We begin the episode with...Gil beating the hell out of a mannequin's head with a golf club. Huh? How'd I come in at the end of the credits? I begin Tivo'ing this sucker at 8:58. I get three minutes of some booted loser yammering on about being a survivor, and then this?
Okay -- so I lied. We begin the episode with me having a hissyfit over KPIX's apparent inability to press the right button and keep the satellite feed going. Fortunately, nat-the-rat saves me by writing that I missed the following:
"Pre-credits: Construction scene. Guys drilling, hammering, et cetera. A guy drives up in a pick-up truck and stops, talking through his rolled-down window to the foreman (the black guy that Gil thought was the killer, whose name I can't remember). All of a sudden, a safety hat comes crashing down onto the windshield of the pickup, shattering it. Both guys look up, and then the camera looks up and we see a body falling straight down at us. It is a really cool shot. Then there is the expected squishy thump. Then it cuts to Gil arriving. He stands by the body and looks up. (He looks really cute in that shot -- kinda like a little kid, looking at the heavens in wonder. Forgive my hormones.) The Evil Sheriff is there with the foreman guy. They ask Gil why he's there, since it was obviously a suicide. Gil says something to the effect of 'don't be so sure 'til all the evidence has been examined.' The foreman guy talks about how depressed the dead guy had been lately. Gil says that, if the guy was suicidal, why would he bother coming in to work? Cue the Who."
Everyone, take a moment to thank nat-the-rat. And now, on with the recap.
Gil's riding in a big red elevator with a construction foreman and Evil Ike, who's explaining what the half-finished building will be used for: a jail. "Fourteen hundred beds means fourteen hundred criminals off the street. The old jail's maxed. The prison population's increased by ten percent in one year," Ike posits. I somehow doubt the women and men of the LVPD are weeping into their shift reports and wailing, "Oh, if only we had a couple hundred more jail cells! Then this town would be clean!" I also doubt Ike has ever really asked himself if jail overcrowding is the result of this country's misbegotten war on drugs vis a vis the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act and the 1988 Omnibus Anti-Drug Act. Those two pieces of legislation set up the architecture for mandatory-minimum sentencing, a breathtakingly ill-conceived practice that has contributed roughly 500,000 new long-term inmates to the American prison system and permitted it to reach such milestones as quintupling the number of female prisoners in less than twenty years. If you want to address prison overcrowding, look first at mandatory minimums, not Evil Ike's secondary career as a Las Vegas developer.
But I digress: if you people wanted the lowdown on the myriad ways the war on drugs has failed, you'd watch Traffic. You're here to watch Gil give Evil Ike the fish eye and say, "You look like the Sheriff, but you talk like the mayor." Heh. I like how Gil has no problem calling it like he sees it. He then turns to the foreperson-type man in the elevator and asks, "Mr. Harris, do you get a bonus for early completion?" "Twenty grand a day; I'm ten days ahead," Mr. Harris replies. Gil feigns guilelessness, saying, "Wow, two hundred thousand dollars. You must really work your guys pretty hard, huh?" Mr. Harris and Evil Ike share a disgusted look. Gil exits the elevator and asks, "Where, exactly, was Valenti's workstation?" I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume Valenti's the guy who died. Mr. Harris explained that Valenti had the entire floor to himself, as he was the safety guy who drilled holes for the safety cables that ring the perimeter of every open floor.
Gil stares at a few lines of cable stretched taut across the edge of the site and flashes to Valenti drilling holes there. Oh, so now he sees dead people? He should take a trip to the shabbier 'burbs of Vegas; I understand there's a creepy little kid there who does the same thing when he's not trying to pay it forward. Gil snaps back into the present and recites some physics for us: "Terminal velocity's 9.8 meters per second, squared. He would have hit the ground in under five seconds." Gil continues walking the perimeter, Evil Ike and Mr. Harris on his heels, and wanders over to Valenti's apparent jumping-off point. He looks down at the blood splotch and re-visualizes Valenti's fall, and starts back, creeping himself out. Then he reverts to Grissomian type, noticing the drill that's still hanging suspended from the edge of the platform. He crouches and pulls it up, then turns to Mr. Harris, asking, "Did this belong to Mr. Valenti?" Mr. Harris, undoubtedly seeing his cushion of cash dwindle down to the low six figures, replies testily that Valenti was the only guy up there. Gil looks up at the two men and says, "This drill is shorted out. Do you think he jumped before or after he got the shock of his life?" Mr. Harris is confounded: "The GFCI would have prevented shock." Evil Ike steps into the expository role, albeit grudgingly, by asking, "What is GFCI?" Mr. Harris tells us all, "The ground fault circuit interrupter." In other words, the fail-safe preventing people from becoming the component that completes a circuit. In this case, since the third prong of the power plug was cut off, the drill is no longer grounded, the GFCI doesn't recognize circuit imbalance, and thus it fails to operate. "These prongs don't usually snap off by themselves," Gil says. Mr. Harris and Evil Ike exchange foreboding looks.
Gil then wanders over to Mr. Valenti's toolbox, asking, "Are all your workers as careless with their tools?" Okay, I know he's usually lacking in the tact department and he's no fan of Evil Ike, but the attitude is a little excessive here. Gil exposits that the wire cutters may have been used to tamper with a grounding prong; he then sets up a Lucite cube and inserts a hose, thus processing the cutters by either cooling or powdering them (I'm not sure which, and the usual websites don't have the info up yet) until the prints stand out in stark relief.
And then we're on to the B plot for the evening. Catherine and Nicky greet Buzz the detective (also known as O'Reilly) and say they got the call for the 419. The deceased is fourteen-year-old Dylan Buckley. The CSIs wander past a tall, abstract sculpture resembling a white ceramic honeycomb, then stop in the center of the stark, spacious office. Dylan is laid out on his back, in the "casual dead" pose that screams, "Staged!" As a tall, polished woman dressed all in white pads out, Buzz informs us that they're all in said woman's home, that woman being Dr. Leigh Sapien. Incidentally, Dr. Sapien is played by certifiable Hey! It's That Guy! actress Brenda Strong, whom others may remember as Sally Sasser on Sports Night. Catherine -- who apparently took the same cranky pills Gil took this week -- launches into questioning Dr. Sapien as to how she ended up with a dead teenage boy on her floor. Sapien invokes doctor-patient privilege, but Nicky reminds us all that said privilege expires when the patient does. Sapien spills: "Dylan suffered from reactive attachment disorder. Issues with his mother. I'd been treating him for six months." Catherine casts aspersions on the treatment method when she notes that it's ten p.m.; Sapien replies, "I see my patients whenever they need me. At weekends, at night, at the office or here." Nicky gently prods Sapien to get over herself and simply tell them what happened. She does: Dylan was apparently complaining about his curfew when he went into a grand mal seizure. Sapien tried to stabilize his head, but the effort was futile. She sums everything up tidily: "Dylan was an epileptic. He hit his head. And when the convulsions stopped, he was dead." There's a lovely well, duh quality to that last statement. Sapien claims she did CPR; Nicky is too busy noticing the fawn-colored lint on her all-white ensemble to pay any attention. He moves in closer to Sapien; she shifts uneasily, asking, "What are you doing?" and Nicky responds by summoning Catherine for a tape-lift. Catherine complies.
In the scene, Gil pops into the morgue and David the More-Fun-Every-Episode Coroner says, "Quick. Name me three human bones that can withstand a twelve-floor drop." My closed captioning panics at the thought of a pop quiz and flees. Jesus, this episode is hexed. Gil, not surprisingly, knows the answer: "The bones of the inner ear: the malleus, anvil and stirrup. High cellular density, protected by the skull. Why?" "They appear to be the only bones not broken or fractured," David replies as the camera pulls back and gives us a shot of Valenti's battered body. "I want to see the entry and exit wounds," Gil says, and David stares incredulously before replying, "Gil, he wasn't shot; this is the guy who fell off the new jailhouse. Are we talking about the same case here?" Gil adopts a well-duh tone and says slowly, "He fell after he was electrocuted." His bad mood must be contagious; David snaps back, "I didn't see physical evidence of electrocution." Gil explains that there was a faulty drill, and Valenti should have burns marks on one of his palms; the camera pans down to a puffy, livid hand, and we see a cheesy special effect: computer-generated lightning. Oh, for the simple flashback shots of yesteryear. David notes, "In most electrocution cases, capillaries rupture, hemoglobin leaks into the perivascular tissues..." "Right. Leaving a fern-like pattern on the chest," Gil picks up, as the computer-generated effects continue by turning the smooth expanse of Valenti's chest into something resembling a relief map, then zooming back. "His body contradicts your crime scene," David says, and Gil counters, "I don't care what his body says; this guy was electrocuted." But, Gil! The body is evidence!
Later, Gil is sitting at a lab bench working when he becomes aware of Sara staring at him. "What?" he inquires testily, and she replies, "I don't know what I'm looking for." "Signs of charring and melting. You've done this before," he says. Damn, he's in a mood. Sara replies, "Yeah, but we always go back to the body because the body tells a story. And in this case, the body says there's no crime, but you're not listening." And thus the student hoists the teacher on his own petard. Gil decides it's okay for him to break the rules every once in a while -- and this is one of those times. He rationalizes, "Bodies tell us stories because we interpret them the way our predecessors taught us to. Just because we don't see something we're supposed to see doesn't mean it's not there." Sara glares and resumes staring at the shoes. Gil, who has been peering at the inner workings of the faulty drill, notes that the wires in the drill have been crossed and the polarity reversed. Oh, is there some field in which he isn't an expert? The crossed wires confirm that someone tampered with the drill. Now, the question is why Valenti fried. As Sara points out, "The rubber soles of his boots should have protected him from shock. That's why you're safe in your car during a lightning storm -- the rubber tires." She's holding the boots, examining them, and Gil stares at the soles, an idea forming in his head: "Rubber's an insulator, but metal's a conductor. What form of metal hides in plain view at a construction site?" Oooh! I know! Construction staples -- those suckers have punctured my tires twice in the last six months. I'm now quite the jack-wielding wonder. But enough about me -- Gil takes the boots from Sara and finds a nail in the sole of one of the boots.
And finally, after fifteen long, arid minutes, Warrick appears on screen. He's matching the prints Gil lifted from the cutters against AFIS. Warrick notes that the jail construction site is a union gig and all the union guys are already in the database -- which is mighty convenient in terms of plot advancement, yes? -- before telling Sara that he got his sample by lining up the partial ridge prints from the handles, then sighing in weariness. I feel his pain; for some reason, this episode is dragging. The talk turns to whether or not Gil's onto something with the electrocution theory. Warrick, demonstrating a possible relapse into his old ways, says, "Bobby Dawson's taking odds: two to one Grissom's wrong, five to one he gets suspended for shutting down that jailhouse. Ten to one --" "Fired," Sara says. She is not amused. Fortunately, the computer beeps, demonstrating that technology is Warrick's friend. The prints have been ID'd: Mr. Harris. Just then, the discorporeal voice of Gil floats about the room: "Sounds like you got a match." Both CSIs look up in horror, clearly wondering how long Gil's been listening in on their conversation. The answer: Long enough.
Cut to Gil attempting to question Mr. Harris while Evil Ike hovers between them. After about thirty seconds, Ike tells Gil, "This is how it's going to work: the construction site is going to re-open and the investigation is going to go away." "Sure!" Gil says cheerily, continuing, "After the lab processes all the evidence." He's saved from further digging his own vocational grave with his mouth when Brass knocks on the door and beckons Gil out. The first words out of Brass's mouth: "I don't like being put in the middle." "Who does?" Gil inquires rhetorically. Brass ignores him and returns to his rightful role as Captain Exposition: Valenti was a union rep who, three days prior to his death, demanded more overtime pay and pressed for a walkout. Gil feigns shock: "Motive?" "Right," Brass deadpans. He then adds that, by the by, Mr. Harris was Evil Ike's best man. Gil rolls his eyes and heads back in to deal with Mr. Harris and Evil Ike. "Well," Ike asks, "what was that about?" "Ehhhh. We're in a bowling league together," Gil sasses. Ike implores Gil to wrap this entire mess up. After Gil attempts to tie motive and evidence to Mr. Harris, Evil Ike decides it's time to wrap up the investigation.
Back in the B plot, Nicky's going through Dylan's clothing. He gets to the boy's white boxers, and notices more of the same fawn-colored lint he found on Sapien's sweater. As he frowns intently, the scene shifts to David asking Dylan's mom if she needs someone to drive her home. He has to repeat himself before she finally answers, demurring that she's fine. She wanders off in a daze, and happens to wander right into Nicky. We find out over the course of the conversation that a) she's the Widow Buckley, which is quite sad, and b) her story matches up awfully well with Sapien's. Nicky says, "I'm sorry for your loss," and looks as though he genuinely means it. Aww. He's clearly the sensitive guy on staff. He then heads into the morgue; David is standing over Dylan's body, saying, "My youngest just turned fourteen. Tough age." For some reason, Nicky looks distressed by this, so he turns back to work and asks about cause of death. We see, courtesy of the TMICam, that Dylan has skull fractures which, at first blush, seem consistent with grand mal seizures. First impressions are somewhat misleading, however; David calls Nicky's attention to Dylan's bruise-covered torso. "Possibly from being thrashed during the seizure?" Nicky asks. That's weird phrasing; I thought Dylan would be the one doing the thrashing, not acting as the object of an external thrashing force. Perhaps the discovery of the tan fibers on Dylan's shorts has rattled him. "His body's covered in them," David notes. Nicky notes that the fibers are mysteriously absent from Dylan's clothes and muses, "At some point he was just in his underwear." "Makes you wonder exactly what kind of therapy was this?" David asks rhetorically. Nicky looks troubled. I see a labored plot point looming on the horizon.
Gil is walking into CSICentral when a hand snakes out of the darkness and grabs his shoulder. He whirls around, and a guy says, "I have information about Jim Valenti." Gil, remembering how much trouble people who try to "help" him usually are, wisely says, "Call Jim Brass at Homicide." The man lunges for Gil's arm, and Gil turns back to him with a dangerous look on his face. The guy blurts out, "I was the union rep before Roger. The walkout was my idea. Bob Harris threatened me and my family. I wouldn't betray the union so I gave up my position at the local; Roger picked up where I left off." Demonstrating that he's learned from past extroverted helpers, Gil demands, "Why are you telling me this?" "Because it could have been me," the guy responds.
And along comes Liam the lab tech to break the tension; we see him from the back, saying, "Cheese." He then wheels around, and I recoil involuntarily. Liam's hair has reached new and depraved depths of aesthetic violation. It's a tonsorial manifestation of profound mental illness on somebody's part, and that shirt Liam's wearing -- broad stripes, buttoned up to the chin -- doesn't do him any favors either. "Milk," he continues, oblivious to my weeping, "sweaters. What do these things have in common?" If I can come up with the answer, will you return to the adorable Liam Gallagher shag? Please? Across the lab, Catherine and Nicky -- who now look like the hairdo all-stars compared to Liam -- answer correctly, "Angora." Apparently, all those tan fibers were angora, which is apparently 100 percent goat hair that has been spun, washed, and dried. This really shouldn't surprise me, but for some reason, when I hear "angora," I tend to think cats, not goats.
Anyway, David's just checking out for the night when Gil comes back down and demands to see Valenti's body again. David tells him it's an impossibility, as he released the body six hours ago. Gil begs to see the coroner's notes and David, sighing heavily, unlocks the morgue and re-enters with Gil in tow. The two men sit down and begin looking for slight aberrations. Valenti's troponin levels were up; Gil notes that the enzyme's levels typically rise after ventricular fibrillation, which could be indicative of electrocution. David points out that troponin's found in anyone who's suffered cardiac arrest, regardless of zapping. Gil implores David to work with him, as opposed to playing devil's advocate. David does by noting that Valenti also had six to seven times the normal level of iron in his blood, and he was jaundiced. "Tell me about his testicles," Gil requests; David manages to look only mildly nonplussed. "Okay, I'm working with you. Genetics can be fascinating and there are things I notice, but I didn't take notes on his genitals," he explains. Gil thanks him and runs off.
As it turns out, he doesn't run very far: Warrick, Sara, and Liam are all hanging out in the break room, generally being slackers because they figured that after Evil Ike put the old investigation on hold, they'd have to get new assignments. Gil snits that since they didn't hear the order from him, it doesn't count. Way to put your subordinates in the middle of a power struggle, Gil.
We get a shot of the Vegas skyline at night, then a segue to a pristine white coffin gleaming in a black chrome showroom as the strains of Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" ("Winter," to be precise) play. Gil opens the door to the prep room of the mortuary, and the mortician has his back to us, conducting in time to a particularly lovely violin arpeggio. "Vivaldi, 'Four Seasons,'" Gil notes, and Mr. Gessig (who, I'm pretty sure, we saw last year in at least one episode) says, "Vivaldi, Valenti, both Italians. It's like being in Venice." Yeah, throw in the Medici-style politics Evil Ike's got going on, and Vegas turns into a regular Renaissance Revival. Gessig glares suspiciously and says, "Why are you here? Do I need a lawyer?" A-ha! So he is a recurring character of some sort. Gil asks if Gessig's begun prepping the body yet, and Gessig replies, "I was beginning to drain him, then I got distracted." "Yeah, I know. Venice. I need to see his testicles," Gil says. Gessig breathes, "I always knew there was something weird about you." Since Warrick has, for all practical purposes, become the invisible man in the scene, I can only conclude that he's nodding in agreement behind Gil's back. Gil goes for the sheet and Gessig frantically leaps in to stop him, reasoning, "If I let you see them, I have to let everybody see them." He quickly relents in the face of Gil's wrath. Warrick looks beleaguered. Gil plunges a hand below the sheets and notes that calling Valenti "peanut testicles" would have been neither slanderous or libelous. Warrick deadpans, "Yeah, that's rough. And the significance of this would be?" Gil tells us all about hemachromatosis -- the result of ingesting trace amounts of iron in his blood over a long period of time. Gil gets a pint of Valenti's blood, to go, in an effort to test a private theory. In the short throwaway scene, Warrick runs into Sara and adds some fuel to the private-theory fire, telling her that the blood needs to be packaged in plastic. Sara shares her own news: the cutters didn't match the serrations on the plug, so someone and something else had to be responsible for tampering with the drill.
Back in the B-plot, Nicky and Catherine are eating lunch at an outdoor hot dog vendor. Nicky's asking Catherine if she's even been in therapy. Sometimes, my job is just too easy...anyway, Catherine quips, "Who hasn't? It didn't save my marriage." Given that the marriage consisted of her and Eddie, she may have wanted to bypass counseling and gone straight for an exorcism. Nicky asks, "You were okay sharing your problems with a complete stranger?" "You rather I tell them to you?" she shoots back. Buzz saves them both from a debate about the effectiveness of therapy by giving the gift of a warrant and some handy background information: apparently, Sapien got her license suspended for having sex with a minor patient. Nicky explodes that she should have lost her license.
In the meanwhile, Gil's making a circuit. Warrick comes in with the blood and asks Gil, "You want to fill me in here? I'm acting as the expository impetus since Brass is apparently taking a breather in the subplot subbasement." Gil obliges: "Iron is a conductive metal. I want to know if there's enough iron in Valenti's blood to conduct electricity." Gil hooks the plastic bag of blood into the circuit, hands Warrick a plug, and commands, "Plug in the blood." Warrick does, and the light bulb on the circuit lights up.
Cut to Sapien saying, "Angora fibers? What does that have to do with anything?" Just bring Liam in -- not only will he explain all, but his coiffure may be enough to frighten her into confessing. Sapien's pushing Nicky's buttons, and Nicky goes Texas on her ass, exploding, "Dylan Buckley was just a boy. He trusted you, and you abused that trust." I like that his accent comes through particularly strongly when he's pissed; it's nice to know I'm not the only expatriated Southerner who reverts to the enunciation of my youth when I'm livid. Jesus, this recap's just all about me this time, isn't it? Catherine comes out with the angora blanket in question, and Nicky has a truly creepy flashback in which Sapien wrestles the unwilling, undressed Dylan on the blanket while he looks on. "He was a fourteen-year-old kid. What's wrong with you?" Nicky demands. "He resisted, you persisted," Catherine intones. Sapien takes umbrage -- and really, who can blame her when it's two lab techs conducting an impromptu interrogation? -- and says heatedly, "I don't know the basis of your allegations, but I have never crossed the line with a patient." "That's not what your rap sheet says," Nicky snarks. "Rap? Sheet?" she replies. "Sex with an underage patient," Catherine supplies. "I was a resident, he was seventeen, we were in -- look, no criminal charges were filed. It should have been expunged from my record." Catherine shakes her head and says, "That doesn't make you any less guilty." Sapien rebuts that, while she's no saint, she's neither a killer nor a child molester. As Catherine and Nicky leave with the blanket, she asks Nicky what's bothering him. "I'm on a case," he brusquely replies. "We're on a case," she emphasizes. He blows her off and sinks deeper into the funk that's meant to signal that this case is affecting him for deep dark reasons. That labored plot point I saw on the horizon sprints to the zip code to mine.
And now -- the debut of the fridge-cam shot! Gil peers in and finds nothing worth his time, then closes the fridge again. He runs into Sara, and we establish that she went to the deli and got a sandwich and a pickle. She offers half the sandwich; Gil requests the pickle instead. After she pulls it out, Gil holds the pickle aloft and says reverently, "Oh, that's a nice one." Sara gives him a look indicating that she's dying to tell him he needs to get out more. step: Gil completes the pickle circuit. Sara comes over with her mouth full and says delightedly, "You turned my pickle into a light bulb!" Somehow, I don't think that's going to catch on the same way "you got your chocolate in my peanut butter!" did. Gil happily corrects Sara: "I'm electrocuting the pickle." "You sure are!" she notes. Warrick elbows his way into the scene and says, "So that's what I smell." Gil shares that he used to cook his hot dogs in college the same way. There's something so...Gil about that. I'm surprised we haven't seen a scene yet where he's making fondue with a beaker and a Bunsen burner. Gil notes there are no burn marks. He, Warrick, and Sara explain to us all that the pickle -- with its highly conductive sodium -- is a model for a body with highly conductive iron. Valenti's body was turned into one big, non-resisting, highly conductive wire. To quote Sara: "In through his hand from the drill, out through the nail in the boot." As Gil hands Sara the pickle, we see a flashback to the method of electrocution. The three of them bask in the glow of the pickle and the fresh knowledge that they've just proved murder until Liam comes in, begs them not to shoot the messenger (though any ambulance-chaser could make the point that the hair alone could incite unreasonable rage), and hands over print results from the nail.
Cut to Gil explaining that no, Mr. Harris's prints were not found anywhere near the murder weapons. Ike snits that nobody goes after his friends without there being consequences, and in this case, those consequences will include apologizing in a conveniently-arranged newspaper article. See? I sensed the presence of Evil in Ike last year, and it turns out I was right all along. Ike walks off, leaving Gil standing stunned. In the scene, he recovers enough to go through the union database. Brass comes in and says, "I heard the Sheriff chewed you a new one." I can only imagine that Paul Guilfoyle was all, "Oh, to be on cable and take that phrase to its colorful conclusion." He comes over and smiles at Gil not unsympathetically, then accedes to Gil's request that he check out the far-too-helpful union guy from a few scenes back. It turns out this guy -- Ian Wolf -- was pushing the investigation in Harris's direction quite enthusiastically, and Gil's finally getting suspicious. As he turns to go, Brass asks Gil why he insists on pushing some cases. "This is just like any other case," Gil says, up to his neck in the murky waters of denial. "You know what I think? Adrenaline. You need the rush. But that's just me." He exits, leaving Gil to ponder this insight.
Nicky's day isn't going much better; he's laying out an orderly, methodical grid on the blanket and meticulously swabbing each section. Catherine comes in much later and asks exactly how many swabs one blanket needs, and Nicky brusquely mutters, "I'm thorough." She sticks a pin in that for the moment and shares her news: she had the lab test Dylan's blood for elevated levels of creatine kinase, an enzyme linked to a post-seizure state, but his levels were normal. Nicky beats her to the punch and tells her he's got his own copy of the report. "You're racing me, Nick, and we're driving the same car!" The plot point races to my immediate vicinity, and we both watch as Nicky begins to explain his sudden change of behavior. Long story short: as a nine-year-old, Nicky was molested by a babysitter. Catherine is apparently the first person he's told; she reacts quite empathetically, which is far better than I do. Lord knows I wouldn't wish molestation on any one; I just wish that writers would not go there every time they want to give a character a deep, dark secret or explain their crusading sense of whatever. Cause-effect characterization is pat and obvious, and this show can do better than to be all "Gil had a Deaf mother, so he's sensitive to communications issues!" and "Nicky was molested, so he's devoted his life to justice!" I also have to take issue with the way this was sprung upon us: I can think of at least one episode last year involving child molestation, and it's not as though that revelation affected Nicky particularly strongly then. Maybe his trauma only kicks in when he can identify with the victim, but it still seems out of left field.
Okay -- I'm over the ranting. We can resume the recap. Gil and Brass are interrogating Ian; it goes poorly.
Back at the B plot, Liam is explaining that the swabs have yielded three distinct sets of epithelials: Sapien's, Dylan's, and the Widow Buckley's. Catherine muses, "Naked kid under a blanket at his shrink's, late at night, his mother's there." Liam says, "Yeah, your case just entered a whole new dimension of weird." Good; I imagine his hair's been lonely being there all by itself.
Catherine looks at Nicky; Gil crosses behind Nicky, and the camera shifts focus, thus segueing nicely into the scene. Surprise, surprise, Ian Wolf's prints are all over the nail in the boot. Warrick, in the meantime, is off in the background, presumably getting a warrant and going through Ian Wolf's tool belt for evidence.
While this is going on, Catherine and Nicky interrupt David's meal (leftovers from his anniversary dinner; this unprecedented second mention of David's domesticity has me wondering if these are private in-jokes or actor requests that made it into the script) and ask about the Y incision. Surprise, surprise, the fibers are in Dylan's nasal passages and lungs. "He was wrapped in that blanket," Catherine says. "Head to toe," Nicky says. We get the TMICam shot of the fibers getting sucked into Dylan's respiratory system. And then we get the explanation of how they got there: Dylan's mother, in an effort to deal with his reactive attachment disorder, decided to try rebirthing therapy. Ostensibly, this technique acts as a forced imposition of the Rousseauean tabula rasa, thus erasing all of the patient's past trauma and permitting them the ability to bond with their parents. And while this disorder is a very real thing (see the DSM-IV, pp 116-118, heading 313.89), the rebirthing therapy seems to have roughly the same merit as recovered memory therapy. Make of that what you will. Long story short, and to quote Catherine: "So you wrapped Dylan up [in a blanket], beat the hell out of him, and he's supposed to love you again?" Well, only if he doesn't suffocate first. Which, unfortunately, is what happened here. Nicky spits out, "So much for your therapy. Excuse me," and he storms from the room.
In the plot that just never runs out of juice, Warrick's matched up the tools in Wolf's belt with evidence on the scene. He then tries to mend fences with Gil by saying, "I think I can speak for both of us when I say we let you down." "We quit before we should have," adds Sara. Ever gracious in victory, Gil says, "Yeah, you did." He then heads to the construction site with Brass to arrest Wolf. After having done so, Gil and Evil Ike have a staredown, and then KPIX thoughtfully cuts off the episode. Dammit! ["Nothing really happened after that. Gil walked off; Evil Ike glared bemusedly at the back of Gil's head." -- Sars]
week: I sit in front of the television with KPIX on speed-dial, ready to dispense an abusive, digressive diatribe should I miss minute one of the show.