Dispo Day

The episode opens with a shot of two giant cruise ships in the harbor. Since the water around them is not rapidly turning black, we can assume they're not dumping their waste holds and possibly infecting the Miami harbors with ecological invaders; maybe that's just a special treat they save for other formerly pristine waters. Anyway -- the cruise ships, the palm trees, the establishing shots.

We then hear a dispatcher saying, "CSI evidence disposal motorcade headed onto Washington." Said motorcade includes a big armored truck, a Humvee, and a police car. Horatio's voice comes over the dispatch, "Roger that. Proceed north on Robbins. Keep this channel open, please." Inside the truck, Speedle and an unnamed driver -- let's just call him Randy Redshirt -- look distinctly unimpressed.

As Speedle looks out the window, the scene fades, as if in flashback. However, we soon see that we're flashing back to what Speedle and friends did at work that day. Huh? That's not nearly so dramatic and interesting as normal television flashbacks; I expect a decent flashback to have adultery, alien abduction, infants born under cover of secrecy, wizened old men selling mogwais to colorless rubes, elaborate schemes embroidered by moustache-twirling villains and/or blue-suited government types, murder, mayhem, dwarves chewing gum, doves flying around as Chow Yun Fat goes down with his guns blazing, fairy elf princesses putting the make on Viggo Mortenson...you get the idea. I do not expect to see the Bob-white Club slicing open sealed boxes of confiscated drugs and testing them to make sure they haven't been replaced with corn starch. Those people need to get decent lives so they can flash back to those later, or else they'll be having Big Chill-style reunions where they all reminisce about their favorite centrifuge or something.

The convoy continues, and we're treated to a shot of Horatio's face because it's been forty-five seconds since his last appearance, and that's just too damn long.

Just then, a funeral procession cuts across the empty street, the hearse accompanied by what appears to be a patrolman on a motorcycle. It's a tiny procession -- just the hearse and the car -- yet it somehow rates its own flashback, too: two men we don't know and therefore don't care about sliding a coffin into the hearse. The hearse and its escort pull up to Horatio's humvee and the dispatcher says, "Uh, CSI? We got a funeral procession making its way up to you." This raises all sorts of interesting questions in my mind: are all funeral processions, large or small, registered with the police department and given an escort? And knowing that the CSI team is currently undertaking a sensitive evidence-disposal operation, wouldn't the police department have rerouted the funeral to give the disposal motorcade maximum security? I think too much about these things.

Anyway, Horatio decrees, "Let them pass. And bring the widow unto Me." Oh, he stops before voicing the widow request, but you know he's thinking it. As the funeral motorcade speeds up, Horatio studies the motorcycle patrolman curiously. The patrolman pulls ahead into a three-way intersection -- there's no way anyone can go straight, just left or right -- and Horatio notices that the motorcycle is strategically placed so nobody can turn left or right until the guy moves. He also notices, "Kevlar...at a funeral?" Why not? It's the latest in paranoid chic. As Horatio gets on the dispatch and says, "Everybody on alert. I don't like this," a station wagon materializes out of nowhere and plows into the side of the hearse, effectively snarling up the intersection and trapping the armored transport with nowhere to go. For some reason, I flash back to the episode of Beverly Hills, where Dylan got married and on his wedding night, paid assassins confused his wife (played by Rebecca Gayheart) for him in a similar auto-crash-style trap. I don't think we're going to see anything so viscerally satisfying as Luke Perry buzzing off into the sunset at the end of this episode, though.

What we do see instead: the rent-a-cop lobbing a smoke bomb into the vehicular fracas, thus obscuring visibility while retaining the element of surprise. He then uses the strategic advantage to take out one of the cops in the patrol car with what looks like a hand cannon before being shot by the pissed-off guy in the patrol car's passenger seat. This is the cue for the two guys riding in the hearse to come out with their semis blazing. They dispatch a few random people to make sure the body count goes up, then head toward the disposal truck. Horatio's all business as he skulks around the Humvee and brandishes his gun as if he knows what to do with it. Speedle -- witnessing a hail of bullets coming through the windshield of his ride and taking out the guy to him -- is considerably less sanguine. Meanwhile, in the station wagon, the woman is uselessly screaming, "The baby! The baby!" as she tries to crawl over the seat and unfasten the straps in the kid carrier in the back seat.

Horatio can't go rescue the mother and child yet because he's too busy felling bad guys with a single well-placed bullet while all around him, the other people shoot it up A Team-style. The bad guys are heading for the dispo truck now, where Speedle is trying to hold them off and failing spectacularly. You can't blame the guy for location (i.e. hiding behind a truck door and thus not able to see anything), but the jammed gun and wild non-aim can't be helping matters much, and the guy to him falling on top of him -- or being pulled to safety in a really improvisational manner, take your pick -- is the kicker in the Things That Will Affect Your Ability to Shoot trifecta. By the way, the woman's still screaming, "The baby!" It's a cute baby, and its cuteness goads Horatio into running over to play hero while around him, besieged SWAT team members drag their fallen comrades out of further harm's way. While this is going on, one of the bad guys has actually made it to the truck and is opening the door to climb across the seat. The other heads around the truck to finish off Speedle and Randy Redshirt, both of whom are lying on the pavement. Guy #2 comes around and points his gun down at Speedle; Speedle points his up in return and fires first. Or, more accurately, tries to fire first. His gun is jammed and only clicks impotently. This buys the other guy time to plug Speedle in the chest.

Horatio's still telling Sally Screamer to get down, as opposed to bobbing up, target-style, to helpfully give the shooters something to aim at. Once he's accomplished that, he looks up in time to notice Speedle's shooter sliding into the passenger seat of the truck and joining his friend as they hijack said truck full of drugs. Horatio manages to fire at the speeding truck's wheels -- taking one out, naturally -- then watches as the truck and a rent-a-cop type (huh? how many of these guys were around?) veers off into the sunset.

Horatio then runs over to where Speedle's lying on the ground and looking like death warmed over. That could be due to the mushroom-colored shirt Speedle's wearing (Rory Cochrane doesn't exactly have George Eads's coloring, but he does share the other man's inability to carry off warm-based tones without looking like he's in immediate need of a new liver), but there's probably something to be said for the gunshot thing and the blood, too. Horatio screams, "Speed! Speed!" and hunkers down to his fallen comrade for this exchange:

Horatio: Hold on, let Me see, let Me see.
Speedle: [coughing and gasping] My -- my chest.
Horatio: That's a sucking chest wound, isn't it?
Speedle: That's not what sucks in this scene, Horatio.
Horatio: Shhh. Let's just try to breathe.
Speedle: What is this "let's" business? Are you the one whose lungs suddenly got the ocean view? I don't think so.
Horatio: That's the blood loss talking, Speed. I think...
Speedle: I think my imminent death has given me a new clarity of thought.
Horatio: That's right. Now, let's go toward the light.
Speedle: Can the "we" crap, kemosabe. I'm off to a better place -- one that doesn't...include...

Speedle trails off, and the music swells dramatically as Creed's "Arms Wide Open" plays and Horatio gathers Speedle to his bosom, manfully restraining his sobs before setting the other man down, brushing his hair back from his forehead, and turning to the direction of the camera: "That's a wrap, isn't it? This is my Emmy clip. David C's gonna be in the hizzouse!"

Oh, I wish. Here's what really happened. The "lemme see" thing, the "oh, my chest" thing, and then Horatio opens up Speedle's shirt to reveal the Kevlar vest beneath it. Horatio tells a gasping, retching Speedle to hold on -- maybe telling him to breathe in might help, since the poor guy's had the wind knocked out of him at the least and is probably hyperventilating in panic. Oh, hey -- he does! Horatio's all, "Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait -- the Kevlar caught it! The Kevlar caught it, man. Now just breathe. Breathe easy. Keep breathing if you can." After being all calm and careful with Speedle, Horatio looks up and screams to anyone else who's presumably left alive, "Rescue! Get Me rescue right now!"

Roger Daltrey screams his comprehension of that command. I check the credits to make sure Rory Cochrane's still in them. Yup -- we'll be seeing no death-of-a-regular tonight. That's a shame: killing off a lead character without warning would be a hell of a great way to shake this show's predictability.

Or useless banter from the B-team. Delko's taking pictures of the hearse while Calleigh hunkers down by the wheel and comments, "It's creepy. The engine's still running." At least nothing she's wearing is creepy -- yet. The episode is still young, and I have faith that we'll see at least one puffy-sleeved atrocity before the end of this. Delko tells her from creepy: "You ought to be there in the middle of the night when we pull one of these things from the water with the radio still on. Talk about creepy." Calleigh's looking around the wheel well when Delko points out, "The car's stolen." She replies, "Based on...?" "Based on the screwdriver still in the ignition," he shoots back. Yeah, that would be a tip-off. Delko explains that we can use our Craftsman flathead screwdrivers the time we misplace the car keys because "the screwdriver completes the circuit." Calleigh's none too impressed; she's dug a slug the size of a champagne-bottle cork out of the tire and decreed, "Well, stealing cars is a side job. This is a death talon." We find out that those bullets have been off the market since 1997 or so, and the shooters must have been saving these for a rainy day.

Since it's been a whole minute without Horatio, we return to find out what he's doing. The answer: beginning to lay the trail that will lead back to the people what brung our dispo day low. He and Alexx are examining the fake cop, and Horatio decrees that the guy has the kind of frighteningly bulky physique commonly found in your penitentiary weight rooms. I've always wondered whether weight-lifting prisoners were particularly frustrated by the limitations the prison diet must impose on the quest to get cut; it's not like the warden's going to be sympathetic to the need to get down to 5% body fat in time for the Mister Cell Block C competition. Anyway, Alexx takes that insight and runs with it: "I'll get his prints to Delko for AFIS, see if I can get you a release date." Horatio says okay, but he's not paying any attention to her. Instead, he's checking out the reporter who's barreling toward him.

The man and his hair state for the camera, "Enrique Rayas, in the field. Horatio Caine -- a drug-related shootout in the streets of Miami -- a sense of dejà-vu once removed?" I'm stunned by the profusion of dependent clauses with nary an independent clause to justify their existence. Horatio warns Rayas, "You're about to make a mistake you don't want to make." To make? This guy's been committing assault and battery on the English language for a minute and he's only now making the mistakes? Rayas smarms, "Just drawing a parallel here. Your brother gave his life in the line of duty two years ago, albeit under much cloudier circumstances --" "Circumstances weren't cloudy -- the reporting was," Horatio shoots back. Speaking of reporting, why is this blow-dried pinhead the only one on the scene? Most self-respecting newsrooms have police scanners (never mind how they get them), so you can be sure more than one reporter would be there, and on a good day, you might even see a competent one. Oh, wait. This is a television television reporter, and all they're good for is clumsy exposition or agitating the protagonist. As Rayas is frog-marched back behind the crime scene-tape line, Detective Baldy comes up to tell Horatio that they've found the truck near a pier. A pier in Miami? Well, that narrows it down.