I love Paris in the springtime, I love Vegas in the fall ... we open on the Las Vegas strip, taking in lavish shots of the Bellagio, Paris, and Aladdin exteriors, then the MGM Grand. A very nervous-looking young dark-haired guy is trying to get the attention of passersby, in a way that suggests he learned his travel manners from those Karl Malden American Express travelers checks commercials. A man and woman -- him clad in a Hawaiian shirt, her in a pink sweater-set thing that complements her blonde hair -- notice the panicky traveler and head toward him, wearing expressions of vague concern.
"You all right?" Hawaiian Shirt Guy asks Anxious Traveler. "I'm barred. I got, like, ten thousand dollars in chips, and I can not cash it [sic]," replies Anxious Traveler, his agita affecting his grasp of subject-verb agreement. He then proposes that the would-be Good Samaritans take his chips into the casino and cash them for him. Blonde Woman answers, "Sure, we can do that for you, but you don't have to keep your eye on us..." "We're honest people," Hawaiian Shirt Guy finishes. Anxious Traveler assures them he is in no way impugning their characters, but he wants a guarantee that they'll come back with his ten gees; a simple $2000 would do wonders for his peace of mind. And if they act now, he'll throw in another thousand on top of the deposit just to make nice. The couple does one of those marital mind-melds and agrees.
Cut to a cashier examining the patently false-looking chip and saying, "I'm sorry, sir, I can't cash this for you." Well, he actually could -- the cashier is series creator Anthony Zuiker, so I imagine he could do any damn thing he wants on this show. One would hope, anyway. But in CSIWorld, it's Hawaiian Shirt Guy's turn to play dismayed traveler; then he and the missus turn tail and run toward Anxious Traveler's last known location. Hey! They're at the Tropicana. I love the Trop. Anyway -- they're standing in the doorway, looking over at the Trop's capacious parking garage, when they hear the squeal of tires peeling out.
A transition later, we're at (presumably) the same parking garage, festooned with yellow police tape, and about to be graced by Gil and Brass. "The guy was running one of the oldest scams in Vegas. Would have gotten away with it too, 'til the getaway driver put a nickel in the guy's jukebox," Brass exposits. He continues, "Those are the Ortons, from Florida" -- we flash to the would-be Samaritans -- "they ID'd the deceased as the con man." Pan down to Anxious Traveler, who's looking anxious no more. He's looking pretty inert, and surrounded by hundred-dollar bills. Brass IDs the Ortons' money; Gil responds that it's evidence. We then establish that there's no surveillance in the garage, although the shape of the tire skids (banana), the fresh blood oozing from Anxious Traveler's head, and the oil slick the car left behind will certainly aid and abet the forensic treasure hunt about to commence. Sam Vega, the annoying detective from the other week, surfaces and hands over a plastic bag full of poker chips. Brass cynically notes that he hasn't seen the "chip clip" in a while. Gil declines to respond, and instead launches into the pre-credits punchline. "A striking resemblance to Judas," he muses. "How's that?" Brass helpfully supplies. Gil hits it home: "They both lost their lives over a worthless bag of chips."
Cue the credits, wherein I ignore The Who in favor of thumbing through a concordance for the listing, "Pieces of silver, thirty, as compared to chips."
Once we return from commercials, we're back at CSI Central, where Gil is booking down the hall bearing a plastic maze, a stack of files, and a jar of insects. As he walks by Liam the Lab Tech's aseptic lair, he notices the sounds of punk rock playing. Gil immediately assumes his super-villain persona, Enemy Of Fun, and pops in to bark, "Hey, Sanders? No punk rock." Liam looks up and asks innocently, "What about Black Flag?" Gil clutches his C. elegans cargo and asks, horrified, "Are you nuts?" Having fulfilled his quota of Liam-bashing for the day, he then proceeds down the hall and bumps into Catherine. Eager to show off his new stable of racing studs, Gil brandishes the jar and says, "Livestock. Hissing roaches from Madagascar." Oh, my bad -- not C. elegans at all, but rather, G. portentosa. Anyhoo -- the Madagascar hissing cockroaches are capable of running two and a half miles per hour; Gil is going to race them at the fifth annual entomological convention in Duluth. "You're roach racing," Catherine confirms. "Actually, I'm giving a tutorial in preserving mass crime scenes. The sideshow is racing these guys. I mean, to have a chance to run against legendary roaches like Cocky Balboa, the Drain Lover, Priscilla, Queen of the Gutters -- it's huge!" Gil burbles. It's also left me insatiably curious: how does one determine the gender of a Madagascar hissing cockroach? Catherine then turns the conversation to herself, and asks Gil who's supervising the night shift. He is under the impression she is, what with having conveniently forgotten that she's on a red-eye to Reno as Sam's date for a new casino opening. Good to see that Sam's not letting grief get in the way of his gambling empire. Of course, getting back to the matter at hand: someone's got to run night shift.
Gil and his team of tiny steeds take a visit to Warrick, who is -- oh, rapturous joy unbounded -- wearing a wife-beater, the better to set off his...expression, as he sputters, "A-slash? Acting supervisor? What about Nick? He's got seniority. Or Sara? She'd jump at the chance." Gil looks up from his roaches to reply, "If it was about seniority, I'd ask Nick. If I wanted someone to stay up for three straight days, I'd ask Sara. Instead, I want you." The camera pulls back to show Warrick tucking in his wife-beater -- leaving me to wonder if Gil just kind of wandered in on Warrick en dishabille and casually said, "You're in charge." Oh, if only. And oh, if only the show were on HBO; we could have seen that moment. But alas, we're on CBS, and it would be crass and exploitative to show male booty when the nudity clause is better reserved for dead dominatrices. But I've digressed. Warrick is not satisfied with Gil's answer and spits out, "And if I ask why?" Gil replies, "Your curiosity would be better served on the case: the shooting death of a con man at the Tropicana. Our guys are already there." Gil prepares to fly like the wind -- or at least scuttle like a Madagascar hissing cockroach -- but Warrick inquires hotly if anyone else has been apprised of this sudden change in management. "No," says Gil sunnily. He drifts off; Warrick assumes a profoundly beleaguered expression. I hope that look's comfortable; he's going to be wearing it for the fifty minutes.
Nicky and Sara are doing their forensic evidence-gathering thing to moronic techno music, looking all scientific and competent and generally giving off the vibe that these are people who perhaps will not take too kindly to a coworker claiming he's in charge. As Warrick pulls up and exits a CSIMobile, Nicky turns to Sara with one of the evidence cameras in his hands and says flirtatiously, "I got one left. Smile!" Sara gives him a supermodel pout; Nicky snaps and deadpans, "Lovely." They both smile, however, as Warrick comes over, and they rib him for finally showing up. "I got detained," Warrick says uncomfortably, adding, "I guess you did a one-to-one on these treads already?" Nicky confirms it, giving Warrick a what the hell? look. Warrick presses on, "Put together an evidence list?" "No," says Sara, also wondering what's going on. "You got to do it, buddy. You were late," Nicky says. Warrick clarifies that he does not, because he has to go back to the lab with the body; Nicky and Sara begin to look annoyed. Warrick asks if Sara can go put the fear of God into some lab techs, and Sara snaps back, "Who died and made you boss?" Warrick grimaces, "He's not exactly dead." Sara immediately puts on her irritated face, saying, "Grissom gave you shift tonight." Warrick nods, unenthused -- probably not the right response when dealing with someone who is clearly chomping at the bit for the gold-plated opportunity Warrick was handed. Sara stalks off, disgusted, and Warrick sighs. Nicky prepares to walk off, and Warrick snipes, "Anything you want to say?" "Yeah. Good luck," Nicky says. He then snaps the flash in Warrick's face and walks off -- Warrick grimaces good-naturedly and thinks about the many, many ways he screwed up. Number one: He should have told Sara and Nicky right off the bat that Gil put him in change. Number two: He should have said he wasn't thrilled with it, but he was dedicated to doing what Gil wanted, so how 'bout a little tenderness? Number three: Then he should have indicated that he was putting on the management hat and taking it from there; just leaping into the big boss role without explanation and expecting Sara and Nicky to be down with it was plain stupid.
And Warrick's night is probably about to get worse: he heads into the morgue, where David The Occasionally Fun Coroner is holding court over the dead body du jour -- one Vincent Avery, killed by a gunshot wound to the left ear (he was plugged as he was getting into the car), which we see up close and personal. Warrick walks us through the likely flashback reenactment, concluding, "He knew the killer." David then walks us through a lingering TMICam visit to the bullet wound, giving us the bullet's-eye view of the proceedings. In a word, ick. Warrick asks if David can provide pictures. "Hot off the fluoroscope," David replies. The two men look -- the "deformed projectile on the right side of the calvarium" is about to be fished out so Warrick can do a little ID'ing. Warrick then looks through the rest of the x-rays and says, "Wait a minute. There's something hidden in his stomach." We fade out on the X-ray and back in on Avery's open stomach, where a series of small white sacs are nestled against the stomach lining, amidst a morass of green goo. I am ashamed to admit that, owing to my geeky sci-fi ways, my first thought was an alien larvae infestation of some kind. Then I remembered I wasn't watching Andromeda, and paused the TiVo again: surprise! It's fifty balloons' worth of controlled substances, swaddled in lime Jell-O vis a vis the spoonful-of-sugar-helps-the-medicine-go-down school of delivery. Warrick raises the question we all have: Why would a high-stakes drug mule bother with the chip clip?
We may find out -- but probably not at this moment. Brass has swung by to exposit on young Mr. Avery, a con man out of Atlantic City with many, many petty convictions to his name. Nicky, the person to whom Brass inexplicably exposited all this -- as opposed to, say, the two men who just gazed upon the gory green mess of Avery's stomach -- is politely disinterested. He'd rather talk about tire treads, since that's what he's working on. Nicky points to a blotch in the tread and asks Brass if he shares the opinion that it is, perhaps, a nail embedded in the tire. "Either that, or a spot on the lens," Brass grumps. Nicky looks crestfallen. We then fade into another scene where one coworker perpetuates random acts of violence and senseless cruelty on another, i.e. Sara berates Liam for failing to invent a time machine, collect her evidence, whiz both it and himself back to the day before, run the tests, and have them ready for her this minute. If I may go off here for a moment -- and I think I just may -- the way some people treat Liam is pretty much uncalled-for. I can see having issues with the hair; if you take Liam on hair value alone, the urge to smack him around a little is understandable. But this is Liam, people. He does all sorts of composition analysis tests, sequences DNA like a mo-fo, provides looks at cultures above and beyond the insular little world of the nocturnal lab rat and generally livens up the joint. He's worth his weight in bed-head. And he is evidently possessed of a more generous spirit than I, because if I were in charge of analyzing evidence for a platoon of ungrateful martinets, I'd find a way to rig it so that every crime in the greater Las Vegas area could be traced back directly to its primary investigator. So watch it with the lab rat abuse, or I may be forced to begin collecting unkind adjectives to hold in reserve against future incidents.
There. I've ranted. Liam calls Sara on her witchy method of inquiring after her lab results with, "Just because you got passed over, don't take it out on me." Sara weakly denies doing that; Liam sees right through her. He then produces her evidence: the pills she's handling are composed of coal, wood, and coconut shells -- activated charcoal pills, which are just what the doctor ordered for coating the stomach walls and absorbing all impurities. Or for people who happen to have swallowed fifty balloons filled with cocaine, says Warrick, coming in so that Sara may swing her broom around and focus on him, giving Liam a little break. Sara realizes what went on with Avery: "Without the pills, one bite of a chocolate bar would produce enough gastric acid to eat away at the balloon." As she says this, we see an X-ray of a person swallowing something, then the stomach acid churning furiously. We then awkwardly transition into the introduction for tonight's Big Plotline: Sara has found plane tickets in Avery's shirt. He was in seat 4-A; Ellie Rebecca was in seat 4-B. Sara comments that it's strange for someone to use two first names; Warrick counters that it's strange to go into the evidence locker and find it bereft of evidence. "Hey, don't make me feel bad for doing my job," Sara shoots. In the background, Liam leans back in his chair and waits for the fireworks show to begin. Warrick does not disappoint, volleying back, "If it was your job, you couldn't feel bad." The two CSIs glare. Liam decides the explosives are detonating a little too close to him and beats a hasty retreat; nobody spares a glance toward his retreating back, as Sara and Warrick are trying to melt one another's skulls with thermonuclear-grade glowers. Sara asks, "What do you want from me? This case is hot!" "It's my case. Tonight I'm the primary. I have to process it. If you have a problem with that, clock out now. Am I clear?" Warrick says. You can tell from his expression that he hates playing the authority card, but he's determined to do his job. Sara glares for a moment before saying, "Clear," and stalks off. Warrick sits there and looks…beleaguered.
Cut to Warrick dusting the plane ticket stubs for prints and running them through AFIS. Up pops the name -- Ellie Rebecca Brass. Warrick shakes his head, since his craptacular evening just got a little more crapperrific. "It couldn't be," he mumbles. We transition to Brass outside CSICentral; he runs into Warrick, who asks if Brass has a daughter. "Where are you going with this?" Brass asks warily. "Her prints came up on airline stubs relating to tonight's homicide," Warrick replies. "Well, there's got to be more than one Ellie Brass in the world," Brass replies. Yeah! This could be television's other troublesome daughter named Ellie -- Ellie Bartlet -- unfairly tarred by a typographical error of massive proportions. But after the bona fides Warrick rattles off -- birth date, county of birth (Essex, New Jersey, for those keeping score at home) -- Brass snatches the file, more or less confirming that we aren't going to be seeing the First Daughter reprising her role as the thorn in her father's side any time soon. The two men confirm that someone from LVPD will have to bring in Ellie, and Brass will be recusing himself from the case. Since, as we know, the people of the CSI department labor under the strictest of ethical codes when it comes to cases where there's an implication of personal involvement.
And now, I shall pause while we all share a knowing chuckle.
Cut to Vega bringing in Ellie Brass. She's a twenty-first-century Kelly Bundy. As Warrick's about to steer her into an interrogation tank, Brass pops into the hall to confirm that it is his little girl being brought in for questioning. Ellie catches his eye and smirks. She heads down the hall towards him, secure in the knowledge that all three men think she's headed for a touching, if awkward, reunion with her paterfamilias. The tinkly piano music in the background certainly seems to lend itself to that assumption, as does Brass's gooey expression. Then Ellie, clearly intent on proving she's a bad girl, spits on her father's badge. Warrick, bizarrely enough, executes the kind of dance move last seen when Judas was belting out "Too Much Heaven On Their Minds" during Act I of Jesus Christ, Superstar; Vega restrains him from breaking into "Listen, Brass, I don't like what I see/all I ask is that you listen to me." Brass stares into his daughter's mocking gaze and says calmly, "So we're going to pick up right where we left off?" Beautiful move, Brass -- all Ellie wants is a reaction, so don't give it to her.
In another part of CSICentral, Sara is peering down at a table full of hundred-dollar bills, documenting their serial numbers for evidence. She inquires of Ronnie the lab tech, "Did you know that 97 percent of all hundred-dollar bills have traces of cocaine on them?" "I was the one who told you that," the lab tech reminds her. Sara nods in embarrassment and bends back to her task. Something's askew; she looks up and inquires, "Hey, Ronnie? You know what the intaglio script is." "Engraving on Ben Franklin's collar," Ronnie replies. I can't confirm this -- yet another drawback to having never developed a cocaine habit and an intimacy with hundred-dollar bills, I suppose. Sara points out that she can't find the intaglio script on this one bill; Ronnie backs her up.
Meanwhile, Ellie is attempting to sound world-weary as she flips through photos of Avery's dead body and says, "Everyone I sleep with dies." Somehow, I suspect the line would work better if she were French; then she could imbue it with the nihilistic resignation it deserves. Now, Ellie just sounds like she's about to follow up with, "Well. Gotta go get my navel pierced at Clare's Accessories." Ellie attempts to convince us all that she's devil-may-care and flirting with the wrong side of the law while Warrick and Vega look on, unimpressed. As Ellie whips out a pack of cigarettes and asks, "Mind if I smoke?" a patently false casino chip falls out. I grin, relieved that we will be spared Ellie's attempt to pull a Sharon Stone. No, wait...this is a Bruckheimer production, so she's more likely to blow something up; it's Eszterhas and Verhoeven who think it's all naughty for a woman to reveal that she's not a fan of Brazilian bikini waxing mid-interrogation. My bad.
Anyway -- Warrick and Vega note the chip, and Warrick asks Ellie (who is, by this point, trying to look disinterested, but overshooting and ending up somewhere in "comatose"), "So. You two fly to Baja, pose as a married couple, bring home a stomach-load of blow, and then run chip scams? Who's taking your drug profits?" "Man, I wish I knew what you were talking about," Ellie intones. And I wish you could act, missy, but to paraphrase noted Western thinker Mick Jagger, we can't always get what we want. Vega pushes Ellie to reveal her role in Avery's shooting; she tells him she was home in the bathroom. "Yeah, she was passing pellets of cocaine," says Warrick matter-of-factly. Ellie gets the vapors at this indecorous mention of bodily functions in mixed company, and announces her intention to take her leave. Vega's not having it, and he barks at her to sit down. Surprisingly, she responds well to that. Vega thanks her, and Warrick tells Ellie that they'd like her consent for some X-rays. "As long as you're the one doing them," she says. Oh, that pass was so clumsy, not even Jerry Rice could save it. Vega says he'd like to see her car. No dice; Ellie lent the Toyota Ho-rolla to her boyfriend. Warrick presses for this poor unfortunate's name, and Ellie leans in, breathing, "You know, you have this whole Lenny Kravitz thing going on. I'm not one for brothers, but damn." Warrick is irked, and presses for the boyfriend's name: "Are you gonna go my way. 'Cause it ain't over 'til it's over." I kid! He simply asks for the name, and gets "Keith Driscoll" for his troubles.
And then the pere Brass gives Warrick another headache, vigorously denying the need to get involved in the Ellie case despite the mountain of evidence they're collecting against her. Brass finishes with instructions to find the boyfriend: "If I know my daughter, that's the shooter." Warrick points out, "It's a big city. The boyfriend could disappear. But hey, it's your kid." And that's one to grow on, Brass. Stand there and think about it, won't you?
Sara is still examining the funny money. Ronnie gives her a compare-and-contrast: in the left scope, the real Benjamin, and in the right, the tourist money. Sara explains that on a real hundred-dollar bill, the words "the United States of America" are engraved on the border of Ben's portrait. On currency issued by the nation of Orton, however, the intaglio script has been blurred out. "It's called microprinting, a little trick Treasury uses to thwart photocopying of a bill," Ronnie supplies. Sara then asks about pigmentation -- Treasury seals and serial numbers should be the same color. Again, the Orton currency shows a deviation from the norm; the green didn't hold. "No printer on the market can hold a true green. Yellow and blue hues always bleed in. Our monetary system depends on it," Ronnie replies puckishly. Sara asks who they notify; Ronnie replies that they actually notify Secret Service, who, conveniently enough, have a branch office in Vegas. Actually, Secret Service is everywhere -- you think they just fly in out-of-towners to do security before a Presidential visit? Anyway, Sara's on a crusade now.
Meanwhile, Ellie's being x-rayed. She comes up balloon-free, and smirks her I-told-you-sos to Warrick. He asks if she realizes the overdose risk she runs every time she ingests a pellet. "Only if I eat. Releases gastric acids, blah blah blah blah," she says, straining again for a sullen exterior of criminal indifference and landing instead squarely in the petulant child school of line reading. She may as well get a tattoo on her forehead reading, "I'm acting out! Because I secretly yearn for my father's attention, even as I reject him and the law-enforcing institution which he liked better than me! So there!" Warrick asks how Ellie can not eat. "The thing with me is, I'm mind over matter," she replies. The lab tech's skeptical expression mirrors my own; it's kind of hard to be mind over matter when one has displayed very little evidence supporting the "mind" portion of the equation. Ellie continues, "I can imagine a hamburger and I'm full. Will you...fill me up, Warrick?" "Why don't you just imagine that," Warrick replies, in my fantasy world. In the episode, he says nothing, then exits the scene so he can freak out on Nicky. "I gotta call Grissom," he moans, whipping out the cell. "Then call him," Nicky smirks. Hey! Here's a brainstorm for you -- why not put Ellie in the room with Nicky and his penchant for rescuing wayward young lasses? It's not like Nicky's actually in the plotline that much, and it's not like Ellie's contributing anything -- they could both end up the better for the experience. Sadly, my idea will never be realized. Warrick has elected instead to pick up on the unverbalized "but" in Nicky's voice and calls him on it: "I heard a 'but' in there." Nicky explains, "You know how Grissom is. You ask him for the keys to the car, he's going to ask if you've done your homework...it's like a multiple-choice question, you know? Go with your first choice." "Sack up," Warrick says. "Sack up," Nicky confirms. Right on! I liked that scene; the friendship Warrick and Nicky have has always struck me as being composed of equal parts competition and cooperation, and it's nice to see the latter.
Day has broken over the strip, and the CSIs labor on. Brass is looking up Ellie's car registration when his cell rings. He picks up -- because what the road needs is someone who's both reading computer scans and talking on the phone while he drives -- and it's Catherine. He asks if Warrick put her up to this. She dodges the question and advocates, "We all get a little crazy when our kids are involved." Brass pooh-poohs her concerns and tells her to enjoy Reno; she hangs up after warning him not to go it alone if he finds the boyfriend. Too bad! The boyfriend -- or someone like him in Ellie's bitchin' Camaro -- is right in front of the Brassmobile. Brass promptly goes into police pursuit mode. Now we're in the Jerry Bruckheimer portion of the show -- a flashy, loud car chase ending in someone bashing in a window with a crowbar. This, apparently, is Brass's idea of exercising prudence in the line of work. After breaking the window, he leans in to make introductions. The passenger vigorously disclaims, "I was just hitchhiking! I begged him to let me out!" Brass orders the guy to get lost, and pulls Driscoll out, pinning him to the car and asking him what he and Ellie are into. "What do you mean?" asks Driscoll, no doubt wondering if he's just been tapped by Penthouse's drive-by letters squad. Brass clarifies: the boyfriend has Ellie working at a drug mule. "You got it mixed up, man. She turned me on to coke so I could stud for her," Driscoll rebuts. Brass responds by whipping out his gun; we're saved from an ugly incident of police brutality by Vega and a few back-up cars. Driscoll is taken in for questioning as Brass glowers. Vega then does a walk-by suspicious glare of his own, and we go to commercial.
Once we resume, we're poolside at a casino, and Mr. Orton is asking Sara why he can't have his money back. Sara explains that it's counterfeit, and she's obligated to take it out of circulation. "What?" Mrs. Orton protests. Sara notes that Mr. Orton's not looking too surprised; he explains that a gas station attention pegged one of his hundreds as phony, so then he went to the bank to turn in the bad money for some legal tender, but to no avail. "I mean, why would anybody turn in bad money if they couldn't get reimbursed for it?" he reasons. "Because it's in violation of Title 18, Section 473 of the United States Code, punishable by up to fifteen years, for knowingly passing on bad money," Sara replies. Mrs. Orton does not take this well. Sara then gives them a crash course in How To Detect Fraudulent Money, pointing out the ghost imprint in the bill. "You should see Lincoln on the five; he looks really stressed out," she adds, clearly trying to put these people at ease before she tells them that a special agent from Secret Service will want to talk to them about a deposition.
A special agent whom Warrick's meeting now -- Special Agent Beckman from the Treasury Department (who, in an uncanny casting shout-out, looks like a friend of mine who's currently working as a federal prosecutor in Vegas). "Treasury Department," Warrick repeats, trying to get a bead on what's going on. "I wanted to make sure CSI's on the same page on this counterfeit case," Beckman continues. "Counterfeit," Warrick manages. "Our lab's going to want to analyze that money too," Beckman continues, oblivious to the question mark materializing over Warrick's head. Just then, Sara strides up and says, "You were with Brass's daughter, I didn't want to interrupt you." "On a federal case," Warrick clarifies. She ignores him, making her introductions with Beckman, with whom she's apparently already chatted on the phone. She then pulls Warrick aside, gritting her teeth in a false smile for the benefit of passersby. Before she and Warrick can get into it, Nicky swings by to berate Warrick for turning off his pager and missing the news that he's working on Ellie's car in the garage. Warrick turns to Nicky and says, "I'm dealing with something here." "You see, this is why I didn't bring this to you," smirks Sara, hoping to sidetrack Warrick from dealing with her. It works; Nicky protests that time is tight. Beckman jumps into the fray, asking if Sara's been withholding information, and Sara defends her actions as sins of commission rather than omission: "I ran with the case; I do it with Grissom all the time." That's all Warrick needs; he bellows, "Well, I'm not Grissom." Since this is not HBO, nobody says, "No shit." Instead Nicky -- blessed be the peacemakers, for they shall keep me from having to recap a lengthy confrontation -- reminds them that they're all here to solve crimes. Sara takes her cheap shot -- "I didn't say it" -- and Warrick regains his composure before giving everyone their marching orders.
Cut to Warrick and Nicky bonding over processing the car, while the Chambers Brothers sing "Time Has Come Today." Nicky is pleased to see that the treads from the crime scene match the treads on the car. Incidentally, that nail Nicky thought he saw is a tire plug. Anyway, Warrick sums up the scene with, "Proves one thing: this was the getaway car used in the murder." He then sums up the evidence again for Driscoll and his lawyer; the meeting ends after the attack lawyer points out that Brass pulled a gun on her client. Warrick is dismayed. Uneasy rests the head that wears the crown, and all that.
Beckman is now prodding Sara into revealing why she's pursuing the funny-money case; she calls him over and shows him a stack of counterfeit bills with different serial numbers, concluding, "This couple didn't make just one bill and run off a hundred copies with the same serial number. They had to burn separate plates for each serial number. Much harder to catch." But much cooler to watch: while Sara's reciting her reasoning, we see the bills being Xeroxed, then separate serial numbers being laser-engraved into a separate set of bills. Beckman then drops a little bomb with, "The Duffys are major counterfeiters." "You mean the Ortons," Sara corrects him. Beckman fills her in -- the minute she called him, he hit a database and found that the Ortons were the Duffys, who have each done time for interstate fraud and high-end counterfeiting. "You federal guys are sneaky," Sara says, a little irked that Beckman was sitting on this information. Beckman shrugs it off and asks Sara what she wants to do with the money. She tells him that it's his to handle as he sees fit. Beckman's all, "Well, off to go shut down a major counterfeiting ring!" and Sara takes umbrage that he has not seen fit to invite her along. He remedies that.
Meanwhile, Warrick's telling Brass, "We got bad news from the garage." "Give it to me," Brass requests. Warrick does: they've placed Ellie's car at the murder scene, and they'll be pressing charges against Ellie. Brass is all, "You mean Driscoll." Warrick clarifies that he most certainly does not, what with Driscoll running around a free man, courtesy of Brass's little gun incident. They're bringing in Ellie. Brass asks if they're under the impression that Ellie might perhaps tell the truth and clear her own name, and hastily moves to correct said impression. Warrick stares after him, not really wanting to be witness to the sordid family psychodrama unfolding before him, and yet powerless to extract himself from it. And yes, frankly, Ellie does seem stupid enough to think that doing hard time for a murder she didn't commit is a fine way to show her dad who's boss.
Speak of the devil, Ellie's on the screen. She's in Brass's office, to be precise. She confirms that she's going to be arrested; Brass offers to bail her out, and says she can stay at his place. Ellie rebuts that she and Keith have a place of their own: "We share everything." Undoubtedly decorated with samplers reading, "The couple that mules drugs together cavorts with thugs together," and other such homey touches, I'm sure. I wonder if they have framed his-'n'-hers mug shots on the coffee table? Brass comes around his desk, standing in front of his daughter and asking, "Ellie, why do you do this to yourself? You're better than that. Or him." "No, I'm not," Ellie answers decisively. Brass looks pained, and doesn't respond.
Night has again fallen on the city. Sweet Jesus, I hope these folks either get paid serious overtime, or they're given a proportionate amount of time off, what with them working all night, all day, and now into night number two. We pan over the city, stopping for a moment on the Mirage's billboard of Siegfried and Roy. Hee! I love those two; the Vanity Fair piece on them a few years ago absolutely cracked me up. Anyway, well away from any spangly festivities, Warrick is in Gil's office; he's pulled up a visitor's chair and is working at a corner of Gil's desk, clearly loath to disturb any of the boss's papers. As he's plowing through his own paperwork, the phone rings. Warrick regards it with dread. It rings again, and we can see Warrick mentally debating whether or not to get it. He finally rounds the desk and punches the speakerphone button, saying, "Grissom's office. CSI. Warrick speaking." The disembodied voice on the other end goes, "It's Vega. I got a four-forty-four." "Officer-involved shooting? Who?" asks Warrick, for the sake of those of us who don't know our police codes. "One guess," Vega snits. Warrick hangs up the phone and hauls ass out of the office.
Cut to roughly eight hundred law enforcement vehicles in full flashing mode outside a tract home. Brass is sitting on a low wall in the front yard, hunched over and staring dazedly while the EMTs wheel out a body-bagged corpse on a gurney. Warrick surveys the scene and promptly runs into Ecklie, who smarms, "Congratulations, Brown, you just bounced off the glass ceiling." And congratulations are in order for you too, Ecklie, for making a comment that could provide fodder for an actionable discrimination suit. "Excuse me?" Warrick demands none too gently; I'm amused to see Nicky as his wingman on this. Ecklie continues, "Brass buys his daughter a 'Get Out of Jail Free' card and her boyfriend ends up on a gurney. Good call." Warrick pointedly prods, "And you're here because..." "I'm dedicated," Ecklie oozes. Yeah -- dedicated to evil. Or dedicated to playing the bureaucratic heavy now that Evil Ike's off providing security to David Palmer over on 24. Warrick's not buying the dedication argument. He and Nicky move past Ecklie like he's yesterday's garbage. They then run into Vega, who informs them that Driscoll was shot in the throat. "First officer here found Brass on the floor, woozy. Keith Driscoll, lights out." I don't know if Vega's intentionally aping the Dragnet style of line delivery, but every time he finishes speaking, I always find myself humming "dum duh DUM dum, dum duh dum dum DUUUUUMMMMMM" in an a cappella imitation of the theme. While I've been humming, Vega has been sharing more news -- Ellie is MIA, and the weapon is ready for CSI processing. Warrick and Nicky's idea of processing: to confirm that yes, there is a round missing. It doesn't look good for Brass.
Speaking of things that don't look good: Vanilla Sky? Am I alone in wondering if they had to bring in ILM to make it look like Tom Cruise was anywhere near Cameron Diaz's height? I'll stop now before the lawsuits commence.
Okay, back from commercial, and it's Vega-and-Brass time. We establish that Brass went over to the apartment to look for Ellie; that he reasoned there was no need to notify dispatch on a personal visit; that he then conducted a conversation with Driscoll which consisted largely of shaking the younger man by the shoulders and demanding to know where Ellie was; that someone, probably Driscoll, then knocked him out. Brass does not remember drawing his gun. "You're leaving something out," Vega pushes. We flash back to Brass looking for Ellie, possibly hearing a faint echo of her voice, and he says, "I'm not leaving anything out." Vega reminds Brass that, like it or not, Ellie will be coming in for questioning. "We're going to pick her up eventually," Vega finishes. "Careful. She spits," Brass replies wearily. He then goes back to nursing his head wound.
Warrick is glumly cleaning and inspecting the gun while Nicky queries, "One shot?" "Fifteen bullets left in the magazine; there should be sixteen," Warrick answers. "What kind of cop doesn't empty his magazine? They're trained to shoot to kill," Nicky replies, establishing that something's not sitting right here. Warrick sighs and turns back to the gun. Nicky drifts off, but Warrick shouts for him to come back, as he's just found some of the shooter's blood on the back of the grip. Nicky leans in and points out, "Novice shooters get their hands pinched in the slide." "Slide bite. Man, Brass didn't shoot this guy," Warrick concurs. He looks fretful about proving it, however. And in the scene, when he's asking Brass to show his hands, he looks even more fretful, especially after he asks Brass for his badge. "It's not your job to take my stripes," Brass says tightly. "In this case, it is," Warrick counters. He looks to Vega for back-up, but Brass surrenders his badge unprompted.
Back in the B-plot, Sara's going into raptures at the sight of the top-of-the-line counterfeiting equipment: "This is the Rolls-Royce of printers! Closest thing to what the government uses. Multiple inks, disaperf computer paper..." Beckman comes in with, "Heavy rag, twenty-five percent content, makes for durability." "Mr. Duffy, can Agent Beckman and I see your burn plates, please?" Duffy does so, making a great show of his petulance. Sara muses that they have everything -- press, ink, burn plates, and paper -- except the money. "There is no money," Mrs. Duffy says. Sara pushes. Beckman repeats, "There is no money." Sara's all huh? and Beckman -- in a plot twist that had me fuming with irritation for a good five minutes -- reveals that the entire plot was a test to see if law enforcement personnel would a) detect funny money, and/or b) keep it for themselves. The Duffys -- a.k.a. Special Agents Connors and Tesori -- were in on the plan too. "We put bait money in the hands of bad people: in this case, a reputed con. Our directive is to see how the money leads to law enforcement," Beckman reveals. Sara points out that Avery was killed, and Connors (the woman) leaps in with, "Murder wasn't on the agenda." Beckman notes with some pride that despite unforeseen complications (i.e. the loss of a human life), the sting still held. Beckman tells Sara she should be proud to have been drawn into an elaborate web of federal deceit. "I don't feel that at all," she replies. He aphorizes that "it never feels right when it works. Only feels wrong when it doesn't." Because apparently, with Gil out of the episode, the task of dispensing cryptic bits of pseudo-wisdom falls to outsiders.
Wrapping up the A-plot is our man in the lab, Liam, who informs us that he's sequenced the DNA in the saliva sample off Brass's badge, and the DNA from a Jim Brass blood sample. Warrick beholds Liam's work and notes, "They're nothing alike." Liam says awkwardly, "From parent to child, seven of thirteen markers should match up, minimum. In this case, they have nothing in common. I don't have Ellie's mother's on file but my guess is --" "What, is she adopted?" Warrick asks. Oh, Warrick. Sweet, naive Warrick. Look at Brass. Look at Ellie. Look at a basic Punnett square. Draw your own conclusion -- Brass and Ellie don't have any marker types in common (because DNA markers aren't binary, either-or data, but rather, come in classable groups known as types) because Mrs. Brass stepped out on Captain Exposition. Liam and Warrick come to this understanding silently, and mutually consent to move on to discussing whose blood is on the gun. Hint: not anyone previously mentioned.
Warrick then turns to the passenger manifest on the plane and, using the credit card sequences, notices that the tickets for Avery and Ellie are charged to the same card as for one Marty Gilmore. Cut to an unmarked car stopping Marty Gilmore mid-escape-attempt. Brass and Warrick get out and stop Marty shortly before he roars off on his chopper. "You're the hitchhiker," Brass says. "You know this guy?" Warrick asks. Brass puts together the pieces, and Warrick steps up to Gilmore, saying, "You conned the captain. I gotta shake your hand." Gilmore, who looks as though he's about to chunder, warily asks, "This a joke." "No, on the real," Warrick confirms, and the two men shake. While he's got the other man in his grip, Warrick turns over Gilmore's hand and notes the pinch. Without letting go, he says, "You shot Driscoll, with [Brass]'s firearm." We then see the crime take place via flashback. We also learn that Gilmore set up Ellie for shooting Avery at the casino. Gilmore delivers this last bit of news while nearly doubled over; he looks acutely uncomfortable. "You eat something?" Warrick asks, realizing that, hello! he's dealing with drug mules. "I took a laxative," grits out Gilmore. "Oh, God, he's going to OD," groans Warrick -- who, to his credit, does not use this latest development to launch into a ranty monologue on the woes that have befallen him since he began pinch-hitting for Gil. "Can we get a medic?" Warrick repeats a few times, increasingly more urgently, while Brass stands by and watches impassively as Gilmore writhes in pain. He eventually calls in. Gilmore groans, "Oh, my God, I'm going to die." "Worse," Brass supplies. "You're going to live."
Brass is then charging through the hospital (I suppose he kept Gilmore company in the ambulance, out of spite), and Warrick hails him to give back his badge. He reveals, "I only took the badge to get Ellie's DNA off it." Brass gives a small smile, recognizing a little bit of the Grissomian craftiness there (the handshake was another classic Gil move), and says, "A man's gotta do..." Warrick stands there uncomfortably, and Brass prods him to spill; the man does, revealing that he checked Ellie's DNA against Brass's, and "you never said anything about her being adopted." Brass confirms that that's because Ellie isn't adopted; she just isn't his, biologically, although he's elected not to share that information with her. Warrick nods. As Brass walks off, Warrick continues standing in the corridor, looking wrung out.
And now comes a scene that's so offensive to my sensibilities, I refuse to recap it. In fact, I spent most of it heckling the screen, shouting about how it was Paul Guilfoyle's gimme-an-Emmy clip. To sum up: Brass weeps about being a bad dad and is it too late to start over, and the wooden ingénue playing his daughter denies him the chance. Yes, Brass weeps. Real tears. The scene has "Emmy nomination" written all over it. It was cheap and manipulative, and the sooner Ellie's off the screen, the sooner Brass can return to being his usual self. One small, nitpicky note, however: in an earlier episode, he mentioned having a teenaged daughter. One presumes that Ellie's not a minor (she flies around the country unaccompanied, and the issue of prosecuting her as a minor was never raised, so I believe it wasn't a concern.), so the question is, does she have a younger sister? We'll probably never know -- and given the piece of work Ellie was, I have to believe that's for the best. ["I believe one of the CSIs mentioned her birth date as in 1982, which would make her nineteen." -- Sars]
Back in the safe, sterile embrace of CSICentral, Sara and Warrick pass each other in the hall. He teases her about lending him a hundred dollars; she ripostes, "Oh! Look! Shift's over; guess you're one of us again." Warrick chuckles as she walks off. Gil then arrives, garment bag flung over one shoulder and roaches in hand. This is totally screwing with my sense of time: are shifts thirty-six to forty continuous hours? Are they comprised of multiple days? Did Gil just go to Minnesota for one day and bring, like, costume changes with him so he could race the roaches in thematic attire? I'm so confused. Anyway. Gil reveals that his roaches choked, and asked Warrick if he fared any better. "Well, the job is fine. It's the other stuff, the personalities," Warrick replies. "I love mankind; it's people I can't stand?" Gil inquires leadingly. "Einstein?" Warrick asks. "Linus," Gil corrects. Warrick laughs: "Charlie Brown. Figures. Is that why you put me in charge, you think I like dealing with people?" The look on Warrick's face indicates that he's willing and eager to disabuse Gil of that idea. "Remember when you asked what I was in high school?" Gil asked. "Yeah. You said, a ghost," Warrick responds. Gil clarifies, "When I leave CSI, there won't be any cake in the break room. I'll just be gone. So I wanted to see if you could step in. Tell me -- all of it, from the top." He's got an almost paternal look on his face, and Warrick settles in, sighing with something like relief and sitting down to face Gil. As the camera pulls out and the volume fades, Warrick laments, "I don't know where to start." "It can't be that bad," Gil replies consolingly, and then we can't hear any more -- we only see the two, makeshift father and son, connecting in a way that Brass and Ellie could never imagine.
And thus, I end a recap on an up note; it's the second Gil-Warrick ending that's been a wonderful finish to an episode. Coincidence? I think not.