“ Ben, now standing erect and flanked by two police officers, looks like someone who would be a roadie for Alien Ant Farm if he were not otherwise engaged with clandestine body-planting. ”
Night has fallen over Las Vegas and the surrounding mountainous foothills. Tim Daly -- or someone who looks a lot like him -- is driving an official-looking Land Rover over a rough dirt road. The husband and I have a debate:
Him: That's not Tim Daly.
Me: It is too! And he's looking for a one-armed man.
Him: Most likely he's looking for a show.
Me: Well, maybe it's a package deal.
Anyway, the ersatz Tim is driving along when he notices a car parked in a place where cars usually aren't parked. Naturally, he parks the Land Rover and walks toward the edge of the road to investigate. He hears a noise, and proceeds to slide stealthily down a grass-covered embankment -- a plan that, while laudable in theory, falls flat in execution when he does it and lands on his stomach, to a dead person. A young man pops up from a half-finished grave, registers the lawman getting to his feet, and does what all would-be felons do when confronted with a cop: he runs toward the law enforcement personnel. He trips just as he passes Ersatz Tim -- lucky for Tim since he's still not on his feet yet -- and the prone officer promptly wrestles the would-be escapee into submission.
Seconds later, swarms of Las Vegas's finest have forsaken Sin City to check out the crime scene in the desert. Gil and Nicky stop by Buzz, who exposits ably, "They caught him red-handed. Ben Jennings." Ben, now standing erect and flanked by two police officers, looks like someone who would be a roadie for Alien Ant Farm if he were not otherwise engaged with clandestine body-planting. Then again, perhaps the bands of today do demand more from their roadies than humping equipment and procuring willing groupies. I wouldn't know. Anyway, Ben looks no more or no less harmless than any kid you're likely to see in an MTV video. Make of that what you will.
Now that Buzz has made the informal introductions, Nicky decides to make the formal ones. He and Gil walk over to Ben, and Nicky does the honors: "Nick Stokes, Gil Grissom, Las Vegas Crime Lab. You wanna tell us what's going on here?" Ben does not. Gil steps in, asking, "You have anything to say?" Again, more silence on Ben's part. Gil decides to kill two birds with one stone -- mess with Ben's head and give us our punchy pre-credits lead-in -- by continuing: "You don't have to talk to us." He pauses long enough to sweep his flashlight beam over a corpse, and continues, "He'll talk to us." Yup -- right after The Who plays us into commercials.
Speaking of commercials, how appalling is it that Mastercard is already flogging Christmas consumerism on November 1st? Isn't there some sort of obscure clause in the FCC broadcast regulations we can dredge up that puts a moratorium on this holiday nonsense until November 23rd?
“ Sara pops onto the scene, chirping that she lost the boys at a fork in the road. Nicky smirks, 'My bad.' You know he's not really sorry; he wanted some time with Sensei Gil before Sara showed up and began volunteering to take Gil's pulse. ”
Back on the show, Gil's noting that they're going to have to impound Ben's car and take it into evidence. Sensing that automotive destruction is nigh, Sara pops onto the scene, chirping that she lost the boys at a fork in the road. Nicky smirks, "My bad." You know he's not really sorry; he wanted some time with Sensei Gil before Sara showed up and began volunteering to take Gil's pulse. Gil barely registers the kids squabbling; he tells them it's processing time. Ben is uncuffed, and the CSIs descend upon him. "Make like a scarecrow for me, partner, arms out, away from your body. That's it, stay just like that," Nicky tells Ben. Ben complies, a little freaked out. Sara whips out an industrial-sized roll of duct tape and collects the contents of Ben's shoe soles. Gil and Nicky lift fibers off Ben's clothing, then survey his body for defensive wounds. As they're working on Ben, the kid stands there, looking scared, but when Gil calls out to a tech named Matthew to give the corpse VIP treatment, Ben looks absolutely terrified.
The camera pans out, then down to the Vegas Strip, giving us a shot of the Paris casino, with Caesar's Palace in the foreground and the Bellagio immediately behind. This must be a shot from the north end of the strip. Anyway, we're in the swanky new part of the strip. A black SUV pulls up at a pristine valet area -- yup, the producers are definitely working on giving the impression that we're at a swanky Steve Wynn-esque casino -- and Catherine hops out, voicing over that they've got a dead female body in the Mediterranean Casino's spa. She and Warrick head in to the spa, where Brass is already waiting, and he exposits, "The body is Shelly Danvers, D.O.B. 10/10/81. An employee walked in to get towels, and found her here." "Here" happens to be a bench in the spa locker room. Warrick stares at the body for a moment, and we close-up on a livid patch of flesh on her thigh, then a copy of what looks to be either Harper's Bazaar or Vogue (it's far too tastefully laid-out to be Jane, and the words are in tiny type, which means that the editors presume their subscribership can read, thereby eliminating Cosmo), then her head dangling limply off the padded locker-room bench. Catherine eyes the scene and says skeptically, "A young woman, healthy, just reading a magazine. And all of a sudden, she DFOs?" Well, I nearly did after I saw what Bonnie Fuller had done to Ruth Whitney's legacy at Glamour, but I digress. Brass mutters that he is but repeating the story the night manager gave him. Warrick heads over to question the night manager. She chirps that she stumbled across the body when she was restocking the locker room with towels. As Warrick fixes her with a skeptical look, Catherine asks Brass if he moved the body. "Yeah, I was born yesterday," he replies. "This sash may have been tied by somebody else," she explains. Warrick gives the sash an appraising glance; the night manager immediately begins looking everywhere but at Warrick. Catherine looks up and asks the night manager if she knows anything about re-dressing the body. "Well, she was naked. I-I-I thought she should be covered," stammers the manager, who has clearly never seen an episode of a crime show -- any crime show -- or else she'd know that law enforcement types tend to view her little act of initiative as tampering with a crime scene. Catherine continues to stare at the night manager, and asks, "Did you move the body in here too?" Sure enough, the night manager did: "Guests were looking in. I put a robe on her. It's not like it's a crime or anything." Oh, but it is. "It makes us doubt the circumstances surrounding the victim's death," Warrick explains. The night manager begins to look distinctly queasy. ["A look she's good at, by the way; this actress's last major gig was as Steve Sanders's love interest on . Poor thing." -- Sars]