Since we're now pretending that CSI does not begin with desultory shots of Las Vegas at night, the show opens with two party girls wending their way through the side streets of Las Vegas, apparently lost. How anyone can get lost in Vegas is beyond me -- point the car at the shiny lights and drive, people -- but these two have managed, which, frankly, does not provide a ringing endorsement for their mental capacity. As they're giggling about shortcuts, the car gives a sickening thump and runs over something. The brunette in the passenger seat tells her friend to stop the car. "It was just a pothole," the driver protests. "I think you hit someone," she counters. Cut to the brake lights going on.
In the scene, the usual phalanx of accident vehicles have ringed the scene and Gil is hopping out of the CSIMobile. He walks past the party girls -- who are looking justifiably horrified -- and Sara joins him in time to hear Buzz the investigator give the exposition: "Blonde behind the wheel; girlfriend called in. Vehicular manslaughter." Um, thanks, but I like it better when Brass does it. Gil nods, looking pensive. Warrick -- who either took a separate CSIMobile or mastered the art of teleportation when nobody was looking -- is snapping pictures of the crime scene; Sara leans in and asks, "Taillight?" Yes, Sara, it is. You'd think that someone who dismantles vehicles on a regular basis would be more conversant in car parts. Gil shines his flashlight on a six-pack of "Heisler" beer and inquires, "Have you been drinking, Warrick?" No, Gil; Warrick's inappropriate behavior is confined to gambling during working hours, not consorting with call girls, or inciting cuckolded spouses to homicide. Warrick grunts in the negative: "No, man, I'm having a block party. I marked it where I found it, over in the sidewalk over there." Incidentally, that sidewalk is in Laguna Beach, California, if the websites all filling me in on the genesis of Heisler Beer are correct. Gil and Sara forego hiking to California to gaze at the sidewalk, opting instead to hover over the body on the street. Gil leans down and draws back the body's sweatshirt, then notices the tire treads arrayed perpendicularly on the body's torso. "Two distinct tire treads. One wide, one narrow," he intones, failing to add, "and how they got on the body below its layers of clothes is a mystery I will reveal only after I've made my usual attempt at pre-credits gallows humor." Sara looks at the body and drawls, "Given the extensive bruising by the wide treadmark, the victim was killed by a larger vehicle, not that compact." Gil then calls out, "I wouldn't book those suspects just yet. I think they ran over a corpse."
And with that, the weakest opening line ever, we segue to The Who. And then we cut to commercials, where I find out that Pier One has sunk to an even lower level of kitsch by employing Kirstie Alley to hawk their wares. Not that decorating in Early Thai Cathouse was ever my thing; I just think that if you're a company best known for wicker furniture, Kirstie Alley is not what you need to class up your image.
“ The explanation I just provided for what the malleus does and why it matters when it's deformed is far more exhaustive than what CSI gave you. See the lengths I go to for you people? ”
But back to the show. Gil and the gang are standing around their CSIMobile and doing a whole lot of nothing in particular when Catherine and Nicky drive up in a second CSIMobile. Nicky leans in and explains where they're off to: "We got a call about ten minutes ago, shooting at Vegas Grounds Coffee Shop, Eighth and Main, multiple fatalities..." "We want this one," Catherine interrupts. "You guys get over there. Keep me in the loop, keep the media out of it," Gil replies; Sara looks stricken that the case she's working on is only the second-creepiest case of the evening. But Catherine's not finished yet; she collars Gil and asks, "Remember about three months ago I applied for the American Academy meeting in Chicago. Well, the deadline for your approval is at the end of shift today." "It's not a problem," Gil says dismissively. Catherine's not buying it: "Well, there's important papers to be presented --" "You don't have to explain. Consider it done," Gil interrupts. Catherine and Nicky drive off to their multiple murder.
Cut to the morgue, where David the unfun coroner is standing over the body and telling Gil they've got an ID for the hit-and-run based on prints: Brian Clemonds, 22 years old, born in Las Vegas, and Deaf. "You can tell he's Deaf by his fingerprints?" Sara asks, intrigued. "Actually, yes. He was printed as part of a state aid program in '81. To confirm, I examined his ear canal." And now, the CSI-cam takes us to yet more territory unexplored in prime time: the time-lapse deformation of the malleus, one of the three small bones of the inner ear. No kidding -- we see the bones knot and turn a mottled grey-black. And for those of you who may be wondering, as I was, why the malleus matters: people who can hear do so because their malleus is hammer-shaped and thus can work with the anvil and stirrup bones to transmit the vibrations of the tympanic membrane to the inner ear. There's a much longer explanation I could give you about how the vibrations parse the frequency of sound through inner-ear membrane displacement and hair undulation, but the explanation I just provided for what the malleus does and why it matters when it's deformed is far more exhaustive than what CSI gave you. See the lengths I go to for you people?
Gil, who is all-knowing and therefore needs no explanation of the malleus, notes that there's a college for the Deaf in Las Vegas about a mile from where Brian was found. "So Brian takes a walk, crosses the street, doesn't hear the car, gets creamed," says Warrick, displaying all sorts of sensitivity and tact there. Sara picks up the thread enthusiastically: "The vehicle, probably a truck or an SUV based on the tire tread, takes off. Along comes the compact and -- thump -- runs over his dead body." David, true to his role as the unfun coroner, takes the air out of that theory by pointing out that Brian's bloodied knuckles don't have any relation to the injuries one sustains when one is hit by a car. Oh, and by the way, the blood on his knuckles probably isn't his. Gil perks up noticeably at this news. Warrick and Sara prove the elasticity of their hypothesis by positing that the fight somehow led to vehicular manslaughter. Gil asks if David's sent the blood down to the lab for DNA testing, and David replies, "When you find the suspect, you'll nail him with his own body fluid." Gil then asks if Brian's family has been notified; David answers in the negative.
Back in the B-plot, Catherine and Nicky are about to head into the shot-up coffee shop. Nicky displays his flair for homespun gibberish, commenting, "One person's dead, it's a shame. More than one, it's a party." O-kay. The two of them head into a coffee shop that resembles the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Nicky wanders over to one of the bodies, picks up the headphones of the Discman that's fallen to it -- I guess those babies really are good about not skipping tracks when they're jolted -- and listens for a moment to a Casio gone mad. "Speed metal. Couldn't hear a bomb go off over this," he comments, as the closed-caption reads, "Papa Roach. Couldn't hear a bomb go off over this." It occurs to me that nothing will be more fun than watching CSI -- a show that has memorably mangled the closed captioning by running it backward and providing dialogue that never appeared in the episode -- and trying to see how well they caption a show about a Deaf dead person. And then it occurs to me that perhaps I need to try and expand my definition of "fun."
Speaking of fun, that's Brass's cue to come in, quipping, "Welcome to the caffeine wars. I got four dead, one on the way to the hospital." The caffeine wars? He couldn't come with anything punchier, like A-froth-alypse Now? Barista Dogs? The Good, the Bad and the Latte? Catherine and Nicky continue to view the carnage before them, making nary a comment about the peril of getting between a caffeine fiend and his fix, and Catherine stops at a male body. "Hey, I know this guy," she says. Well, she must not like him, 'cause she's not all too distraught at the sight of his bullet-riddled corpse. "I bet you do. Who doesn't know Frankie Flynn? He used to own the Orpheus, lost his gambling license a few years ago?" Brass says. I check the clock to confirm that Brass has indeed fulfilled his contractual obligation to provide exposition by 9:15. Lying a few feet away from Frankie Flynn is his obviously incompetent bodyguard, Al Robson. Since the cash register is still intact -- as are the picturesque sacks of coffee beans -- Brass is positing that whoever shot up the joint wasn't interested in money or mocha. The CSI team moves behind the counter and looks down at the crumpled body of a young barista. "She's probably still in high school," says Nicky. Yeah, he's the sensitive one. Catherine and Nicky then move in the storage room and see another girl huddled by the back door. "Ahhh, bless her heart," Nicky says. Okay -- we get it. Give him any more of a bleeding heart, he'll be a hemophiliac; then where will your crime scenes be? Catherine tries to outline the probable string of events: "If it was a hit, the shooter followed Flynn through the front door, shot the muscle first, then Flynn, then some poor kid minding his own business. The girls were last. Four dead, one still alive." Just then Brass's beeper goes off; make that five dead. Make me irritated and confused: what kind of a hitman goes hog-wild and takes out the baristas?