Gil just smiles smugly and has Holly sign waivers in case of injury or death on the job. She does so, complaining that she's lightheaded from giving blood. "You're probably low on sugar. I've got just the thing," he says, and pulls out a jar of indistinguishable dark objects from its home to the urine samples in the lab fridge. "Try one of these," Gil offers. Holly looks even more squeamish than before -- she's really reaching into levels of human discomfort that normally accompany being asked to breaststroke through a vat of rancid lard -- and says she doesn't want to eat anything that's been in the lab. Gil looks nonplussed, then smiles persuasively. Holly takes a look at the thing Gil's handed her and asks, "Is there a grasshopper in here?" Gil responds by popping one in his mouth and rolling his eyes orgasmically, while the soundtrack crunches along. Crunches? I asked my dad, who had eaten a variety of chocolate-covered insects during his wild days in the Navy, what chocolate-covered grasshoppers were like, and he told me they squished -- not crunched, squished, much like lard would if you had to swim through it. But I digress.
Holly's now in a meeting being run with ruthless bloviation by Cap'n Brass. He fulfills yet more police clich�s by carrying on about paperwork, then brusquely assigns cases to detectives who couldn't be less thrilled to get them. Nick gets a trick roll, which is exactly what he didn't want; Warrick gets a homeowner shooting a would-be intruder. Brass then asks, "Anyone seen Catherine Willows?"
No, but we're about to: a minivan pulls up, a woman leaps out of the passenger seat, leans into the back to kiss a child who's a dead ringer for the Bad Seed, then scoots into the police station.
Brass gets to revel in yet another clich�: he's chewing out Gribbs for being related to her mother -- who is, as it turns out, a lieutenant in the traffic division. Brass carries on about being forced to hire Gribbs due to nepotism, then segues into his secondary role as Lieutenant Exposition, informing Gribbs -- and us, the viewers at home -- that the CSI lab is number two in the country and solves crimes nearly everyone else would call unsolvable. He does not, unfortunately, tell us who's the number-one crime lab or why we're not watching them instead. Perhaps that information will be revealed in an upcoming episode, when the CSI folks go play them in the Forensics Softball Championship Games or something. Gribbs absorbs his diatribe and exposition, then replies that she thought the key to being an investigator was to collect evidence, then come to a conclusion, as opposed to prejudging her. Gribbs then gives us backstory: she graduated with honors in criminal justice at UNLV. Brass is less than impressed, as am I, since UNLV's requirements apparently don't include spending any time around a lab, if Holly's reactions are anything to go by. Gribbs tells Brass he's not being fair; Brass hauls out the big book of clich�s, bitching first about hiring, then about his breadth and depth of experience on the squad, and finishes by telling Gribbs she'll amount to nothing more than headaches and bad press. He then dismisses her. Way to get the last word in there, Brass.
But wait -- sharp-eyed Grissom has stopped playing with the maggots and noticed that beneath the suicide's gun, there's a tape recorder. "I think we may have our suicide note," he says.
Cut to the scene, where the message is playing for two women -- presumably mom Paige and sister Gina. Immediately after Harman says, "I love you, Mom," we hear the gunshot. Gina jumps and cries out, while Paige stares at the tape player in horror. "Go upstairs," she commands. No kidding -- for such a considerate suicide, wouldn't Harman think to turn off the tape recorder before firing the gun? "This can't be happening," Paige says, clearly in a daze. The camera pulls back on Squat-Bald-and-Bitching and Grissom. Not that laying eyes on Grissom is an undue burden, but what's he doing delivering the suicide note to the of kin? Shouldn't the homicide detectives do that? Have all those television-detective shows been wrong all these years? In any event, Grissom leans forward and offers his condolences. She's having none of it. "You don't understand," she says numbly. "This is his picture. But that's not my son's voice." Grissom blinks, nonplussed.
Cut to credits: an opening shot of the Las Vegas strip at night, intercut with typical crime-scene props like fingerprints and corpses and typical television show props like actors, flash by while "Who Are You?" plays. It's all very meta. Incidentally, Squat-Bald-and-Bitching is played by Paul Guilfoyle; according to my copy of Barnhardt's Unauthorized Television Guide 2000-2001, he's playing Captain Jim Brass. Oh, the jokes about brass balls to be made for an entire season. Thank you, writers!
scene: a young woman parks her car in front of the police station and strides down the hall and into the lab. As she enters the lab, she recoils at a fetal pig suspended in formaldehyde. She's going to go work on crime scenes, yet she can't handle a fetal pig -- now would be the time to start rethinking vocational choices. But because giving herself the heebie-jeebies over one pig wasn't enough, the woman moves on, getting more grossed out as she notices a squid in preserving fluid, several frogs floating about, and a shark's egg. Did this woman never take a biology class? After she runs out of things in jars to gape at, the woman -- who resembles a very tall Kimberly Williams -- decides to spook herself further by staring in horror at a human skeleton on display. Oh, my, God -- nobody who's made it to adulthood can be this green, especially if they're wandering about a laboratory. Unless this woman's managed to miss reading National Geographic, watching the Learning Channel, and taking a basic sixth-grade biology class, she's seen nothing that would shock a thirteen-year-old.
Naturally, as she's engrossed in creeping herself out, Grissom sneaks up behind her and says hi. The woman peels herself off the ceiling and introduces herself as Holly Gribbs. Grissom introduces himself as her supervisor on the graveyard shift in forensics, then asks her to roll up her sleeve and donate a pint of blood. It's something all the new hires do. What is the modern workplace coming to? First they want a photocopy of every form of ID you have, and now they're storing your bodily fluids? Holly has the same reaction: "Why?" she demands. "So many reasons," chortles Gil, doing his best to leave Holly with the impression that she's working for a ghoul.
The scene switches to a whiteboard drawn in a grid, with columns of crimes under assorted names. "One more, baby, one more," gloats a Charlie Sheen look-alike. A second man enters the scene and greets the first: "Ninety-nine. You and me -- dead heat. crime solved gets promoted to CSI III, man." "Yeah, yeah," says the first guy. "Choice of shifts, $8000 raise and extra week vacation. O ho, it's all about the Cabo, bro." Thank you, Captains Exposition. How else would we know you two are hotshot competitors, if not through you stating backstory and incentive for us? Bro -- who, as his column indicates, is named Warrick Brown, proposes betting $20 on the possibility that the promotion will happen during this shift. The other guy, Nick Stokes, asks if there's anything Warrick won't bet on. The answer is no. And the viewer is left wondering: haven't we already seen the gambling addiction on ? And wouldn't living in Las Vegas be a bad idea if you're a compulsive gambler? It's like asking a functioning alcoholic to live in Napa Valley. Nick, who's apparently an enabler, asks Warrick for a line on a professional game, then warmly wishes him good luck on the shift. Warrick reciprocates, and tells Nick he hopes Nick's not handling a trick roll tonight. A what? Given this show's track record with exposition so far, it's only a matter of time before we find out.
Cut to Gil telling Holly that CSI's job is to use the evidence to recreate the crime scene without having been there. Holly's looking around the lab, finally rethinking that vocational choice. She's looking in the wrong places; the odds on her going to a crime scene strewn with preserved pig fetuses and human skeletons are pretty low. "It's pretty cool, actually," Gil says. "I just got out of the academy. I already know this," Holly replies, leaving the viewer to wonder -- exactly what was Holly's academy experience like if she's surprised by a forensics lab that has a human skeleton? Didn't they cover that sort of evidence in any of her classes, or was all her time spent fending off the advances of Steve Gutenberg and telling Michael Winslow to stop making funny noises?
Gil just smiles smugly and has Holly sign waivers in case of injury or death on the job. She does so, complaining that she's lightheaded from giving blood. "You're probably low on sugar. I've got just the thing," he says, and pulls out a jar of indistinguishable dark objects from its home to the urine samples in the lab fridge. "Try one of these," Gil offers. Holly looks even more squeamish than before -- she's really reaching into levels of human discomfort that normally accompany being asked to breaststroke through a vat of rancid lard -- and says she doesn't want to eat anything that's been in the lab. Gil looks nonplussed, then smiles persuasively. Holly takes a look at the thing Gil's handed her and asks, "Is there a grasshopper in here?" Gil responds by popping one in his mouth and rolling his eyes orgasmically, while the soundtrack crunches along. Crunches? I asked my dad, who had eaten a variety of chocolate-covered insects during his wild days in the Navy, what chocolate-covered grasshoppers were like, and he told me they squished -- not crunched, squished, much like lard would if you had to swim through it. But I digress.
Holly's now in a meeting being run with ruthless bloviation by Cap'n Brass. He fulfills yet more police clichs by carrying on about paperwork, then brusquely assigns cases to detectives who couldn't be less thrilled to get them. Nick gets a trick roll, which is exactly what he didn't want; Warrick gets a homeowner shooting a would-be intruder. Brass then asks, "Anyone seen Catherine Willows?"
No, but we're about to: a minivan pulls up, a woman leaps out of the passenger seat, leans into the back to kiss a child who's a dead ringer for the Bad Seed, then scoots into the police station.
Brass gets to revel in yet another clich: he's chewing out Gribbs for being related to her mother -- who is, as it turns out, a lieutenant in the traffic division. Brass carries on about being forced to hire Gribbs due to nepotism, then segues into his secondary role as Lieutenant Exposition, informing Gribbs -- and us, the viewers at home -- that the CSI lab is number two in the country and solves crimes nearly everyone else would call unsolvable. He does not, unfortunately, tell us who's the number-one crime lab or why we're not watching them instead. Perhaps that information will be revealed in an upcoming episode, when the CSI folks go play them in the Forensics Softball Championship Games or something. Gribbs absorbs his diatribe and exposition, then replies that she thought the key to being an investigator was to collect evidence, then come to a conclusion, as opposed to prejudging her. Gribbs then gives us backstory: she graduated with honors in criminal justice at UNLV. Brass is less than impressed, as am I, since UNLV's requirements apparently don't include spending any time around a lab, if Holly's reactions are anything to go by. Gribbs tells Brass he's not being fair; Brass hauls out the big book of clichs, bitching first about hiring, then about his breadth and depth of experience on the squad, and finishes by telling Gribbs she'll amount to nothing more than headaches and bad press. He then dismisses her. Way to get the last word in there, Brass.
The coroner tells Gil that Harman wasn't a suicide after all. Gil explains to Holly that the victim's arms would affect the angle and size of the wound -- and here we're treated to the bullet-cam as we zoom in through the bullet hole, around the chest cavity and back out -- and the hole they're looking at had to be made by someone else.
"It's like someone stood over him, and BAM," says the coroner -- as we are again treated to the bullet-cam, only faster and louder, presumably to symbolize the brutality of the act. The coroner then begins to peel open the chest cavity, which we really don't need to see now that we've had two tours in the last three minutes. Holly watches him make incisions; Gil watches Holly's reaction. He asks how she's doing, and Holly makes a hasty exit looking for the bathroom.
After Holly leaves, the coroner peers owlishly at Gil and says, "She is cute," while Gil feigns surprise. Holly stumbles by the bathroom door and ends up in the morgue, but she's so nauseous, she doesn't notice. She vomits quickly, then gets a gander at her surroundings. One look at the neat rows of plastic-covered corpses, and she's headed for the door. Her foot catches on a body cover, and she feels along the doorframe for a knob -- having forgotten how to work a door in her panic to get out, I guess.
Meanwhile, Gil and the coroner are discussing Brass's autopsy turn-around edicts while a monitor, facing the same angle they are, displays Holly freaking out in the morgue. We rejoin Holly's freak-out in progress, as she turns around and notices that the corpse she's uncovered is looking somewhat green and desiccated. Holly turns around and begins screaming for help. The scene comes off like a cheesy horror film, kind of like that Nike commercial that got pulled from the Olympics. Instead of Holly sprinting off, however, Gil happens to come by and opens the door. Holly hyperventilates her way out of the room, gasping about the presence of bodies in the morgue. Gil pulls her close for a paternal hug -- very quick, with a desultory pat or two on the back while she tries to burrow through his scrubs -- then turns to the morgue window and yells, "You assholes!" I recoil in shock -- that's not a word you hear a lot on a network during prime time! Since when is it okay to say one of the seven dirty words on CBS? ["Since ten o'clock, I guess." -- Sars]
Fortunately, profanity has just the opposite effect on Holly; she begins breathing easier and Gil talks her down to normal. He's a little touchy-feely here -- time will tell whether it's because he's all warm and caring like that, or whether he's going to put the make on young Holly.
scene: another night aerial of Las Vegas, this time by the Mandalay Bay, a hotel I cannot recommend enough due to its fantastic multilingual cable package and gigantic bathroom with both a shower and a tub. It's pure heaven being able to loll in the tub and listen to the Chinese cartoons. But I digress.