As CSI Files previously reported, Giovinazzo did a live chat with TV.com. Fans got to ask questions about the actor and his role on New York. He and Danny are similar because of their New York backgrounds, but they’re “not so similar in that he’s much smarter than I am,” Giovinazzo revealed. However, he likes Danny just the way he is and wouldn’t change anything about the character. “He’s been interesting for me since the first episode,” the actor explained.

Giovinazzo’s favorite episode from this season was “Sanguine Love”, which he wrote. “I learned about and was involved in all aspects of the show,” he said. “It was a moment of respect for all that goes into an episode and such satisfaction from working with everyone toward one common goal. Fantastic.”

Danny married fellow CSI Lindsay Monroe (Anna Belknap) last season, and Lindsay gave birth to their daughter just before season five ended. Giovinazzo said the couple—and their daughter Lucy—are “doing great”, but he revealed that things may not stay that way for long. “I can tell you all…there will be a cliffhanger involving us in the finale this year,” the actor said.

Fatherhood has changed Danny as a person, Giovinazzo explained. “All my priorities have shifted, which can sometimes cause important things to fall through the cracks,” he said, adding, “stay tuned.” Fans should also stay tuned to find out the fate of Danny’s missing police badge. “I sure hope so,” Giovinazzo said when asked if his character would located the badge, “’cause I need that thing If I plan on making any more arrests.”

Thanks to Messers fan on TalkCSI for the heads up.

Source: Twitter

Giovinazzo thought about writing an episode of New York for the past few years. “I finally just went for it,” the actor told Hollywood 411. The end result, “Sanguine Love”, focused on something that is popular right now: vampires. “It’s fascinating, the real vampirism that’s out there, or people that believe in it,” Giovinazzo continued. “It’s their religion and their way of life, so it’s a fun episode about that.”

However, the actor didn’t pen the episode around his own character. Costars Gary Sinise (Mac Taylor), Hill Harper (Dr Sheldon Hawkes) and Melina Kanakaredes (Stella Bonasera) had more to work with in the script. “I wrote a lot for Gary. He’s been really into it and curious how it’s going and really passionate about it, which is all I could ask for,” Giovinazzo said. “Hill’s been great, and Melina—I kinda tried to write me in as little as possible.”

Giovinazzo hopes to write more episodes for CSI: NY. He’s also hoping to try out a different role behind the scenes by directing an episode of the show. You can watch the video of Giovinazzo’s interview below:

Source: YouTube. Thanks to perlnoir on TalkCSI for the heads up.

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

Synopsis:

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

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

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

Analysis:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Starting out the week on Monday at 10:00pm ET/PT, CSI: Miami welcomes back several familiar faces in “In the Wind”:

The CSIs have 24 hours to find out if a man on death row is truly guilty, and Eric Delko returns to work the case.

This is the third time Allison Liddi has directed an episode of Miami. Her most recent credit was for “Hostile Takeover” earlier this season. Producer Brett Mahoney previously wrote this season’s “Dude, Where’s My Groom?”

The following guest stars will appear in the episode:

• Evan Ellingson as Kyle Harmon
• Denis O’Hare as Evan Talbot
• Anthony Michael Hall as James Bradstone
• Lois Atkins as Sarah Bradstone
• Nick Eversman as Todd Bradstone
• Nicholas Lea as Donald Newhouse
• Phyllis Somerville as Louise Russo
• Scott Michael Campbell as Phillip Hale
• Symba Smith as Daisy Arnesse
• Bryan Friday as Reporter
• Peter Gregory as Defense Attorney
• Larry ‘Tank’ Jones as Guard

The Dead Zone actor Anthony Michael Hall guest-stars as the death row inmate. Adam Rodrigeuz is back as Eric Delko, and Evan Ellingson returns as Horatio’s son Kyle, who was last seen in season seven’s penultimate episode, “Dissolved”. Denis O’Hare is reprising a role he played in “Out of Time” and “Delko for the Defense”. Nicholas Lea appeared in several episodes of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation’s fourth season, as well as the season five premiere “Viva Las Vegas”. Scott Michael Campbell was in the CSI episode “Way to Go” during season six. Symba Smith guest-starred during CSI: New York’s first season, in “Grand Master”. Stunt man Bryan Friday has appeared as an actor in episodes of all three members of the franchise: “Blood Lust” during CSI’s third season, “Going Under” in the fifth season of Miami and last season’s New York episode “She’s Not There”.

On Wednesday at 10:00pm ET/PT, one CSI: New York actor tries his hand at writing with “Sanguine Love”:

When a young woman’s body is found in Central Park, drained of blood and missing part of her ear, the CSIs jumpstart an investigation that takes them into the dark and mysterious subculture of vampirism.

Norberto Barba has directed seven episodes of CSI: NY, including this season’s “Death House”. Series star Carmine Giovinazzo (Danny Messer) wrote this episode, following in the footsteps of costars Melina Kanakaredes (Stella Bonasera) and Gary Sinise (Mac Taylor). Kanakaredes penned last season’s “Grounds for Deception”, and Sinise co-wrote the teleplay for Turbulence in season five, as well as story for season two’s “Live or Let Die”.

“Sanguine Love” will feature the following actors and actresses in guest-starring roles:

• Melinda Dahl as Estelle Christensen
• Michael Graziadei as Keith Borgese
• Ken Garito as Jimmy Duncan
• Ivan Shaw as Billy James
• Charles Shaughnessy as Mr. Christensen
• Finola Hughes as Mrs. Christensen
• Ella Fitzpatrick as Young Woman

Ken Garito was in the CSI episode “Iced” during season five, and Ivan Shaw was in the season seven episode “Meet Market”. The other actors are new to the franchise.

Rounding out the week on Thursday at 9:00pm ET/PT, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation investigates a fast-paced underworld in “Internal Combustion”:

The case of two high school students, one dead and one missing, lead the CSIs into the underbelly of streetcar racing and a tangled web of deadly competition.

This is the sixth time Brad Tanenbaum has directed an episode of the series. His most recent credit is for this season’s “Death and the Maiden”. Jennifer N Levin wrote “Internal Combustion”, which is her first credit for CSI.

The episode will include the following guest stars:

• Jorja Fox as Sara Sidle
• Archie Kao as Archie Johnson
• Larry Mitchell as Officer Mitchell
• Connor Ross as Trevor Beck
• Taylor Scout-Compton as Renata Clarke
• Nick Chinlund as Gus Davis
• Leonardo Nam as Miyamoto Takahashi
• Samantha Droke as Cindy Medina
• Manish Dayal as Rishi Parayan
• Brian George as Dr. Parayan
• Kari Coleman as Mrs. Sheila Beck
• Sean Marquette as Bad Teen
• Mickey Meyer as Burly Student
• Jascha Washington as Student

Jorja Fox and Archie Kao are reprising established roles, and Larry Mitchell is back as Officer Mitchell. Connor Ross played a different role in season four’s “Coming of Rage”. Nick Chinlund portrayed a different character in “You’ve Got Male” during season two of CSI, and he was also in the New York episode “It Happened to Me” earlier this season.

“In the Wind”, “Sanguine Love” and “Internal Combustion” begin airing February 1 on CBS.

Thanks to jessmary25 on YouTube.

Thanks to Messers fan from TalkCSI for the heads up.

According to CSI Files sources, “Sanguine Love” opens with the discovery of a young woman’s body in Central Park. The woman, Estelle Christensen, has been drained of blood, and part of her ear is missing. She was killed by a thin, sharp object that punctured her neck. The single puncture wound severed her carotid artery, causing her to bleed out. She also has a strange scar on her wrist.

Estelle was a photographer, and her latest images help Flack and Stella retrace her steps leading back to her apartment. The doorman, Jimmy, is sad to learn that she’s dead. He says that he assumed she stayed with her boyfriend when she didn’t come home the night before. Stella pulls out a photo Estelle took, and Jimmy confirms that the handsome young man is the victim’s boyfriend, Keith. Jimmy tells them that Estelle and Keith usually went into the park at sunset to take pictures, but he didn’t see Keith with Estelle the night before.

Mac and Stella talk to Keith, who is clearly distraught. He tells the CSIs that he hasn’t seen Estelle for several days. They got into an argument, and Stella wonders if it was about another man. Keith denies the implication that Estelle might have been cheating on him. They fought because she had been acting strange lately—different. He just wanted to know why. Before they can get anything else out of him, Keith breaks down. He blames himself for Estelle’s death. If he’d been with her in the park, he could have protected her. He should have been there.

Mac speaks with Estelle’s parents, who have flown in from England. They last spoke to their daughter several days before. She was happy in New York, and her photography was doing well. Estelle’s father says that his mother lived—and died—in New York, and it’s hard for him to come back to the city to bury someone he loves again. When Mr Christensen reaches out to comfort his wife, Mac sees something familiar on his left wrist: a scar just like the one Estelle had.

Mac confronts Mr Christensen, who finally admits the significance of the scar on his—and his daughter’s—wrist. The mark was made with a blade shaped like an ankh during a ceremony performed in a vampire haven. In addition to causing the scar on her wrist, the blade is consistent with the weapon used to kill Estelle.

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

“Sanguine Love” will air February 3 on CBS.