the sand on the beach up to his neck, and just assumes that Paul’s death is exactly what it looks like. Jesse seems more hesitant to jump to conclusions.

I’m not sure why Ryan’s attitude has been so amped up this season. Is he being set up for a big fall? Ryan has always been the CSI on the show to make missteps: his loose lips with the press in season three, his gambling problems in season five and his well intentioned attempts to help his gamblers anonymous sponsor last season, which culminated in a nasty run in with the Russian mob in “Wolfe in Sheep’s Clothing”—which led to Ryan making some questionable choices. He’s always been a little hotheaded and defensive, but this season it’s definitely been bordering on arrogance. Is he still feeling threatened by new recruits Jesse and Walter? Or is there something more behind his attitude? I hope we find out soon, because last time I checked, leaping to conclusions and hanging up on coroners weren’t advisable things for a CSI to do.

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

Synopsis:

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

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

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

Analysis:

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

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

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

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

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