By Sobell
Oh my God, Las Vegas is flooded!
I kid: we begin by zooming over what I would assume is the Atlantic Ocean as the sun is setting behind the Miami skyline. A synthesizer plays. The Miami scene is a little less dusky. The sun, as it turns out, is actually rising, which means one of two things: either the sun comes up in the west in Miami -- something which might be plausible, if Dave Barry is to believed -- or there's another large body of water behind Miami and the camera approached from that direction. I don't know. Anyway, it's now quite sunny; the synthesizer throbs as we see a few high-rises, a stretch of straight highway leading into grassy swamplands, and the Everglades themselves. As the camera fixes on an airboat parked on the waters, two things happen -- the synthesizer switches to industrial music, signaling that this is not your father's Miami police drama, and the sun begins rising or setting again. I can't keep track. The scene falls dramatically silent as the camera slides down the boat and begins tightly focusing on the water. As a fisherman casts a fly, breaking the glassy surface, the lull is broken by the sound of a plane passing overhead. Judging by the way the fishermen's flowing manes whip in the wind, the plane is going very fast and very low. A plume of black smoke trails behind the plane as it continues to plummet; the fishermen make appropriately surprised noises as it zooms by them and crashes within eyeshot. There is a conflagration that can be directly traced back to Con Air, proving that nothing emerges from the Bruckheimer Productions machine until it can muster an explosion or two, and then the camera zooms from the incandescent fireball to the cool green waters several feet away. The waters are quickly roiled by a piece of machinery landing in them.
We then awkwardly transition to a tracking shot of grass. Lots and lots of grass. Enough to keep the people at Pottery Barn in sea-grass rug production through 2003. The camera then cuts through the grass and down a straight, narrow canal. Then, it zooms back up to produce the unnerving spectacle of David Caruso zipping sideways across the screen. We pull back to see Caruso -- or, as he's known on this show, Horatio Caine -- standing at the prow of another airboat, looking for all the world like a ship's figurehead by way of Banana Republic. We watch the boat zip around for a while, then see Caine again, who's now crouched to Eric Delko. They zoom over to the crash site and begin expositing. Delko says, "Flight 906, outbound Miami to D.C., dropped off the radar at oh-eight-twenty. Crashed right after takeoff." Caine asks how many were on board. Delko replies, "NTSB confirms two pilots, six passengers." NTSB, for those of you playing along at home, is the National Transit Safety Board. Its role in this episode is roughly equivalent to Vera's on Cheers. Were this episode actually taking place in a world where Florida had not apparently seceded from the United States, here's what would have happened: the plane would have gone down. Someone fluent in federal regulations would have remembered 49 CFR 830 (Notification and Reporting of Aircraft Accidents or Incidents and Overdue Aircraft, and Preservation of Aircraft Wreckage, Mail Cargo, and Records), notified the conveniently located NTSB field office in Miami, Florida, given them the relevant information about the crash, then remembered that Section 10 reads, "Prior to the time the Board or its authorized representative takes custody of aircraft wreckage, mail, or cargo, such wreckage, mail, or cargo may not be disturbed or moved except to the extent necessary:
- To remove persons injured or trapped;
- To protect the wreckage from further damage; or
- To protect the public from injury.
Where it is necessary to move aircraft wreckage, mail or cargo, sketches, descriptive notes, and photographs shall be made, if possible, of the original positions and condition of the wreckage and any significant impact marks."
In other words, this is not the aviation equivalent of a knock-over at the local 7-Eleven.
BUT. Suspending the idea that a show about law enforcement would bother to research existing laws governing the investigation of aviation accidents and returning to the episode at hand, we get back to the heart of the matter: eight people went down. Or, as Delko puts it, eight souls. Caine says, "Eight souls unaccounted for, okay." Before the two men can get into the metaphysics of plane crashes, Delko has a frustrating moment with the cell phone, blurting out, "Look, they're advising we wait for fire --" Caine doesn't care what "they" say: "We were four miles away when we took the call. First responders provide immediate aid, no questions asked!" Shouldn't Caine be addressing that comment to the people on the cell phone, especially since Delko relays it only as, "We're taking this." Caine then orders Delko, "Call MDPD" -- God help me, I thought of Mindy Page Davis Page for a moment there; MPDP, MDPD, it's understandable -- "tell then I want to set up a forward command post at levee 67 -- mobile recovery, biohazard gear, the works. And then call in the night shift. We need all hands on deck." What, is Caine's phone ear broken so he can't make the call himself?
Poor Delko's having himself a freak-out on the cell phone when Caine grabs his attention for yet another pressing matter. "Right there," he intones. "We've got a survivor right there!" Delko screams, "Hold on, sir, I'm coming!" then leaps in the water. Well, at least he's dressed for it. And with all that nervous energy, he could probably skim the surface like a dragonfly. Caine watches Delko slog through the river, then heroically picks up the phone and barks that he needs air rescue. Give Horatio command post, give him mobile recovery, give him biohazard gear, give him an air rescue -- is there anything else he wants? How about a Hot Pocket? A Fresca, maybe? A mint on a silken pillow? No, no, Horatio -- really, just ask. Meanwhile, Delko's busy slogging through the Everglades, screaming reassurances as he goes; the minute he hits the guy, he bellows, "He's not breathing." Well. That challenges the definition of "survivor." Caine looks intense. Delko somehow finds a patch of solid ground, deposits this "survivor" -- taking care to jostle his neck as much as possible in the process -- and proceeds to launch into CPR. "Breathe, breathe, breathe," he urges. Horatio just hangs out and watches. Delko, meanwhile, is doing everything short of pounding on the guy's chest and screaming, "Live, damn you! Live!" Caine finally gets Delko's attention and lets us all know the survivor…isn't. Delko is understandably winded, but he still manages to gasp out, "I lost him." "It happens," Horatio tells him. Delko contends that the floater could have told him something. Horatio says, "We don't need him to. We've got the whole story right here." He then shifts so he can pose cinematically in front of the airboat and the billowing plume of smoke.
And we go to the credits, the much-anticipated credits. Well, much anticipated in the Sobell household: I had money riding on the background music. All summer, the husband argued that CSI: Miami would provide the perfect opportunity for a Miami Sound Machine revival, while I countered that the people behind the spin-off would be counting on The Who to provide that all-important link to the original series. At some point, we made a wager. So when the opening scream of "Won't Get Fooled Again" echoed and the credits rolled, we had this conversation:
Me: I win! I win! That means you lose! I win!
The husband: Damn straight I got fooled again.
Me: Not me. I win. Yes, that's right. I win.
The husband: Anthony Zuiker is now my blood enemy.
Me: Over this?
The husband: [screaming] BLOOD!
Me: I can't believe --
The husband: You tell Zuiker I'm coming, and Hell's coming with me.
Me: Try to get a little perspe--
The husband: You tell him I'm taking a dollar out of his ass.
Can you imagine if we had gone for the big stakes, like $5?
Anyway, credits. Who. Commercials. Then we're back at the scene and Caine's walking with Calleigh Duquesne, who's telling him that the jet was registered to a Scott Eric Sommer, who made the Fortune 500 via insurance scams. Caine couldn't care less: "Did you get a flight plan yet?" Calleigh replies that it went straight to NTSB. Unlike, say, an accident notification or subsequent report. Calleigh continues, "They've got a go team flying in. They'll be here within the hour." What? They have to fly in from the field office in Miami? Is the highway traffic that bad? Horatio asks where fire and rescue are. Calleigh replies, "They went out to look for survivors. Delko's with them." That last sentence is open to a wide variety of interpretations. Caine watches a bunch of firefighters run by as she tells him this. Calleigh watches too, then turns back to Caine to ask, "Is it as bad as it looks?" Judging by the first five minutes of this show, yes. Caine takes a look at Calleigh and says grimly, "It's actually worse than it looks."
Meanwhile, on Dagobah, Delko's crouching purposefully and peering through mist-shrouded swamp trees as an airboat slowly glides by. Use the Force, Delko. He does, gliding over to a severed human arm floating in a thicket of money-festooned lily pads. Delko picks up the arm, leaves the money. Perhaps it really does grow on trees in the swamp. (Sorry, I couldn't resist the low-hanging fruit.) Back at the main crime scene, more cars pull up, and Tim Speedle (scruffy, male) gets out of one while Megan Donner (not male) gets out of the other. She gasps, "NTSB is on the way and [beat] they're going to want updates. [beat] "Flight logistics, weather, eyewitness reports." Speedle responds by deadpanning, "Welcome back, Megan. I didn't know you were going to be in this week." Megan averts her eyes and asks if there were any survivors. Given that Speedle just showed up at the site, what makes her think he's going to know? Speedle more or less tells her this; Megan plows ahead, quavering, "They'll be found in the first few hours." [beat] "If we find them at all." Did someone force-feed that woman a bunch of Pixie Stix, then change her lines two minutes before pushing her in front of a camera? Speedle gives her an Are you for real? look before rubbing her arm reassuringly and saying, "We've got it covered?" Megan looks at Speedle's hand as though it had detached from his arm and crawled up her arm under its own power, then insists shakily, "This is a level two biohazard site." She begins walking into the danger. "We're taking precautions." In another part of the site, Horatio's walking along and telling Calleigh, "All search personnel should have Tyvexx overalls on, double gloves, masks, decontamination after every shift." Back to Megan: "Everyone doses up on antibiotics. Blood-borne pathogens and bacteria from body decomp, not to mention 6,000 pounds of Jet-A fuel." Meanwhile, Caine's telling Calleigh, "No shift should last more than twenty minutes. No food or water on site." To drive home the point that Horatio and Megan had or have the same job and are expecting to be the voice of authority on the scene, Megan echoes Caine's edict on comestibles. Caine then tells Calleigh, "We're treating this as a crime scene." On this show? What are the odds? Meanwhile, Megan asks Speedle to get her a copy of the flight plan, then heads off to go assert herself elsewhere near the scene. As she leaves, Speedle calls out, "Nice to see you too!"
And now, the moment we've all been waiting for: Megan and Horatio, on the same screen at last. He is, of course, watching other people do all the work when she comes over and inquires rhetorically, "You thinking bomb?" He does her the honor of taking off the shades before saying, "The jury's still out." Caine then extends a hand, shakes hers, and says, "Welcome back, Megan." She receives this about as well as she handled Speedle's little gesture earlier. We establish that Horatio is an expert on bombs, and that none of the telltale signs -- gas washing up, pitting of metal, thermal effects -- are there. Megan then has herself a little worry over NTSB. She need not bother, really. Horatio's all, "They're not here yet." She insists, "Horatio, we've been through this before." Horatio invokes ValuJet at the same time I do. The camera swivels back to Megan, which is unfortunate, as Kim Delaney looks as though she's reading cue cards -- done in rebus -- as she recites, "Then I don't need to remind you the Feds have jurisdiction over any air crash. They deputize local agencies. We're working for them." Caine ignores this and points out that while the Everglades' current is a paltry four miles per hour, that's still giving the crime scene a velocity of four mph. Megan's sympathetic but, she says, "That's not your call. Or mine." Horatio takes off the shades again to register his au contraire: "I am sorry for the way things turned out for you, but I did not ask for this job." "I know," Megan says to a point 270 degrees out of Horatio's eye-line. Horatio, still actually looking at the person he's having a conversation with, offers her the job back any time she wants it. Oh, spare us not one moment of Megan grinding her teeth in authority. Megan says curtly, "Not my call either." Caine then says, "Until then, let's get to work." He walks off, leaving Megan to stand there and sigh over the foolishness of wearing stiletto heels in the swamp.
The scene shifts to an al fresco morgue -- established by having the camera rest on a crispy corpse before zooming back to show us a row of similarly singed bodies lying on autopsy tables under a canvas tent -- where Alexx (yes, two Xs -- I guess it means she's exxtra cool) the coroner is asking Horatio how they're doing for survivors. Horatio concedes that it's not looking too good. He asks how many people she's got. Alexx replies, "Four or five, depending on which pieces match." She then turns her attention to the body on the table in front of her, noting, "Injuries are consistent with catastrophic blunt force trauma." Horatio's not terribly surprised, saying, "Pretty normal for this type of crash." Alexx replies, not to Horatio but to the corpse, "Wasn't normal for you. You didn't get up this morning thinking it would be your last, did you, honey?" To Khandi Alexander's eternal credit, she manages to sell that line without any embarrassment. And to Horatio's credit, he's not too spooked by his coroner conducting small talk with the bodies: "Ask him if he knows what brought the plane down." Alexx gives Horatio a mildly amused look, glances down at the body, then looks back up at Horatio and says with vindication in her voice, "I think he just might have answered your question. Small entry wound in the upper torso." We get what looks like a nascent TMICam shot, if the TMICam in question were merely starting out, and could only muster a 10X magnification instead of the molecular-level splendor we've all come to know and love. Alexx then rolls the body over, and Horatio notes that whatever entered the body exited it as well. He then calls for Calleigh, who comes hustling over. Now is as good a time as any for me to wonder: is Emily Procter going to be the George Eads of this show? She's a lovely woman, but the Liza Minnelli makeup and Heidi-of-the-Lowlands hairdo aren't doing anything for her. Anyway, Calleigh comes over, assesses the size of the wound, and guesses that it may be a .32 or a .38. Horatio dispatches her to the fuselage to see if the probable slug is still lodged in there. "Do you think you can find it?" "Does Elvis wear a white jumpsuit?" Calleigh replies. Not if he's currently working in a McDonald's in Des Moines, as some tabloids would have us believe. Or if he's actually keeping tabs on who his little girl selects for husbands -- then, I figure, he's wearing a straitjacket somewhere. But I digress.
Some police type is busy interviewing the fisherman from a couple scenes back; the fisherman is saying that he and his pal were merely drowning some worms when "I heard a noise, real loud. I looked up -- boom! That's all I saw." The cop asks if the fisherman approached the plane. The fisherman says, "No, sir. We hightailed it out of there. Called 911." The camera pulls back to show us a skeptical Megan, and Speedle, who doesn't look skeptical. He looks like he's suffering. The cop then asks if the fisherman didn't bother to look for survivors. Because that's what you want minutes after a fiery plane crash -- untried amateurs poking around the smoking wreckage. The fisherman fails to point this out, then goes on to ask if he shouldn't get some kind of reward for calling 911. At this point, Speedle curls his lip derisively and walks off; Megan pivots and scampers beside him. She's awfully nimble for someone whose heels are sinking into the mud with every step. After he's out of Good Citizen Stan's earshot, Speedle snorts, "Fishing, my ass. Did you see the size of that rifle in his boat? Thirty-ought-six? They were poaching gators." Megan counters, "There are...[(beat)] panthers out in the 'Glades. How do you know the rifle's not for protection." Note how there is no question mark at the end of what one would customarily assume to be an interrogative statement. Note also the pause before Megan says, "How do you know they didn't borrow the boat, the owner left his rifle inside." Again -- not really so much a question. Megan's challenging Speedle on this for some reason. Speedle gives her a dismissive glance before saying, "I trust my gut...it seems pretty obvious." Megan says, "You sound just like Horatio." And this is a bad thing? At least his phrasing isn't doubling as the tempo for an avant-garde music recital. She barrels on, "The problem with the obvious, [beat] Tim, is it can make you overlook, [beat] the evidence." Having thus delivered her assessment of Speedle's on-the-job observation skills, Megan moves on.
So do we: the camera shows us the eye ridge of an alligator as the reptile sinks into the water. A few feet away, a deputy sporting a rifle sits watchfully as Speedle snaps pictures. At the stern of the boat (if an airboat can be said to have a stern ), Delko is in the water, looking for evidence. Delko dumps his largess and moves back to swim among the gators. Speedle tags and examines the detritus: a sodden DayRunner, and a wallet, conveniently opened so we can see pictures of the pilot with his smiling wife and children. After staring down for a moment, Speedle then shakes himself out of his reverie, lifts his camera, and begins taking pictures of the evidence. He's able only to get one shot in before lowering the camera to look at a picture of the children the pilot left behind, then resumes taking photos.
Cut to Horatio and Megan hunkered down in the grass, combing through it for evidence. Horatio holds up a piece of twisted metal and asks, "What do you make of this?" Across America, viewers respond, "I can make a hat, or a brooch, or a pterodactyl..." Megan says instead that it's an automatic fuel injector. Horatio invites her to look closer; the camera takes him up in that invitation, and we see, at a juncture in the metal, that the part's serial number has been sanded off. It's still no TMICam. This is, as Megan says, a "strip-and-dip," where an old airplane part is sold as new. Horatio elaborates for the folks at home. Megan looks around -- can the woman conduct a conversation with anyone where she's making eye contact? Would it kill her? -- and says, "I'll have Speedle look into it." Horatio calmly but matter-of-factly replies, "I need Speedle here for collection." Megan's head whips around, and she looks at Horatio for a long moment; this is clearly supposed to be the big Now Megan's Demotion Really Sinks In scene. After a long pause -- in which Horatio manages to look unapologetic without looking unsympathetic -- she finally says, "I'll look into it." Horatio nods and smiles slightly before saying, "Thank you." Megan declines to reply and stalks off while Horatio shifts into the Squatting Brood pose.
In another part of the Everglades where the sun is a little higher up in the sky, a lethally abraded passenger strapped into his airplane chair is about to become the object of a still-life photograph. Speedle fusses with the camera while Delko hovers behind him, wetsuit down around his waist. The better to show off the delts, I suspect. Speedle is apparently moving a little slowly between shots, prompting Delko to say, "Hey, Herb Ritts, c'mon. You want to do this while we're young, or what?" Delko, count your blessings: you could be working with a would-be Mapplethorpe instead, or Speedle could be asking you to strip down and be Charis Wilson to his Edmund Weston. You're getting off easy with Herb. Speedle says calmly that he needs a minute -- it's an eerily Horatio-like delivery -- and Delko's all, "How about I take the pictures and you go out there and backstroke through that crap?" Speedle looks annoyed, but asks, "You all right?" Delko huffs that he most certainly is, and in tones more suited to the playground, asks the same of Speedle. Speedle is apparently also all right. Horatio stops them before they come to blows over further exchanges of pleasantries. Delko apologizes ("Sorry, H.") and Horatio reminds them to stay focused. Speedle walks toward them and says, "We were just talking about how at plane crashes like this, they used to find the passengers without any feet. They couldn't figure out why. It turns out there's a support bar under the seat that was acting like a guillotine." Horatio and Megan elect to skip the forensics lecture in favor of looking at a muddy plane chair lying on its side. Horatio notes that the seatbelt is unbuckled and undamaged. Speedle notes that the plane wasn't full -- there were eight empty seats. Horatio replies, "I've already counted nine unbuckled belts, so that would mean one of the passengers was unbuckled during takeoff, doesn't it?" The camera pans over to Megan, who looks uneasy at this display of unsupported reasoning. The brainstorming session ends with Speedle and Horatio wondering if the unbuckled seat belt belonged to the pilot who got shot; this leaves me wondering exactly who managed to get the plane to take off, then. Would they have to sit on the pilot's lap? Would the lack of a seatbelt get in their way? This makes no sense to me. Anyway -- Speedle goes off to pretend he's not affected by the crime scene some more. Megan asks how everyone's holding up, which would be odd, since she was just standing to them, but it's not like Megan's been actually looking at anyone talking in her vicinity, and Horatio replies they're all fine and they're doing their jobs. Then he does his by finding and picking up a formerly snazzy red briefcase sporting a "CMC" monogram.
Seconds later, we're in the makeshift lab set up on site -- a lab that's already got furniture and working electricity and detritus on the shelves, which is pretty amazing given that the plane crashed mere hours before -- and Horatio's forcing the briefcase open. Further down the bench, Calleigh asks what Horatio's got. "Nothing," he replies, with a little anger in his voice. "Not a pen, not a piece of paper, not a paperclip, nothing." Calleigh comes over to see nothing for herself. Horatio turns to look at her and continues, "Who travels with an empty briefcase...that's odd, right?" Calleigh confirms that it is. Before this conversation can go anywhere, we all suffer a flashback to fourteen minutes ago when Delko was shouting at plane crash survivors, only this time the guy is living. Delko's still shouting, though: "We got one with a pulse!" Having determined the presence of cardiac activity, Delko the rescuer's step is to start CPR compressions. Yeah, I don't get it either, and I've got my CPR card from the American Heart Association. Delko's activities have the effect of causing the survivor to spit water -- which should, in theory, lead to Delko rolling the man over on his side to aid water removal from the lungs and reduce the likelihood of inhaling fluid, but instead, they cover the guy with a blanket to keep him from going into shock. Horatio screams, "Sir, can you hear me? Stay with us! Stay with us!" as Delko continues doing compressions and panting, "Breathe, breathe."
And then, thank God, we go to commercial.
When we get back from the commercials, rescue personnel are loading the survivor into an ambulance. Delko inquires of Horatio, "Whaddya say?" Horatio says, "No friction burn, right? Means no seatbelt." Delko asks, "Then he may be our shooter." Horatio moves on: "Yes. The question then becomes, why would you shoot your own pilot? Thank you, gentlemen." For a moment there, I thought Horatio was acknowledging an audience, but then I realized he was thanking the rescue workers. I think it helped when he turned around from a slack-jawed Delko and gave a thumbs-up to a departing MedEvac. After Horatio's done saluting the airborne folk, Megan comes over and tells him she's got a report of a floater five miles from where they are now. Horatio gives her a look and says, "I can't possibly take another scene now --" Megan interrupts with, "Horatio, it is your scene." It's also his job, Megan, so feel free to step back and let him do it. Or accompany him to the floater five miles away -- either will work.
We see a bare foot floating in the water, and the camera pulls back to show us a woman floating face down, limbs akimbo, her tan suit splotched with blood. Horatio and Megan are peering down at her from an airboat, and then Horatio looks skyward, presumably looking for clues to begin raining down. "Ohhhh-kay," he finally says.
And we're in the indoor morgue now, with Alexx leaning in to inquire of the body, "How did you get so far away from your friends? Did you fall out of that plane? Is that how you ended up all alone out there? All by yourself?" The camera swivels from Alexx's face down to the corpse's, and we see Alexx smoothing down her hair before continuing, "In more ways than one, I bet. Only woman on board. That couldn't have been easy. You were with them, but not one of them." As Alexx is having her moment of Zen with the body, Megan, who is standing behind her, cranes her head to give Alexx a look -- it's either the Oddly, I missed this look or the Help! I'm trapped with someone holding a conversation with a body! look, but it's not readily apparent which is which in Megan's world -- then turns back around to say, "All-Boys Express. Been on that flight." Horatio's voice booms out of nowhere like the Voice of God: "Ladies..." Overt patriarchal symbolism much? Megan looks up at Horatio (who's standing in a glassed-in observation bay overlooking the morgue), then casts a "see what I mean?" look over at Alexx as Horatio informs them that they may have a flight plan. Oh, wow -- did the NTSB team fly in with it? Alexx goes back to swanning about the corpse; once Horatio identifies the body as Christina Maria Colucci, she leans in, delighted to be introduced, and says, "Hello, Christina." You know, I applaud anyone who takes the extra time to add the personal touch to the services they offer. Even if the recipient of those services isn't around to appreciate them.
Alexx begins to break it down for Horatio, who's following along on a screen upstairs for reasons that will never, ever be explained. She says, "Preliminary exam indicates no friction burns on her lower torso." Horatio deduces that Christina wasn't wearing her seatbelt, and there must have been a second person out of the seat, further snarling up the mystery of who was doing what on the plane. The bathroom is briefly raised as possibility; Megan asks, "Mile-high club?" but Horatio pooh-poohs that, because the small size of the plane rules out the discretion that one might want when conducting a furtive fornication session with the boss. Megan suggests that perhaps Christina's judgment was swayed by bottom-line considerations: "Not if [the boss] was picking up the tab. This stuff's all designer. Red suede, four hundred and fifty bucks a pair. The price alone could have killed her." The camera switches from Megan back up to Horatio, who receives lab reports from an extra. Alexx informs him, "I put a rush on her tox screen. Blood alcohol is point-oh-nine." Megan is surprised someone would be legally drunk at eight o'clock in the morning. Well, whatever gets you through the day...Alexx continues, "We also found traces of fluoxetine. She was on Prozac." Megan inquires rhetorically, "Who isn't?" then looks up to ask of Horatio, "Anything you want to share?" "Not currently," he replies. Heh. He asks for a grid on the scanned image of the body, then asks Alexx to enlarge section C-6. What, he can't enter the morgue and look at the body himself? Is he afraid of catching girl cooties from Alexx and Megan? Does Alexx have the Michigan Womyn's Festival door policy regarding who can visit with her and her special friends? After bidding Alexx to zoom four times, then eight so he can get a close-up of Christina's hand -- as opposed to, say, entering the morgue and looking at Christina's actual hand himself -- he asks what the deep, perfectly round marks on Christina's hand are. Alexx grabs Christina's hand to see and muses, "Could be impact-related..." "Something she hit?" Megan asks. "Or something that hit her," Horatio replies. We then segue into the first flashback of the night (time: 22 minutes), where all we see are men clutching their heads and screaming as a plane door opens and papers fly all over the place.
We then segue to Horatio holding a picture of a smiling Christina and assuring Mrs. Colucci, "She's a lovely girl." Well, she was, prior to falling four thousand feet and hitting the water face-first. Horatio puts down the picture and asks Mrs. Colucci about the briefcase he found at the crash site. Mrs. Colucci tells Horatio that the briefcase was a family gift to Christina following her promotion. Horatio goes on to ask if Christina "recently suffered any setbacks, personally or professionally." Mrs. Colucci replies, "My daughter battled depression when she was in high school. That was a very long time ago. She would never try to hurt herself...would she?" Horatio answers frankly, "I don't know." Mrs. Colucci continues, "Ever since she was a little girl, she was so good at keeping secrets." And you're telling us this because...because Christina has been blackmailing her siblings over who broke Mom's lamp since 1976? Because you suspect that she was keeping depression a secret? Because this seemingly innocuous comment will be the one that explains motivation and solves the case later? Mrs. Colucci then breaks down crying and asks Horatio, "Will you help me, please?" Horatio looks all empathetic as he assures her he will, then holds her hand as the "this is a touching moment, really!" music tinkles in the background.
Meanwhile, over at the plane's fuselage, Calleigh -- remember her? Blonde girl, formerly sporting Heidi braids, last seen God knows how many tiresome scenes ago? -- is inspecting the wreckage with a borescope. I pause the TiVo and ponder the many, many comments I can make about CSI: Miami being filmed in BoreScope before turning back to what is promising to be a leaden exchange between Calleigh and someone who is listed in the end credits as, I kid you not, "handsome tech." Anyway, Calleigh takes this guy to school: "The swamp boys use it for a sneak-and-peek. I think it's kind of cute." As Calleigh says this last part, she's waggling the long, narrow end suggestively in front of her face. Paging Dr. Freud...anyway, Handsome Tech asks if he can advance the explanatory portion of this evening's plotline, and Calleigh invites him to be her guest. He asks, "So, uh, what exactly are we looking for here?" "Ballistics evidence. We think there may have been a shooting on the plane, but so far, nada," Calleigh responds. Evidently the word "ballistics" rings a bell (or, um, dings it, if you want to belabor the bullet metaphor) and Handsome Tech says, "You know, I heard of you. You're the bullet girl, right?" No -- Bulletgirl's alter ego was Susan Kent, girlfriend of Jim Barr, a.k.a. Bulletman, and she's dead, freeing him up to zoom around the Power of Shazam. And there's no way you can confuse Calleigh for Bulletgirl II; that one's a "steel-coated human bullet." Take it up with Marvel if you don't believe me. Back on the screen, Calleigh asks if Handsome Tech is really Airplane Boy (no comics counterpart exists, to the best of my knowledge) and HT's all, "I guess you could say I know my way around an airframe." "Really?" Calleigh coos. "What are those?" We all get a close-up of what looks like an very unglamorous screw, and HT tells us that those are bayonet pins, which hold the door shut. Calleigh already knew that; what she wants to know about are the vertical scores on the pins. HT muses, "Could mean the door failed." Calleigh, who's following The Caine Contradictory Conversation Killer Method, points out, "Or someone wanted them to."
Back at the lab, Delko wanders by, and Horatio asks him how it's coming on the black boxes. Delko replies that he's about to head back out; he merely came back to dose up on antibiotics first. I imagine this job plays merry hell with his intestinal microflora. Horatio stresses the importance of the black box and dismisses Delko so that Speedle can come in for his audience with the Caine. Speedle's been dealing with the pilot's widow, which is just what he needs after having gotten all verklempt over the guy's wallet earlier. We learn from Speedle, "The thing is, boss, she kept going on about Sommer and all his top brass screwing over the rank and file. You want to know why they were going to D.C.?" Horatio already knows: "They were being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission, weren't they?" Speedle shifts awkwardly, probably wondering why he bothers since Horatio apparently has all the answers already. Horatio, producing a wad of subpoenas for Sommer and his chief financial officers, does nothing to dispel that impression. Speedle strikes a blow for the working class: "Company fails, the management bails." Horatio's even anticipating him here: "And sails into retirement on a golden parachute with a big, fat severance package, right?" Speedle, whose 401(k) was evidently tied up in Tyco, WorldCom, ImClone, and Enron, says, "Yeah, and Joe Cubicle gets a pink slip and a frozen pension plan." Horatio attempts to placate Speedle by consoling him with SEC imagery, but before the magic's complete, Calleigh comes in and shares the news that the bayonet pins were shot and the plane door opened mid-flight. We flash to the pins rattling through their holes, then the door flying open and Christina flying out, one shoe whipping off her foot as she falls backward, screaming. To quote Speedle, "That explains how our victim ended up five miles from the crash." Horatio wonders if there was sabotage; Speedle's off and running with, "Company's in trouble, lot of employees ticked off at the boss..." Calleigh picks it up: "Exit door pins were tampered with, most likely by someone who knew their way around a jet aircraft." Horatio intones, "Means, motive, all they needed was an opportunity. Let's find out who worked on that plane."
Yes, let's. The man in question, sitting at a very shiny table and wringing his hands, isn't saying much. Horatio drinks coffee and watches him. Meanwhile, in a lab, Calleigh's busy scraping away at a bayonet pin, trying to get the scores to match the ones on the pins she was looking at in the wreckage. Once she gets it matched up, Horatio comes in and praises her work. Then it's back to the mechanic, Señor Esparza, who's currently being told by Horatio, "We know you're using old parts on company planes, and I wanted to know why. You make money on the side?" Esparza replies, "No. No para mi." (No, not for me.) Horatio wants to know, "You trying to get back at someone? Quieres venganza? Is that why you sabotaged the exit door?" Esparza protests, "No lo comprendo -- I did nothing wrong!" Horatio follows the evidence: "We've matched the markings of your tools. We know it is you who filed down the pins." Esparza explains, "To make them fit! We didn't have the right parts. Oye, trabajé muy duro. I work very hard to get those planes up in the air -- nobody asks how at 30,000 feet." Horatio takes a minute before switching to Plan B, but not before establishing with Calleigh that the plane only reached four thousand feet of altitude. He then steps out of the tank and tells Megan he's cutting Esparza loose. She's all, "Why? [beat] He just confessed to using faulty parts on that plane." Horatio tells Little Miss Law and Order that the plane was flying too low, so the cabin never depressurized, which means the door couldn't come off by itself. Megan concludes, "It was opened [beat] from the inside." Horatio concludes that the only possibilities are suicide or murder. The scene ends with those two concluding that it's time to take a visit to Grace Memorial and talk to the no-longer-unconscious survivor of the crash.
After a few silent establishing shots of the Miami shoreline -- the better to drive home the fact that we are not watching Miami Vice 2002 -- we end up at the hospital bed. Sommer asks if anyone else survived; when told that nobody else has, he vows, "We'll take care of their families. We take care of our own." That doesn't sound nearly so warm 'n' fuzzy as it's meant to. Megan replies, "That's very [beat] commendable [beat] especially in light of your company's [beat] recent financial difficulties." Sommer doesn't quite get what she's saying. Megan elaborates: "We hear the SEC is very interested in [beat] how you take care of your own." The guy on the bed is understandably quite interested in where this is heading. Megan tells him, "We'd like to [beat] get your fingerprints and [beat] a sample of your DNA, ifthat'sallrightwithyou." Jesus Christ on rollerskates, Kim Delaney's delivery is going to drive me around a bend. Someone needs to show up on that set with a metronome, or spend the read-through screaming, "Tempo, tempo, tempo!" until she can deliver her lines with a semblance of realistic pacing. Argh! [beat] Argh!
Okay, that's out of my system. Let's continue. Horatio assures Sommer he doesn't really need to have a lawyer present, and that he and Megan are merely trying to establish what really happened from his point of view. Sommer doesn't remember. Horatio says, "Well, maybe I can refresh your memory, then. What we do know is that your employee, Christina Colucci, fell to her death some time before the plane crashed, and she fell out a door that had been opened from the inside. Does that ring a bell?" Not for Sommer. He claims not to have seen anything because he was in his seat; Horatio effortlessly busts Sommer for lying and invites him to try again. Sommer, in a monologue that might as well begin, "I'm guilty! Guilty! GUUUUIIIILLLLTTTYYYY!," says, "I didn't want to anything because I was trying to protect her. Christina was acting strangely that morning. She was very agitated, and she had been drinking..." We flash to Christina downing her Prozac, then chasing it with bourbon as a nebbishy voice chides her off screen not to mix her pills and booze. Christina then gets out of her seat, pushes past a concerned Sommer, heads to the door in a fit of drug-reaction-fueled irrationality, and ends up getting sucked out. We are once again treated to her flying backwards into thin air, screaming all the while. Megan and Sommer go back and forth over why Sommer failed to stop Christina from jumping out of the plane; it goes nowhere. Horatio then asks, "When did you hear the gunshot?" Sommer is genuinely surprised: "Gunshot? What gunshot?" Horatio deflects that and gets Sommer's prints instead.
Back in the morgue, Megan snips a lock of Christina's hair, then proceeds to run a DNA analysis on it. I don't know which tests, exactly: all we see is a lot of micro-pipetting, some centrifuge action, then a printer spitting out results. Christina apparently had Prozac, Zoloft, 8-8-tetrahydrocannabinol, and Dilaudid in her system. Cut to Speedle and Megan looking at a giant overhead of the hair in question. Speedle is asking, "You ran a chemical profile on her hair?" Megan replies, "Mmm-hmm. Trace elements can generally be found in the follicles. Luckily, she was a brunette." Speedle cuts in: "Right. Dark hair stores higher concentrations of most contaminants." Megan tells him, "Nice thing about hair is, it grows at an even rate. Half an inch per month." Speedle notes that it gives him a nice timeline. We learn that Christina had been on antidepressants for about a year, and had smoked some pot six months ago. As I get distracted imagining how high schools will move on from urine samples to hair samples in a further erosion of civil liberties with regards to biological boundaries, Speedle's all, "And they say blondes have more fun." More fun than a deeply depressed woman on two types of SSRIs who tried to commit suicide by overdosing on Dilaudid? How can that be?
thing we know, Megan's dogging Horatio's heels, arguing that a suicide attempt is the only possible explanation -- "mass spec doesn't lie! She was the focus of an SEC investigation, she knew where all the bodies were buried, maybe she couldn't live with that." Ah, so now I know what kinds of tests Megan was doing. If only I could find out what sort of punctuation to use to indicate when Megan has decided to deliver her lines in a rapid monotone, I'd be so happy. Horatio's not buying the suicide attempt. Megan argues that the plane plunge is suicide -- "she tried to kill herself three months ago." "Tried and failed," corrects Caine. Megan makes another appeal for the plane jump as suicide. Horatio muses, "Most whistleblowers are women," thinking, no doubt, of Colleen Rowley (the FBI), Cynthia Ossias (California State Department of Insurance), Sherron Watkins (Enron), or Debbie Leibrock (Oracle). "I think she was planning to take the company down," he says. Or maybe Christina was merely following her conscience; according to Harvard sociologist Barbara Reskin, top-ranking women in a corporation are often acutely aware of having an outsider status, and "that not-quite-fitting-in frees women to make moral decisions that people who are locked into a network have a hard time making." So perhaps Alexx was onto something back there. Or perhaps I'm just running off at the mouth about a phenomenon that's intrigued me all year. Anyway -- back to the episode. Megan's doubting Christina's motives; she says, "Her testimony died with her."
Me: Hey, wanna make another bet?
The husband: I'm plotting my vengeance.
Me: I'll even give you this one -- wanna say the testimony somehow makes it out?
The husband: No. I want to say that the sets will be red with blood by the time I'm done.
Me: Okay, look, it was just a --
The husband: RED WITH BLOOD!
Me: See if I offer you a chance to make another easy dollar.
The husband: [muttering] Won't get fooled again...
Horatio points out that Christina's death greatly benefits Sommer. Megan counters, "You wanna kill someone there are easier ways than shooting the pilot, especially when you're on the same flight." Horatio insists, "A woman was murdered on that plane." Megan counters, "That's a hunch talking. Where is the evidence? Show me you're right." Okay, show me why Horatio needs to show his subordinate anything. The camera switches from the Caine-and-Donner confrontation to Speedle and Delko watching from the glassed-in safety of the lab. Speedle mutters, "That can't be good." Delko replies irritably, "What does she think, she can waltz in here after six months of being gone and just take over?" Speedle gives him the oh, you bonehead look that we see so often directed at Nicky on CSI, then says, "You're an ass." Delko's all, "What did I say?" Speedle continues, "She lost her husband? What did they give her, two weeks off? She needed a little bit of time. Big deal." Delko abashedly says, "I didn't know." Speedle snipes, "Well, there's a lot you don't know." Caine notices the two underlings watching him, and after Megan heads out, he reminds them of the black boxes. Delko tells Horatio that they've been over the area twice, to no avail. Horatio tells them to do better, then pops out. Frick and Frack confer over what to do ; Speedle, who is shaping up to be the brains of the junior set, tells Delko he knows what they'll do.
Meanwhile, Horatio and Megan are busy looking at the door of the airplane. Horatio and Megan notice that both Christina and Sommer's prints are all over that door, courtesy of a black light, and Sommer's high-up handprints indicate that he did not, in fact, try to stop Christina, but rather tried to push her out. They come to these conclusions by bodily walking through the steps Christina and Sommer would have taken in the Christina-jumped-out-of-the-plane scenario, as well as in the Sommer-pushed-Christina-out-of-a-plane scenario. It's a contrivance to get them all up close and personal so we can see, and presumably swoon from, the alleged chemistry between Kim Delaney and David Caruso. There's nothing; if the producers want chemistry, they should ship Marg Helgenberger in for guest appearances. Then again, that would only point out the leaden dullness Delaney and Caruso have together. Anyway, the point of that scene is to establish the Horatio/Megan dynamic (which failed) and to inform us, the viewers at home, that Christina was holding on for dear life while Sommer pushed her to her death.
Cut to Horatio and Megan rushing to Sommer's hospital room to apprehend him, only to discover that he's checked himself out. Why didn't they call ahead? They could have saved themselves the trouble.
Back to Speedle and Delko, who are visiting the fisherman present at the crash with a warrant to search for items looted from the crash site. Speedle asks contemptuously, "What'd you think -- you were going to sell them on eBay?" The fisherman has no answer for that. Delko reports that he's got the locator signal -- it went on the minute the boxes hit the water -- and the two walk over to get them. There's some back-and-forth between the boys when they see that the poachers have stuck the boxes (which are actually orange) in a pool filled with baby alligators, and then both guys count to three and pull out a box, making all sorts of macho noises as they escape unscathed.
And now, back at HQ, everyone except Alexx is assembled to listen to the contents of the black box. Speedle explains, "This one over here is a cockpit voice recorder; it records the last thirty minutes of conversation over the cockpit mics. This is a flight data recorder. It documents 48 parameters of the flight: air speed, flaps, trim, the works. So this will help us with a timeline to figure out what went down." Speedle then cues the audio tech, Peter. We hear a mix of men's voices, with the air traffic controller leading off, then the pilot and copilot chatting:
"Eaglet nine-oh-six, fly runway heading. Runway 9 left, cleared for takeoff."
"Set takeoff power. One hundred knots."
"Power is set."
"See that game last night? Dolphins are pretty good this year."
"They'll never make the playoffs without a quarterback."
Everyone looks faintly unnerved as they listen, probably because they all know what's coming. Delko explains, "The first four minutes after takeoff were normal. It gets pretty funky after that." Peter cues the recorder, and everyone hears:
"This is the captain. Our flight to Washington, D.C., is two hours, twenty minutes. The temperature is 72 degrees."
[loud noise]
"What was that?"
"We've got a light on. Could be electrical."
"Exit light is definitely on. We've got a door open."
"What the hell's going on back there?"
"Losing power."
"Got a warning light -- engine two!"
"We're losing air speed!"
"We lost number two!"
"Pull out, pull out!"
"Can't get --"
Then, static. The camera pans over everyone's faces as they listen to the disaster unfold. Horatio, who entered a deep blue funk the minute the recorder began, asks softly, "Okay, shut that off, please?" He composes himself, then says, "Something's missing." Bulletgirl III, a.k.a. Calleigh (remember her? She gets, like, less airtime than the corpses do), says, "There's no gunshot." Horatio requests a playback. They listen to the door thunk one more time. Then, per Horatio's request, Peter runs a reverse algorithm, loses the pilots' voices, and pulls up what was going on in the cabin. We then hear an angry conversation between a man and a woman:
Man: I'm not going to let you --
Woman: Get off of me!
They degenerate into sounds of struggle, and Horatio says, "Ladies and gentlemen, that's Sommer and Christina, isn't it?" Speedle nods, then pegs the door opening. We hear Christina screaming, and then only the engine. Horatio presses ahead: "How long between the door opening, and Christina's scream?" The answer: seventeen seconds. Megan and Horatio spell it out for the slow learners at home: Christina held on for seventeen seconds before Sommer pushed her out of the plane. "Now all we have to do is prove it," Horatio says. He then gives everyone their marching orders: Speedle is to go to Christina's apartment and do a full profile. Calleigh is to head back out into the swamp to examine the airframe to look for projectiles. Delko is to focus on the number two engine to see what brought down the plane.
We flash to the three of them carrying out their tasks. Calleigh notices a hole whose diameter catches her attention, so she focuses on that, then goes to Alexx to get an impression of the pilot's chest around the puncture wound. Speedle discovers that Christina has a cat -- pissed off, as you would expect after God knows how many days of no food. Delko just kind of stares at the engine. I get the feeling they're setting up Delko to be the Nicky of this show. Then we see all of them finding the evidence to support Horatio's hypothesis: Calleigh finds a bolt that explains the hole in the man, Delko finds a red fiber in the engine, and Speedle finds a slip for an express delivery.
Back to Speedle reporting to Megan and Horatio that Christina left none of the usual premeditated suicide signs, i.e. a note, retrieved dry cleaning, extra food for the cat or a shrine of personal items. In addition, she also had a full refrigerator, phone calls to return, and other signs that she was planning on returning from D.C. that night. There goes Megan's theory on suicide. We then check in with Calleigh, who tells Caine how the pilot died: metal stress leading to loose bolts. In his words: "A rivet runs through it." Calleigh talks about the plane ripping itself apart, and Horatio says, "That's what brought the plane down, right?" Cue Delko's attempt at gallows humor: "No, actually, the shoe hit the fan." That's right, ladies and gents; one-half of a $450 pair of red suede shoes brought down an airplane. A shoe. Not a goose, a heron, an albatross, or something with a) actual heft and b) better odds of being in the air, but a shoe. Just in case we missed Christina falling out of the plane the last few times, we see it again, then follow the shoe as it flies into the engine and causes a shower of sparks. This is not enough for Caine, so he hauls them all into a group reconstruction of the scene.
Cue the visual effects, as we see Horatio rattling around an empty plane in Bleach-O-Vision. He's playing the part of Sommer. Over the few minutes, we're going to flash between the group assembled under the evidence tent and the crime as it happened on the plane in flashback, so just go with it. Megan enters the scene as Christina. Long story short: Christina decides not to play along with the company and unbuckles her seatbelt to get away from Sommer, and he follows her and pushes her into the door. When she grabs the handle, the door opens (thank you, faulty parts). Christina hangs on, and Sommer grabs the fire extinguisher and beats her knuckles until she lets go. And -- yet again -- we see Christina falling out of the plane. I'm sure all of America can't get enough of a woman falling to her death, so why not show it a few more times, and in more detail? The producers oblige. Best of all, they follow her screaming trajectory downward, the better to let us get a look at her face as it freezes in horror. That better have been one damn expensive stunt to justify its constant repetition in the episode, because I can't be the only one out there who thinks that showing people plunging to their deaths hits a little too close to home.
Anyway. Case solved, once fingerprints are found on the fire extinguisher. Speedle says, "He killed her," in a suddenly very quiet group of people. Calleigh asks, "But what about the other passengers on the plane? They would have seen everything." Speedle more or less reiterates the theory of whistleblower isolation versus the old-boys' network: "Sommer knew nobody on the plane was going to testify; they were all on the payroll. It would be against their own interests." Megan then blunders in with, "Except for the one who knew everything. Christina was good at keeping secrets. Sommer was banking on that. He just didn't bank on her having a conscience." Delko's off having a moment, and Horatio asks if he's okay. Delko says ruefully, "Yeah. I guess I saved the wrong guy." Caine replies, "No such thing, brother. Not here." Oh, brother. Delko snorts, "Right. 'Every man's a prince.'" (I keep flashing to Henry V, but I know that's not right; someone on the forums fill me in.) Horatio reminds him, "It's how we sleep at night." But before they can sleep, perchance to dream, there are a few loose ends to wrap up. First, they have to all stare at Sommer's body as he swings from the rafters in a high-rise. Then Horatio has to go pass on some of his special mojo to the mourning survivors, much as he did in "Cross Jurisdiction" last year. He explains to Mrs. Colucci in a sprightly voice, "This is a copy of the report Christina sent to the Securities and Exchange Commission. This is what she was working on." Mrs. Colucci, who seems to have missed most business news in 2002, does not understand what her daughter the financial officer could have been doing with the SEC. Horatio explains: "She sent this the morning she died. Now, Mrs. Colucci, this was a very difficult decision, but she did the right thing." We see Christina mailing out the report as string-and-piano music plays; she smiles slightly as she's passing it off, clearly signifying that a great weight has been lifted from her conscience. Too bad about what happens , huh?
Mrs. Colucci then unwittingly instigates an eye-rolling closing sequence as she begins to read Christina's report: "To whom it may concern: I hope I'm not writing this letter in vain --" she breaks off, sobbing, and Horatio takes her hand before she continues, with Christina's voice gradually fading in, "To whom it may concern: I hope I'm not writing this letter in vain, but I feel I have a responsibility to those who depend on us, to those who expect us to deliver honest and fair accounting. I feel a responsibility to speak the truth for those innocent victims who are powerless to speak it themselves, because without the truth, we ourselves are powerless."
As this asinine call to arms unspools, we see: Calleigh loading a pistol and squeezing off a few rounds at the firing range; Alexx wiping down her morgue table while appearing to bop to the radio; Speedle getting on a bright yellow motorcycle and taking to the streets sans helmet; Delko, back in a "check out these guns!" shirt, washing his truck; Megan packing up a desk in her house, stopping to check a portrait of her with someone I presume was her husband.
As if that's not enough, there's an ethereal soprano ululating in the background, clearly meant to add an elegiac note to what was obviously supposed to be a letter that echoes why these Miami CSIs are drawn to their vocations. Personally, I prefer theHomicide version: "We speak for the dead." It beats ending as this episode does, with Horatio back out at the crash scene to brood, and brood, and brood. And brood some more.