Previously on CSI: there are no "previously" trailers before the show, which seems imprudent given that this is the first episode airing on a new night and CBS is hoping that the Survivor II audience will stay glued to the tube. How are you going to keep an audience riveted if all you're doing is showing a desolate stretch of I-15?
Ah, well. Who am I to question the wisdom of Les Moonves and his minions? On with the show! It starts, as I noted one paragraph back, with an aerial shot of I-15. The camera swoops off the stretch of godforsaken highway and onto a stretch of godforsaken two-lane blacktop, then over to a prison spread in the shadow of a heat-blasted mountain. We zoom in to see lots of inmates sporting snazzy orange jumpsuits and engaging in vigorous physical activity outside. Again -- outside, in a sunny courtyard, in the middle of the desert. I know this isn't Oz (unfortunately), but inhumane conditions much? The inmates are oblivious to whatever weather conditions may be in effect.
Cut to a pair of well-manicured hands writing out a package to Gil. For the curious, the address is: "Gil Grissom, c/o CSI, 2974 Westfall, Las Vegas NV, ." The hands -- attached to an orange-jumpsuited body -- cradle the package and walk it over to the mail room. Cut to shots of men moving in precision, oh the numbing, anonymous inhumanity of prison life, blah blah blah: the point is that the package -- which contains a videotape -- manages to make it out of the prison in one piece and into the postal system at large.
Cut to another pair of anonymous hands cradling the package and carrying it down the hall at CSI Central. They hand off the package to Gil -- who takes it with a mixture of curiosity and caution -- and he leans forward to inspect the parcel before opening it. Brass notes that it's an anonymous package from County lockup; as Gil whips out his Leatherman to open the package, Brass makes protesting noises: "Give innocent bystanders a chance to clear out." "What are you worried about?" inquires Gil, who is either privy to some information about the rigorous standards to which CSI Central subjects all their mail, or blithely indifferent to the possibility of mail bombs. Brass replies, "One minute, I'm eating tomato salad. The , I'm gazpacho." Well, it's not abusing food in the name of explaining some bit of forensic arcana to the uneducated, but if the first minute of dialogue is any indication, I think I'm going to have to take what I can get in this episode. Gil rolls his eyes at Brass's belabored metaphor and opens the cardboard box. Brass cracks, "With any luck, it'll be the episode of G-String Divas." Oh, Brass. What a tawdry little inner life you must lead. Gil ignores him and plays the tape.
We see a prisoner blowing into a microphone, then speaking directly into the camera lens: "My name is Frank Damon, and I'm awaiting trial for the murder of my wife and son." Frank conveniently pauses so Brass can fill us in at home: it was an arson case, and the DA is asking for the death penalty. Frank continues, "I didn't kill my family, but my lawyer says the evidence is against me." Cut to Gil looking intrigued -- whenever the evidence gets called into question, he's all over it. "I was a good father," Frank says. "I loved him. I would have given my life for Toby and Jeannie. They were my world. Mr. Grissom, you are my last hope. Please help me." Gil is riveted; Brass cracks wise with the probable innocence of anyone in prison. Dude, he should just move to Texas; I understand they share his attitudes regarding law enforcement. Gil smacks Brass down, and we go to credits.
Aprs-credits, Gil is at his desk, flipping through some notes on a much-scribbled-on pad of paper and scowling. In the glass window behind him, we see Catherine walk by, then Nicky and Sara together (oh, please, God, no) and Warrick. Gil continues to brood at the paper until Catherine -- popping her gum in a move that screams "klassee," one K, two Es -- sticks her head in Gil's line of sight. "Am I bothering you?" she asks lightly. "Yeah," Gil snits back, apparently not bothered enough to take my suggestion of swatting Catherine about the head and shoulders with the memo pad. "Good!" she chirps. Gil starts, apparently connecting Catherine's annoying behavior with some distasteful administrivia he has to perform. He tells the assembled CSI team that he was supposed to hand out supervisor evaluation forms -- and there's a moment where he fumbles for the forms until Catherine locates them, thus demonstrating that Gil's greatest talents are scientific, not managerial. Pay attention, people: this is a theme that will be hammered home, repeatedly and with all the subtlety of an XFL cheerleader routine, for the duration of the show. Absorb the lesson now, and valuable chunks of free time are yours later. Anyway, Nicky babbles about how much fun it will be to rate the boss -- blissfully unaware that beyond the confines of the Fourth Wall, I am having fun mocking the latest tonsorial abomination to take up residence on his head. Memo to whomever is doing George Eads's hair: cut the bangs. Cut them now. I distinctly recall reading some frightfully overpriced hairdresser, Garren or someone, talking about how men with square jaws can't carry off bangs, and he's right. Anyway, Nicky gibes, everyone has a good chuckle over how Gil will react to their probable criticisms, and Gil moves on to the time-honored tradition of giving people their assignments. First crime scene: kid found dead in the parking lot of the Monaco Casino -- site of a few past CSI scenes, if I'm not mistaken -- two days before the Super Bowl. Oh -- so we're dealing with late January. I take back what I said about the prisoners some thousand words back; Las Vegas is quite temperate in January. They're fine.
“ I'm now off to roll up in a ball and begin rocking back and forth, mumbling about benzene. But Gil is unburdened by the emotional baggage I carry with regards to organic chemistry. ”
Anyway, back in the present, Warrick offers to work the case and is smacked down; Nicky and Catherine, neither of whom have displayed any depth of knowledge when it comes to Vegas's gambling industry, will be working the case. Warrick and Sara will be working the Frank Damon case with Gil. "How did he find you?" Sara wonders. "Did he dial 1-800-Grissom?" No, because if you dial that, you get a message telling you the number has been disconnected. See the lengths I go to in my recaps? Anyway, Catherine notes that Conrad Ecklie -- supervisor of the day shift and all-around creep -- was the original CSI on the case. "Can a CSI take over another CSI's case?" muses Warrick, who's evidently solved the tree-falling-in-the-woods and which-came-first-the-chicken-or-the-egg questions and moved on to deeper philosophical territory. It turns out that CSIs of equal rank can, in fact, horn in on each other's cases. Catherine continues to prophesy dark outcomes on this case, and Gil puts a stop to her sniping by saying, "There's no trouble. We're both searching for the truth." Everyone rolls their eyes at Gil's naivete and resumes needling him for his lack of supervisory savvy.
In the scene, Brass gets his screen time for the week by playing Captain Exposition, laying out the basics for Gil: Frank Damon was seen fleeing from his burning house with wife and son -- the same ones he would have, in theory, given his life for -- still inside. Apparently the marriage was on the rocks and there was money trouble. When Gil uncharacteristically asks, "How would burning down your house solve your money problems?" -- causing me to wonder if the writer of this episode considered for just one second that a) arson was a time-honored Mafia tactic, b) Vegas is a time-honored Mafia hangout, and c) anyone working in Vegas might be conversant with both the Mob and their work habits -- Brass connects the dots for him. The theory is that Damon torched his place for the insurance and the fire got out of hand. Gil rejects Brass's theory and retreats to his usual argument of following the evidence. Brass points out that there's evidence to support the arson theory, noting that gasoline was found in the closet. Gil corrects him by noting that hydrocarbons were found in the closet; I immediately flash back to the many semesters of organic chemistry I suffered through in college and recall that many complex hydrocarbons are highly oxygen-reactive; unless you can identify the functional groups -- little clusters of distinctive elemental combinations -- that go on the hydrocarbon chain, whatever burned in that closet could be based on anything from alcohols to esters. And that little digression into the world of organic chemistry now constitutes both the first and the last time I've actually used whatever I learned in o-chem. I'm now off to roll up in a ball and begin rocking back and forth, mumbling about benzene. But Gil, who is unburdened by the emotional baggage I carry with regards to organic chemistry, listens to Brass blather on about Ecklie's report, blows him off, and drives off into the night.
And now the final writing credit rolls: whatever happens in this show, blame it on Jacqueline Zambrano. She's the one responsible for this episode.
Nicky and Catherine walk through a parking garage, bemoaning the tragedy of short-fused gamblers shooting each other hours before the Superbowl. Well, it beats the tragedy of short-fused linebackers allegedly stabbing people, then going on to win the MVP for a Superbowl. They wander over to an SUV, then peer at the slumped body inside. He's sporting the world's tidiest bullet hole, smack in the center of his forehead. Although Catherine identifies the crater as the exit wound, it looks far too neat; it looks like the entry wound. But I nitpick. While Nicky stares at the body in front, Catherine rolls around the backseat looking for clues; she extrapolates via flashback that the killer was lying in wait in the back seat, waiting for the kid to get in the car. What, so he could shoot him and clean out his wallet? That's pathologically stupid, even for a criminal. Nicky notes the small cone-shaped device in the dead kid's ear and wonders if it was a hearing aid. He then wanders around to the driver's side backseat and notes the condensation on the window. Oh, that eye for detail! Catherine, who is still rooting around her side of the backseat, pulls out a fast-food bag and opens it. She snorts incredulously then calls, "You hungry, Nick? I got a burger --" and here she pulls out a stack of bills that looks to be roughly an inch and a half thick -- "extra lettuce." Close, Catherine, but you lack that flair for the food metaphor that Gil so effortlessly displays. Nicky gapes at the stack of bills and says, "Rule of thumb, $2500 per inch, there's gotta be $15,000 in there." No, there does not: that would entail the stack be six inches thick. Catherine is merely holding a wad of unmarked bills, not a brick. She looks at the ticket -- it says it's a $50,000 straight bet -- and says, "Giants, negative nine." Meanwhile, my closed-captioning reads, "Rams, negative nine." Now legions of CSI's deaf viewers will think that this kid was shot for being stupid enough to bet $50,000 on a team that was eliminated the first week of the playoffs. Way to go, guys. Anyway, Nicky corrects Catherine and points out that it's the Giants minus nine, and that it's a bet for $30,000 -- raising the question, in my mind anyway, as to what happened to that extra $20,000. Catherine asks what kid would go wandering around with $30,000 in cash placing those kinds of bets. Nicky notes that it was Teller 12 at the Monaco sports betting pit.
In the scene, Nicky and Catherine are talking to the aforementioned Teller 12; he tells us the dead kid was runner 517, someone who made his money placing bets for pros. After a sequence of expository dialogue meant to fill us all in on the role of runners in Vegas's gambling economy -- a conversation, I might add, that one might think would be unnecessary for two people who work with and around cops in Las Vegas, and thus would be moderately familiar with the assorted vocational options in the local economy or, should they not have had the opportunity to make that sort of on-the-job observation, still might know a little something about casino operations, given one person's background as a stripper and the other's predilection for gadding about with call girls -- the two wander off. The only other significant bit of information to filter out of that conversation was Teller #12 sharing the news that he was leaving his job at the end of the week for something better.
“ 'I don't mean to stare,' Gil replies, which is probably true. He's always seemed like someone who simply doesn't process covert social cues. ”
Over at the prison, Gil's being let in through assorted padlocked gates. As he passes through one set of doors, an inmate yells angrily, "Yo, Grissom!" He turns to his compadres in the lineup, angrily saying, "He's the reason I'm in here. [There was a] shoeprint. time I'll go barefoot!" "Even better!" Gil calls out. "Footprints!" Hee! I'm cracking myself up with the image of hardened thugs cursing the forensics inspectors at their trial. I mean, really, can you see it? Some punk screaming, "Those PCR results are wack!" while a forensics expect glowers on the stand? No, me neither. Anyway, Grissom continues into the prison and meets with Frank Damon in one of those visiting rooms that are all phones and Plexiglas. Damon looks warily from side to side, then sits down and picks up a phone. He says, "So you're the Grissom they wrote about in the newspaper." Who is this "they"? What's the context? I ask because, again, forensics investigators typically don't enjoy the same high profile as prosecutors. We find out that six arson specialists gave Damon Gil's name after turning down his case. Either Gil's really good, or he's annoyed enough people that they're hoping to rattle his cage by tossing impossible cases his way. Damon asks Gil for help; Gil answers, "Fires are complicated." "It wasn't too complicated for the guy who put me in here." Ooh! Somewhere, Conrad Ecklie twitches in his weyr, sweating from the burn directed toward him. Gil doesn't say anything, and Damon asks, "You think if you stare at me long enough, you can tell if I'm innocent." "I don't mean to stare," Gil replies, which is probably true. He's always seemed like someone who simply doesn't process covert social cues.
Gil then drops some Sherlock Holmes-style deduction on Damon, impressing the imprisoned by deducing all sorts of details about Damon's life. As Gil comments that he has yet to figure out whether Damon's left-handed or right-handed, Damon convulsively curls his right hand in a ball and moves it out of Gil's line of sight. Gil then queries Damon as to what happened; Damon paints an uxorious picture of a man who went out to get his wife some ice cream in the middle of the night -- prompting me to ask my husband if he would run get me some Chubby Hubby if I promised not to do anything that would lead to his wrongful imprisonment while he was out -- and came back to find the house in flames. It's all very heartstring-tugging, what with the kid being in bed with his parents and everyone beaming. As we continue in pseudo-flashback, Damon is careful to point out that he didn't touch the door due to flashover. "Flashover?" Gil inquires innocuously. Damon replies, "When fire reaches about 932 degrees Fahrenheit, you add oxygen and the smoke will burst into flame. I know how fire behaves, Mr. Grissom, because I'm a volunteer fireman. I was hoping to make the department by spring." Damon concludes by saying he knew he couldn't open the door, and that he ran outside to hail a rig. Gil replies that Damon's training must have lent him familiarity with the role of accelerants in fires; he goes on to mention that traces of gasoline -- not hydrocarbons, as he was careful to argue to Brass earlier -- showed up in the closet.
Damon points out that he knew better than to keep anything like that in the house, and that the one (1) gallon of gas he bought one week prior to the fire went straight into the lawn mower kept in the shed out back. Damon kind of loses it -- it's pretty evident that he's really frustrated that nobody believes him, and angry that Gil's not taking his story on face value -- and as he says, "I need someone to believe me! To figure this out!" he puts his right hand on the Plexiglas window. There's a circular burn scar on his hand. Gil asks Damon how he burned his hand. "I don't remember," hedges Damon, who looks as though he damn well remembers how he got that scar; Gil says as much, noting that "people with third-degree burns don't forget how they got them," although the poor, confused deaf people in the audience are reading the line "people with first-degree burns don't forget how they got them" and asking themselves if they can recall the last time they got a mild burn. Anyway, Gil and Damon stare at each other a while; it's pretty hostile. Damon finally states, "You're not going to help me." Well, Damon, given that you're lying to the man and you both know it, why would he? Gil, however, gives him an assessing look and says, "I'm going to take your case. I don't know whether it will help you or not." His motive? God knows -- perhaps he's decided crossing Ecklie and extracting clues from a determined liar beats pushing papers.
Gil, Warrick, and Sara pull the CSImobile into the driveway of a gutted house; I'm guessing it's Chez Damon. The three enter the house; Gil and Sara wave flashlights around, the beams cutting clear paths through the dusty air, while Warrick snaps pictures. Gil and Sara bemoan the difficulty of working an arson case, noting that fire may ruin a crime scene, but the firemen don't help. Sara notes that the mattress doesn't look as though it belongs in a living room, and Gil explained that it got there via the practice of overhaul -- firemen removing material from hot spots to prevent the flare-up or spread of a fire. Warrick has been silent this whole time. That's just weak, y'all. Gil and Sara wander into Toby's bedroom, noting the gear laid out. Warrick finally speaks! But he asks a dumb question about whether Toby might have used waterproof matches to start the fire. D'oh. The entire team moves into the master bedroom, where the roof is partially burned off and the walls are blackened with soot. A carpet of debris covers the floor. Gil notes that the fire was contained in the bedroom, but the outside of the doorframe -- the part not in the bedroom -- is severely charred, implying that there was some heat and fire damage. Warrick notes that fire takes the path of least resistance, feeding off the most convenient source of oxygen. There -- he's redeemed himself for his earlier dumb comment. Sara follows up, noting that the location of the char is odd given that the outside door isn't burned. She then notes that there's something stuck to the doorknob, something that fused on their with heat. It might be rubber. Alternately, it might be Damon's cooked flesh. Eeew, I just squicked myself out.