Law & Order: SVU, CSI: NY, CSI, Without A Trace and Moonlight
I still need to watch last week's and this week's Criminal Minds. I haven't seen them because they're on at the same time as the American Idol results show, and Mom might die if she didn't get to see that in real time. I also haven't watched last week's Numb3rs, and I can't even begin to tell you why I missed it. So, I've got what amounts to a few casting notes on SVU, vaguely review-like comments on CSI: NY, More substantive comments on CSI, general displeasure with WaT, and some fannish squeeing about Moonlight.
Starting with SVU, not behind a cut becaust it's really short and I don't feel like it.
This actually goes back 3 weeks. The week before last, I watched an episode, Closet, where the big case was the murder of an investment banker. Some investigation leads them back to his secret gay lover, an incredibly famous football player. The major complication is that Olivia is apparently dating the editor of one of the many (and quite probably made up) newspapers in NYC. It was really kind of a dull episode, I honestly don't remember if football guy killed him or not, but I think not. The only reason I mention the episode at all is because the gay football player was played by Buffy alum, Bailey Chase (He was Graham Miller, Riley's friend and fellow initiative guy) who I've always loved and, Newspaper Editor guy was played by Bill Pullman which was kind of amusing to me.
Then in last week's episode, Authority, Guest Starred Robin Williams as Meritt Rook a sound engineer and suspect in a very bizarre case. This episode actually deserved a more in-depth review, and once I watch it again, I may right one up. The gist is this, he is making phone calls to fast-food managers and impersonating a police officer. He's telling these guys that a female employee stole something from a customer and directing them to strip search and detain these young girls. There's a reason there, and it's good and interesting, but I just don't have the energy to talk about it right now. In the end, they think he dies, but I suspect we'll be seeing Meritt Rook again.
Finally in this week's episode, Trade, I really couldn't tell you how good it was. I spent most of the episode laughing at Stephen Collins and trying not to point at the screen and say things like, "RevCam impregnated his son's fiance, hee hee hee." He played a very bad man, who ultimately was not the murderer. Said fiance died. She was pregant and her home was burned down around her, but the fire didn't kill her, a blow to the head did. The fiance is a suspect and the father is a suspect, both because she was trying to screw them over. She was a gold-digging bitch looking for a payday and she didn't care which of them gave it to her. She was blackmailing daddy and refusing to sign a pre-nup with junior. She was also stealing secrets in their commodities trading business. The two men were both more than willing to throw the other to the wolves. In the end, it wasn't either of them. Their attorney, a securities specialist who went to college with the sun, did it because she wasn't good enough for him. She was nuts, nuts, nuts, and in the end she chooses to protect him from his father by jumping off the roof of a building and taking the guy with her. So here is poor bad daddy Stephen Collins crying because his son is dead and he's an ass.
CSI NY, 4x18, Admissions
Written by Zachary Reiter
There's still pressure on this ongoing Taxi Cab murderer thing, but Mac and his team are pretty much ordered to drop everything when the guidance counselor at an exclusive private school is killed during Prom. It was a fairly straightforward case, without some of the twists and turns that I've come to expect, but I really enjoyed it. Fairly early on they narrow in on a suspect, one of the students. Though they do also learn that the guy had a gambling problem which had gotten completely out of hand.
We also got the return of Carmen Argenziano as Inspector Gerrard (Jacob Carter, SG-1 and my favorite of the applicants for House's new team this season who was sadly cut). He's brilliant in this role. We've seen him before, he's kind of an old school detective who has been in the political end of the NYPD long enough that sometimes you think he's forgotten what it's like. He's backed Mac and his team up, and he's been at the front of the pack baying for someone's blood, but he's always memorable and always believeable. This time, he was there because his daughter is a student at this school. Pretty early we learn that she has gotten quiet and withdrawn recently. Her grades have dropped significantly and she's decided not to go to college. This, combined with the fact that she's seen a lot of the counselor lately leads Mac to suspect that he was molesting students. He wasn't. The reality is that she was raped by the student who is a suspect. You can tell she's the daughter of a cop, because while she didn't tell anyone, she carefully preserved the evidence.
Once she turns her dress over to them, they get a real break in the case. They get hits in CODIS for two samples. One is the student, the other is his father, only it turns out they aren't related at all and the student is already an adult. They met in prison and agreed to work together to get their preferred young victims. The one, because he can look quite young though he's using make-up to preserve that appearance, will pose as a student while the other poses as his father. He'll bring girls back, drug them, and the two of them will share the girls. They pretty much get a confession.
Sadly, I think this is the last we'll be seeing of Inspector Gerrard. He shoots and kills the younger of the two. It was an excellent episode that was really aided by Carmen Argenziano's as always superb acting.
CSI NY, 4x19, Personal Foul
Written by Trey Callaway
This episode was just okay for me. There wasn't really anything wrong with it, but I completely failed to connect to either victims or the murderer they caught, also the team was really dense.
The primary case of the episode involved the death of someone who a moment before you might have thought was very lucky. He was called, in a random drawing, to come to half-court during a basketball game. If he can make a shot from half-court, then he wins $1 million. He comes down and makes the shot, and almost immediately falls over dead. The high point of the episode for me was the very beginning, before the death. Don and Danny are at the game. Apparently, Danny had an extra ticket because he and Lindsay aren't exactly getting along, and asked Don to come with. They're great, I love them, and while I can make the scene subtexty if I really want to, I've always seen them more as friends, great friends, but just friends. Danny wins $50 betting on whether the guy can make the shot. That's cute too.
The case unfolds in the usual manner. He was poisoned with atropine, which is from the plant deadly nightshade. First they suspect a vendor with a record, who had a very public fight with the guy. They eventually trace the atropine back to one of the cheerleaders, the one who called his seat number. All of the cheerleaders kissed him, though she was the only one to kiss him on the lips. They have to wonder though, why she didn't die. They search her apartment where they find both nightshade and some other plant whose seeds can be used to make an antidote. She took the antidote and then the poison just before kissing him. She survives, but he dies. They also find a lot of clothes that are way too big for the cheerleader and a picture of a fat girl on the inside of her medicine cabinet.
It turns out, she's the fat girl. Two years ago, at a game, she wins something. When she goes down to clain it, he sees her and starts this chant that gets picked up by most of the stadium, telling her to eat a salad. Her boyfriend breaks up with her the next day and she vows to pay him back. She loses all of the weight and becomes a cheerleader, then she intentionally calls his number rather than the number she pulls from the bin and kills him. I didn't engage with the victim at all because he's an ass who pretty much deserves what he got. I don't really feel for her though, either. It's just such a waste over some idiot who doesn't deserve her time. Sure, get healthy. Get thin and cheerleader material, if that makes you feel better, but the far better revenge is just living a good life and knowing that you're happier than he will ever be. People aren't that way because they're happy and fulfilled with their life. They're sad and pathetic and they don't deserve your attention and time.
Secondarily, they are still trying to find the taxi cab killer. There is another victim and they find a few bits and pieces of evidence including some possible DNA which leads them back to an unsolved case in another city. Once they're looking at that case file they realize that the blood sample used in the case had high levels of a couple of drugs used to treat psychosis in an institutional setting. There are only 3 institutions currently using the drug, but there was a fourth that was shut down by the state not long before the crime in the other city. They get a list of all the files of people released who were treated with that drug cocktail and narrow it down to one suspect. Unfortunately they still don't have a name. Mac goes a little ballistic and says that everyone is to work on this case, double-shifts, around the clock if necessary. Everything else goes to the bottom of the pile.
His life is further complicated when Reed (the son of his late wife, she put him up for adoption, but Mac discovered him last year), who is apparently a budding journalist in the blogosphere keeps trying to get an exclusive from Mac. Mac isn't giving information to any of the press, and he resents the way that Reed is trying to use their personal relationship. Mac is also in trouble with the Mayor's office, because he says in a press conference that he wouldn't take a cab until they catch the killer.
Reed gets a text message telling him to meet someone on a street corner at 10 PM if he wants to know more about the killer. Reed does it, and when the guy doesn't show he gets into a cab to go home. It's pouring down rain, and we're left to presume that the driver is the killer. Though they do play with us and try to make us think that Lindsay is going to get into that cab.
I'm really not into this storyline at all, and I don't much care about Reed. I do hope they rescue him though. I know that Mac and Danny are the designated tragedy magnets of the show, actually everyone on this show sees their fair share of tragedy, but I'm tired of Mac's life sucking.
CSI, 8x15, The Theory of Everything
Written by Douglas Petrie and David Rambo
I knew immediately that I was going to love this. Petrie is one of my favorite writing alums of BtVS, and he's done some really good work on this show and others since then. I felt his presence in the writing, in lines like Brass saying, "She's very shiny," about Evelyn and how they would find her.
I did love the episode, though it was one of the stranger episodes of this show. You know, the original CSI gets much weirder episodes than the spin-offs. CSI: NY gets it's fair share of weirdness but not usually quite to this level, but CSI: Miami never gets anything half as bizarre as this.
When the episode opens, they've detained a guy. I'm still not sure what the grounds were, but he was very drunk, and he had apparently dressed a deer up in a tutu. Anyway, I'm not sure what all had happened there, but he runs when he gets a chance. An officer eventually tazes him, and when he does the man's clothes catch fire and he's one crispy critter a short time later. The team gets to work trying to figure out what caused that. In the meantime we've met Evelyn who nobody really knows much about. She's homeless and she thinks the aliens are invading. She wears an entire suit of aluminum foil, hence the shiny comment. She is also the last person to touch the now dead man. The team determines that no combination of the stuff they have on hand could have killed the guy. So they think maybe it was transfer off of Evelyn.
Sadly, Evelyn dies, she's hit by a truck whose driver was blinded by the reflection of the sun off of her aluminum foil suit. They do find a broken butane lighter on her. Also there's another dead guy who it seems was hit in the head with something.
In the meantime, Catharine gets a case where two old people died in their homes. It turns out they died from cyanide poisoning. They also had a ground squirrel problem (except, I don't think the little critters they kept showing were actually ground squirrels) and had this weird contraption in the back yard that was supposed to get rid of them. There was a young woman that lived next door who was an artist, and she also had a ground squirrel problem. She put out cyanide, which she was able to get for use in her jewelry making, to kill the ground squirrels and had killed the neighbors cat also. They like her for a suspect in the murder of the old people.
In the meantime, they determine that both Evelyn and the other dead guy had very high concentrations of a drug used to treat migraines in their system. They think that they might have been meeting someone to buy more of the drug. They eventually track that guy down. Oh, and they find out about this drug because both of those victims have green blood, and I'm thinking the first dead guy, the one who burned up might have also, but I don't remember now. The blood was green because of sulfur in the medication. Hodgins or is it Hodges, I should know this, anyway, he tells one of the female techs that this is why vulcans have green blood, but she corrects him. Vulcans really have green blood because it is copper rich rather than iron rich. I knew that.
Anyway, they get one last dead guy when some idiot police officer pulls the paper off the windows in the guy who had the drug's place. He's extremely photo-sensitive and the light and associated pain causes him to have a hemmorhage in his brain and he dies. He was also the guy who made the anti-squirrel contraption. Turns out that the first guy to die was the loser ex of the artist. Nobody killed the old people. One of the ground squirrels crawled under the house and chewed through a wire that started a small fire. They had laid new, fire-retardant carpet over the top of old carpet. The new carpet smothered the fire, but not before the old carpet underneath burned and released cyanide gas that they both breathed it in and died. Someone says that it's really a bizarre coincidence how all of these people are related to each other. Grissom says it really isn't. Nick makes some comment about Grissom theories being better than a bedtime story, which I'm sure is already being used in interesting ways in fanfiction. Grissom gives a mini-lecture on string theory, because Grissom knows everything. Funny how I find that annoying in some characters, but not his.
It was a ton of fun, and tonight's episode promises to be even better. Two and a Half Men was written by CSI's writers this week, and CSI was written by Two and a Half Men's writers. Should be interesting.
Without a Trace, 6x16, A Dollar and a Dream
Written by David H. Goodman & David Mognan
I actually thought this case was marginally better than recent episodes, but still not great. Good because the case was actually far more compelling than I've found most of late. Still not great, because the personal crap that continues to intrude is just so soapish.
The case involved the disappearance of a young woman who had just recently had a huge lottery win. She'd been camping with three friends. One is her best friend from way back. Also with them was the best friend's husband (maybe fiance) and the best friend's brother who has been dating the woman who is missing for awhile.
Everyone is a suspect at various points. It turns out that the winning ticket had actually belonged to an old man that the woman helped out. She found it in his things after he died, and her friend convinced her that he would have wanted her to have the money. His son shows up and starts asking for it. Ultimately she decides that it belongs to him and she wants to give it to him. Her friend kills her after she tells them that. The boyfriend later kills himself, apparently unable to deal with either what his sister has done or turning her in. It's all very sad.
The personal crap, mostly involves Sam and Jack (and is it terrible that now in the sixth season is the first time I've realized that I have a girl Sam and a Jack who are a reasonably popular couple with fandom in two of my fandoms. Maybe it's because I try to avoid the implication of Sam/Jack in both fandoms). Sam is letting the father of the baby pretty far into her life, and she confides in Jack that it's hard but she's trying to trust the guy. Jack gets his name and sets an agent to work doing a background check. Because she wants to get ahead with Jack, she does a really thorough check and finds out that he was once arrested (but not tried?) for a sexual assault of a young girl. Jack is of course all kinds of torn up about what to do now. I just can't bring myself to care.
Moonlight, 1x14, Click
Written by Erin Maher & Kathryn Reindl
Superb episode. They've really saved their best work for the end of the season, hopefully it's enough to get a renewal.
In this episode, Mick takes a high profile case as a security consultant for a young starlet, Tierney Tate. The paparazzi are all over them, and Mick even gets reported as her new boyfriend more than once. While it's definitely weird, he actually seems to be enjoying it. Tierney is feeling threatened, someone keeps tipping people off as to where she's going to be. She doesn't know who. Mick sent inaccurate schedules to her management, so they know that's not where it's coming from.
Mick and Beth decide they're going to date. Beth's new boss at Buzzwire is an ass. He wants it to be a tabloid. Put up stories based on speculation and retract them if they turn out to be wrong. That's his motto. He puts Beth on the Tierney case, because of her association with Mick.
They both go to a party on a boat for Lusitania, Tierney's new movie. Tierney sends Mick off to enjoy himself. He and Beth talk, and it's kind of sweet. I might finally be warming up to them as a couple. They see Tierney and her actual boyfriend (a singer in a band that hasn't hit just yet) fight and Mick goes to make sure she's okay. She says she is and that she's going to her stateroom. A short time later, Tierney is dead lying in the water.
Mick of course feels responsible. The paparazzi are still after him, so that's not making life any easier. There's a lot of actual mystery over who did it, but none of that was really important to me. It turned out to be the movie's producer. He'd spent the investor's money on other things and couldn't get out of making the movie without losing the star. With Tierney dead, the film's insurance kicks in and pays them back.
In the meantime, a photographer has gotten pictures of Mick being hit by a car and walking away. He uses those pictures to try to bribe Beth. He tells her that he wants exclusive pictures on every one of her stories. He wants tips all the time, and if he doesn't get them, Mick St. John becomes his number one priority.
Somewhere in the middle was an adorable conversation where Josef implies that he "dated" Jean Harlow, and later implies that he was involved with Greta Garbo as well. This was just too cute and one of the few times that we're really reminded of just how old Mick is because he gets all fanboy about Jean Harlow. They also have a discussion about what their relationship is now. Mick says that Josef is his sire now, and calls him dad (which Josef forbids him to do again). Josef says not really, because Mick would have been a vampire again anyway. He just Re-turned him, so he's not really his sire. I don't think it's possible to say how much I love the two of them.
Oh, I should also mention that Mick discovers a few paparazzi that are actually vampires. He takes their camera when they take pictures of him and tells them to go away.
The other actually important moment of the episode for me, is also the moment of the series that makes me actually like Beth. She doesn't go to Mick with the problem of the blackmailer. She also doesn't just go along with him. She goes to Josef. She goes to Josef and she asks him to take care of it. Because Josef is very very smart, he doesn't let her get away with assuming that he'll deal with it in some nice manner. When she says she thought he could pay the guy off, he asks if she thinks that would solve the problem. Beth reluctantly says not. Josef says, "Then you know how I'm going to handle it." Beth agrees that she does. I like this move from both of them. It shows just how far Beth is willing to go to protect Mick (though it's not completely selfless. She doesn't want to be left behind, and Mick tells her that's what happens if people find out about a vampire. They disappear and start over with a new name, a new life). It also shows that Josef is smart enough to know that Mick is probably going to eventually find out about it, and he needs to make sure that Beth knows exactly what's going to happen. She can't be allowed to say that she thought he'd pay the guy or something, later. She has to be just as complicit in this as Josef is himself. He also tells Beth that as long as she's involved with Mick her job at Buzzwire endangers his secret.
Josef, sends the two paparazzi vamps to eat bad guy. Beth quits her job and goes to dinner with Mick. The new DA guy, has a file on Mick and it includes the pictures that the paparazzi guy took of him being hit by a car and walking away.
It was a truly fabulous episode that makes me love all of them. I can't wait for this week's episode.
Starting with SVU, not behind a cut becaust it's really short and I don't feel like it.
This actually goes back 3 weeks. The week before last, I watched an episode, Closet, where the big case was the murder of an investment banker. Some investigation leads them back to his secret gay lover, an incredibly famous football player. The major complication is that Olivia is apparently dating the editor of one of the many (and quite probably made up) newspapers in NYC. It was really kind of a dull episode, I honestly don't remember if football guy killed him or not, but I think not. The only reason I mention the episode at all is because the gay football player was played by Buffy alum, Bailey Chase (He was Graham Miller, Riley's friend and fellow initiative guy) who I've always loved and, Newspaper Editor guy was played by Bill Pullman which was kind of amusing to me.
Then in last week's episode, Authority, Guest Starred Robin Williams as Meritt Rook a sound engineer and suspect in a very bizarre case. This episode actually deserved a more in-depth review, and once I watch it again, I may right one up. The gist is this, he is making phone calls to fast-food managers and impersonating a police officer. He's telling these guys that a female employee stole something from a customer and directing them to strip search and detain these young girls. There's a reason there, and it's good and interesting, but I just don't have the energy to talk about it right now. In the end, they think he dies, but I suspect we'll be seeing Meritt Rook again.
Finally in this week's episode, Trade, I really couldn't tell you how good it was. I spent most of the episode laughing at Stephen Collins and trying not to point at the screen and say things like, "RevCam impregnated his son's fiance, hee hee hee." He played a very bad man, who ultimately was not the murderer. Said fiance died. She was pregant and her home was burned down around her, but the fire didn't kill her, a blow to the head did. The fiance is a suspect and the father is a suspect, both because she was trying to screw them over. She was a gold-digging bitch looking for a payday and she didn't care which of them gave it to her. She was blackmailing daddy and refusing to sign a pre-nup with junior. She was also stealing secrets in their commodities trading business. The two men were both more than willing to throw the other to the wolves. In the end, it wasn't either of them. Their attorney, a securities specialist who went to college with the sun, did it because she wasn't good enough for him. She was nuts, nuts, nuts, and in the end she chooses to protect him from his father by jumping off the roof of a building and taking the guy with her. So here is poor bad daddy Stephen Collins crying because his son is dead and he's an ass.
CSI NY, 4x18, Admissions
Written by Zachary Reiter
There's still pressure on this ongoing Taxi Cab murderer thing, but Mac and his team are pretty much ordered to drop everything when the guidance counselor at an exclusive private school is killed during Prom. It was a fairly straightforward case, without some of the twists and turns that I've come to expect, but I really enjoyed it. Fairly early on they narrow in on a suspect, one of the students. Though they do also learn that the guy had a gambling problem which had gotten completely out of hand.
We also got the return of Carmen Argenziano as Inspector Gerrard (Jacob Carter, SG-1 and my favorite of the applicants for House's new team this season who was sadly cut). He's brilliant in this role. We've seen him before, he's kind of an old school detective who has been in the political end of the NYPD long enough that sometimes you think he's forgotten what it's like. He's backed Mac and his team up, and he's been at the front of the pack baying for someone's blood, but he's always memorable and always believeable. This time, he was there because his daughter is a student at this school. Pretty early we learn that she has gotten quiet and withdrawn recently. Her grades have dropped significantly and she's decided not to go to college. This, combined with the fact that she's seen a lot of the counselor lately leads Mac to suspect that he was molesting students. He wasn't. The reality is that she was raped by the student who is a suspect. You can tell she's the daughter of a cop, because while she didn't tell anyone, she carefully preserved the evidence.
Once she turns her dress over to them, they get a real break in the case. They get hits in CODIS for two samples. One is the student, the other is his father, only it turns out they aren't related at all and the student is already an adult. They met in prison and agreed to work together to get their preferred young victims. The one, because he can look quite young though he's using make-up to preserve that appearance, will pose as a student while the other poses as his father. He'll bring girls back, drug them, and the two of them will share the girls. They pretty much get a confession.
Sadly, I think this is the last we'll be seeing of Inspector Gerrard. He shoots and kills the younger of the two. It was an excellent episode that was really aided by Carmen Argenziano's as always superb acting.
CSI NY, 4x19, Personal Foul
Written by Trey Callaway
This episode was just okay for me. There wasn't really anything wrong with it, but I completely failed to connect to either victims or the murderer they caught, also the team was really dense.
The primary case of the episode involved the death of someone who a moment before you might have thought was very lucky. He was called, in a random drawing, to come to half-court during a basketball game. If he can make a shot from half-court, then he wins $1 million. He comes down and makes the shot, and almost immediately falls over dead. The high point of the episode for me was the very beginning, before the death. Don and Danny are at the game. Apparently, Danny had an extra ticket because he and Lindsay aren't exactly getting along, and asked Don to come with. They're great, I love them, and while I can make the scene subtexty if I really want to, I've always seen them more as friends, great friends, but just friends. Danny wins $50 betting on whether the guy can make the shot. That's cute too.
The case unfolds in the usual manner. He was poisoned with atropine, which is from the plant deadly nightshade. First they suspect a vendor with a record, who had a very public fight with the guy. They eventually trace the atropine back to one of the cheerleaders, the one who called his seat number. All of the cheerleaders kissed him, though she was the only one to kiss him on the lips. They have to wonder though, why she didn't die. They search her apartment where they find both nightshade and some other plant whose seeds can be used to make an antidote. She took the antidote and then the poison just before kissing him. She survives, but he dies. They also find a lot of clothes that are way too big for the cheerleader and a picture of a fat girl on the inside of her medicine cabinet.
It turns out, she's the fat girl. Two years ago, at a game, she wins something. When she goes down to clain it, he sees her and starts this chant that gets picked up by most of the stadium, telling her to eat a salad. Her boyfriend breaks up with her the next day and she vows to pay him back. She loses all of the weight and becomes a cheerleader, then she intentionally calls his number rather than the number she pulls from the bin and kills him. I didn't engage with the victim at all because he's an ass who pretty much deserves what he got. I don't really feel for her though, either. It's just such a waste over some idiot who doesn't deserve her time. Sure, get healthy. Get thin and cheerleader material, if that makes you feel better, but the far better revenge is just living a good life and knowing that you're happier than he will ever be. People aren't that way because they're happy and fulfilled with their life. They're sad and pathetic and they don't deserve your attention and time.
Secondarily, they are still trying to find the taxi cab killer. There is another victim and they find a few bits and pieces of evidence including some possible DNA which leads them back to an unsolved case in another city. Once they're looking at that case file they realize that the blood sample used in the case had high levels of a couple of drugs used to treat psychosis in an institutional setting. There are only 3 institutions currently using the drug, but there was a fourth that was shut down by the state not long before the crime in the other city. They get a list of all the files of people released who were treated with that drug cocktail and narrow it down to one suspect. Unfortunately they still don't have a name. Mac goes a little ballistic and says that everyone is to work on this case, double-shifts, around the clock if necessary. Everything else goes to the bottom of the pile.
His life is further complicated when Reed (the son of his late wife, she put him up for adoption, but Mac discovered him last year), who is apparently a budding journalist in the blogosphere keeps trying to get an exclusive from Mac. Mac isn't giving information to any of the press, and he resents the way that Reed is trying to use their personal relationship. Mac is also in trouble with the Mayor's office, because he says in a press conference that he wouldn't take a cab until they catch the killer.
Reed gets a text message telling him to meet someone on a street corner at 10 PM if he wants to know more about the killer. Reed does it, and when the guy doesn't show he gets into a cab to go home. It's pouring down rain, and we're left to presume that the driver is the killer. Though they do play with us and try to make us think that Lindsay is going to get into that cab.
I'm really not into this storyline at all, and I don't much care about Reed. I do hope they rescue him though. I know that Mac and Danny are the designated tragedy magnets of the show, actually everyone on this show sees their fair share of tragedy, but I'm tired of Mac's life sucking.
CSI, 8x15, The Theory of Everything
Written by Douglas Petrie and David Rambo
I knew immediately that I was going to love this. Petrie is one of my favorite writing alums of BtVS, and he's done some really good work on this show and others since then. I felt his presence in the writing, in lines like Brass saying, "She's very shiny," about Evelyn and how they would find her.
I did love the episode, though it was one of the stranger episodes of this show. You know, the original CSI gets much weirder episodes than the spin-offs. CSI: NY gets it's fair share of weirdness but not usually quite to this level, but CSI: Miami never gets anything half as bizarre as this.
When the episode opens, they've detained a guy. I'm still not sure what the grounds were, but he was very drunk, and he had apparently dressed a deer up in a tutu. Anyway, I'm not sure what all had happened there, but he runs when he gets a chance. An officer eventually tazes him, and when he does the man's clothes catch fire and he's one crispy critter a short time later. The team gets to work trying to figure out what caused that. In the meantime we've met Evelyn who nobody really knows much about. She's homeless and she thinks the aliens are invading. She wears an entire suit of aluminum foil, hence the shiny comment. She is also the last person to touch the now dead man. The team determines that no combination of the stuff they have on hand could have killed the guy. So they think maybe it was transfer off of Evelyn.
Sadly, Evelyn dies, she's hit by a truck whose driver was blinded by the reflection of the sun off of her aluminum foil suit. They do find a broken butane lighter on her. Also there's another dead guy who it seems was hit in the head with something.
In the meantime, Catharine gets a case where two old people died in their homes. It turns out they died from cyanide poisoning. They also had a ground squirrel problem (except, I don't think the little critters they kept showing were actually ground squirrels) and had this weird contraption in the back yard that was supposed to get rid of them. There was a young woman that lived next door who was an artist, and she also had a ground squirrel problem. She put out cyanide, which she was able to get for use in her jewelry making, to kill the ground squirrels and had killed the neighbors cat also. They like her for a suspect in the murder of the old people.
In the meantime, they determine that both Evelyn and the other dead guy had very high concentrations of a drug used to treat migraines in their system. They think that they might have been meeting someone to buy more of the drug. They eventually track that guy down. Oh, and they find out about this drug because both of those victims have green blood, and I'm thinking the first dead guy, the one who burned up might have also, but I don't remember now. The blood was green because of sulfur in the medication. Hodgins or is it Hodges, I should know this, anyway, he tells one of the female techs that this is why vulcans have green blood, but she corrects him. Vulcans really have green blood because it is copper rich rather than iron rich. I knew that.
Anyway, they get one last dead guy when some idiot police officer pulls the paper off the windows in the guy who had the drug's place. He's extremely photo-sensitive and the light and associated pain causes him to have a hemmorhage in his brain and he dies. He was also the guy who made the anti-squirrel contraption. Turns out that the first guy to die was the loser ex of the artist. Nobody killed the old people. One of the ground squirrels crawled under the house and chewed through a wire that started a small fire. They had laid new, fire-retardant carpet over the top of old carpet. The new carpet smothered the fire, but not before the old carpet underneath burned and released cyanide gas that they both breathed it in and died. Someone says that it's really a bizarre coincidence how all of these people are related to each other. Grissom says it really isn't. Nick makes some comment about Grissom theories being better than a bedtime story, which I'm sure is already being used in interesting ways in fanfiction. Grissom gives a mini-lecture on string theory, because Grissom knows everything. Funny how I find that annoying in some characters, but not his.
It was a ton of fun, and tonight's episode promises to be even better. Two and a Half Men was written by CSI's writers this week, and CSI was written by Two and a Half Men's writers. Should be interesting.
Without a Trace, 6x16, A Dollar and a Dream
Written by David H. Goodman & David Mognan
I actually thought this case was marginally better than recent episodes, but still not great. Good because the case was actually far more compelling than I've found most of late. Still not great, because the personal crap that continues to intrude is just so soapish.
The case involved the disappearance of a young woman who had just recently had a huge lottery win. She'd been camping with three friends. One is her best friend from way back. Also with them was the best friend's husband (maybe fiance) and the best friend's brother who has been dating the woman who is missing for awhile.
Everyone is a suspect at various points. It turns out that the winning ticket had actually belonged to an old man that the woman helped out. She found it in his things after he died, and her friend convinced her that he would have wanted her to have the money. His son shows up and starts asking for it. Ultimately she decides that it belongs to him and she wants to give it to him. Her friend kills her after she tells them that. The boyfriend later kills himself, apparently unable to deal with either what his sister has done or turning her in. It's all very sad.
The personal crap, mostly involves Sam and Jack (and is it terrible that now in the sixth season is the first time I've realized that I have a girl Sam and a Jack who are a reasonably popular couple with fandom in two of my fandoms. Maybe it's because I try to avoid the implication of Sam/Jack in both fandoms). Sam is letting the father of the baby pretty far into her life, and she confides in Jack that it's hard but she's trying to trust the guy. Jack gets his name and sets an agent to work doing a background check. Because she wants to get ahead with Jack, she does a really thorough check and finds out that he was once arrested (but not tried?) for a sexual assault of a young girl. Jack is of course all kinds of torn up about what to do now. I just can't bring myself to care.
Moonlight, 1x14, Click
Written by Erin Maher & Kathryn Reindl
Superb episode. They've really saved their best work for the end of the season, hopefully it's enough to get a renewal.
In this episode, Mick takes a high profile case as a security consultant for a young starlet, Tierney Tate. The paparazzi are all over them, and Mick even gets reported as her new boyfriend more than once. While it's definitely weird, he actually seems to be enjoying it. Tierney is feeling threatened, someone keeps tipping people off as to where she's going to be. She doesn't know who. Mick sent inaccurate schedules to her management, so they know that's not where it's coming from.
Mick and Beth decide they're going to date. Beth's new boss at Buzzwire is an ass. He wants it to be a tabloid. Put up stories based on speculation and retract them if they turn out to be wrong. That's his motto. He puts Beth on the Tierney case, because of her association with Mick.
They both go to a party on a boat for Lusitania, Tierney's new movie. Tierney sends Mick off to enjoy himself. He and Beth talk, and it's kind of sweet. I might finally be warming up to them as a couple. They see Tierney and her actual boyfriend (a singer in a band that hasn't hit just yet) fight and Mick goes to make sure she's okay. She says she is and that she's going to her stateroom. A short time later, Tierney is dead lying in the water.
Mick of course feels responsible. The paparazzi are still after him, so that's not making life any easier. There's a lot of actual mystery over who did it, but none of that was really important to me. It turned out to be the movie's producer. He'd spent the investor's money on other things and couldn't get out of making the movie without losing the star. With Tierney dead, the film's insurance kicks in and pays them back.
In the meantime, a photographer has gotten pictures of Mick being hit by a car and walking away. He uses those pictures to try to bribe Beth. He tells her that he wants exclusive pictures on every one of her stories. He wants tips all the time, and if he doesn't get them, Mick St. John becomes his number one priority.
Somewhere in the middle was an adorable conversation where Josef implies that he "dated" Jean Harlow, and later implies that he was involved with Greta Garbo as well. This was just too cute and one of the few times that we're really reminded of just how old Mick is because he gets all fanboy about Jean Harlow. They also have a discussion about what their relationship is now. Mick says that Josef is his sire now, and calls him dad (which Josef forbids him to do again). Josef says not really, because Mick would have been a vampire again anyway. He just Re-turned him, so he's not really his sire. I don't think it's possible to say how much I love the two of them.
Oh, I should also mention that Mick discovers a few paparazzi that are actually vampires. He takes their camera when they take pictures of him and tells them to go away.
The other actually important moment of the episode for me, is also the moment of the series that makes me actually like Beth. She doesn't go to Mick with the problem of the blackmailer. She also doesn't just go along with him. She goes to Josef. She goes to Josef and she asks him to take care of it. Because Josef is very very smart, he doesn't let her get away with assuming that he'll deal with it in some nice manner. When she says she thought he could pay the guy off, he asks if she thinks that would solve the problem. Beth reluctantly says not. Josef says, "Then you know how I'm going to handle it." Beth agrees that she does. I like this move from both of them. It shows just how far Beth is willing to go to protect Mick (though it's not completely selfless. She doesn't want to be left behind, and Mick tells her that's what happens if people find out about a vampire. They disappear and start over with a new name, a new life). It also shows that Josef is smart enough to know that Mick is probably going to eventually find out about it, and he needs to make sure that Beth knows exactly what's going to happen. She can't be allowed to say that she thought he'd pay the guy or something, later. She has to be just as complicit in this as Josef is himself. He also tells Beth that as long as she's involved with Mick her job at Buzzwire endangers his secret.
Josef, sends the two paparazzi vamps to eat bad guy. Beth quits her job and goes to dinner with Mick. The new DA guy, has a file on Mick and it includes the pictures that the paparazzi guy took of him being hit by a car and walking away.
It was a truly fabulous episode that makes me love all of them. I can't wait for this week's episode.