CSI:NY, "The Party's Over": stellaluna

stellaluna_

Feb 23, 2009 15:14

That is one hell of a dress Stella is wearing. I may have missed a few of the finer points of the plot due to being wildly distracted.

Adam's scene with Jake Kaplan is the most emotionally affecting, and effective, part of the episode. It's also the most important, because of what we learn about Adam: he has some form of OCD. No, he never comes right out and says that in those exact words, but the implications in his description of it -- and of his later emotional reaction -- are unavoidable. It's new information, and not a character reveal we would have necessarily seen coming, but it also fits perfectly with what we know of his background and with what we've seen of him over the past few seasons.

I also have to give the show props for not handling this in a sensationalistic or inappropriate way. In primetime, OCD is too often treated as the source of a character's alleged evil, or as a flat-out joke; they're played as either cheap shorthand or as exploitation, or both. And what those portrayals fail to address is the reality of the many, many people who are living with OCD or with other, similar disorders, and who are neither evil nor sources of constant high hilarity. In quietly revealing that Adam, a character who we've known for several years, has OCD, the show is doing something that we don't see too often.

Simply put, they're giving OCD a human face; this helps to both destigmatize and de-exoticize what OCD is, and what it's like to live with it. Adam isn't evil or a funny little man; he's just Adam, the same character we've been watching all along. This doesn't change who he is; it just adds another facet to his personality.

Mac's talent for making enemies continues unabated. That little exchange of disdain with Dunbrook is almost certainly going to come back to bite him in the ass sooner or later.

As is, possibly, the acceptance of that check -- although in that case, it's the NYPD's collective ass that may be in more danger.

Even if it doesn't yet, I would be willing to bet that these two plotlines will converge at some point.

The whole "blue flu" issue is a pretty tangled one. Labor actions are complicated issues to begin with, and when they're being conducted by personnel who provide vital services to a city, the issue gets even more complicated. On one hand, police officers who risk their lives every day to protect citizens have a right to their pay, and have the right to speak up when they're faced with losing that pay, or at least with having it held until some nebulous future date. On the other hand, their labor action runs the risk of putting those same citizens that they've sworn to protect at risk, by depriving them of those vital services.

I don't really have a point here, other than I want to note that a) this is a complicated issue, and that b) the show does a good job of presenting both sides of the argument without demonizing either one, or portraying one as foolish or misguided. Easy answers would cheapen the entire situation.

I am resisting making this entire plotline some sort of metaphor for Hollywood's recent (and ongoing) labor woes, but the temptation is certainly there.

However, I think that there are good ways and bad ways to take part in a labor action, and I don't think that Danny goes about it in the absolute best way possible. He says that he wants to take a stand and support his colleagues, and standing by one's convictions is, as Mac later points out, a good thing.

If Danny is going to support his colleagues, he also should have enough respect for the people he works with directly to tell them that he's going to be participating. Even if he doesn't get a chance to let them know ahead of time, for one reason or another, he should certainly be up-front about it when the time to walk off the job comes around. Because he doesn't, and because he has no reason to lie -- it's not like they don't know what he's doing, and it's not like he needs to maintain plausible deniability; they're not going to rat him out or get him in trouble -- it comes across as a lack of respect for them.

It particularly ends up putting Hawkes in a bad position, and this is particularly uncomfortable to watch, because it's clear that the hurt and frustration Hawkes feels are both personal and professional.

Which is made clear by Hawkes' earlier conversation with Lindsay, in which she tells him that he doesn't understand because he came over from the M.E.'s office -- a statement that ignores the fact he's been working with the CSI team for as much time as she has (a few months longer, really), and has been just as devoted as the rest of them -- and Hawkes counters by saying that he knows what he would do if he had earned the distinction of becoming a detective.

I'm glad to see that Stella has a hot new fireman boyfriend. I just hope to God that this one is, you know, not a crazy, violent stalker.