Previously on CSI...there is no previously. There is only the usual series of shots showing us, the viewers at home, the glittering fusillade of neon and fluorescence making up Las Vegas. Cut to a spacious interior lobby washed in the soft, flattering lighting tones that hide plastic surgery scars. Lots of people -- all of whom are dressed in formalwear and mingling in socially correct little knots -- are milling about and chatting. The Las Vegas PD Sheriff -- whom, alert readers may recall, I refer to as Evil Ike for his unsettling, crapulent visage -- is talking to a dapper, dark-haired man in a tuxedo. Over the few minutes, we find out that Tall, Dark and Monkeysuited is named Patrick; he's a smoothie with the matron set, and he's apparently throwing this little shindig as a fundraising for Portia Richmond's burn center. After toasting the $1.6 million dollars the fundraiser has reaped, Patrick raises his glass and toasts, "To Portia! Too bad she couldn't be here tonight." The camera pans over to a portrait, presumably of Portia. If you ask me, it looks like Margaret Lesher, the Contra Costa, CA newspaper heiress who ran off and married a cowboy, then drowned under mysterious circumstances while she and her new husband -- who, in addition to being much younger than she, was also much broker -- were camping somewhere in the middle of nowhere. So I'm already thinking: rich matron, younger guy, money scam...it's all terribly suspicious. A brunette who's been eyeing Patrick like I eye a pint of Chubby Hubby slinks through the crowd and attaches herself to Patrick's side. "Hey," he says, "we did it." "We sure did," she coos. Swept away on that wave of grandiloquence, the two begin conducting an amorous survey of each other's tonsils. Their foreplay is interrupted by the usual bloodcurdling scream that presages an unpleasant discovery. Could it be...a commoner in the midst of the fundraiser? A blown implant? No. It's a dead female body floating face-down in a swimming pool, wearing a fetching Nicole Miller sheath and an expression of bewilderment. Patrick manfully pushes his way through the mingling crowd -- it's heartwarming to see that the same people who will write checks for burn victims couldn't be bothered to try and, I don't know, fish this woman out and attempt CPR -- and stops at the pool with his female companion beside him.
Cut to a uniformed cop wading into the now bystander-free pool and fishing the dead woman out, taking care to jostle her neck and spine as much as possible. Well, if she weren't dead before, she'd be a goner now. Gil conveniently arrives on the scene where Brass and Evil Ike have been conferring. After complimenting Evil Ike on his tux, Gil gives us a little exposition: "To know this town is to know its celebrities. [The woman who owns the house] was a showgirl in her day. But that's not her." "Maybe thirty years ago when she was headlining at the Lido de Paris," Brass replies. The two men then grump about having to interrogate a few dozen society snobs to figure out who found the floater, and Gil sighs, "Come for the hors d'oeuvres, stay for the interrogation." Okay, so it's not his best line.
“ But I digress, and while the night is young now, it will not be if I keep this up. ”
After the credits, we're back at stately Richmond manor, and Gil's walking toward the driveway where the CSImobile is parked. Warrick, Nicky, and Catherine get out. Gil notes that the house is huge, the witnesses are plentiful, and the most shrewd strategy is to divide and conquer. I cheer, since I am an ardent proponent of having the entire team work on different facets of one case. Nicky gets sent to do a general sketch of the crime scene -- something that, on most nights, translates into "Nicky gets locked in the subterranean basement known as 'Plotline C'" -- and Warrick and Catherine are to suss out the pool area. After Catherine calls the shallow end of the pool, Warrick mutters, "I'm in deep." Oooh, that's all metaphorical and stuff.
Cut to Catherine wandering around the pool, surveying it for anything that looks out of place. Warrick is snapping photos when he espies something glittering at the bottom of the deep end. Nicky is sketching the landscaping around the house; when he comes to a pond filled with ornamental fish, he muses, "I wonder how much it costs to feed all these fish?" Gil gives him an exasperated look and trains his maglite on Nicky's pad. "Right," Nicky gulps, and goes back to making a line drawing of the crime scene. Back on Catherine's patrol, she happens to notice a bright red piece of fingernail lodged in the flawlessly manicured grass. She picks it up and gives it the patented CSI Stare of Great Scrutiny.
While all this is going on, CBS proves it's been analyzing its viewer demographics and has decided that that demographic wants beefcake. Cue Warrick stripping to the waist before plunging into the pool to retrieve the glittery thing. Man, oh, man -- first Nicky with the whole dead-hooker plotline, now Warrick taking a swim for forensic science. I'm looking forward to seeing what further plot permutations will unfold as the CBS suits continue to treat George Eads and Gary Dourdan as so much eye candy. Can't you just imagine the calls back and forth between the set and the CBS headquarters? "It's Mel again: he wants to know if we can write an episode during sweeps where Warrick and Nick have to go undercover as resort lifeguards." But I digress, and while the night is young now, it will not be if I keep this up. Anyway, Warrick gamely dives in, swims over to the cufflink -- which is the only thing on the bottom of that pool, something I have a hard time believing given that I lifeguarded for eight years and can, with some authority, state that the more leafy matter is around the pool deck, the more detritus floats about the pool and clogs the filters. As he surfaces, Nicky calls, "Marco!" "Polo," Warrick replies. I flash back to interminable afternoons spent listening to the dulcet tones of little children as they played that game, if by "dulcet," you mean "calibrated at a pitch that reverberates inside your skull, increasing in frequency and force until you're forced to relieve the pressure by screaming at them to stop, just stop, for the love of God!" Nicky continues his jovial lifeguard riff, and the CSIs gather around their dripping-wet colleague to ogle...the cufflink. It's turquoise and silver, with the initials "CM." Catherine notes that the make pegs the wearer as hailing from the American Southwest. After tossing some desultory praise in Warrick's general direction, the dry CSIs disperse, leaving Warrick to shiver ruefully.
Cut to Gil entering the morgue. He ribs David the unfun coroner about "detecting a bitter alkaloid" -- it turns out David's bought himself a industry-quality gourmet coffee maker, courtesy of the city, and he quips, "When the coroner asks for something, they don't question it." The two men have an International Coffees moment, then get down to business: the body in question has had submalar augmentation (cheekbone work), rhinoplasty, and breast implants. Gil offhandedly remarks that they can just run an ID on the serial number in her implants and get her name. Eeeuw! Eeeeeeeeeuuuuuuuuuuw! My God! That's creepy. What's ? A GPS locator permitting Hugh Hefner to track the breastally augmented by region? While I'm getting all squicked out over the idea of a police state monitored by breast men, Gil and David are going over what actually killed implant # -670b. She was strangled, something we see courtesy of the TMIcam, which is truly going places -- like a crushed trachea -- never before shown during prime time. Gil says, "Strangling's a man's crime." That's probably correct from a statistical point of view, but from a TV-plot POV, that's kind of ruining the surprise ending here, Gil. Anyway, David concurs, the better to give us all the idea that only men crush windpipes so we'll all be surprised later on if that's not the case. As Gil goes to leave, David plucks the coffee cup out of his hand and notes, "This will be our little secret." Gil nods and gives him an unexpectedly intense look. One interesting note about the whole scene: David the coroner is now sporting a Kerry Weaver-style crutch. I wonder if this little accessory will go as unexplained on this show as it has on ER.
Warrick is changing into dry togs when his ungrateful coworker Catherine tells him he's on a 419 (a death) at the glass elevator downtown. For the Vegas Virgins among us: that elevator is on an L-shaped walkway connecting three casinos: the MGM Grand, the Tropicana and the Excalibur (huzzah!). I highly recommend staying at the Trop; you get a room in the towers, you get mirrors on the ceiling. Who wouldn't want that? ["Another recommendation: avoid the Excalibur like the plague. Seriously." -- Sars] Anyway, Warrick protests being taken off the big case and Catherine tells him to suck it up. He calls her on it, saying, "Whatever happened to, 'you cross the tape, you go the distance.'" Catherine replies, "I was probably saying it to get you to service my needs at the time." I guess that Child Protective Services Investigation is getting awfully lonely and wants a Sexual Harassment Investigation to keep it company. Either that, or this is an attempt at character development and we're supposed to think that Catherine's one sultry little science kitten. Anyway, Warrick looks dismayed. As well he should: he took the bullet this week on Beefcake Patrol and it's him, not Nicky, getting sent to subplot hell. Catherine flits off to ruin Sara's night via cell phone.