CSI:NY, "My Name Is Mac Taylor"
For the show's 100th episode, and for a story that should offer lots of thematic meat on the subject of identity, "My Name Is Mac Taylor" ended up feeling curiously lightweight. There's some great cinematography on hand, and both the color scheme and shot composition in many scenes are flat-out gorgeous, but I'm sitting here and finding myself with very little to talk about in terms of specifics. I didn't even write down any of my usual "Briefly Noted" moments; there's some nice banter when Flack and Danny go to see their confidential informant, but none of it inspired me to pause and do some transcription or to take detailed notes.
In addition, although I'm intrigued by the notion of Mac and his well-noted problems with authority getting involved with a superior officer, the final scene feels emotionally off to me. For one thing, as scarletts_awry pointed out when we talked about the episode the other day, Mac does not have game. This has been well-established, and although I can easily see him getting up the gumption to ask Gillian out for coffee, and even to teasingly repeat her earlier "I'm free now" line back to her -- and I was fine with the scene up until then -- the near-swaggering self-confidence of "She looked back" doesn't quite click.
Furthermore, and I think this is the more important part, this scene follows, and seems to build from, the previous scene with Mac, in which he told Stella over the phone that the case they'd just worked emphasized the importance of spending good moments with one's nearest and dearest. Since that's the case, I think it would have rang much more true, and been a much stronger emotional conclusion to the 100th episode, if we had ended on either that scene or on the one with Stella and Adam looking up the names of everyone they knew, or, even more fittingly, if the final scene had been one of Mac reaching to his actual nearest and dearest, and that would Stella at the very least, if not the entire rest of the team.
Gillian is not that person. I don't care if Mac is attracted to her and I don't care how great a character she turns out to be (and mind you, I think she has potential); she's simply not. Again, I'm curious to see where this may go, especially if Mac does, indeed, get involved with her, because that has the potential for all kinds of interesting tension, but the final scene of the episode wasn't the place for it.
(This even would have worked if the scene of Mac getting his flirt on had been followed by a scene in which he was seen connecting with the rest of the team. That's the emotional note I wish they had hit harder, and that I wish they had concluded on.)
However, all of that said, the scene with Mac and Stella on the phone is really well-played; their love and friendship comes through loud and clear without either of them ever having to spell out the fact that they care about each other or that they're important to each other. Similarly, the scene with Adam and Stella looking people up in the database is playful and affectionate. (This is also the closest the episode gets to explicitly touching on what should have been the paramount idea of identity, as Adam wonders about the lives of all the other people named Adam Ross in the New York area.) We've already seen that Adam has a crush on Stella, and possibly on the rest of the team as well, but it was nice here to see that there's a genuine sense of friendship and camaraderie underlying that, and that Stella feels a similar sense of friendship toward Adam.
We already knew this, of course, after how she came through for him in the budget cuts crisis, but then again, friendship (or any relationship) can't be based solely on crisis; good relationships also succeed, or fail, on the basis of the everyday, of the little things.
On that note, I also really liked the scene between Stella and Hawkes at the waterfall. The facts about the case that they're exchanging are pretty much incidental; what's nice is the level of affectionate familiarity that exists between them, and how pleased Hawkes seems to be about sharing his findings with her. There's a real sense of connection and of caring between these two, and it's something that I always enjoy seeing highlighted.
One final random note: the pool scene at the beginning reminded me of the pool scene in Val Lewton's Cat People (the original 1942 version directed by Jacques Tourneur, not the 1982 Paul Schrader remake), in which Jane Randolph is stalked by -- maybe -- a large cat, of whom all we see is its shadow as it circles the pool.
Despite my issues with "My Name Is Mac Taylor," it's a real thrill to see CSI:NY hit the milestone of its 100th episode. In the middle of the fifth season, this is still my favorite show, and one that has continually surprised me with its handling of characters and theme. There have been missteps, of course, as is inevitable, but they've hit the mark more often than not, and I hope that the show will continue to be as strong as it has been all along. I'm looking forward to it.