CSI:NY, "Taxi"
"Why can't you see who I am?"
This cri du coeur, uttered by a serial killer whose real name we never learn, does a good job of encapsulating everything this show has been about from the beginning. While this season the focus has specifically fallen on guilt and responsibility -- and those turn up here, too -- the show's overriding concern from day one has been identity and family, and that's very much the major concern here, as the Taxi Cab Killer case is finally put to rest.
It's significant that the Killer's major concern isn't avoiding getting caught, but getting his words out to the public. This is, as it turns out, why he's targeted Reed, and why he's committed the acts he has: he wants to get his message out; he wants to be heard. He wants to be understood. Despite the insanity of his acts and the brutality of the murders, this is, at heart, a very human and universal concern. We want to be understood; in other words, we want people to know who we are. We want them to be able to hear us, to really listen. We want them to look at us and care.
We want to know that we're not alone. In other words, we want to establish identity and family connections.
The Killer commits the acts he does out of whatever damage and delusions he's suffering from, but he also is self-aware enough, on some level, to succinctly sum up what he's searching for: "It's his message, what he wants them to understand."
Of course, Reed's connection to Mac adds extra layers to this, especially when he starts using his real-time blog entries, after he's been kidnapped, to send Mac a message. He makes references to beer and related products in order to tip the team off that he's being held in a brewery, but it's significant that he first uses Claire's name in order to get Mac's attention.
What's even more significant is what he writes after he first says that he's going to refer to the victim as Claire: "No one should be written about with anonymity. But then, she shouldn't be dead." On one level, he's talking about his unnamed fellow victim. But it's also clear that he's talking about the real Claire here, too, and Mac knows it. Because Claire died anonymously, with thousands of others, and like most of the other people who died in the Towers on 9/11, her body was never recovered; she doesn't even have a grave -- which Reed also knows, because that's the only answer Mac was able to give him when he asked where she was buried.
This brings the focus of the entire conversation back to the difficult-to-define relationship that Mac and Reed have. Reed isn't Mac's son; he's not even quite his stepson. So...what are they to each other? For one thing, each of them is the other's only living connection to Claire, the only way they now have of reaching her in some fashion, or at least of keeping her memory alive. It's a familial connection, but it's a very broken one, and one that's based on loss and grief.
What's also interesting is that this conversation is witnessed by Stella and Quinn. Stella is probably the person Mac is closest to in the world, and the one he trusts most implicitly; in his case, she is the one who understands him, the one who knows who he is and who really is able to hear him when he speaks. (And this is borne out by their earlier conversation, when Stella tells him exactly what happened between him and Reed, even before he describes the argument to her.)
Meanwhile, Quinn is someone who represents a piece of Mac's past just as much as Reed and Claire do. If the connection with Reed is based on loss and grief, the connection with Quinn is based on betrayal and guilt -- and maybe more than a little bit of missed opportunities, missed chances. Mac never pursued anything with her because the one kiss they shared represented a betrayal of Claire, however brief, and for whatever impetus propelled it. But, as Quinn asked Mac previously: does he ever wonder what might have happened?
Quinn's reaction to being told the Reed connection is also interestingly complex, and there are several layers of hurt and regret here: she seems both genuinely sad at the reminder of Claire's death and more than a little wounded at the way Mac snaps at her. At the way, even now -- at least as it must feel from her perspective -- Mac uses Claire's name as a way to shut her down, to put her in her place. These are two people who don't understand each other, and at least one of them seems to want that kind of understanding.
Mac's fear when he sees Reed bleeding out from a slit throat is also palpable, and there's a sense here, too, that he's trying to do for Reed what he couldn't do for Claire: he couldn't save her from dying, but maybe he can redeem himself for that with Reed. (And there's something more than a little heartbreaking in the way Stella tells Mac that she can't stop the bleeding because her hands are too small.)
In the end, there's hope: the Taxi Cab Killer is caught, and Mac is there to take Reed home from the hospital. "We can all begin to heal," Mac says, and I would argue that this is a little too facile of an ending, a little too easy: the Taxi Cab Killer may have been put behind bars, but the damage he's done will be longer-lasting, and the capture of one killer doesn't mean everyone is safe for all time. As we've seen, again and again, no one, nowhere, is safe.
However, the potential glibness of this gets mitigated slightly by the phrasing of Mac's last line; the key words here are begin to. Healing, like everything else, is a process; it doesn't happen overnight, and maybe it never happens altogether. There's still a lot of work to be done, and a lot more heartache along the way.
Briefly Noted:
While not the main focus of this episode, guilt and responsibility do crop up here, as well. Notice Mac and Reed's exchange during their conversation:
"You're not blaming me for his death?"
"I'm blaming you for putting a target on his back."
Also notice the three ways in which the Taxi Cab Killer takes responsibility for his victims, and his reasons for committing the murders: he compares himself to Charon, the ferryman on the River Styx who transports the souls of the dead to Hades (making himself a psychopomp, the one responsible for granting them safe passage); the symbols he carved were a reference to Leviticus 27:29, "None devoted, which shall be devoted of men, shall be redeemed; [but] shall surely be put to death" (as beaniesheppard suggested in comments a couple of weeks ago), which suggests that he's been attempting to find redemption for his victims, and for the city as a whole, by practicing human sacrifice; and the continued presence of the rosary beads hanging over his rearview mirror, which, as I noted when they first appeared, may be used to pray for reparation for the sins of others, rather than one's own sins.
Finally, notice that the notion of vigilante justice crops up here -- in other words, a literal notion of taking responsibility for the law into one's own hands.
Once again, although he'd probably still insist that he doesn't, Mac is largely letting his emotions guide his choices here, as seen when he asks Quinn for more time before they go after Reed for what he's written on his blog.
I really, really like Quinn, and I hope, after all the time they've devoted to her in the two episodes she's appeared in, that they have plans to bring her back as a recurring character. She and Mac have great chemistry, and she also serves as a good foil for him, and for the rest of the team, as someone who's not afraid to speak up and challenge them when she feels she needs to.
Since when is Reed twenty-three? He said he waited until he was eighteen to come looking for Claire, and that was a year and a half ago. He shouldn't be more than nineteen or twenty at most, depending on when his birthday is.
Fashion Watch:
Flack wears a dark gray pinstriped suit with a light blue shirt and a black tie with diagonal white stripes. Later, he wears a light gray suit with a blue and white striped shirt and a gray patterned tie.
Mac wears a black suit with a dark blue shirt. Later, he has a gray pinstriped suit and a burgundy shirt, and in the final scene, we see him in casual wear, with a black t-shirt and black zip-up pullover with jeans. Blue shirt count: twenty-four.
Danny wears an off-white henley with jeans. Later, he wears a short-sleeved green henley over a white v-neck t-shirt, which strikes me as a slightly odd layering choice, and jeans.
Lindsay wears a midnight-blue v-neck sweater over a white camisole.
Hawkes wears a slate blue shirt with a gray suit. Yes, he's definitely caught blue-shirt fever from Mac.