The episode opens in daylight -- somewhat confusing to my pea brain, as I'm trained to think of C.S.I. as being that show about forensics investigators on the night shift -- with assorted shots of the Las Vegas strip. It looks a lot less impressive by day, unless you're one to be impressed by massive hotels. The shot pulls back and we're in the air, watching an airplane fly over the mountains ringing Vegas.
The soundtrack informs us that the plane has requested a "VOR one-five runway approach. Request Las Vegas police."
As this is going on, we're still looking at the side of the plane. A smallish-sounding child cries, "Mommy," and we hear a weak scream. The camera pulls back from the plane's door where it's been trained, and we transition to the Strip at night. Ah, sanity has been restored to my world. The scene swoops over to McCarran Airport -- for those of you who have never had the pleasure of flying into Vegas, it really is, like, two blocks from the Strip -- and a plane taxiing on the runway. I realize that this is the same plane that was having trouble in broad daylight a few seconds ago and promptly get confused all over again: the plane was having trouble in the day, and now it is night. Exactly where were they flying from? My head hurts.
Brass's voice rings out over the tarmac, what with the plane having taxied into an impressive array of vehicles bearing flashing lights. Oh, wait. The plane is the crime scene. Now I get it. I think. Brass plays Captain Mise-en-Scene, telling us the luggage will be staying with the plane and the Las Vegas police will be treating it like a crime scene. Brass establishes that whatever happened on this plane probably happened in first class by a) telling his underlings to quiz the clueless passengers in coach, and b) telling anyone in the general vicinity that he'll be talking to the first class passengers sequestered in the lounge. At least, I hope that's what's happening: it could just be that when one flies first class, the perks extend to assorted airport lounges in case of trouble. Who knows?
Gil's hovering over Brass's shoulder like the Angel of Death. He does nothing to dispel the impression as he walks up a portable staircase into the plane: "Dead guy in first class?" he asks. "Las Vegas Air. Always heard it was a good time," Brass replies, obviously equating first-class seating with, say, a pass to an orgy hosted by Caligula. Gil ignores him, and they walk into the world's most spacious first-class cabin. The body sprawled out in the aisle definitely looks dead. Gil and Brass have a marvelous minimalist exchange:
"Dead?"
"Coroner called about thirty minutes ago."
"Eyewitnesses?"
"First class. Nine passengers, one flight attendant."
Brass continues by telling Gil the first class passengers are sequestered in an airport lounge -- you know, so they have time to collude on their stories before being interrogated -- and according to everyone they've interviewed so far, the deceased had a panic attack and died before landing.
As Brass is telling us this, the camera is panning up from the dead guy to the carnage behind him -- a smashed serving cart, broken dishes, a shattered wine bottle. It should be interesting figuring out what that had to do with the panic attack. Usually, the food is good enough in first class to allay any irrational fears about mystery meat. Gil peers intently at the dead guy's neck. Welcome back, Grissom! We've missed that look.
He and Brass continue to move through the world's most capacious airplane, noting that there was a point of disturbance through the galley, on the cockpit door. The bloody handprint there kind of gives it away. Gil crouches down and takes a picture of the deep foot impressions on the bottom of the door, size 10 or 11. He straightens out, gives the door the patented Grissomian Gaze of Contemplation, and heads back into vast, echoing space of the first class cabin.
He and Brass go back to looking at the dead body, which is lying between rows 1 and 2. As Gil snaps pictures of the bloody figure -- which I swear seems to have flipped directions in the interval between going into the galley and coming out -- he notices a CD by his knee. He picks it up and notes the edge. "Is that blood?" Brass asks. At this crime scene, you have to ask?
As the two men exit the plane, Gil orders the entire plane taped off: "Nose to tail and wing to wing." "That's going to take a lot of tape," Brass deadpans. Gil's having none of it: "I got a dead body, a crime scene with wings, and something very wrong." Yeah, I'll tell you what's very wrong: this isn't a local crime. Someone gets killed at 30,000 feet, the problem belongs to the FAA, and the FBI, and whatever other Federal agency happens to feel like getting involved that day. Given that Las Vegas is crawling with Feds, the odds that Brass would have beat the FBI out to the tarmac are pretty slim, and the odds that the Feds wouldn't have immediately whipped out a court order and used it to bitch-slap the local investigators into submission are even slimmer. Still, an hour of Gil and Brass sitting in McCarran and lamenting the loss of a crime scene to the Feds would be a pretty boring episode, so we'll let this slide. For now.
Cut to the credits, and then the commercials. Christopher Lowell asks me, "Could you die?" If I had to watch you on a regular basis, Mr. Lowell, death would be a sweet and welcome relief.
Back to the show. Gil's ambling across the tarmac when a sedan that screams "law enforcement" drives up behind him and hits a little siren. Gil turns around, his entire posture screaming, "What now?" The sheriff is what, and Tall, Bald, and Smarmy gets out of the car to tell Gil, "We have a whale of an opportunity here." What, to launch an investigation that could lead to an eventual Supreme Court case concerning the boundaries of federal versus municipal crime scene investigation? TB&S anticipates my line of inquiry and allays all the nay-sayers in the audience by saying, "Dead body on an airplane. FAA has jurisdiction, but they won't be here 'til sunrise. That gives us about twelve hours to be heroes." Or bit players in a case reinforcing exactly what sort of jurisdiction federal agencies have when it comes to airline incidents, but never you mind that. Gil gives TB&S a troubled look: "I don't follow you." TB&S explains slowly, using small words: "Well, we either hand over the guy who did it when the Feds get here, or they get all the glory while we watch from the sidelines." Or, you could try and explain your grandstanding to the unamused DAs driving out from the Justice Department headquarters right about now. I've met some of those guys; I wouldn't want to mess with them. Gil cares not about whatever residual state's-rights-vs.-federal-rights issues might be at play here; he only points out, "We're not even sure we have a homicide yet. First reports indicate he had some kind of an episode." The sheriff squints at Gil, looking for all the world like a sinister young Dwight Eisenhower, and sighs, "Give me a little credit. Even you wouldn't tape off one of these wide-bodies unless you knew you had something. An arrest would be good for you. It would be good for me too. Good for Las Vegas." Gil looks at him, some sort of insight slowly dawning. He leans in and asks, "Are you running for mayor?" Gil, a word of advice here: if you're trying to suss out the motives of your highly political boss, inquiring after his career ambitions in an incredulous fashion will not give you the information you need. TB&S only stares stonily at Gil; taking that as all the answer he needs, our man Grissom smiles in cynical understanding and heads back toward the plane.
Back on the plane, the rest of the CSI people have shown up. Nicky straightens up from his position of crouching over the corpse, and it's clear that George Eads has, once again, antagonized the wardrobe department and possibly the hairdresser too. He's wearing an olive jacket and a post-Caesar mop that do nothing for him. His coworkers all hang back on the other side of first class, clearly afraid that they'll catch the bad hair. Well, actually, it probably has something to do with blocking. Nicky, settling back into his usual role of Exposition Lad, asks, "What about the passengers in coach? Did they see anything?" Sara explains, "The curtain was shut. The flight attendants kept them separated. They disembarked through the rear." Dude, the airlines should just give up the charade and start calling that section of the airline "steerage" if the people are going to be treated like that, crime scene or no.
Warrick -- who is wearing a decent blue jacket and pullover, thus telling me that Gary Dourdan escaped the wrath of wardrobe this week -- asks if we know who the body is, and Catherine notes that he's "Tony Candlewell. Age thirty. Communications company manager from Atlanta, married, no record." Gil steps back in the plane, eyeing the entire scene suspiciously. "So? What do you think?" Nicky looks clueless. Catherine says, "I dunno, but this sure must have looked scary at 30,000 feet." "All this done by one guy?" Warrick says incredulously. "Had to be on drugs." "Too much damage for one guy," Sara says. "So, more than one guy? What do you think, Gris?" Nicky asks. Gris? The hell? Gil replies testily, "I think we got ten witnesses all singing the same song. The deceased went berserk. Unless we find something else in the evidence, that's what happened." My, someone's in a pissy mood tonight. Gil begins divvying up the assignments: Catherine and Warrick are doing interviews, Nicky gets to work with the coroner, and Sara will help Gil sweep the plane for evidence. Oh, goody! No -- really. I like when the entire team works on one case.
Cut to the airport lounge, stocked with a small number of excessively pissy-looking people. Having spent more than my fair share of time in McCarran's lounges, I can't blame them: the constant light and noise from the banks of slot machines lining the airport -- to say nothing of the backlit Siegfried and Roy murals overlooking the baggage claim area -- don't do a lot to soothe the travel-weary. However, in CSI-land, the people aren't pissy because they're overstimulated; it looks like they're just innately obnoxious. The camera rests briefly on most of them: there's a woman with her daughter; a flight attendant with beautiful long, curly red hair; a youngish couple sitting very close together; an older couple where she looks like she's made a career of making his life miserable; a bald and peevish businessman; and an older gentleman of color who looks quite nervous. Brass enters with Warrick and Catherine. He introduces everyone. The peevish bald businessman snipes, "You know you can't keep us here." Oh, God. Please let him be the killer, if only so we can see him crumble like Camembert. Catherine sweet-talks him into submission and turns to go. As she passes Warrick, he praises her snow job sotto voce; she chirps back, "More flies with honey."
Back on the plane, Sara is rifling through the dead man's pockets. She pulls out his wallet; the contents are utterly innocuous. "A standup guy," notes some dork in a baseball cap. Ah, he must be this week's token homicide investigator. Sara keeps flipping through the wallet and stops on a picture of Candlewell with a dark-haired little girl and a pleasant-looking woman. I have a momentary freak-out at the idea of someone in my peer group being permitted to parent something larger than a goldfish -- irrational, but there you go -- and rewind my Tivo back to the point where Sara's looking at his driver's license. I notice that Candlewell -- who was, a few scenes back, listed as being 30 -- has June 18, 1975 as his birthday on the license. Barring the possibility that C.S.I. is set in the near-future, this guy is only 25. Or the props department got their math wrong. Whatever. My moment of nitpicking is past. Anyway, Sara's puzzling over the wallet as the dork in the cap sighs, "He had a family. Can you imagine getting that phone call? What a shame." Sara pegs him with a look. "David," she says, sighing deeply and handing him the wallet, "it's always a shame."
On the tarmac, the pilot's talking about Candlewell. In flashback, we learn that he seemed like "a standup guy" -- there's that phrase again -- even going so far as to help other people swing their luggage into the overhead compartment. Gil asks the pilot when he became aware of a problem in first class, and the pilot tells him that 35 minutes into the flight, the red-headed flight attendant (also known as Shannon) asked for someone to come out and address an issue with a passenger. We flash back to the scene, where Candlewell is rattling on the door to the lavatory and shouting for the occupant to come out. Brother, I have been there. Well, not the shouting part, but there have been times when I've wanted to. The assistant pilot comes over and tries to make nice with Candlewell, telling him there are two other lavatories toward the rear of the plane, but Candlewell snaps, "I paid $1200 to pee here, not in coach." Hee! Back in the present day, Gil presses for more information, and the assistant pilot concludes, "He seemed agitated. Flying makes people react in funny ways."
Gil's hanging with Jenna the cool coroner as she prepares to take Candlewell's internal temperature. "Is that a meat thermometer?" he asks. "Digital readout," she responds. "Bigger numbers." Nicky's moderately nonplussed; I bet he never thinks of his Thanksgiving turkey in quite the same way again. Jenna peers at the readout: "98.1," she says. I think it's safe to assume we're talking Fahrenheit here. Nicky steps up to the plate, swinging the bat for Team Exposition: "The body should be colder than that. Temperature drops two degrees the first hour after death, and one-and-a-half degrees each successive hour." Jenna snaps, "Well, he's been dead for two hours." Nicky displays a heretofore undisclosed flair for algebra by plugging the numbers into a formula and concluding that the temperature at time of death was 101.6. "This guy had a fever." Jenna looks at him, clearly restraining herself from saying, "Duh," and murmurs, "Let's see what else we've got." It's an impressive list: petechial hemorrhaging behind the eyes; horseshoe-shaped contusion on the left side of the neck, as if someone stepped on it with a boot; multiple contusions front and back; a broken hand. "This guy's a study in contradictions," Nicky says. No, actually he's a study in pain. None of that sounded like it tickled. Nicky continues, "He's got defensive wounds on his palms. But the scraped knuckles and the broken hand indicate aggression." Ohhhhh. That kind of contradiction.
Back at McCarran, Gil's going through and giving us the passenger roster and seating. For those keeping track: Dr. Kiera Berhle, 3E; Emily Berhle 3F; Nate Metz, 2C. As Gil and Sara get to 2C -- they're putting cones with passenger names on them in every seat -- they note the seat won't stay upright. It keeps flopping into 3C as if it's been broken. A quick check of the clipboard reveals that -- yes, Candlewell was in 3C.
Flash to Nate Metz, an annoying young Turk with "dot-com project manager" written all over him. He probably spends his flight time working on some sub-notebook computer or reading Fast Company in an effort to psych himself into thinking he's a king of e-commerce, as opposed to some backwater baronet of click-throughs. But I digress: Metz is sharing his hostile feelings with Catherine and Warrick as they try to figure out what happened with Candlewell. "You know why I fly first class? Other than the fact that my company pays for it? Because I can work. I have to work." Yup -- another dot-commer with an inflated sense of importance. Apparently, Candlewell was kicking the back of Metz's seat; we learn in flashback that Metz's idea of common courtesy is to look up from his crappy Wintel machine to snap, "Hey, Pelé, could you please stop kicking the back of my seat?" Candlewell slurs, "I'm not doing anything," and Metz snaps some more. Catherine pushes for more details, and Metz claims he stopped interacting with Candlewell after that so-clever Pelé quip. Brass asks to see Metz's knuckles, and they're scraped raw. Brass neutrally observes this, and Metz gives them both a panicky look, thinking, "Gosh, none of those articles about being a change agent told me how to lie convincingly to the police."
On the plane, Sara's peering at the chair with a flashlight while Gil is poking around behind her. He notices blood drops a couple rows back and swabs them; they're on seat 4B -- Lou Everett.
Flash to Lou Everett, the bald officious businessman from a few scenes back. Ah, Lou -- the evidence doesn't look good for you, and I couldn't be happier. He's trying to get a snack from the vending machine and failing. Brass comes over with Warrick, and the three engage in a tense, flashback-filled conversation. Metz apparently gets kicked one time too many and his laptop gets knocked to the ground. He gets up to confront Candlewell -- who is, at this point, only mumbling incoherently -- and a physical confrontation is about to take place when Everett decides to play peacemaker. He gets a CD to the face for his troubles. Everett snaps us all into the present by whining, "So what do you think? Can I sue a dead man for bodily injury?" I'm sure you'll try, you pompous weasel. Brass replies, "I think you need some coffee. A few cocktails on the plane?" Everett carries on about being nervous when he flies. Warrick, whose Whitey-is-lying detector has to have been bothering him since about 9:05 tonight, gives Everett the fish-eye and says, "Alcohol does different things to different people at different altitudes." Everett gets all defensive and snipes, "Why don't you just ask the flight attendant?"
Cut to the scene, where Shannon is being interviewed on her version of events. I really like the way the writers are introducing and transitioning between different characters tonight; it's very smooth. Shannon notes that Candlewell had been complaining about a headache, and that it apparently developed en route. "So what made the worm turn?" Brass muses. Shannon has no idea: "Look, I've been flying for ten years. I've seen it all. I've seen ferrets in briefcases, fellatio in first class, passenger stir-frying on their tray tables...I mean, who knows why anyone does anything?" Gil, who has quietly approached while Shannon recites her observations on the stupidity of airline passengers, exchanges a look with Catherine. The two talk about the incredible noncommunicativeness of the passengers. "If nothing criminal happened on that flight, why isn't anyone talking?" Gil muses. "I'm going to go out on a limb here and say they're hiding something," Catherine ripostes. "Then we get to play hide-and-seek," Gil says. I bet you do.
Gil's back on the plane with Sara, snapping his cell phone shut. Jenna's forsaken the meat thermometer for the electric carving knife, and added more injuries to Candlewell's list: intercardial bleeding, thoracic hemorrhaging, a ruptured spleen and a fever. Sara's jaw is dropping with every new announcement, and when Gil asks her what's she turned up, she fumbles with the many, many tiny empties Everett had apparently been stowing in the seatback compartment. She moves over the other side of the plane and notices the neck of a broken wine bottle tucked into yet another seatback compartment. Sara fishes it out, and the TMI lens zooms in to show us the blood on the edge; Gil helpfully reminds us all that Candlewell had defensive wounds on his hands. The seat where the bottle was found belonged to Marlene Valdez ...
...who is, in yet another smooth transition, bitching fiercely over her ruined blouse. Since, you know, human lives come and go, but tacky Pucci-print knockoff blouses are precious. Her husband tries unsuccessfully to placate her; Brass and Catherine absorb this little domestic drama. Once she's done bemoaning her blouse, Marlene flashes us back to the event leading toward Candlewell's death: gazing on the agitated and aggressive man and goading her husband into confronting him. Candlewell flails and knocks over the wine on the concession cart.
We zoom back to Gil, who's picking up the other half of the wine bottle and fitting the two pieces together. "Marlene in 2E slashes the victim. He's bleeding. Where does he go?" muses Gil. "The lavatory," replies Sara.
The two of them beat feet to the lavatory. Judging by its clean and spacious interior, I can totally understand why Candlewell was militant about using these facilities instead of the ones in coach. Sara notes that there's no evidence, and Gil corrects her. There's no overt evidence, but plenty of latent evidence. Sara hands him a UV light and notes, "One step ahead of you every so often." Gil thanks her and gets to work scanning the countertop. He has her fetch a small magnifying lens -- called a Christopher Columbus -- and peers more closely at something the light has turned up. Suddenly, I'm back in sixth-grade sex ed. No, wait, the CSI TMI-cam has now tired of showing internal organs and is now focusing on much smaller booty. Like sperm. It's awfully non-motile, though; I thought those suckers were supposed to be viable for a few hours.
What follows is one of the oddest exchanges anyone on CSI has had to date. Sara matter-of-factly inquires, "I take it that's not blood." Gil looks back with an arch look and grins, "No, but it's got protein in it." Sara makes a whatever face, then gets a big smile of her own and says, "Oh. The Mile-High Club. That means that two passengers may have had no idea what was going on in that cabin." Gil, who has gone back to gazing at inert spermatozoa through the Christopher Columbus, muses, "High altitude enhances the sexual experience. It increases the euphoria." Sara looks thoughtful and says, "Well, it's good. But I don't know if it's that good." Gil's head shoots up from the Christopher Columbus and he gets quite the speculative look on his face. Sara meets his eyes and demands, "Cite your source." "Hand me a swab, please," Gil pleads. Now she's downright flirtatious: "You're avoiding the question," she burbles, continuing, "Enhances sexual experience, increases euphoria...cite your source." Gil puts down the Christopher Columbus, and without turning around to meet Sara's eyes, mumbles, "A magazine." Right. Was it one with a letters forum? Something along the lines of "I never thought these letters were true until the time I was flying with two hot Swedish swimsuit models"? Gil turns back and gives Sara what he clearly hopes is the wide-looked look of a pristine academic. Sara's giving him the same look a lion gives a gazelle on crutches two feet away: "What magazine?" "Applied Psychodynamics in Forensic Science," Gil says. Oh. That letters column must not be as much fun. "Never heard of it," Sara shoots back. "I'll get you a subscription," Gil responds. "Now cite your source." Sara gives him a look that reminds me of Elsa licking her chops at the end of Born Free. "Oh, so now you want to go down that road." "Yeah!" insists Gil. "Nah, never mind." "You started it," Gil sing-songs. Sara shakes her head and Gil raises an eyebrow, clearly intrigued. Sara smiles embarrassedly and says, "Delta Airlines. Flight 1109, Boston to Miami. March '93, Ken Fuller." Gil's eyes grow wide and he licks his lips. "Hazel eyes," Sara continues, "organic chem lab TA, BMOC, over-rated...in every aspect." Gil manages to close his mouth with some difficulty. Sara stammers, "Could we get back to work please?" "Yeah?" Gil gasps. He turns back to the Christopher Columbus and sets it down. Getting up to slide past Sara, he says, "I think due to your firsthand knowledge and experience in airplane bathrooms...you should do the swab." Oh, Gil, come on. Why don't you just shriek, "Clean the bathroom, you dirty, dirty girl! Clean it until it is as pristine as you should be!" 'Cause you know, that would be a little more subtle.
Cut to Catherine interrogating the couple in question. We establish, through the clever use of two different last names, that the newest members of the Mile-High Club are not married to one another. Oh, Catherine should take this well, once she puts two and two together. Boy, are those passengers lousy liars.
Sara swabs the bejesus out of the lavatory and notices handprints on the top. "A stallion!" she muses.
Warrick and Catherine complain vociferously about the uncooperative passengers. Back on the plane, Sara's crawling up the aisle taking fiber samples; she notices fibers from Candlewell's khakis.
Swing over to the lab, where Liam the Lab Tech is dressing a mannequin in the latest dead-guy gear. He's got music going on, and is kind of bopping around like he's two songs away from channeling Isaac Mizrahi and going mad on a catwalk. Nicky comes in and asks what Liam's got. Liam lifts of a lapel of the jacket and cracks wise about the nice Bordeaux and Starbucks served on the flight. No blood and no saliva. There are no prints -- leather is too porous -- but plenty of shoeprints on the back of the jacket.
Gil's commandeering the jacket via cell phone, then going in to ask Catherine, "I need their shoes." "Why are you telling me?" she snarks around a mouthful of Funyons. "Because you're the people person," he says, clearly dreading the idea of dealing with the living. "Go tell them that," Catherine snaps. "They're not giving me bupkus." Jesus, someone's cranky tonight. Gil says please and -- I tell you, this is the strangest episode of CSI yet -- bats his eyes at Catherine. She sits there, stunned, then gets up to collect everyone's shoes. It takes a moment for the directive to sink in.
Cut to the office. Warrick is, once again, matching up shoeprints for evidence. Are we going to discover that Warrick's got some Imelda Marcos action on the side, a new addiction to Ferragamos now that he's got the gambling habit firmly in hand? Because this is like the third or fourth episode where he has to spend five minutes peering at shoeprints. Sara comes by with photo comparisons so Warrick can easily match the prints with the impressions on the jacket. Catherine spreads them out, and everyone begins matching shoe treads. A few minutes later, Catherine goes out to break it to the crowd that three of them are staying -- Lou, Max Valdez and Dr. Kiera Berhle. As they squint in confusion, Gil glares from the door.
Cut to the police department. Berhle and her daughter Emily are walking with Catherine down the hall toward the fishbowl; Brass comes out and says, quite nicely for Brass, that Emily will have to wait with an officer. Berhle rolls her eyes and gives him some lip; I wonder why anyone would bother paying $1200 for a flight if it features people like the ones we've seen tonight. Brass makes nice and then makes cute with the kid. It's downright saccharine, and so I elect not to recap it; I'd like to prevent the onset of adult diabetes, thank you. After Brass has softened up Emily, he moves in for the kill: "Were you scared? Did you see what happened?" Emily, unfortunately, does not pipe up with, "The Constitution makes it so I don't have to testify against Mommy," but settles for rolling her huge, Margaret-Keane-esque eyes. Brass then goes in to deal with the elder Berhle.
"How long have you been a physician?" He asks. "I prefer 'surgeon,'" she snits. You know -- I know surgery is a notoriously sexist specialty with a lot of rampaging egos, and being a woman wielding a scalpel can't be a basket of sunshine and bunnies, but Kiera's a snot. When Catherine asks how Kiera came by her shiner, Kiera says sanctimoniously, "I caught it during the ruckus. That's the price you pay for being a good Samaritan." Catherine swallows the bile and walks Kiera through the sequence of events, trying to determine how her heel prints got on the back of the jacket. Kiera spins a flashback about helping Candlewell after he passed out; in her version of events, she had to roll him over using her feet for leverage. She did CPR and it was for naught. "If he had been in my ER, I might have been able to save him, but at 30,000 feet, there's only so much you can do." Kiera, can the good Samaritan act; the only thing you two have in common is a jackass -- and he was riding one, not being one.
Back on the airplane, Gil's talking to Sara, mumbling about a ping-pong ball and paddles. Sara goes to check the defib paddles in the first aid kit; they're unused. Since, you know, Kiera could only do so much at 30,000 feet.
Cut to Shannon, explaining that by the time she thought to use the paddles, Candlewell was already dead. Catherine acidly inquires as to whether or not Shannon's been trained to use the paddles, and Shannon stammers that her training only covers people who have heart attacks while seat-belted in. She goes on to say how scared she was that they were all going down; apparently, Candlewell was heading toward the emergency exit. Catherine muses that Mr. Valdez was down for the count, Mrs. Valdez was brandishing a broken wine bottle...so what about seat 1A? Shannon gives him a name -- Mr. Cash.
"I was wondering when you guys were going to get around to asking me questions," Mr. Cash says, in the latest of the smooth transitions. Man, I totally hope CSI keeps this up; it's a treat to watch. Warrick asks, "All right. What did you see?" "Not much," Cash says, somewhat amused. Gil gets testy: "Sir. It's been a long night, and we don't have much time before our crime scene flies away." Cash says mildly that he was in his seat the entire time. Gil, frustrated, repeats that Cash is in seat 1A. "You were sitting ringside. How do you not see what happened?" Warrick bursts out, clearly exasperated as well. Cash busts out a collapsible white cane and extends it with a flourish. This is about the point that my husband, who has been watching patiently, loses it and shouts, "I bet you the blind guy beat him to death with his stick. The blind guy and the little girl double-teamed him. And the serial killer from the last episode is hiding in an overhead compartment chanting, 'Gil! I'm not touching you.' That'll be the twist." I cluck soothingly and promise him full run of the Tivo immediately after CSI; I just know we're in for another fun-filled viewing of Fear Strikes Out. Anyway, enough about me. "The blind leading the blind," Gil says. Cash points out that he's legally blind -- his vision being 20/200 -- and we flash onto Cash's version of the scene, which is mostly blots and voices. Gil asks Cash to identify the voices, and he fingers Everett, Valdez, and Metz. Gil flings himself on Cash's mercy by saying something about eight witnesses, eggs, milk, and an oven, and finishes with "And all I got is a limp soufflé." The blind man fixes him with an incredulous look, as if to say, "I'm blind as a bat, but even I can see your metaphors blow." Warrick pleads, and Cash leads us through another flashback where Candlewell was subdued by the crowd, and killed in doing so. He finishes by saying heavily, "I never heard such silence." The three men sit there quietly until Gil's beeper goes off.
He's hanging out with Jenna; it turns out Candlewell's brain was swollen. Jenna ran a spinal fluid test for cerebral proteins; Candlewell's range was twenty-five percent above the normal 45 milligrams, at 60. "Did anybody mention this guy had a headache?" Jenna asks incredulously, then goes on to mention that Candlewell was suffering from undiagnosed encephalitis. Changes in altitude and pressure set it off -- like flying. Gil, who's reading the coroner's report, takes off his sporty little reading glasses and asks incredulously, "Is that what killed him? Encephalitis?" No, Gil. No! Being beaten to death by a few pairs of Cole-Haan loafers is what killed him. Didn't that awesome list of injuries a few dozen paragraphs back register? Jenna tells him as much, without nearly so much attitude. Gil rewards her patient demeanor by meandering into the second half-baked metaphor for the night: "A guy gets shot in the chest. He runs back into his burning house, inhaling smoke as he goes. The roof collapses. The air-conditioning unit falls on his head. He dies. What killed him?" I don't know, Gil -- the howling mob waiting for him in the upstairs bathroom? Paul Millander and a rubber hand? The shaggy-dog police? Jenna refrains from smacking him.
In the scene, everyone on the CSI squad is carrying mannequins into the airplane, trying to recreate the scene. As Warrick and Catherine walk by, Gil commands, "Vicki Mercer and Carl Finn are, I believe, in the bathroom." "The Mile-High Club," Warrick grunts as he heads back there. "If you ask me, it's their spouses that are the dummies," Catherine replies. Attagirl, Catherine. Want to call their spouses and see if you can set off another homicide-by-misunderstanding? Gil directs everyone else to set assorted dummies in assorted seats. When Brass asks why, Gil says, "The physical evidence that Sara, Nick, and I collected is contradicting the anecdotal evidence that you, Catherine, and Warrick got, and my money's on the physical evidence --" "So is mine," Catherine interrupts. "These passengers are lying." Gil invokes yet another burning house as a metaphor, then tells everyone they're going to recreate the scene. Brass draws Everett, Sara is Shannon, Catherine is Kiera -- she sighs something about single motherhood and imagination, and then, in a plot move that will undoubtedly launch a thousand fan-fics, Gil tells Nicky and Warrick that they're the bickering Valdezes. "You two are married. Who wants to wear the pants?" he asks. Nicky quickly calls the mister and Warrick replies, "Yeah, whatever. You're henpecked already." The two amble to their seats, arguing like an old married couple. Too bad the good people of Nevada recently voted to deny domestic partnerships any sort of legitimacy. Sara turns to Gil and says, "And you're the computer geek." Gil snaps, "In the interest of clarity, yes." Gil sits down in Metz's seat, and it falls back. Warrick snickers and Gil snits, "It's ten minutes to sunrise. We're going to have to pull a Run, Lola, Run and play this in real time." Bring on Franka Potente and you've got yourself a deal, Gil. The investigators buckle down.
As they recreate the scene, Gil walks everyone through the steps of encephalitis; Metz gets up; Everett follows after Brass deduces that Everett was peeved over a drink being spilled; Brass, Gil, and a mannequin recreate the melee. Nicky breaks in by saying, "If I'm Max, I want no part of this. Plus I don't have an aisle seat." "Ah, but you're lucky," Brass replies, "Your wife wants you in on this." Warrick mumbles, "Yeah. Go ahead, honey. Save my life." Nicky gets up -- tossing off an "excuse me, buttercup" to Warrick -- and moves over to where Candlewell would have been standing. Candlewell shoves Max into the service cart, breaking it. Warrick gets up, drawls something about saving Nicky's butt as usual, then pretends to do as Marlene did and grab the broken wine bottle for use as a weapon. Marlene slashes Candlewell; he heads toward the cockpit. Shannon is useless. Candlewell then heads for the exit door and tries to open it a move that, according to most of the forum posters, is an exercise in futility. Doors don't just pop open at 33,000 feet -- unless you're in a Jerry Bruckheimer movie like ConAir. So...given that Bruckheimer's an executive producer on this show, any aviation hijinks are well within the realm of narrative possibility. Just be grateful we haven't been subjected to big, boisterous explosions yet.
Anyway, poor, out-of-his-head Candlewell goes for the door, touches off a frenzy of self-preservation. Max and Everett slam Candlewell down, and everyone piles on. The CSI guys are into this until Sara points out, "You jump a guy at the exit, he dies at the exit." The five other investigators try to figure out what happened:
Nicky: He tried to get away. Warrick: But we didn't let him. Catherine: At this point we're not individuals anymore. We're a mob.
Flash to a genuinely brutal scene of several people kicking a man to death.
Catherine makes like Berhle, rolling over the body and doing desultory CPR. The investigators look around at each other, suddenly sobered at having figured out what happened.
Cut to the tarmac, bathed in brittle, early-morning sunlight. Gil's in his sunglasses, talking to the bald, evil Eisenhower-looking sheriff and demanding that five of the passengers be arrested for murder. "That's four more than I anticipated," Evil Ike replies. Gil goes into his usual spiel about the evidence not lying; Evil Ike blows holes in the mob-murder theory and tells Gil he has no more time to prove his case. Gil pleads with him, and Evil Ike says, "If you or I were on a plane, we'd do whatever it took to save our lives." "That's what a jury would say. That's not what the evidence says," Gil replies. "That's exactly my point," Evil Ike smarms, then drives off over Gil's toes.
The mob is loading into an airport shuttle bus as Gil watches them go. He's glaring the glare of righteous justice, mixed with more than a little disgust. Catherine comes out to watch everyone leave. An anchor-droid voices-over, telling us that no charges were filed and nobody's saying anything. The camera swoops back from Gil and Catherine's tense, quiet figures to the break room, where Sara's perched on an armchair, watching the television report. Warrick grabs for the remote, and both Sara and Nicky protest. Warrick tells them to let it go, bringing us up to speed on events by telling us that the Feds have already punted on the case. Nicky says disbelievingly, "And you're okay with that? We processed evidence for twelve hours, laid out the case, and now those passengers are going to suck martinis and eat shrimp cocktails? Where's the justice in that?" The power of his monologue is blunted by how very bad the new, longer hair looks. Please, Nicky, make nice with the hairdressers again.
Warrick drawls, "Oh, you think this is about justice? It's about human nature, how people react when their lives are threatened." Sara interrupts, "I know you're not condoning what they did." "I'm not discounting it," continues Warrick the pragmatist. "I mean, think about it. Is there any place more vulnerable than being 30,000 feet in a tin can?" "Feeling vulnerable is not a defense, and where they were is irrelevant!" shoots back Sara, continuing, "They took a life --" "Because their lives were threatened," finishes Warrick. Nicky jumps in to split a hair: everyone's lives were threatened at the exit, but five feet away? That's the difference between self-defense and murder. Warrick again reminds them of human nature: "Adrenaline doesn't come with an off switch. I don't care what you say." Sara responds, "I don't care what you say. I could never take a life." Warrick's eyebrows go into orbit, so incredulous is he. He says, "If it was between him and me, I could. Nick?" Nicky punts. Catherine and Gil come in, and she makes a crack about the seriousness of the room. Sara presses the two of them for their opinion. Nicky picks up the ball, saying, "Catherine, you're a mother. You and Lindsey are on that plane. How far do you go?" "All the way," Catherine answers without hesitation. Sara calls her on it, and Catherine says, "When it involves the protection of my child, I fight to the death." Warrick tries to wrap up with, "See? We have four people here. All with different opinions. Think of how the passengers must have felt."
Gil finally speaks up. "You all have different opinions, but you've taken the same point of view. You've put yourselves in the shoes of the passengers, but nobody's put themselves in the shoes of the victim. That's the point." Sara stammers her misunderstanding. Gil continues, looking a little perturbed, "Nobody stopped to ask Candlewell if he was all right. They just assumed because he was kicking the back of Nate's seat he was a jerk, because he was pushing his call button he was bothering the flight attendant, because he was trying to get into the lavatory he was making a scene, because he was going back up and down the aisles, he was posing a threat." "He was a threat!" Catherine says. "No," Gil replies. "He turned into a threat. It didn't have to be that way. People make assumptions. That's the problem. You just did. And I think those passengers made the wrong assumptions. And now this guy's dead."
Everyone's looking at Gil with these Well. Thanks so much for pissing on my tea party faces, and Warrick asks Gil what he would have done to prevent Candlewell from turning into a problem. "If one person had taken the time to look at the guy, to listen to him, to figure out what was wrong with him, it might not have happened. It took five people to kill him. It would have taken only one person to save his life."
Everyone looks contemplative as the piano music tinkles on. The screen fades out onto Jerry Bruckheimer's name...and that's it.