Previously on CSI: We meet Gil and Catherine, who love a good crime scene; Warrick, who loves a good bet; Brass, who loves pissing in everyone else's cornflakes; and Holly Gribbs, who's not loving anything about her new job. A young thug shooting her in the back does nothing to change her mind, but it does provide the opening premise for this episode. And now...
We open on a nighttime shot of the Stratosphere, zoom across to the Rio, and move up the strip toward the Luxor. ["Oh, that's a shout-out." -- Sars] The camera angle shifts into a typical casino -- carpet patterns that make your eyes bleed, the kind of blinking lights and electronic chirps that trigger seizures in children, and lots of slack-jawed yokels working the slot machines. A middle-aged guy with a buzz cut keeps pulling the lever on one machine with relentless precision. As he plays, a skinny woman who would have made a fine Skid Row groupie back in the day is watching the slot-monkeys play. She grabs her boyfriend's arm as he's cleaning his glasses:
"Forty million. Could you imagine?"
"It'll never happen. You gotta better chance of going to the moon."
"Hey, gimme $20."
"You got your own money."
"Yeah, but I left my purse in my room. Hurry!"
As the two of them are conducting this complex financial negotiation, the buzz-cut guy takes a drink, then walks off in defeat. He leaves his slot card -- a debit card that casinos hand out to people who don't want to haul around plastic cups full of quarters -- behind. The boyfriend walks over to the machine, inserts a $20 bill, and yanks the handle twice. The first time and second time, nothing happens. The girlfriend looks on eagerly, and Prince Charming says, "Your little premonition cost me $20. You happy now?" He gives the slot one last petulant yank, then snipes at the girlfriend, "Watch out, here come the millll-yuns!" Fortunately, she's ignoring his antics and noticing that the millions did, in fact, come. "Oh my God!" she shrieks at eardrum-splitting level. Great -- they can use some of that money to buy her elocution lessons.
Cut to a shot of Prince Charming and Skankerella holding a giant check aloft for the cameras. Both are wearing tacky t-shirts reading "Giga Million." Skankerella has not stopped shrieking; fortunately, her boyfriend is saving himself from hearing damage by ignoring her. We then see them walking down a hotel hall as a chunky security guard comments that they'll be having steak tonight. Prince Charming is holding the check in both hands; Skankerella is holding her boyfriend in both of hers. "They gave us the presidential suite," she coos, as Prince Charming fumbles with the key. "Here, Richard Gere, let me get that for you," the guard says, then ushers them in.
"Oh, look at our view," Skankerella says, tripping over to the window that opens several hundred feet above the strip. "Take a hike," Prince Charming says. "Get lost. I'm a millionaire now. Why would I want to waste any more time with you?" Because, Charming, she's the one who had that premonition leading to your new fortune. Who knows what else she's good for? As Charming's opening up about his issues with intimacy and social class, Skankerella's jaw hits her clavicle and she reels. Fortunately, room service arrives just then, saving us from seeing the rest of the ugly break-up.
Cool Change
In the scene, it's daylight and Gil's on the cell phone saying, "All right, the minute you hear anything on Holly Gribbs's condition, I want you to page me." He then ducks under police tape to view the crumpled body of Prince Charming. I guess the jackpot thing happened as our C.S.I. squad was busy nailing yuppies and terrorizing Holly Gribbs on her first night on the job. Gil looks at Prince Charming and inquires, "He pulled a Louganis?" Nice. One can imagine the kinds of deaths that earn the nicknames "the Strug," "the Chastain," and "the Thorpe." A young man in a tie, who goes unnamed in both the show and its closed-captions and thus shall be dubbed Exposition Lad, plays his role: "The Giga Millions curse strikes again. The last four winners have ended up missing or dead. Some say there's a conspiracy here." And the actor who played a Kennedy is just the man to solve it.
Exposition Lad then tells Gil that the girlfriend is upstairs in police custody. "Do you want to talk to her?" "Not yet. Right now I want to talk to him." "How do you talk to a dead body?" asks Exposition Lad. "I let him talk to me, actually." That Gil, dropping the Zen forensics science. Exposition Lad is suitably awed. "In fact, he just spoke. Didn't you hear him?" Oh, Gil -- now you're just showing off. "He just told me that he didn't commit suicide," Gil continues, holding up Prince Charming's mangled eyeglasses. Exposition Lad again advances the plot: "You lost me." Gil explains that anyone cowardly enough to take their own life wouldn't be brave enough to watch the changing view on the way down; most jumpers take off their glasses before leaping, whereas people who are pushed don't have time. "You can tell all that just by looking at a pair of eyeglasses?" Exposition Lad inquires incredulously. "You have no idea," intones Gil. You're right! Thank God we have you, Gil.
Cut to the opening credits. One big change: Jorja Fox is now listed as a principal cast member. We see the closing line "And Chandra West as Holly Gribbs," which doesn't bode well for her future on this show.
Gil walks into the police station and asks for his messages. The secretary hands him a stack an inch think. As he heads toward the lab, he notices that all the lab techs are staring at him silently. He enters Brass's office and says, "I just got off the phone with the sheriff. He says he wants me to run the unit." Brass turns around, his brow furrowed but for the giant dent where the boomerang of karma hit, and tells Gil he's the boss now. He then informs Gil that he'll be working in the homicide department. "So I guess this might put you and me at odds." Brass, give it up: you're already at odds with anyone who walks upright. This little move is simply a device meant to exacerbate your ongoing antagonism with everyone in C.S.I. Don't try to pretend otherwise. Gil, however, is playing Zen mind games and replies, "Cop versus scientist. It's interesting, huh?" See? See? It's all about setting up ongoing tension, not Brass's inability to relate to tool-using primates. After Gil asks for advice, Brass tells him to cover his ass and hide. Clearly, this is a man who read the One-Minute Manager and knows that he needs to keep his communications short and to the point.
In the scene, some shellacked television anchorperson is talking about Holly Gribbs being brutally gunned down on her first night on the job. Warrick winces as if each word is stabbing him; Nick looks concerned, and Catherine's face is drawn in harsh lines of guilt and grief. "Weren't you supposed to be shadowing Holly?" she asks. "Warrick, man, what happened?" asks Nick. "I hooked up with Grissom on that toenail case" -- and never in the history of television has such an ordinarily hilarious phrase been delivered in such an agonized tone of voice -- "then I came back here." "You let her go solo?" asks Catherine, conveniently forgetting that Gil did too. Warrick tells her he already feels awful and she should just lay off him. She does, since it's now Gil's turn to start in. As he enters, he recaps last week's whereabouts of the C.S.I. team with considerably more brevity than I did, then tells everyone Brass has now been moved back to Homicide, where he can begin leaving the body of evidence his colleagues will no doubt use to justify his demise. Nick asks, "Who's going to run this squad?" and I realize either Nicky's not very bright, or he's a teacher's pet. Gil tells it like it is: "Me. We'll just play it by ear."
He then begins parceling out cases. We learn that Prince Charming was staying at the fictitious Hotel Monaco; there is no Hotel Monaco in Las Vegas, although there is a very nice one on Geary Street in San Francisco. I highly recommend the bar there. But I digress. Gil's working Prince Charming's unhappy ending. Nick's working the Gribbs case -- something Catherine takes immediate exception to -- and Gil justifies the decision by pointing out that Nick's the only one in the C.S.I. group who didn't have personal contact with Holly. Catherine quibbles some more, and Gil tells her she's emotionally involved. "Yes. She was going to walk. I convinced her to stay. If anyone's to blame here, it's me and I want this case," Catherine says heatedly. "Fire me!" She heads toward the door, presumably to go track down Gribbs's shooter, as Nicky looks on uncomprehendingly. "I'm not going to fire anyone," says Gil -- undoubtedly allaying many of Warrick's fears -- and goes on, "We're all on edge because of Holly. I just want everyone to stay calm and do their jobs for the ten hours." The camera cuts over to Nick, who's making his jaw extra-firm in an effort to look calm and competent. Gil then looks over at Warrick and explains that as of now, the C.S.I. department is short of help, so he's bringing in old friend Sara Sidel, a C.S.I. out of San Francisco, to lead the investigation. Catherine huffs about having someone sniffing around, then departs. Nick looks even more clench-jawed, and not at all pleased to be told he's going to be working the jumper with Gil. That's probably because he was wondering two things: did Sara Sidel ever hit the bar at the Hotel Monaco, and where does the San Francisco C.S.I. rank relative to the Las Vegas department? Or maybe I'm projecting a little. Warrick asks Gil what he can do; Gil tells him to take some personal time and get his story straight before Sara shows up.
Cut to the apartment where Gribbs was shot. Catherine walks in, toting her crime-solving suitcase, just in time to have a uniform ask her, "What do you think happened here?" Catherine stares at the overturned furniture and imagines the crime; we switch to the hypothetical vignette as it's being played out in slow-motion, echoey sound, and red-soaked colors. The assailant tells Holly not to move, she pleads for her life, and he shoots her with enough force to send her, and a few pieces of furniture, tumbling to the ground. Catherine snaps back into the present and begins looking around. She sees Holly's gun and empties the clip. It's partially empty, and Catherine murmurs, "She shot back." Stooping to peer beneath the furniture, she notices a beeper lying on the floor.
Cut to the morgue and a female coroner cheerfully saying, "He's all rigored up. Pull it like a slot machine." It's Prince Charming -- how heartwarming to see that life's small ironies continue into death. She goes on to talk about the three-week dry spell between jumpers while Gil works at the arm. A Band-Aid swings off the arm, and Gil notices a set of long, deep scratches on Prince Charming's left forearm. He comments that they look like defense wounds. Nicky, displaying that stunning insight that makes him a CSI Level III while Warrick rots in cheap casinos, deduces that "someone came after him with something pretty sharp. Got any idea what it might be?" The coroner speculates that it might be glass, based on the tiny shards they found in the wound. Gil notices it's not just glass, but black glass.
Nick and Gil are now in the Hotel Monaco's presidential suite, combing through the evidence again. Gil notices a pile of bloody towels, and Nick points out a broken champagne bottle. "I missed that," Gil says, thus satisfying Nicky's need for validation. Nick salves his superior's ego by asking, "What do you think, boss?" Gil tells Mr. CSI III to call it. "What, you want me to play it blind?" Nick responds, and Gil tells him, "What does the room say?" That Gil, always holding conversations with inanimate entities. I bet he had a rich, full fantasy life as child. Nick takes us into flashback -- complete with stylized bluish hues and echoes -- and we're watching Prince Charming and Skankerella break up all over again. Room service comes in and drops off a cart with champagne. As soon as he leaves, Skankerella demands tearfully, "So what was I then, just someone to bang?" "Yeah," responds Prince Charming. I'm guessing that he's not terribly interested in remaining friends with his ex. He better hope they're not sharing a cab together when they get back to Newark. Skankerella takes this revelation poorly, seizing the champagne bottle and breaking it while screaming, "Why?" She slices Prince Charming's forearm, he calls her a crazy broad -- clearly, the writers are toning down the language in the wake of the PTC's statement condemning the show -- and storms out. Nick takes us out of flashback and into the interrogation room, where Skankerella is finishing the story for him and Gil. Gil asks if the fight was the last time she saw Prince Charming; she replies that she cut him up pretty good and he probably went to the lobby to get some first aid. Gil asks if she's sure, adding that the presidential suite is a secured room and there will be a record of any entrances -- trying to scare her by thinking he's documented a lie of some sort -- but Skankerella's a cool customer. She shoots back, "Well, if they keep a record, check it for yourself. Why are you bothering me?" Oh, I don't know, missy. Perhaps because there's a little thing called motive? Gil asks Nick to check the log; he confirms that Skankerella is not lying. "Can I go now?" she asks, with the kind of eye-rolling impatience most fourteen-year-olds would dismiss as too obvious. Gil nods, and she gets up from the chair she's been straddling -- a class act just like her ex -- and struts out. Nick and Gil brainstorm possible explanations, and decide to go see how sturdy the "perhaps-he-was-flung-from-the-roof" hypothesis is.
Meanwhile, Warrick is on the phone to the emergency room, inquiring as to Holly's status. Judge Cohen beeps in on the other line and upbraids him for betting the 49ers instead of the Packers, as per last week's episode, and commands Warrick to meet him "at the spot in fifteen." Hmmm. Could Judge Cohen and Warrick have a long-running relationship wherein they conduct a less-than-ethical exchange of goods and services? Or am I jumping to conclusions, only to discover that "the spot" is a caf where the two meet to discuss the implications of Plato's Republic when read from a twenty-first-century perspective? Hey, in a show where grown men talk to corpses and hotel suites, anything is possible.
The camera swoops over a hotel roof, presumably the Hotel Monaco's, where Nick and Gil are standing over a pile of crash-test dummies. Gil announces the beginning of Operation Norman while Nick paws at his pants. "You'll never get that off. It's Meyer's roof dust. All the hotels use it now; it diverts the sun's rays." Nick asks how Gil knows all this crap -- his word, not mine -- and Gil tells him it's their job to know stuff. A second later, a voice on the walkie-talkie tells the two men the coast is clear; we then see Gil standing on the Hotel Monaco's driveway and watching the dummies fly off the rooftop as a crowd cheers behind him. Oh, please -- this is Las Vegas. There are Elvis impersonators and showgirls all over the place. Who's going to stand behind a police line and watch mannequins fall from the sky? ["I would have. Then again, I don't live in Vegas. I also don't get out terribly often." -- Sars] Gil logs the progress while waving beneficently to the crowd. "Norman jumped." He muses. "Norman pushed. Norman fell." "Wouldn't you if you were married to Mrs. Roper?" a female voice sasses from the crowd. Ladies and gentlemen, we have just met Sara Sidel, a.k.a. Gina the Secret Service Agent on West Wing, a.k.a. Maggie Doyle on ER. Can't you feel the MBTV synergy here? Gil's feeling something, but it's not exactly synergy. The two chat for a while; she derides his methods as old-school, while he defends his work in what sounds like the latest installment in a long-running argument. Then Sara brings up Holly, asking how she is. We find out that Holly's still in surgery. Then Gil goes abstract on us, saying, "I have so many unanswered whys..." Sara states that the only why she's interested in is finding out why Warrick Brown left the scene.
Because he had to get to the spot, that's why. Warrick and Cohen meet in a parking garage. The bad news is, they're not discussing Plato. The worse news is, Cohen demands ten thousand dollars in an hour. The good judge is looking considerably less like a mischief-loving scamp of the bench and more like a corrupt S.O.B. in every scene.