CSI:NY, "Personal Foul"
"Are you gonna take responsibility for the next person killed in a cab?"
Yet again, we get an episode that turns on the question of responsibility, this time explicitly so. And it's not just about professional responsibility, or about Mac's toward the Taxi Cab Killer case, but about personal responsibility: responsibility in people's relationships and in how they treat each other.
Our attention, again, keeps being pushed back to Mac's responsibility in all of this, and this is also explicitly touched on several times. The most interesting reference to the question is when he tells Reed that he gave him his cell number for personal reasons, not professional ones. There's a clear line being drawn here, one that lies right in the place where those two spheres divide, and it's equally clear that Reed is using that personal angle against Mac, not to mention violating various standards of professional responsibility himself.
And just as Reed uses that personal connection against Mac -- in the process violating any trust that may have been established between them when he flat-out lies about his "highly-placed source" in the NYPD -- Mac then uses it against Reed when they confront each other near the end. "Out of love and respect for your mother, I'll give you an exclusive. You ready? Watch who you mess with."
That one actually made me gasp. Mac's anger is justified, but the specific way in which he expresses it is low-down in an extremely pointed way. It's the kind of statement that's meant to twist a knife, to hurt someone else just as much as he's been hurt -- or, perhaps, to hurt Reed before Mac can be hurt again.
It's also a way of using family against Reed, of using those ties to hurt him and to emphasize (to remind him?) of just how Mac has already been hurt, and of how much he's already lost.
Because that's the thing about family: it's not all sunshine. We see family emphasized over and over again on this show, and we also see all the ways in which the team forms a family, and in which they're there for each other, all the ways in which they've bonded and in which they would go to the wall for each other. That's the good side of it. In this episode, I think, we're seeing the emphasis placed squarely on the dark side of family ties.
Family is the tie that binds, the tie that brings people closer together. It's also the tie that can push people further apart. At its very worst, it can be used to destroy lives. And that's what we're being asked to play witness to here. Reed betrays Mac's trust; both he and Mac use their family ties against each other, to hurt or to try to make the other person do what either of them wants -- to have the reaction that each of them is looking for.
This was set up in "Like Water for Murder" with Reed. We saw the establishment of family ties there, too, but we also saw a situation in which Reed first asked Mac to give him his word, and then in which Mac told him that he shouldn't have promised something he couldn't deliver, and warned him that Reed couldn't use his expectations of their relationship to change Mac's mind about anything. All of this was groundwork for what we saw happen between them tonight.
And, now that he's gotten into a cab (after agreeing to meet an anonymous informant on the street at night), Reed may end up paying the ultimate price for what happened -- because he may not have agreed to that meeting if Mac hadn't threatened him, but Mac wouldn't have threatened him if he hadn't made the statements in his blog that he did.
Which also brings us back around to the notion of accountability, and the cold fact that we can never predict the long-term consequences of even our seemingly most innocuous decisions, not until those consequences begin to unfold and nothing can be done to change them.
This idea of the ways in which people betray each other, the ways in which family can hurt as well as heal, plays out throughout the episode. Danny makes several attempts to talk to Lindsay about what's been going on between them, and during their phone conversation near the end, he says all the right things. At least, on the surface they're all the right things. But all of this is more than a little uncomfortable, and more than a little disingenuous on his part, when that conversation is immediately followed by what he tells Ricki Sandoval when she comes over to say goodbye.
He doesn't say they can't do this anymore. He doesn't say that he has someone else he's with and that he can't hurt her. He doesn't say anything like that. What he does say is that he's "starting [my emphasis] to think it's a bad thing for [them] to do." Only starting to think that, Danny? Really? (And his phrasing indicates that their affair has been ongoing, and wasn't just a one-night stand.) And it's not even a definitive statement even then; he's still hesitating, and he still tries to call Ricki back when she tells him that she's moving. He tries to tell her not to go.
Danny is reacting largely out of hurt and guilt, both because of Ruben's death and because of the ties he has to his blood family, the ones who apparently taught him that trust was a loser's game. To his brother Louie, who taught him that people who love you abandon you and lie to you because they love you.
People do terrible things to each other in the name of love, and Danny is no exception; there's something more than a little manipulative in the way he treats both women here. The other thing that's troubling is that Lindsay is acting on incomplete information. She doesn't know the whole story; she doesn't know that Danny has been carrying on an affair with Ricki.
Now, to be fair, his repeated statements to her that they should talk may mean that he's been planning to come clean with her, but at this point, she still doesn't know. She still believes that this is all about the way that Danny has pushed her away since Ruben's death. She doesn't know the whole story; she doesn't know everything that's really going on with Danny. And, until she does, there can be no real trust regained. There can be no way for either of them to move forward, no matter how they choose to do so.
Of course, this also points to another theme that we've seen this season, the tension between what people know about each other and what they don't, and how people's hidden faces can be far different from what they present to the world.
Ricki's scene with Danny is about another kind of breakdown, too: it's about what happens when family ties shatter. I said, back when Danny's involvement with her was first revealed, that they formed a kind of twisted, ersatz family, since their affair was borne out of their shared grief and hurt over Ruben. Now, with Ricki leaving, that bond is broken.
More to the point, Danny's last tie to Ruben has been broken. Ruben is really gone, and nothing Danny can do will bring him back. Nothing will stop the grief -- a grief that, it's clear, the last few months have done nothing to heal.
These are all the ways in which people hurt each other.
Also notice what Ricki tells Danny: "Don't say you're sorry, just say goodbye." Sometimes, apologies aren't enough; all a person can do is leave.
This directly parallels Mac's speech to Stella when the two of them are discussing the Taxi Cab Killer: "All she asked me to do was stop this killer from hurting someone else. But in spite of all the heartache, all the bloodshed he's causing, the only thing I could really offer her was an apology."
Danny is told not to offer an apology; Mac has nothing but an apology to offer. And it's clear from his words that this apology wasn't enough, or even much help. It was just all he could do.
Sometimes all a person can do is leave.
But we do get a nod here to a better bond between two people, as well, in Mac and Stella's simple exchange when she first comes into his office:
"Need me?"
"Yeah."
And they're there for each other, and neither of them need to say any more about it than that.
There are also nice moments of bonding between Stella and Hawkes when they go on their little "field trip" to see the wild parrots, and between Danny and Flack when they're at the basketball game together at the beginning. The emphasis on these scenes is on trust and friendship, on the fellow-soldiers bond between these various sets of people, and that's the good side of family.
These are all the ways in which people help each other, and heal each other.
Briefly Noted:
"See something?"
"No, that's the problem."
Again, note the emphasis both on what's not there, and on what isn't seen.
"So even with all this information at our fingertips, we still don't have our killer's name."
And the emphasis falls in the same place here, too. There's a constant tension in this episode regarding the unknown, and an emphasis on people not talking, not telling each other the truth or avoiding the real issues.
I know it's for reasons of plot, but Reed is seriously stupid to get in a cab immediately after he's been out chasing a story about, oh, what was that again? A serial killer who drives a taxi cab? The devil you say!
Also, Lindsay, honey. There are other subway stops around even if the (non-existent) 3rd Street Station is closed. Walk a couple of blocks, you'll hit one. Or take the bus. Seriously, either of those would be better than a cab, and you're wet already. Trust me, wet is better than dead.
Fashion Watch:
Flack starts off the episode in casual wear, with a dark blue henley and jeans. Later, he's back to his usual look in a dark gray pinstriped suit with a white shirt and a silver-and-gray patterned tie.
Danny also goes for casual with jeans and a light gray t-shirt with a high v-neck. Later, he wears a black polo knit with a khaki-colored cotton jacket.
Lindsay wears a dark green leather jacket over an off-white fitted henley. For the rest of the episode, she's seen in a short gray jacket with a cinched-in waist and a curved collar that is (oh, pun not intended, I swear) to die for, over a black v-neck. Seriously, I love this jacket. Actually, I love most of the jackets they put her in; they need to keep doing that. The green leather is cute on her, too, and she really rocks the fitted little jacket look, especially with her short bob. It's so much better than the frills.
Stella wears a pink v-neck with a tie at the neck, and a gray pinstriped suit.
Mac wears a black suit and a blue shirt with a white stripe running through it. I'll give him props for the stripe, and the shirt actually was pretty nice -- but in the end it's still another goddamn blue shirt. Blue shirt count: twenty-three.
Hawkes wears a brown suede jacket over a blue shirt. I swear, if he's started taking his fashion cues from Mac, I will lose it.