The Miami Report
You know, I was going to wait until tomorrow and try to work up the enthusiasm for a Conversations With Dead People treatment of the episode, but Speed and Tyler boycotted after the first fifteen minutes, and frankly, I can't blame them. In fact, I'm glad they didn't have to sit through some of this, because...yeah. (Someday I will stop talking about them like they're real people, but that day is not today.) I did take notes, though, so I'm just posting those and going to bed to think about Speed and Tyler living under assumed names somewhere in the snowy north thanks to the Federal Witness Protection Program.
Christ. At least when I wrote about a tidal wave hitting Miami, Speed and Tyler got to make out.
CSI: Miami Episode 3.07, "Crime Wave"
I figured out the deal with the new guy. He's the Wesley. You all know how Wesley Crusher was a Marty Stu of Roddenberry, right? So the new guy has to be a Marty Stu of somebody. We know Horatio's a Marty Stu of Caruso (duh), so now we just have to figure out who's writing the new guy and what relationship he's supposed to have to Horatio (no not like that ew that's tantamount to incest fic) and we're golden. I have a feeling he's supposed to be Horatio's Mini-Me, but we're not supposed to be able to tell, because the writers think the audience is just that dumb.
And no, I will never call him by his name, no matter how many new guys come after him.
The guest star shout-out of the week: Mr. Brian Bloom, aka Dusty Donovan, Lily Walsh's first love on As the World Turns. Of course Holden was her true love, so poor Dusty lost out and went on to Baywatch. Oh, no, wait, that was Billy Warlock. Brian went on to...pretty much nothing, really, unless you count a string of movies no one's ever seen and an episode of Touched By An Angel. And look at him now. Yay Hollywood. Why anyone would ever sign on for a 2% chance at success in a career I will never understand.
"That's why I got the Brass Pass." Yeah, new guy, you're a real stud. Jesus. Speed never talked like a loser.
Oh, so this is the abuse episode. Because a giant tidal wave approaching the city isn't enough drama for a Very Special ninety-minute episode. Not only does H have to save the entire city from a wall of water, he has to save Yelena from her abusive boyfriend. He's the man.
Another new guy in the lab, but we'll call this one by his name, which, apparently, is Aaron. I guess they had to get somebody to do Speed's job, seeing as none of the CSIs are doing lab work now that he's dead. Maybe it reminds them too much of him and makes them sad. Heh. I can't even think that with a straight face.
"That…is not the horizon." You know, Caruso just strips all the drama right out of this show. I wonder if he ever actually watches himself on film.
One commercial and the water receded? Lamest tidal wave ever.
The New Guy subplot was really lame. It was kind of a riff on Calleigh and her drunk dad, only less compelling and far less interesting. And the neighbor lady…what was the point of that?
I love Tripp. Not just because he says 'hinky', which happens to be one of my favorite words, but because he's an even bigger curmudgeon than Speed is. Was. Whatever.
Hey look, it's Rick. Bet nobody saw that coming. And Horatio gets to be all 'I keel you!!!1!'. Never saw that coming either. And while we're on the subject, I'm still not buying the whole abuse storyline. It's just completely out of character. Much like Speed getting shot in the exact same manner twice. So yeah, these writers sure know what they're doing.
And you know, the whole Horatio/Yelena thing was pretty much played after season two. They either needed to wrap it up at the beginning of this season and let them get together or let Yelena move on completely with Rick, because now they're going to do the whole 'Horatio's moving on but Yelena needs him to saaaave her' thing, and it's just...it's played. That storyline is tapped and it's time to move the fuck on already. And I say that as someone who used to really enjoy the Horatio/Yelena dynamic, so I'm not speaking lightly.
But speaking of OOC, I have a hard time believing the new guy needs to explain the burial process to Alexx. I'm not an expert or anything, but most M.E.s does work pretty closely with the mortuary industry, so I think she'd know a little more about it than her new best friend.
The mortuary lady is that Ann what's-her-face, right? Didn't she do a spoken word album in the 90s?
Dear Mrs. Bank Manager, Please do not feed Horatio's ego. Kthxbai.
Okay, I had really, really high hopes for some unintentional comedy tonight. This could have been a really good episode, and yet the writers managed to fuck it up in such a way that it was just…boring. None of the cases were interesting, and the whole Brian Bloom vigilante justice thing was just stupid and lame. How do they manage to make this show worse every week? Even the CSI writers get lucky every once in awhile.
The only good thing about this episode was the amount of Tripp screen time (and it's nice to see that he and Eric have put the past behind them), and the tiny little bits of Delko/Calleigh we got. But considering their combined screen time was less than the new guy's total screen time, something is seriously wrong.
Other than those two things this was a complete waste of my ninety minutes. I mean come on. Where are my disaster scenes? Where's the water flooding the streets? Where are the dead bodies being radiated by Miami pollution and rising to eat the brains of the survivors? Okay, I wasn't really expecting that last one, but they could have given us more than twelve thirteen corpses that floated out of a graveyard.
Man. What a letdown.
And to top it off, Tyler finally has to endure the new guy. Twice. I know, I know, it was inevitable. I guess I just wasn't expecting it to be tonight. But Tyler was grumpy to him, and I'm taking that as a shout-out. I'm also taking his morbid sense of humor regarding the body and the one-way ticket as a shout-out because surely Brian Poth knows that I am his biggest fan and finds Tyler's weekly Conversations With Dead People amusing. Remind me to send Brian flowers or something.
Horatio referenced his own 'hardware' (gag), aka his 'Brass Pass'. Could they make the correlations between him and the new guy a little more obvious, please? Because I think there's a deaf and blind elderly woman living in a cabin in Montana who didn't get that.
The new guy is officially Exposition Guy. Like Tyler needs to be told how long they can keep evidence in a murder investigation any more than Alexx needs to be told about burial rituals.
You know, I don't hate the new guy, but they're sure as hell not making it easy to like him. Valera already hates him, and that makes it even harder for me to resist. Because hello, he's rude and sarcastic and kind of uppity, considering, and he doesn't get to say Tyler's name. Ever. Okay, possibly that is a little leftover bitter. But I still don't get what his uncle had to do with anything. I get what they were trying to do, I just don't understand why they thought it worked.
The exciting action sequence with Horatio and the imploding building almost made up for some of the crap in this episode, but not a lot. It probably would have been better if Horatio and Brian Bloom were buried under the rubble and had to chew their way out. They needed something to add excitement to this episode, because the cases were lame and boring.
And how come the new guy's stealing all Calleigh and Eric's screen time? That's fucked up. It's bad enough that they're making him Alexx's new best friend and Horatio's favorite protégé, not just because they're completely disrespectful to Speed's memory in doing so, but he's been around two minutes and he's already the star of the show. It's like Horatio heads up the A case, and new guy heads up the B case, and they just stick the other characters in wherever.
And they keep letting him work alone, whereas Nick didn't get to do that until he'd been a CSI for four years. It's just unbelievable, and I can't even enjoy the unintentional humor anymore because the rest of the show is just too damn annoying. Man. That episode sucked.
Next week: Speed dating. Fascinating. Let's not even talk about the unintentional pun, because I will probably cry. And new guy and Horatio are the only CSIs to make the trailer cut. Just in case you didn't get it in the past ninety minutes. Which, by the way, you're never getting back.