As CSI Files previously reported, race car driver Danica Patrick guest stars as a driver who becomes the primary suspect when her major rival, played by Antonio Sabato Jr, ends up in the hospital after a fiery crash on the race track. “Obviously Danica races cars, but Antonio does as well,” executive producer Pam Veasey told TVGuide.com. “It was great to have them both on the show. They have a lot of experience behind the wheel.”

Fans will discover in the episode that Mac Taylor (Gary Sinise) and Lindsay Monroe (Anna Belknap) have experience with the sport as well. “Mac has a fondness of racing, and so does Lindsay,” Veasey said. “Those are two characters that know a lot about racing, which no one would expect. Lindsay knows about the mechanics of a car and totally gets into racing, being a Montana girl.”

“As a kid, [Mac] built his own soap-box derby car,” she continued. “So there’s a little reminiscing for him and a fun little moment, in which both Mac and Stella [Bonasera, Melina Kanakaredes] get in the cars and race them. Our actors got to peel against some pavement and burn some rubber.”

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.

The opportunity to join New York couldn’t have come at a better time for Buckley. “When I booked CSI, I had $32 to my name and was living out of my car,” the actor revealed. “To go from that to this, getting to travel around the world and meet different people – I’m completely grateful!”

The success of the CSI franchise over the past decade is no surprise to Buckley. “They’ve got great writers and they’ve cast great actors,” he said. “And it’s such an old tale; it’s Sherlock Holmes. Who did it, and how did they do it? They took that old theory, made science sexy and took this fresh look. People really respond to that.”

The New York edition of the franchise sets itself apart, the actor added. “New York is a character on the show,” he explained. “I don’t know many people that aren’t fascinated by it. It’s so film noir. Then you throw an actor like Gary Sinise (Mac Taylor) into the mix and it speaks for itself.” But is there any rivalry between the three CSI series? “I think every CSI wants to be the top,” Buckley said. “It’s a healthy rivalry. [Executive producer] Pam [Veasey] expects to be number one and be the top. You can’t get complacent in the sixth season.”

Being on the air for so many years does have its advantages. “Going into your sixth season, it allows the writers to go deeper within the characters,” Buckley said. “We can get into the intricacies of them and what makes them tick. The audience really feels for these characters. They’re so invested in them.”

Fans may be invested in Buckley’s character now, but there wasn’t always much for the actor to work with. “When I joined the cast, there was no description of who Adam was,” he explained. “Pam Veasey has always said that my character is kind of the comedy of the show. But over the years he’s started to understand who he is and show his strengths.” And the actor behind the quirky lab tech does get “a fair bit” of input into his character. “That’s the wonderful thing about working with Pam Veasey and [executive producer] Peter Lenkov,” Buckley said. “They really take the time to listen to anything you have to say about your character.”

The actor has the opportunity to share his opinions about Adam as a character, but Buckley is not the science expert he plays on TV. “You know what, when I was in high school, I was a horrific student,” he revealed. “I’m a poster child for ADD, and I’m terribly dyslexic. Growing up, learning for me was next to impossible. So Adam’s journey of education and my journey of education are night and day. I’m sure my science teachers back in high school that watch the show now have a good laugh.”

Luckily for Buckley, playing Adam isn’t all about pronouncing difficult scientific terms. Some episodes have given the actor the chance to delve into more emotional territory. “One of my favourites was the episode ‘The Party’s Over’,” he shared. “There’s a child that commits a murder and they send me into the interrogation room to talk with the kid. It was the first real episode where I got to sink my teeth into something – to get out of the lab and not be saying science words, and to emotionally connect to the dialogue.”

At the start of season six, Buckley was pleasantly surprised by his character’s romantic involvement with coworker Stella Bonasera (Melina Kanakaredes) in the premiere episode, “Epilogue”. “I remember showing up on the set and people asked me, ‘Have you seen the script yet?’ I took a look and I was like, ‘Oh, wow!’ I think it’s a great storyline,” he said. “Adam and Stella have always had a flirtatious thing back and forth. The guy needs some love! He’s in the lab all the time. Stella’s a sexy woman, so why not?”

Buckley enjoys working on CSI: NY, but he revealed that he has another ambition: to take his acting to the stage. “One of my dreams is to come to London and do a play,” he explained. “Not even one of the big shows – I would be happy doing a small theatre in a small town. Just to immerse myself in the work would be great!”

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

In “Death House”, Mac Taylor (Gary Sinise), Stella Bonasera (Melina Kanakaredes) and the rest of the team find more than they expected when they answer a call for help. “There was a 911 call from somebody who claimed that they were dying, so we come here and discover that this place has been locked up for years,” Sinise explained. Kanakaredes added, “When we get here, we do find a body, but it’s literally mummified.”

The team is confused at first because they don’t find anyone who could have made the 911 call. Eventually, however, they learn the truth about the penthouse. “[W]e discover through the course of the episode that this environment was designed just to trap people,” Sinise said. “It was designed by an inventor, so each of these rooms has some gizmos, gadgets and all kinds of crazy things going on.”

You can watch the original video, including a behind-the-scenes look at the “Death House” set, below:

Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief will open in theaters on February 12, 2010.

CSI Files previously reported that Kardashian would appear in an episode of New York scheduled to air on December 16. “Someone is murdered today, and somehow I’m involved,” Kardashian said from the set. “It’s cool to get in this mindset and really be this heavily involved in such a crazy crime.”

Pat Monahan, the lead singer of Train, also guest-stars in the episode. “I play Kim’s boyfriend, a musician named Sam Baker, who tried it and failed miserably and ended up homeless,” Monahan said. However, there’s more to the story. “Kim helps me get a second chance,” he added, “but she has an ulterior motive.”

Joining Kardashian and Monahan are former MTV VJs Vanessa Minnillo and LaLa Vasquez. Minnillo revealed that her character, along with the characters played by Kardashian and Vasquez, “all have some sort of play in this murder.” She added, “Obviously I can’t tell you why, but this is the day we confront each other and everything goes crazy and something happens at the end.”

New York star Melina Kanakaredes (Stella Bonasera) shared some more information about the episode. “We are shooting a scene where a character who would have been the red herring finds out that he was gonna be the next victim of these vixens and their plan,” she said.

Stella and Adam spent the night together in the season six premiere, “Epilogue”. After their brief affair, Stella told Adam the relationship should not continue. According to Veasey, Stella will keep her word. Even though the two characters will not get back together, fans can look forward to more spontaneous behavior from Stella this season. “She’s not going to limit herself,” Veasey said. “Her momentary enjoyable moment with Adam was one of those things. She’ll be a much more aggressive, live-in-the-moment type of character.”

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation’s leading man, Laurence Fishburne (Dr Ray Langston), will appear in CSI: Miami and CSI: New York as well as his own series during the week of November 9. “He’s actually going to be following a case to Miami and up to New York and then ending back in Vegas,” explained New York star Gary Sinise (Mac Taylor).

“Basically, these young women are killed, and their body parts are kind of strewn across the country,” Fishburne said. “So that’s what keeps my character on the move.” His costar Marg Helgenberger (Catherine Willows) added, “It grabs a person’s attention and becomes a really dark story.”

“I’m grateful for the experience of going to those other shows because I feel like there was something there for me to learn,” Fishburne shared. “I’m really excited about it just because I’ve known Gary Sinise and David Caruso (Horatio Caine) for a long time. It’s an opportunity to kind of work with some people I admire and respect.”

Even though the franchise will deal with a single storyline running through all three series, each CSI will maintain its individuality. “It’s very interesting because every show winds up having a unique and distinct character,” Fishburne said. Sinise’s costar Melina Kanakaredes (Stella Bonasera) added, “They’re so different. I’m sure it’s crazy for our writers, but it’s fun for us.”

“Interacting with all three shows is something that’s never been done,” Sinise said. “It’ll be a pretty interesting crossover week for CSI.”

Check out the full video below:

(Fans outside the US can watch the video here, courtesy of ricker23a.)