CSI NY.
Dead Reckoning, Battle Scars, It Happened to Me.
Dead Reckoning:My favouite part: The scene between Mac and Flack when Mac confronts Flack over his not shooting the woman.
- Loved Mac and Flack’s little talk, it was really nice to see Mac try to reach out to Flack, because it’s something he’s neither particularly good at (he may understand what Flack’s going through most of all the team, but he’s always struggled with the emotional stuff, and that kind of talk is usually something he’d leave to Stella, so it was really nice to see him try). I liked particularly that Mac was trying to reach out as a friend, and not an authority figure. What was interesting, and really nice here, is that Flack clearly doesn’t want to talk about what’s going on with him. That seems very Flack-like to me. We’ve never really seen him dealing with something as emotionally destroying as the death of a loved one before, and the way he chooses to handle it - throwing himself into work, hiding his problems, telling people he’s fine when he’s clearly not - strikes me as very in character for someone like Flack, a police detective from what may be a long line of cops. It’s also a very Mac-like way of dealing with it, and sets up a nice, and interesting parallel between the two of them. I think this may well be why Mac is struggling so to reach out to Flack - he sees himself in Flack, and really isn’t sure how to handle it.
Battle Scars.
- Break/street dancing is dangerous and painful!
- Loved Mac testing weapons and talking about his military contacts.
- Alice? LOL, no wonder he’s such a tough guy.
- Mac and Flack looked HOT walking through that club place when they were going to talk to that other street dancer guy (Nick?). Flack looked very nice in that white striped shirt.
- Hawkes’ ‘Hawaiian’ style shirt was just weird.
- I thought the way the case turned out was a nice twist, and also quite sad in that it really didn’t have to happen and it was the result of people with good intentions trying to make something good come out of something bad. It also raised interesting questions of responsibility, Nick killed Jesse, but ultimately I think Alice was to blame. What a scumbag.
- It was great to see Flack smiling again. Flack isn’t doing well, and it may turn out he’s come back too soon, but I think taking down Alice, getting to put away a real scumbag, helped him a lot. Which may well be why the CSIs, and Mac in particular, understand and don’t fight him on his continuing to work.
- Facebook quiz, LOL!
- Glad to see Danny has a stick and is still struggling with walking. It makes his very quick recovery more believable. Reminds me of House a bit too. Maybe he’s going to start using it to grab suspects with or something.
It Happened to Me.
- A really good Hawkes episode. Except for the revelation in the first episode that Hawkes is volunteering for the Central Park medical service, we haven’t seen how Angell’s death affected him. Hawkes was distinctly OOC this episode - snapping at patients and his friends, lying to Mac, Don, and Danny. He seemed angry and frustrated throughout the case, and it seemed to be about more than his guilt over misdiagnosing Stafford. Although that was definitely part of it. One thing I love about this show is that from time to time it shows it’s characters as human and flawed. We’ve seen it with Mac during the Dobson arc. With Stella during the Diakos arc. With Danny in episodes like On the Job and All in the Family. We even saw it with Adam, in the s6 premiere, sleeping with Stella wasn’t wrong, but IMO it was the result of Angell’s death and the shooting, and Adam and Stella’s likely very human reactions to that of fear and frustration and need. We’ve seen it with Flack when he killed Cade and in his behaviour this season. But we’ve never really seen it with Hawkes, he’s always seemed the calmest and most put-together, controlled, members of the team. So to see that he’s just as capable of making mistakes, of letting emotions drive his actions, and of being taken in by bad people (something we’ve seen with Mac (‘Joe’), Stella (Frankie) and Danny (his past with Tanglewood, the ‘boyfriend’ in Buzzkill) as well) was interesting and realistic.
- The team’s reactions to Hawkes’ behaviour, notably Mac’s, Stella’s, and Don’s, was interesting and again real, and nicely done. All three are angry/frustrated with him for keeping things from them, but also there is a good deal of hurt and confusion there because, as Mac put it, ‘it’s Sheldon’. Don is rightly pissed at Hawkes for lying to him, as are Mac and Stella. And Hawkes is caught in the worst position of all - pride and shame keeping him from confiding in his friends, and, more importantly, making him push them away. His method of dealing with problems - keeping his problem a secret and pushing away efforts to talk about it - parallels both Don’s behaviour this season, and Mac’s behaviour throughout the series. While Danny and Stella are the more emotional members of the team, and more the kind to let their emotions rip (though both have hidden their problems before) Mac, Flack, and Hawkes are….not less emotional, but have a much tighter hold on their emotions. And this fits very nicely with each of their backgrounds, as not only are they all law enforcement (a job in which keeping a rein on emotions is important) but also Mac is ex-military, Flack comes from a family in which police work is something of a tradition, and Hawkes is a former surgeon. Both soldiers and doctors need to keep control of their emotions to be able to perform their jobs effectively, and to avoid burn-out, and I imagine that in Flack’s family, and in his life as a cop, keeping control of your emotions was strongly encouraged. Hawkes’ behaviour in this episode is both very believable and wonderfully human.
- Once again we see Mac trying to reach out to a friend, and to reach out as a friend and not a boss. As I said before (in the comment on dead Reckoning), this isn’t something that’s easy for Mac or something he’s very good at, and it’s really nice to see him trying. I really liked that he told Hawkes he could tell him anything. Although they’ve had their differences before, I think Mac genuinely meant this, and that Hawkes genuinely appreciated it, even if he was too angry/ashamed to actually tell Mac, or anyone else, what happened. Mac offering Hawkes his spare room (in typically Mac-like fashion, LOL) was sweet, and a big thing for someone as intensely private as Mac to do - to offer to share his private space like that.
- I loved Mac and Stella’s discussing Hawkes, and how honest they were able to be with each other. The scene showed the beauty of their relationship, and the deep trust they hold in each other. There has been distance between them since the shoot out, but this was an episode that showed the old trust and closeness is still there. What I liked best about the scene was they could share with each other their anger and worry towards Hawkes, which they couldn’t convey to Hawkes himself. I liked that Mac admitted he had been tempted to lecture Hawkes, it shows a recognition of one of Mac’s weaknesses- his tendency to lecture at times when he should just listen - and that Mac himself recognizes it and restrained himself from doing it shows that he’s aware of this flaw, and trying to fight it. Stella’s anger, which stems largely from a sense of betrayal, is also very in-character, and the fact that both Mac and Stella share high expectations of each other and the team, and that this can cause problems for them and the people for which they have the expectations, is very in character for both. I also really liked that for once, Mac was the one advising understanding and trying to see why Hawkes was the acting the way he was, whereas Stella, though she saw the need for that, was the one who was more outright angry and frustrated, and, very in character for her, struggling to hide that. It was nice to see that Stella isn’t always the ‘all-knowing, always understanding, emotional guru’ type and to see the role reversal between the two of them from episodes like Help, where we saw Stella trying to persuade Mac to see past his anger at Hawkes and understand what he was going through. Stella has seemed tense and angry a few times this season, and that’s still there. It’s evidently still there for Mac too, given that his initial reaction to Hawkes’ confession was anger. What was really nice though is that despite their anger/frustration with Hawkes, both Mac and Stella came through for him at the end, reinforcing the show’s strong sense of family. And of course, it was ultimately the more emotionally in-tune Stella who talked to Hawkes about his problem at the end, while Mac, for whom actions not only speak louder than words, but may be easier than words, offered him a room. Mac may know that he’s not very good at talking about the emotional stuff, and Hawkes had twice rebuffed him, so he does what for Mac is perhaps a little easier, and also the second best thing - offers him somewhere safe to stay. While Mac offers physical reassurance, he leaves it to Stella to offer the emotional ‘talky’ kind of comfort, and that reflects the way Mac and Stella work together to keep their ‘family’ safe,
The looks Hawkes and Stella exchange at Mac’s offer show that they’re both touched and amused by it, and that they both recognize it’s a pretty big thing for Mac to offer, given, as I’ve mentioned before, how very private he is.
- Hawkes eventually spilling his secret to a stranger involved in the case reminded me of Mac talking to the victim of Locked In Syndrome in Blink about Claire. Like Mac, Hawkes found it easier to share what he was going through with a stranger, although, as with Mac, it was his friends, the ‘family’ of the team that are the ones who are ultimately there for him. Hawkes telling John that ‘it happened to me’ highlights the fact that often, it can be easier to talk to someone you barely know, than someone you care about. Hawkes talking about the way what happened changed him, and the guilt he feels over pushing away his friends, was very human, very realistic. As I said about Mac earlier, there’s self-recognition here, which is an important part of dealing with problems. As with Mac, there’s also the sense that though Hawkes was painfully aware of his flaws (as I believe Mac is aware of some of his) that doesn’t mean he was able to stop himself acting the way he did, acting out those flaws, and that’s very human and realistic, and one of the reasons I love this show.
OK, now on to some less serious, lighter notes:
- Mac looked HOT in that dark blue shirt.
- Hawkes looked very nice in the brown striped shirt. So much nicer than that horrendous Hawaiian-style-thing he was wearing last week.
- Flack looked mighty fine, nice and clean shaven and in casual gear. Yummy.
- LOL at Flack and Danny’s reactions to sloshing. They like their food, and they like it on a plate of some kind, thank you very much. Flack’s grossed-out reaction to the sloshing party reminded me of his horrified reaction to seeing the vendor warehouse place in Happily Never After in s4. Poor man, loves his food so much and keeps seeing it misused.
- LOL at Flack and Danny waving at each other across the street.
- Oh, Sid. Something to ‘noodle on’. Love him.
- Loved Adam’s frustration over Haylen moving things. Funny, but also a nice subtle reminder of both his OCD and the displacement and resentment he feels at Haylen’s presence in the lab.
- Of course Adam knows what sloshing is.
- Youtube, LOL.
- Poor Adam with the exploding orange juice!
- I am really glad I ended up recording this ep last night, as I would have been watching it just after dinner otherwise - for which I had crayfish linguine with orange juice.
- Thelonious Cross? LOL. Another hilarious name.
Apologies if I got any bits of certain episodes mixed up. Three good episodes, and a very nice contination of the whole idea that bad things can happen to anyone at anytime, an idea we saw in different forms in nearly every episode so far - the randomness of the bar shootng and the Compass Killer, of the mugging in Battle Scars, Mac's dad having cancer, the health care professionals being targeted because of their connection to one patient, what happened to Hawkes. It does a nice job of humanzing the characters and making them seem a part of the real world, not TV-Land..