See Also: 'Inside Out' Episode Guide

Synopsis:

Horatio is at the Biscayne County Courthouse while his newfound son, Kyle Harmon, is arraigned as an adult on kidnapping charges. As Kyle is led off to the bus to jail, a much more dangerous criminal, Julio Rentoria promises two million dollars to anyone who can break him out of jail. Horatio, after telling Tripp he hasn't yet revealed to Kyle that he is the boy's father, asks the detective to ride on the bus to make sure it gets to its destination safely. On the road, a truck hits the bus head on and several prisoners escape, including Julio and Kyle. Tripp fires at what appears to be a man with a gun, but when the dust clears, the body of a young deaf woman named Veronica Eckland lies on the ground, and Tripp fears he's responsible. Kyle quickly turns himself into Horatio, who reluctantly returns the boy to police custody. Calleigh is relieved when she can clear Tripp of Veronica's death, and she matches the bullet to a gun belonging to a man named Barry Slater. Barry admits he was at the scene to help free Julio and collect the two million, but claims his gun and bike were both stolen.

The bike is traced and found with one of the escaped convicts, Oscar Monahan, who is facing serious jail time via the Three Strikes law. Natalia bags the keys to the bike but is rushed off by Ryan to a shooting lesson with an expert at the gun range. She's shocked when she returns to the lab and learns her evidence is being called into question by Oscar's defense, thanks to an expert witness: Ryan Wolfe. Ryan is claiming that because she took the evidence to the firing range rather than right to the lab, she broke the chain of custody. State's attorney Rebecca Nevins leans on Natalia to give her dirt on Ryan, but Natalia won't budge. Calleigh and Delko trace a cutting-edge paint sample found on the bus's bumper to an SUV owned by one Will Bedford. Will admits to helping Julio get away for the two million payday, in order to help his sick brother. He turns over the payment to the CSIs: two million dollars worth of heroin.

Ryan goes to examine the area where Oscar was discovered with the bike and finds the gun used to shoot Veronica. The DNA on it matches not Oscar but Barry, the gun's owner. He confesses to shooting Veronica when he saw her gesturing to Julio, afraid she would beat him to the big payday. While Tripp investigates Veronica, Valera finds DNA inside the heroin packets that belong to Joe LeBrock, who's serving time in jail. Horatio locates Julio's cohort, Trevor, but he has a cryptic warning for Horatio: they know who his son is. Tripp discovers that Veronica was engaged to Julio, and she must have told Julio about Kyle after reading Horatio and Tripp's lips at the courthouse. Horatio rushes to the jail only to learn Kyle is missing.

Tripp and Delko trace a call placed to Joe LeBrock in jail to a cell phone belonging to Julio and manage to locate him and take him into custody. Horatio puts the pressure on Joe to find his son. When Horatio threatens to kill him, Joe tells the CSI that Kyle is in a tunnel below the jail. Horatio finds his son and tells him that he's his father. Horatio pulls Oscar aside: he agrees to not use the Three Strike law against him if he'll protect Kyle in jail. Oscar acquiesces and protects Kyle from Julio and his thugs.

Analysis:

Last week, Horatio was in the hot seat with an angry relative of someone he helped put away gunning for him; this week, it's his son who's in the hot seat. It's clearly not a good month to be a Caine. Kyle gets the full initiation in this episode; first, Horatio takes him to the barber to get a haircut and style that somewhat resembles Horatio's own. (What's next? Matching sunglasses?) Then, at the end of the episode, Horatio drops the big news on Kyle, revealing that the boy is his son.

As cheesy as the haircut scene was, it was probably a good move on Horatio's part. Kyle is about as innocent looking as they come, and though the new haircut didn't change that, it did make him look marginally older. For all his bluster in "Dangerous Son", Kyle is very much not a hardened criminal. Horatio is understandably worried about him, and the moment Horatio has to slap the cuffs on Kyle is a rare glimpse of vulnerability for the usually infallible CSI. The audience and Horatio realize in the same moment that there's really not much Horatio can do for his son.

Potentially standing in Horatio's way is Rebecca Nevins, the attorney Horatio briefly had a relationship with in season three before she got catty about Yelina and he abruptly broke up with her. Apparently she's gone over to the dark side completely, committing the inexcusable offense of wanting to try Kyle as an adult for the kidnapping of the prison guard's wife in "Dangerous Son." It's disappointing to see her painted as a two-dimensional nemesis for Horatio, but nonetheless, it's nice to see an old face.

In another convenient coincidence, Ryan Wolfe is once again pulled into the case, this time when he learns Natalia has broken a protocol and hires himself out to a defense attorney as an expert witness. At this point, I'm starting to wonder why Ryan even wants his job at the CSI lab back--he's apparently qualified to do just about anything: news commentator, body guard, expert witness. What's next? Maybe raising people from the dead like his look-alike on Pushing Daisies.

So did he set Natalia up? Certainly, he went to a great effort to make sure her mistake came to light. He rushes her away from the crime scene to get instructions from some expert he's found, who is then quick to rat Natalia out to Ryan, who then must have gone to Oscar's defense attorney. Sure, Ryan comes out okay in the end when Oscar is vindicated, but it's another example of how the character comes off as morally ambiguous. Ryan has been ambitious from the moment he showed up at the station wanting on the CSI team, and he's consistently had difficulty balancing his personal desires with what's best for the team. Though it doesn't always make him likable, it ensures he's always interesting.

If he didn't set Natalia up, Ryan sure did sell her out. It's hard to buy that he was merely serving justice when he went to Oscar's defense attorney. After all, if Oscar was innocent, surely the team would find the evidence of that. What was Ryan's intention, other than earn an easy buck, and perhaps make Natalia look bad? Was he perhaps considering that if someone else on the team messed up, it might help his case for being reinstated? Ryan is shrewd enough that the thought had to have crossed his mind.

For whatever reason, Natalia can't return the favor. When Rebecca Nevins grills her, Natalia refuses to give up anything that might tarnish Ryan's character, despite the fact that she's got plenty on him. I was a little surprised, and impressed, that Natalia didn't give into the temptation to fling a little mud Ryan's way. And she was tempted--Eva LaRue conveyed that, just for a moment, Natalia did think about spilling some of Ryan's less than admirable secrets, but she just as quickly decides against it.

Tripp also has a hard time in the episode when he thinks he may have mistakenly shot a woman in the crowd. It's all too quickly resolved when Calleigh discovers the bullet didn't come from Tripp's gun. The victim immediately falls under suspicion when Alexx notes that she was was the most "innocent" of victims, immediately tipping faithful viewers off that the victim was anything but. With a combined fifteen seasons of CSI shows out there, clues that are anything less than subtle are big red flags for viewers.

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