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Night has fallen over Las Vegas and its surrounding environs -- including a forest that looks awfully familiar. We see a flashlight's thin beam pass over a pond, then some detritus, then the inert body of a nude woman. Because this is network television and not cable, she is, of course, strategically covered in leaves. Her skin is a mosaic of white flesh and livid bruising. The flashlight -- brandished, we see, by Gil -- passes over the woman's figure and pauses on her outstretched arm, the better to study the insects hanging out there.
Gil then passes by the body and heads toward the cab of a broken-down old truck. He shines a flashlight in the passenger window; the beam rests on the slumped body of a man behind the wheel. There's a rat sitting on his shoulder, looking considerably more adorable than the filthy rodents I've seen slithering in and out of gutter grates in San Francisco. I wonder if the blow-dried rat in this scene came about per someone's request: I won't do the scene unless the rat is having a good hair day. I also wonder if the show has some sort of vermin wrangler on call to style the animals ("Mr. Petersen, we're sorry, but one of the hissing cockroaches refuses to do the scene until I've buffed his carapace to a glossy sheen. Would you mind waiting?"). Anyway, Gil studies the body and the rat, then moves on. He continues through the woods and stops at a third body, then hunkers down to look at it. A bespectacled middle-aged man bends down as well, and murmurs, "That one's not ours." I instantly wonder if Gil has somehow stepped into the middle of a cult crime scene -- an anal-retentive cult crime scene where, after everyone else drank the Kool-Aid (tm), one person stayed behind to organize the bodies. Gil asks for confirmation. The bespectacled man says, "I authorize all cadavers and associated research. He's not ours." My dreams of recapping Jonestown: The 24th Anniversary DVD Special Edition dissolve.
The camera pulls back to reveal that Gil and company are in an enclosed area, surrounded by a fence bearing an expositorily convenient sign reading, "Anthropology Department. Private Property. Keep Out." No word on whether this anthropology department is affiliated with the University of Western Las Vegas. Anyway, Brass -- who apparently did not bother to acquaint himself with the local forensic landmarks during his prior tenure as CSI head -- walks into the body farm with Catherine. "People donate their body to science and end up submerged in a pond? Crammed in a car?" he asks incredulously. Catherine looks around and decrees, "Body farm. Creepy." The reaction these two have confounds me: knowing Grissom, he probably throws the office's Thursday night get-togethers out here. Gil steps in to correct his colleagues: "It's not creepy. It's a controlled study of situational decomposition. All in all, a very healthy place." I wonder if he practiced that speech in front of a mirror to make it appear more natural. Catherine invites Gil to keep working on that speech's delivery with the skeleton hanging from a nearby tree. Gil doesn't have time to respond, as Brass has donned the mantle of Captain Exposition and told the audience precisely why we're at the body farm: "Whoever dumped the body here knew about the body farm. What he didn't know is that each body is tracked by a bunch of scientists." Because this is Vegas, Catherine brings the gambling metaphor: "You can't slip a card into the deck." David The Emergency Backup Coroner interjects with some of that pesky science, adding that there's no rigor mortis yet, so the death of the body farm transplant took place less than six hours ago. The CSIs roll the body over -- cause of death: a gunshot wound to the chest -- and peer at the corpse. Catherine murmurs to Gil, "Well, look, one of your friends," as a beetle climbs out from under the victim's shirt and begins scaling the placket. Gil leans in to see if it's someone he recognizes from the Bugmont Stakes. He picks up the little insect and sputters, "It's a carpet beetle. It shouldn't be here!" Catherine asks, "He looks more like a hardwood floors kind of guy to you?" No, that would be the Christopher Lowell beetle. Gil is not amused; he explains, "Carpet beetles are the last to arrive at a corpse, when it's almost a skeleton. This guy's still fresh." He swings the flashlight around -- evidently looking for the source of the carpet beetles -- and looks no further than the swinging skeleton which is, upon further TMI-errific inspection, wreathed in shreds of flesh and covered in carpet beetles. Gil puts two and two together and shouts, "David, get this body out of here now. We've got cross-contamination!"
And that would be our cue to go to the band that knows a little something about cross-contamination of substances.
Burden of Proof
“ And, since it's now 53 minutes into the show, everything will wrap up at once. ”
Fortunately, by the time we get back from the commercial, Gil's recovered enough to march down to the lab where Catherine's working and tell Catherine, "Did you hear the dad copped a plea to the murder and the DA expedited it?" Catherine -- who is wearing not a whole lot of tank top, which I find odd in a lab environment where she's busy wielding hot curling irons in the name of science and could burn herself to a crisp -- recites, "Voluntary man [slaughter]. First offense. Out on bail. Free in four. No jury was going to convict a father for killing his daughter's abuser." Gil shows Catherine Jody's nail polish remover, which happens to match the accelerant used in the fire. But the Jody-as-arsonist theory dies a quick and painful death as Catherine produces a charred little protolimb and, comparing it to a photo of Jody's burn, concludes that Jody really did burn herself on a curling iron.
Meanwhile, Warrick is still working on that photo, zooming in on Jody's iris and pupil to amplify the reflection in the eye. Nicky comes in, and Warrick shows him the results: there's a porthole of some sort, thereby demonstrating that the photos were taken on a boat. Warrick dashes out to the lobby to talk to Jane about whether Kimble owned a boat -- and Jane reveals that he didn't, but Bradley does. Warrick heads over there (I'm assuming it's docked at Lake Mead, and Las Vegas has not become a marina town overnight) and snaps photos of the boat's porthole for comparison.
And, since it's now 53 minutes into the show, everything will wrap up at once. Catherine talks to Jody: "We know that Mike gave you his camera. We suspect that your father used it to take pictures of you on his boat. We believe that he then placed the camera back at Mike's to implicate him, along with the pictures." Jody finally speaks: "He said I was like my mom, when she was young and they were happy. He said having me was like having his family back." Catherine listens empathetically, then takes a moment to steel herself before asking, "Did you ever tell your mom?" Jody replies that she tried, indirectly. Catherine leans forward to tell Jody, "We have strong forensic evidence against your father. But cases like this are very difficult to prove. A victim testifying makes all the difference." Jody refuses to look at Catherine as she explains, "He told me if I ever told anyone, he'd kill me." Catherine tries again, and Jody cuts her off with, "I told Mike, and he was going to fix things. And my dad killed him." You can't blame the kid for being scared. Just then, Warrick comes in and quietly calls for Catherine; she comes over and inspects the contents of the big brown paper bag he's holding. Warrick explains, "DNA just ran it. She's under fourteen, right?' "Yeah, twelve," Catherine exhales incredulously.
“ Gil's entire expression screams, 'I'm avoiding this! I really am! I have bugs on the wall! Pretty bugs! Let's talk about them!' ”
Cut to Bradley's attack lawyer refuting all allegations that Bradley assaulted his daughter. Gil and Brass are not having any of this; with some pleasure, Gil lays out the evidence Warrick found on the boat. It's a sleeping bag stained with vaginal and seminal fluid, matching Jody and Bradley respectively. Bradley begins to explain with, "Okay," but his lawyer cuts him off with, "Don't say a word." Brass replies, "He doesn't have to. The sleeping bag's talking loud and clear." Bradley then turns to his lawyer and pleads, "Brad, make me a deal." "I can't," Brad the Lawyer responds. Bradley doesn't buy it: "You got me four years for murder, you can get me something." This back-and-forth goes two more rounds, with Bradley insisting, "You can get me something!" before Gil acrimoniously interrupts, "No, he can't. In the state of Nevada, we're all bound by a legal statute" -- and here, I register my shock at Nevada having anything resembling a stringent legal statute of any kind -- "the sexual assault of a minor aged fourteen and under is a mandatory life sentence with no possibility of parole." Bradley looks dismayed to learn this; Gil looks grimly satisfied at Bradley's growing despair. Good to see that Gil does occasionally hew to the whole "only three things make me mad" speech he gave last year.
Out in the Labitrail, Catherine pulls Jane aside to apologize for treating her so harshly earlier -- "I owe you an apology; I have an eight-year-old daughter" -- when Jane cuts her off. "It's okay. You were looking out for mine." The two women have a Blonde Mothers In Solidarity moment, and then Jody and Jane walk out of our lives, thus ending this week's case.
But wait! There's more! Gil and Catherine are at Gil's place having dinner, and he asks her, "Tough case, huh?" Catherine would prefer a straight-up murder any day of the week. Gil consoles her with, "You wouldn't be human if it didn't affect you." Catherine decides the "let's talk about me" portion of the evening is over and immediately lobs back, "I heard about you and...Sara." Gil shakes his head and says, "Sara. You know...she gets very emotional." Catherine is floored by this evasive maneuver, sputtering, "Are you in denial? No...that's way too analytical. Wow, you got burned bad, huh? Welcome to the club. I-I got third-degree burns from my marriage. Happens to everybody. Everybody just moves on." Going from Catherine's relaxed body language and the way she's waving around that drink like it's a baton and she's a bandleader, I'm thinking that alcohol has loosened Catherine's tongue a little. Gil takes in Catherine's off-the-cuff analysis with, "Good. Let's move on." His entire expression screams, "I'm avoiding this! I really am! I have bugs on the wall! Pretty bugs! Let's talk about them!"
Burden of Proof
Catherine is not ready to move on -- she insists with the genial stridency of the happily schnockered, "You have to deal with it! You have to deal with it! You have to deal with it first before it...goes away. You are the supervisor. You have responsibilities and people are making a family around you whether you like it or not, whether you give them permission or not." Gil shifts -- his body language telegraphing his growing unwillingness to admit to any of this -- and Catherine puts the family metaphor in relatable terms for him: "We don't have to go to the Grand Tetons together. Just...every now and then you gotta lift your head out of that microscope." Gil relaxes as he concurs, "Yeah." Exhausted by her drunken aerobic pep talk, Catherine goes over to hang out by the window and collapse on Gil's couch, the better to watch Gil stumble through the following phone conversation: "Yeah. Hi. I-I'd like to get some flowers for a girl. Oh, no. Not flowers. Um, uh, uh, a plant. A living plant. She likes vegetation. Yeah, that'd be fine. To a Sara Sidle, delivered at the CSI division of the Las Vegas Police Department, the one out on North Trop boulevard. Yeah, you can bill me at the same place. Gil Grissom. The sentiment? Oh, oh, on the card. Ummm. Uhhh. Have, have it say...uh, have it say, uh, 'From Grissom.' Thank you." And the screen goes dark.