Saving Face

Before we begin this recap, I want to share with you one of my favorite cinema rants, delivered by Truman Capote in the movie Murder by Death: "You've tricked and fooled your readers for years. You've tortured us all with surprise endings that made no sense. You've introduced characters in the last five pages that were never in the book before. You've withheld clues and information that made it impossible for us to guess who did it. But now, the tables are turned. Millions of angry mystery readers are now getting their revenge. When the world learns I've outsmarted you, they'll be selling your $1.95 books for twelve cents."

While it's an amusing look at the economics of the day (the day being 1976), the main lesson I took away as a young girl was this: My God, does Obi Wan Kenobi make an oddly beguiling woman. No, wait, that was a tangential observation. The real main lesson I took away was this: a truly well-written, well-executed mystery lays all the clues out in plain sight, but does so in a way that manages to simultaneously entertain the audience, while permitting them the opportunity to solve the mystery over the course of its unfolding. While last-minute revelations are handy for sloppy writers, they're far more shocking if the astute reader or viewer realizes the clues have been leading to that conclusion all along. Think about The Sixth Sense for a moment or the movie Malice, which is one of the most economically-written mysteries made in the last ten years.

Why am I telling you all this now? Oh, no reason.

Day breaks over Miami, and a pint-sized hottie is preparing for his job at a morning show, wondering why on Earth he left politics. Elsewhere in Miami, a woman is sleeping while someone whispers hoarsely, "Julisa" just out of camerashot. The alarm goes off at the ungodly hour of 6 a.m., and she pops right awake, rolling over and mumbling, "Aure?" to a pile of pillows. Plainly, she expects someone to be there. "Aurelio?" she calls. As Julisa walks down the hall, her name echoes in a hoarse whisper. I imagine if she were more awake, she'd be all creeped out. After one repetition of her name, Julisa asks, "Que estas haciendo aqui?" Which is, of course, not at all what the closed captioning said. How nice to know it's capable of bilingual gaffes. Anyway, Julisa asks why Aurelio didn't come to bed last night, and as she walks around to the front of the chair where Aurelio is sitting, the ominous synthesizer swells and we see that Aurelio's sporting a collar made of plumbing pipe. "Ayudame," he whispers. The camera pans down to the note pinned on his chest, which looks as though William Carlos Williams composed it in PowerPoint:

this is a
BOMB
deliver 50,000 dollars
in the four hours
put the money in a brown paper bag
call 555-0187
do not call the police

Ah. So much depends on a little red fuse ...

So after Julisa screams, the first thing she does is call the police. Approximately two dozen squad cars pull up, sirens screaming, along with the bomb squad action van. A man gets out of the van, his tucked-in shirt and Dockers simply screaming "loving husband and father." He orders "no-one within 500 feet!" This man, by the way, is Al Humphries; the show will take its sweet time introducing people by name, but I won't.

We then switch to the bomb scene leading the morning news on Channel 3 WORX (Channel Three Works?). Horatio watches intently. In the background Delko asks, "How 'bout a cuppa coffee, H?" and Horatio answers in a somewhat pinched voice, "No thank you." Just then, Calleigh comes in, chirping, "That smells good." Delko replies, "Cafe Cubana? It'll put the hair on your chest." "Don't you just say the sweetest things," Calleigh smoothly replies. Hmmm...bouncing into the room, coming up with comebacks instead of hissing at the light -- Calleigh's one of those morning people I hear so much about, isn't she? Delko comes slouching into the room and mumbles, "That stuff's not good for you. It will rot your stomach out." Then he pops a soda, so we can all smirk knowingly at the situational irony. Except me, because I'm smirking in recognition. Delko asks Horatio if the bombing is serious; Horatio answers by ordering, "Change the channel." Delko does: Channel 5 (WPOK) features the bomb scare, as does Channel 4 (no station ID, only the CBS Eye) and Channel 11 (station ID too small to read). Okay, so it's serious. But how seriously disturbing is it to contemplate this crew hearing about a crime from the news? I mean, it beats having a giant Horatio signal the commissioner has to light, but the news? Given that news crews are listening to the police scanners for breaking stories, shouldn't these people -- who ostensibly work for the police department -- be doing likewise?

Cut to a humvee pulling up, and Horatio jumping out. He immediately quips, "I didn't know they made body armor in triple-extra-large." Al turns around and shoots back, "They make jockeys this size too, but you wouldn't know anything about that, would you?" Actually, going by the way those two are smiling at each other, maybe he does...the two men grin for another minute, then do one of those torso-pounding hetero-guy hugs. Al says, "Horatio Caine, back from the dead. Found any good fiber lately?" "Just enough to keep me regular," Horatio says, before segueing into an inquiry about the crime scene. What we have is a Schedule-80 PVC collar clamped around the victim's neck, with Al going in to "John Wayne" it. Horatio looks mildly alarmed as he says, "That's not the way you taught us, big man." Big Man replies that he's got no choice, as disarming the bomb remotely isn't an option. Horatio replies that Al has the best hands in the business. And something tells me we'll be seeing those hands fly by us at 60 miles per hour in a few minutes. All that's left to seal this guy's death warrant is any one of the following: a. revealing that he's about to catch a plane to Bethesda so he can drop off the cure for cancer with the NIH; b. mentioning that a lucky lottery ticket worth millions is in his pocket, and he's going to cash it as soon as he defuses the bomb; c. popping over to appear in the opening minutes of a Six Feet Under episode. Horatio watches Al walk over to grab his kit with a fond smile on his face; as Al picks up his case, he turns back to Horatio and says, "Look, I've got to go do this thing, but let's grab a beer later. Catch up." Okay, that works too. So long, Al.

And now, time for the formality. As Aurelio trembles under his ransom slide, he tells Al, "I keep my insurance policies in a wall safe upstairs." Al says calmly, "That's good to know. I keep mine in a sock drawer." I hope someone who's nowhere near the blast zone is noting this for the survivors. Aurelio stammers, "Would you tell my wife...tell her I love her." "I'm kind of busy at the moment," snaps Al. Oh, he does not. Nor does he take the time to ponder what kind of freak explosion would blow up only one person in the room. Anyway, Al's all, "You can tell her yourself in a few minutes. You two will be knocking back mojitos in no time." Al busts out a drill, and as it begins whirring, we cut to a shot of Horatio outside, examining what looks to be an x-ray of the bomb. Immediately after a bird chirps in the still morning air, the windows are blown out in an explosion. A gust of air rifles the x-ray and then Horatio puts it down to look up, the actual sounds of glass breaking and fireballs whooshing apparently not being enough to hold his attention. He takes off his glasses, looking genuinely shaken. We then pan back to the window; the fireball has subsided, leaving a remarkably intact wall. Horatio looks stunned, and puts his fingers up near his right ear; they come away bloody. Just as he mouths the word, "No," Roger Daltrey screams, "Yeah," and we're at the credits.

And we go to commercials. Is it just me, or does White Oleander look like Divine Secrets of the Aryan Sisterhood? Did someone hire Leni Riefenstahl to make a chick flick?