Desultory shots of the Vegas skyline at night. It's a good thing there are so very many big buildings covered in neon, or the people who put together this show wouldn't have anything to start with. We hear an emcee voice-over: "Ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together for the Comedy Hole's very own Michael Borland," and then we see Michael Borland in backlit profile as he says, "Look, look, the Kennedys killed Marilyn Monroe. I'm pretty sure the gunman on the grassy knoll was either Arthur Miller or Joe DiMaggio: 'Bang my wife, will you?' [pow]" There's polite laughter.
In the alleyway behind what is presumably the Comedy Hole, Jeffrey Ross is shaking slightly as he runs through his routine, telling the brick wall he's facing, "Hey, if you'd have me, I'd ask you to marry me. Hell, somebody's got to clean the apartment."
Inside, the backlit silhouette of Borland is telling a hostile but full house, "Hey, how many of you know the theme to Gilligan's Island?" The crowd raises their hands and whoops. He then asks, "All right. Now how many of you can recite the Bill of Rights?" No hands. I get it, but he's missing a fundamental point: Gilligan's Island is a very catchy tune, so maybe there's the possibility of setting the first ten amendments to Gilligan's Island like so -- Just sit right back and read all these things / that we tacked on the end / like forbidding Congress to tamper with speech / assembly or the press / assembly or the press... -- and teaching it to people that way.
Anyway, this sort of I'm-too-smart-for-you comedy does not appeal to the club rats; they shut up instantly. Recognizing that he's going up in flames, Borland says nonchalantly, "Forget it, guys. It's really not that important. We don't use it anymore." By the way, we can now see Borland, and it's a considerably thinner, grayer, and non-stammering Bobcat Goldthwait. Outside in the alley, Jeffrey Ross is saying, "Heinous. That was her name -- heinous. Her sister's name is horrendous. Her other name is bleccch." Oh, how charming. Jeffrey Ross laughs with delight at his own frat-boy humor, which isn't even good frat-boy humor. You want good frat-boy humor, watch that beer commercial where the folksinger is serenading the wingman. This is just mediocre.
Back in the club, Borland's saying, "I hear people saying, 'If it wasn't for the U.S., the French would be speaking German.' Yeah, well, if it wasn't for the French, you'd be speaking Cherokee." Or adding "u" to "color," "favor," et cetera, but we'll skip the alternate history for now and applaud that joke because it is amusing. We will be the only ones doing so; nobody in the audience appreciates being reminded of things like the history of international relations when there's unquestioning, Dixie Chicks-hatin' "patriotism" to be had instead. As the club manager checks the audience, then checks his watch, Borland says insincerely, "Oh, I'm sorry. Did I hurt your brains?"
We transition back out to Jeffrey Ross telling the wall enthusiastically, "That's my time, everybody. Tip for the night: If you don't know what you're doing, don't do it harder! Good night, everybody!" He cracks himself up, then looks down, commanding, "Zip me up." A ponytailed woman rises. Holy cow, I am still amazed that L. Brent Bozell and the rest of the Parents' Television Council didn't immediately issue a blanket condemnation of CSI after this; I was convinced after their protest of Buffy as anti-Christian because it showed an evil minister during Holy Week (never mind that the minister was anti-woman, which is pretty offensive any week of the year) that the PTC would be all over something so much more explicit like a depiction of someone getting a hummer in a back alley. I guess the PTC was in mourning over the ending of Touched by an Angel, and too depressed to act. The woman asks if there's anything else she can do, and Jeffrey Ross says, "Yeah. Laugh." That won't be too hard; it's not like her mouth was full.
As Ross walks in, Borland is telling the audience, "Can you imagine having Jesus as your brother? 'Why can't you be more like your brother? When your brother's home, we always have wine.'" I'm guessing Borland hasn't read Christopher Moore's Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal, because that question gets answered. There's a background scene in which the club manager also fellates Ross (but only metaphorically) and Ross makes derisive noises about Borland. As he heads to the stage, Borland is wrapping up (the lack of applause is stunning) and introducing him as, "A man I'm sure you know from his hit TV show Dougie to the Max, Mr. Dougie Max!" As Dougie Max (a.k.a. Ross) comes to the stage, he grabs Borland in a bear hug and says boorishly, "Remember when I used to open for you?" By this point, I am actively rooting for this swine to get killed. After some macho posturing, Dougie unleashes what is apparently his signature move: spewing water all over the enthusiastic patrons. I bet these are the same morons who no longer order Chinese food lest they be infected with SARS, yet think nothing of basking in the backwash of a total stranger because he's a celebrity. Dougie then issues his punchline: "It's a cruel world. Ain't it great? Bam!"
Mercifully, we zoom out before we're actually subjected to any of Dougie's act. We zoom back in on a headshot of Dougie hanging on the wall -- does every comedy club in the country have the wall of fame? -- and Brass walking in with Catherine and Gil as he quips, "Welcome to the Tragedy Hole. Did you hear the one about the comedian who died onstage? Literally." Catherine turns to him and deadpans, "Ba-da-bump." Brass riffs, "I'll be here all week." Catherine jokes, "Maybe he slipped on a banana peel." Brass ba-da-bumps Catherine, then explains, "The crowd thought it was part of his act -- until he didn't get up." My God, Dick Shawn reached an icy finger beyond the grave and laid it on the word processor this week.
Catherine and company hit the stage. She says hi to Emergency Backup David, then hunkers down to look at the body. After noting that there's no foam around Dougie's mouth or discoloration around the lips, Catherine concludes that there's no overt evidence of a drug overdose. Gil asks wryly, "When was the last time a comedian died of natural causes?" That Gil, he's got a sly sense of humor. Emergency Backup David notes a clenched fist, which is a classic Levine sign (shorthand for the kinesthetic description like "clenched fist over chest to describe constricting pain"), and everyone brainstorms the possibility of heart attack in someone so young. Gil ignores it, and calls out for the manager to turn down the house lights and turn up the stage lights. As the manager does so, Gil explains, "I want to see what he saw, right before he died." Gil stands there a moment, looking around. Catherine asks what he sees, and Gil replies, "Nothing." Catherine asks, "What are you looking for?" Gil replies, "A punchline?" Brass ba-da-bumps.
And on that howler, we go to the credits. The Who carry on as I wonder aloud whether it would have killed Gil to make a joke about how anyone on that stage would have gone toward the bright light, only to trip as they fell off the stage.
When we're back from commercial, Gilbert Gottfried is sitting at the club's bar as Emergency Backup David and an extra roll the body out; he cracks, "There's a switch -- they have him rolling in the aisles. Well, I guess he's off to a better place." A few feet further down, Borland looks up from his slump-shouldered position on the bar to comment gloomily, "Any place is better than this dump." The manager takes offense to that, and reminds all and sundry that compared to the late, lamented Dougie Max, the rest of them are humorless clods. Manager Alan then proceeds to fill Brass in on his rich and nuanced history with Dougie Max, calling him the Sam Kinison and bemoaning how expensive it was to book the boy wonder he cultivated. You'll pardon me for not crying real tears over this guy's dilemma as, in CSI-world, he's responsible for midwifing an unfunny terror who probably put out some sitcom bilge like Yes, Dear, thus making the television-watchers of CSI-world choke on their Choco-Bees in rage. The bartender's not all broken up over Dougie's departure either; he lobbies to fill the empty spot in the day's show. Alan smacks him down, then turns back to Brass to admit his complicity in the cultural crime he committed: "Dougie was a hack with hack material who caught a break and never let anybody forget it. You want suspects? Here -- check out the wall. Any one of these guys would kill to have his stage."
Brass is presumably off looking at the headshots. Catherine is now looking at the green room, noting the appalling array of food that's only one double-carbon bond away from polyester. She then notices the thin spray of white powder scattered on the glass surface of the coffee table; after dipping a finger in it, Catherine mutters, "Oh, china." I suppose we're to infer that this is cocaine, but I always thought that china was more commonly associated with heroin slang.
Gil, meanwhile, is cataloguing the liquid assets: "Six bottles of Innoko water -- three partially filled, three unopened." Brass tells him to save the lectures on squandering fresh water for someone who cares, and provides more backstory on Dougie: "He was like Tarkanian with the towel, always biting and pacing. Dougie's mantra was, 'It's a cruel world. Ain't it great?'" Gil gives Brass a "you've got to be kidding me" look, and Brass says apologetically, "Lowbrow. Strictly chug-and-belch." Gil has evolved beyond our Earth humor. He explains, "Laughter is an involuntary motor response, triggered by survival issues -- food, sex, body functions, death." And yet when you laugh at someone in bed, they take it all so personally: "Baby, it's not you! It's a survival issue!" Brass responds to Gil's debunking of the "laughter is the best medicine myth" by shrugging, "It's a cruel world."
Catherine's pressing Alan for information on who would have access to the green room prior to a show; Alan replies, "According to who? According to me, the talent. According to these meat sticks, the world." The comics have mysteriously assembled in a line, and Catherine now tells them she'd like to see their open wallets. She hits Borland first; he explains that his driver's license is about thirty-five pounds over his now-current weight, adding, "I know that in Nevada law, if there's a twenty-five-pound discrepancy, that's actually against the law." So he's smart. He's also not offering Catherine anything she wants, so she moves on. The guy is the barkeep (incidentally, he's Joe Rogan's kid brother; this episode is night of a dozen comics), who also has nothing she wants. Gilbert Gottfried is ; he hands over his wallet and tells Catherine, "In this one, I'm wearing a thong." I almost didn't recognize him here -- he's not doing his usual squint-and-shriek thing. That must be a pleasant byproduct of having a shtick like he does or like Bob Goldthwait does; when you go out in public and you're not popeyed, squinting, twitching, howling, or shrieking, nobody recognizes you. Catherine tells Gilbert she doesn't want to listen to his thong song and moves on. She hits the ponytailed fellatrix and finds what she's looking for in that wallet -- a thin scrim of powder atop her ATM card. Catherine asks Felicia the fellatrix when the last time she used the card was; demonstrating that Dougie certainly didn't love her for her mind, she replies, "What?" Felicia is escorted out in handcuffs. After Brass pushes her in, he looks up, and something across the street makes him pause. We see a nebbishy fortysomething guy getting out of a midlife-crisis-mobile with a blonde half his age. This sight -- which is not exactly uncommon in Vegas -- clearly triggers Brass's curiosity.
Back in the bowels of the Labitrail, David The Quizzical Coroner is holding court with Gil. He says that Dougie's cause of death was "myocardial necrosis -- just what you'd expect from a heart attack, only I didn't find any blockages consistent with coronary disease. He was remarkably healthy for a dead guy." Gil segues awkwardly, "Dougie Max had more than comedy in his blood" -- and it's debatable how much of that he had -- "tox came back positive for coke." This is David's cue to bust a few Trebek-style moves: "The answer is, the three main ways to take cocaine." Gil rolls his eyes and replies, "All right, Alex. What is snorting it, smoking it, or injecting it?" David compliments Gil on his answer, then continues, "The answer is: normal nasal passages, clear lungs, and no track marks on the body." Gil says flatly, "Continuing this childish metaphor, what is 'how did the drugs get into his system?'" David waggles his scalpel as he says delightedly, "We'll have to wait for Final Jeopardy." Gil scoffs and storms off to wonder why everyone he works with has got to have a personality.
Felicia's lawyer is telling Catherine that Felicia's agreed to plead to possession and answer questions, so long as her willingness to do so isn't construed as an admission of guilt; Catherine's all, "That's between you and the DA." She then turns to Felicia and shares the news about Dougie's tox screen. Felicia replies that Dougie was in a program, it was her cocaine, and Dougie wasn't using. Catherine's all, "Then why is it in his blood?" and Felicia explains, "Well. Dougie always liked to do a little hum-and-coke before a show." Because nothing settles the nerves like having a testosterone-and-cocaine cocktail barreling through your veins. We then see a flashback to the pre-game show. The set-up, y'all, not anything Cinemax-rated. Catherine takes a moment to process this and pull a straight face, then replies, "Cocaine on the foreskin -- or any skin, for that matter -- is not a stimulant. It's a numbing agent." Felicia says, "Right. That was the idea. You see, the goal wasn't to pop the cork; it was to shake the bottle." Catherine comments that it sounded frustrating, and Felicia clarifies, "Dougie liked to go on stage frustrated." We flash to Dougie, presumably frustrated, telling the audience, "I ran away from home at age twenty-five. I drank and I whored and I got my own show!" Well, that's one to grown on. Felicia explains that drug-induced priapism is evidently the key to success if you're comic hack like Dougie: "Go in hot, burn the place down." Catherine looks distinctly taken aback.
In the break room, Nicky's pouring himself a cup of coffee. Brass comes in, comments on how he needs coffee, and Nicky pours for him too. Brass says, "I need your help with something." When Nicky indicates that he's game, Brass says, "A few weeks ago, Homicide gets called to Green Valley. A woman in her forties slips in the bathtub and drowns -- cracked skull, raccooned eyes. Traumatic death, but nothing suspicious." Nicky asks what CSI found, and Brass explains that CSI found diddly and squat, since they weren't called to the scene on account of Brass ruling it an accident. Nicky asks what changed, and Brass tells us, "Last night, I saw the husband out on the town. I mean, Nick, three weeks ago this guy was devastated." We see his flashback and the husband moaning, "I should have been here. What am I going to do? She was my life!" Nicky takes all this in and comments, "Onward and upward." I would like to see Nicky giving that advice to the recently-bereaved the time he has to handle them; he's like the anti-Grief Whisperer. He's the Recovery Cheerleader. Brass explains, "This is way upward. He traded a beat-up Acura for a brand-new Ferrari, he's with a girl who gives more liftoff than -- than Cape Canaveral." Nicky laughs and says, "People grieve in different ways, man. And if this widower wants to bury his pain in flashy cars and fast women, who are you to judge? Hell, I'm thinking of picking up some women tonight just by pretending that my wife has died and I need sympathy." Or maybe he cuts that a little short.
Brass points out that he has no problem with burying one's grief in the saline bosom of a new boon companion, but he did call the life insurance carrier, and it's not looking good. The merry widower George Stark made a call to the insurer the morning his wife Shelley was found and demanded his dough. Frankly, I'm amazed they paid up that fast -- most places wait until you've got copies of the death certificate (which is usually released following any police report and autopsy) and then there's a few months' lag before the payment. This happened two weeks ago? What was it, Policy-While-U-Wait? We find out that George pocketed the $750,000. Brass adds, "I got the police report, autopsy protocol, death certificate, detective summary and scene photos." He hands the file over to Nicky. Nicky looks down at it, then asks, "You sure you're not looking for Grissom?" Brass replies, "I'm chasing something that Gil Grissom isn't interested in -- a hunch."
Well, even if Gil were around to be not interested, he wouldn't be able to show Brass any indifference; he's got his hands full listening to Catherine explain, "I don't have to run any tests -- you cannot absorb enough cocaine through your penis to O.D.!" Gil shoots back, "Cite your source." Catherine rolls her eyes and says, "I don't have a source." Gil nyah-nyah-nyahs, "That's why we did the tests." I get the feeling that this is an argument they have a lot. Gil and Catherine cease their bickering as they approach Liam's bench. From this angle, the shackles keeping him confined to the inside world aren't readily visible. Liam's all playful with the test sheet, but nobody's biting. Catherine snatches the sheet and notes, "Cocaine levels are less than .05 milligrams per liter -- way too low. That's not what killed him." Gil ignores the test that backed Catherine and asks Liam, "So what did [kill Dougie]?" Liam tells him it was the new anti-migraine medication naratriptamine, thirty milligrams of which Dougie had coursing through his veins -- twelve times the recommended dosage. Catherine says, "Dougie Max was poisoned." "To the max," Liam replies. We go to commercial on my groan.
Nicky's recruited Sara to look over the evidence files with him. They spread everything out over a light table, and Sara notes that the photographs don't exactly build a forensic case. Nicky adds, "Just a bathroom, a towel bar and a dead woman." We see a shot of the towel bar miraculously leaping out of the water and back on the wall. Sara notes that Shelley's injuries are consistent with an accident; Nicky counters that a contusion on the back of Shelley's head was non-fatal. We then get a whizzy look at Shelley's body rising out of the water in the classic "my hands are covering all the parts that can't be shot in shadows" pose before somehow sliding back into the deep, dark water. There was an abbreviated autopsy, which David The Questioning Coroner oversaw. Sara says, "Cause of death: drowning. It jibes with the husband's account, it jibes with the detective's account. There is nothing in this file that suggests anything other than an accident." Nicky replies shortly, "I don't know, Sara. Other people's notes, other people's photos, evidence twice removed. No CSI ever even got to look at it." Sara concedes Nicky's point by staring at him and asking, "Do you want to go to the bathroom?" Nicky smiles. That might be the best offer he's heard in a while.
In another part of the labitrail, Gil is gesturing to the massed specimen jars atop a lab bench and explaining that each one matches a consumable found in Dougie's stomach contents. Gil points out that they know Dougie had naratriptamine, and that they know he ingested it. Catherine cracks, "Because spam can't be absorbed through the penis. And if you ask me to cite my source --" Gil's visited alt.erotica.spam.spam.spam enough to know that Catherine speaks the truth. They proceed to test everything for naratriptamine; Catherine raises her eyebrow at the Choco-Bees sample and asks, "Death by chocolate again?" Gil cocks an eyebrow in response.
Out in Green Valley -- which undoubtedly earns its name from the tree-covered hillsides surrounding it, and that's all I'm going to say about that geographical quirk in the middle of the Las Vegas desert -- Sara is marveling at the tacky new sports car while Nicky attempts to explain what the CSIs are going there. George is too busy fretting about how sensitive his car alarm is to pay too much attention to Nicky. Nicky tries again, "We're not really as concerned with the car, sir. What we'd really like to do is take a look at your bathroom." George stalls a bit, Nicky patiently explains again that they're there to tie up some loose ends in the case, and George compliments him on his diligence before pulling the grieving-widower card and claiming that Nicky's examination of his bathroom would cause his newly scabbed-over wounds to re-open. Or something to that effect. I was too distracted by the giant blinking "GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY" neon sign to pay attention to the exact words. Just then, Sara sets off the car alarm on purpose (the small smirk on her face as she knocks on the window is hilarious), and as George bellows, "Miss, I thought I --" Sara apologizes, Nicky grins over his shoulder, and the extras all halt in their steps, pinch their babies to make them cry, and begin glaring at the jackball with the car alarm. Sara helpfully points out, "Your neighbors are looking." Nicky cannily takes advantage of the chaos to get them an invitation inside...
...where they discover that the grieving widower hasn't just been exorcising his demons through fast cars and loose women, but also through interior decorating. The walls have been freshly painted, and the fixtures have been replaced, with all the old ones conveniently tossed. George does, however, helpfully point Sara and Nicky in the right direction for investigating the bathroom mise en scene by noting that he lives in a cookie-cutter division where all the houses look alike. George also makes some noises about moving, what with the house being too big for one person. I guess his mourning harem resides elsewhere. Nicky and Sara politely take their leave. Outside, Sara asks Nicky, "You pulled the plug kinda early. What's going on?" Nicky replies, "The bathroom's not the crime scene anymore. I say we go with the best thing." They both look at the model home.
Back in the labitrail, Liam's asking, "What do Socrates, Edgar Allan Poe, and Dougie Max have in common?" They were all notoriously bad dressers? Gil looks up from his desk, clearly wondering why he's doomed to spend his days working with people who delight in quizzing him. Liam answers his own question: "They all drank themselves to death." We establish that Liam isolated the naratriptamine in Innoko water bottle #3, flash back to Dougie's death scene, then re-emerge in the present in time for Gil to ask about the other bottles. They're clean. Gil begins visibly thinking, saying, "I need you to process that bottle for trace impurities." Liam replies, "Got it. Anything that might have mixed in with the poison could help us identify the original source." Gil concludes, "We identify the source, maybe we identify the killer."
In the B-plot, Nicky's outfitting the tub in the model home's bathroom so Sara can take a fall without replicating the exact results of Shelley's lethal slip. I do hope they got permission from management first; it would be hard to demonstrate that model to prospective home-buyers if you weren't aware of two strangers laying foam rubber padding all over the tub. As Sara buckles her padded helmet, Nicky says, "Seventy-five units with seventy-five identical floor plans. I never thought I'd be grateful for cookie-cutter homes." He has a point, but that still won't stop me from deploring the style-free conformity of most suburban subdivisions. Sara shares my opinion: "Like bees in a hive. Gives me the creeps." Nicky watches Sara suit up and asks anxiously, "Are you sure you don't want me to do this?" Sara quickly replies, "Are you kidding? I live for this. And Shelley Stark and I are the same height and weight." Not according to Nicky, who observes, "Yeah, but you're taller...thinner." Sara tells him flirtily, "Butter that toast, Nick," then swivels into the tub to prepare for her fall. She sits down and talks us through the course of events: "I'm Shelley Stark. My bath is over and I'm about to get out, so I brace myself with my left hand and I'm getting up at a 45-degree angle, and I slip...so I grab the first thing that I can." "Towel bar," Nicky prods. "Towel bar," Sara repeats, and swings toward it like it's the monkey bars. As she hangs on it, she says, "So, at this point, all of my weight is being supported by this bar." Nicky notices that it's not going anywhere. Sara yanks, but flies off the handle and back into the tub. This amuses Nicky, and Sara mock-pouts. Alarm bells begin blaring in my head; this is a little too cute, and if the powers that be are trying to lay the foundation for some end-of-the-season Nicky-and-Sara hookup, I'll be putting in a request for hazard recapping pay.
Sara decides the bar is coming down, and yanks with her Serious Face on. Nicky gallantly offers to step in, Sara turns him down and yanks some more, and eventually, she's forced to conclude, "There is no way Shelley Stark brought down this towel bar." Nicky steps in, and after a great deal of manly tugging, he finally wrests the fixture free of the wall. He concludes, "Someone took a lot of effort to make [Shelley's death] look like an accident." Sara replies, "Yeah. About $750,000 worth of effort." She sounds so tough, but the effect is completely undermined by the giant helmet on her head, because it makes her look like a refugee from Speed Racer.
The distaff set represents at the Comedy Hole with Maggie Wheeler sharing what makes her crazy about men: "You know how they take the toilet paper, and then they put it up on top of the holder? What is that? Do they not see that, or are they just so busy looking at their underwear on the floor?" People are getting up and leaving, but she is belaboring a pretty shopworn point; it is possible for female stand-up comics to come up with better material than a Cathy comic strip. Just rent The Queens of Comedy some time, or catch Elvira Kurtz. Anyway: Maggie Wheeler (or her character) is bombing onstage, but Gil and Catherine aren't really taking in the act so much as they're taking in the atmosphere. Gil in particular is riveted by the red light Alan flashes to get comics off the stage. Maggie halts in mid-joke and attempts to wrap with, "That's my time. You've been fourteen quiet people, six empty tables. I'll see you in Hell." As she leaves, Gil tells Catherine, "Modern version of the old hook."
The bartender comes over and invites Gil and Catherine to open-mike night -- somewhere, in a parallel universe, Gil the fun-loving CSI is taking the stage and doing an Andy Kaufman-style routine where people aren't sure if it's smart-people comedy or self-absorbed boorishness. Sadly, it's not happening in this one. Before anyone can ask or answer any questions, Borland takes a sip of joe and comments brightly, "Wow, your coffee stinks!" The bartender's not exactly torn up inside over that. He's moved on to telling Catherine that he's the one who set up Dougie's Innoko water bottles during Dougie's final performance: "Mr. Max had very acquired tastes -- lofty demands, you know. Six pristine Innoko water bottles, labels all facing the Luxor. And the green room? Forget it. Silver tray, Spam, Choco-Bees, all blue. Not to mention that passionfruit stuff -- what is it, two bucks a pop? Try to find that stuff." Gil wants to get back to the water, and does so by telling the angry bartender that it was poisoned. "Really?" asks the nail-chomping bartender, not surprised so much as curious. Gil asks about the bottles the bartender took to the stage; they came from Dougie's private stash. Catherine asks who might have had access to the water. Just as the bartender's busy telling them how nobody's allowed behind the bar, Gilbert Gottfried wanders back there and says insouciantly, "But nobody listens to him. You got a bottle opener?" Bartender boy yells, "That's going on your tab, you leech!" "I'm scared!" Gilbert taunts off-screen. Catherine notes, "You've got a temper -- and a record. Assault. Club in Tucson." Bartender replies, "I had a temper until I kicked the crap out of a heckler for interrupting my closing bit." Gil asks out of nowhere, "Do you get headaches?" The bartender implies that Gil is giving him one now. Gil makes that headache worse when he requests, "We want all the Innoko water -- to go."
We see cases and cases of Innoko being wheeled into a holding area in the labitrail while Warrick -- remember Warrick? -- watches. Gil hustles on over to give him a solo assignment: a dead body in a convenience store over on Torrey Pines. Thank God Nicky's finally working solo at this point, or else he'd be pitching the "why does everyone get to work solo but meeeeee?" fit.
As Warrick walks off, Catherine comes on over and tells Gil that the bartender's had six different prescriptions for migraines in the last two years and -- o! happy convenience -- he happens to be on naratriptamine right now.
We get an aerial shot of cookie-cutter suburbia, and then the hottest scene of the night as a sunglasses-wearing Warrick strides on into the convenience store and checks out the dead kid in aisle four. Seriously, someone should be looking into creating an entire category of awards for people who can just walk around looking bad-ass and hot. Warrick peels off the sunglasses before asking the guy behind the counter what happened. The guy -- whom many have identified as the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld -- tells him, "I don't know. Kid walks into the convenience store, he goes down an aisle, thing I know, he drops dead." Warrick looks back to confirm that the kid is dead, then turns back to ask for more details. We find out that the kid was pacing back and forth, playing the "what shall I shoplift today?" game and going for the beverage category, taking a bottle of something and drinking it without paying. When Warrick goes to check out what the beverage was, we all see the bottle of Innoko. Warrick turns to the proprietor and says, "This isn't funny anymore." You know, it's not like the other guy ever said it was.
Cut to Catherine arriving on the scene and telling someone on a cell phone that they're doing a total recall of Innoko water. As she outlines the numbers and the scope of the operation -- from mom-and-pop operations to casinos -- we get the impression that recalling Innoko is going to be something of a pain in the ass. We pan across to Warrick delivering the news to a somber-faced female Innoko executive and asking for company information about disgruntled employees. Way to soften the blow, LVPD. As Catherine tells the Chief -- Evil Ike lives on in name, if not in actual presence -- that she's fine with creating a bottled water panic so long as it prevents another death, Liam comes marching over. He's doing his level best not to gawk at the pretty colors and loud sounds of the outside world. Catherine hands him the bagged bottle, says curtly, "We need to find out what's in there," then gets back to the chief on the phone as Liam stands there, a little dismayed that his season in the sun was all of seventeen seconds long. He trudges out again.
Nicky has ventured into the lion's den and is asking David The Defensive Coroner about Shelley's autopsy. David tells him, "I checked her lungs -- bathwater. The blow to the back of the head -- consistent with a fall. Besides, Homicide reported nothing at the scene indicated foul play, so there was no reason to do more than an abbreviated autopsy." Ladies and gentlemen, we've just witnessed the forensic equivalent of passing the buck. Brass begins smoothing things over with, "No one's impugning your work, Doctor." Nicky adds that there's nothing personal. David takes the chance to jump on Nicky: "Well, this is personal, Nick. I tend to take my work to heart, then the two of you come in here, asking me to sign a court-ordered request for the exhumation of a body that's already left my hands, I tend to take it very personally." It's worth noting that the minute David said, "I tend to take my work to heart," he was picking up a human heart and carrying it to the scale, and when he said, "left my hands," that was the moment he dropped said heart in the scale. A tad obvious, but nicely done nonetheless. Brass attempts to deflect the heat off Nicky by pointing out that he's the one with the second thoughts, not be confused with Nicky as the one with the thinly-veiled plan to wreak justice on all who wronged him, so if David's going to get miffed, swing it in his general direction. David takes him up on that offer: "It's my ass on the line. I don't think the two of you are sensitive to what we're really talking about here. First of all, exhumations are costly and public. Makes this office look inept, and that's just internally. God forbid it gets in the newspaper. Remember something: the public does not understand abbreviated autopsy. All they hear is, 'Oh, what did they miss?'" Nicky fires up the ol' counterargument, but Brass asks him to leave the room so the grownups can talk. When it's just the two grumpy old men, Brass says, "Neither of us want to be wrong, but this isn't about the press, the public, your office, you, or me. This is about Shelley Stark. Now we can do one of two things. We can do nothing, let this guy walk, or we can go to work, exhume the body, find new evidence. Now it's your call."
Since the scene shows a backhoe tearing into the sod that carpets Shelley Stark's resting place, I'm guessing David made the call for an exhumation. We see David standing by and watching said exhumation mere seconds later.
Now that Liam's been shackled to his lab bench again, he's got time to run tests on the bottles and compare the respective contaminants found in the bottle. He runs into Catherine and reports, "The poison in both bottles is naratriptamine. Same trace impurities in the water: sulfides, phenols, amino acid complexes and caffeine." Catherine sums up, "So, we've got two bottles of poisoned Innoko water, one from a comedy club on Western, the other from a convenience store halfway across town." She does not marvel at the identical contaminants. Liam wonders what the connection is. Catherine tells him, "There may not be one. It could just be random." Liam asks, "So how are we going to get this guy?" Ah, Liam -- so cute and so naive. I wonder if he cried last Christmas when Gil broke the news about Santa Claus to him. Catherine points out that they never caught the guy who put the cyanide in Tylenol.
Gil tests the second Innoko bottle and rejects the "the naratriptamine was injected" hypothesis. Catherine, however, has figured out how the naratriptamine got into the bottle; it was painted onto the threads of the screw-cap top.
David may have caved on the exhumation, but that doesn't mean he's lost his touch with the underlings. He sternly tells Emergency Backup David that "she's not going to hop out of that coffin by herself," and Emergency Backup David says gingerly, "Doc, I'm not quite sure how to proceed. First exhumation." Awwww. It's so rare that anyone on this show admits they're anything less than a competent smarty-pants. It's endearing to see someone who admits they're adrift on something. David comes over and grumps, "Well, it's very simple. You open it up." Nicky steps in for a little hazing with, "If she grabs you, use your free hand and hold her down, okay?" Emergency Backup David's trying to keep his cool as he wanly replies, "Okay.." We then get the Coffin-Cam shot of Nicky opening the coffin, then all three men peering inside. Emergency Backup David comments, "Woooow. She's pretty well-preserved." True -- a tad moldy, but overall, not too scary. David asks, "David, would you do me a favor? Go to the store and buy some cold cream?" Emergency Backup David's curious as to why he's going to be doing this, and David replies brusquely, "Her makeup. It's got to come off." Thus enlightened, Emergency Backup David scampers off to the Walgreen's.
In the shot, a surprisingly mature female anchor -- and I say this only because, in an industry wracked with lawsuits from women who have been dismissed from their job for the mortal sin of aging, it's startling to see any anchorwomen over forty -- is reporting on Las Vegas's bottled water scare, doing her level best to foment mindless terror among the television news-watching population. Warrick, Leah, Liam, and Hodges are all watching with varying degrees of contempt. Leah wonders what kind of sicko would poison bottled water. Hodges replies, "The question isn't who, it's how, as in how do they expect this lab to test 40,000 bottles of overpriced tap water?" Warrick's all, "One bottle at a time. If a bottle should happen to fall, that's 39,999 bottles of possibly tainted tap water on the wall." Or something to that effect. As the news report wraps up, Liam asks, "You know they tested for the cyanide in the Tylenol case? Hodges? One, two, three? Ehhhhnnnt. They took it to the airport. They x-rayed bottles in bulk using luggage scanners." Leah says approvingly, "Nice. Cyanide's opaque to x-rays." Hodges sits down and snarls, "Cyanide and x-rays, that's a lucky break. But have any of you geniuses have a lucky test for naratriptamine?" Catherine comes in and announces to the room, "We got a bigger problem than we thought we had." Hodges immediately asks, "Why are you looking at me?" Catherine replies that she wasn't, and Hodges insists, "Yes, you are." Catherine moves her head to a near-profile and says, "We think that we nailed the tampering method. The poison wasn't inside the bottle. It was on the bottle cap. We think the killer dripped a solution of naratriptamine into the threads of the bottle cap. Capillary action pulled the solution into the threads, where it dried into white crystals." And for those of you who were all, "Capillary action...that sounds so familiar, and yet I can't quite explain it," here's the quick 'n' dirty explanation: the interaction between the surface tension of the fluid and the walls of a vessel produces a force that draws the fluid up and away, thus pulling it along the walls. There. Go forth and impress friends the time they spill something by watching the liquid spread and sagely nodding, "Capillary action in action." Anyway, Warrick quickly deduces that the backwash -- the liquid coming in contact with the threads, washing by in capillary action, then getting swished back into the vessel whenever someone jogged the container -- is what got the naratriptamine into the bottle. Long story short: to find the naratriptamine on the bottles, the team is looking at unscrewing 40,000 bottle caps. Somewhere, an ergonomics expert is wincing in anticipation of the RSI that will be developing from that task.
Gil finds a way to narrow down that onerous task by noticing that both tainted bottles had the same lot number. That lot number doesn't match the convenience store stash, but it does match the Comedy Hole. Gil explains that the kid in the convenience store was unlucky enough to take a sip from a planted bottle: "Maybe the killer wanted us to think it was random product tampering." "Why?" asks the presumably seasoned investigator Warrick. Gil replies, "To cover up one murder with another?" Warrick realizes Gil is right as we go to commercials.
Down in the super-blue morgue -- since when did they get the Trading Spaces makeover with the artsy blue backlit panels? -- David is explaining the peculiar cocktail of formaldehyde, phenol, methanol, alcohol, perfume, and pink coloring agent that we know as "embalming fluid." Nicky comments on the bactericidal qualities while noting that it's not exactly fungicidal. Indeed -- that alcohol probably provides plenty of raw material for nutrition. David instructs Nicky in the dark art of cleaning a funeral-prepped body: "It's like bathing an infant, Nick. Soft and always in motion," but before we can have a Johnson & Johnson bonding moment, David's all distracted by the deep purple bruises on Shelley's back; they weren't there four weeks ago. David explains, "Subtle bruising may not be evident at the time of death, but it can be accentuated by the embalming process after the body leaves my slab. This bruising would have meant nothing to a mortician." Well, if the morticians in Vegas are anything like Fisher & Diaz, that would be because the morticians are too self-absorbed to assign meaning to anything not directly related to themselves. Anyway, Nicky and David turn Shelley over -- she helps by planting a foot and turning her leg -- and once she's supine on the table, David sponges off her facial makeup and we see a huge palm-and-five-fingers-shaped bruise. Nicky says unnecessarily, "Brass was right. We are looking at murder."
Before we can cut to a shot of Brass basking in the righteous glow of victory, we have to watch Liam conducting a briefing on-the-go with Gil and Catherine, explaining how the naratriptamine was in powder form, so it would have had to have been ground up before it was suspended in a solution. This leads to a line of inquiry centering around the apparatus which was used to grind up the pills, and Catherine connects the dots as she remembers the coffee grinder in the green room -- which would explain why they found caffeine in the tainted bottles.
Within seconds, Gil is absconding with the coffee grinder. Bow before the mighty power of the warrant, which fells all who would thwart it in their quest for java! We establish that the house offers coffee, but if you want the good stuff, you've got to bring it in a thermos. Gil looks thoughtful; perhaps he's meditating on the portrait of Dougie Max which is drawn on the opposite wall. Although Max signed it, several other comics added editorial comments. Apparently, it's a cruel world and he sucks.
Gil promptly heads out into the club and stares down at the memorial wreath to the bar. Ten bucks says some aspiring comic points to it and says, "Hey, we knock 'em dead here." Gil studies the wreath, which features at its center the last-ever portrait taken of Dougie, seconds before he collapsed. After peering at it for a while, Gil asks, "Doesn't the red light mean 'get off the stage'?" Alan shoots back, "No -- the red light means 'get off the stage now.'" Gil responds, "So why were you giving Dougie Max the red light?" Alan claims that he'd do no such thing, and Gil wanders off, having apparently decided that Alan's usefulness has reached its limits. Gil then checks the light switch and -- well, it's a light switch, but Gil seems to think that the tiny smear of blood at the base might be a clue. He then announces that he'll need a sample of everyone's DNA.
Cut to Catherine once again dealing with the funny men of the Comedy Hole. The men make assorted comments about their pressing grooming appointments, which are supposed to indicate how they're always "on" and desperate for a laugh. Catherine's got a swab at the ready for Gilbert Gottfried, and she sighs, "Just give me an 'O.'" "I need a lot of foreplay," he wheedles in response. Catherine shoots back, "Oh. Well, maybe I should use a rectal swab." Gilbert makes a perfect O. After she swabs him, we then establish that the barkeep gnaws his nails to the quick; his index fingernail is little more than a ragged bloody ridge. Flash to Dougie on stage saying, "I'm one of eleven kids with twelve fathers. You figure it out," while the angry bartender flashes the red light over and over. Back in the present, he asks, "What are you going to do -- arrest me for distraction with intention to humiliate? I'm guilty." There's a long silence, and he finally pulls the "just kidding" card. Nobody's laughing.
At last! Brass is having his moment of sweet vindication. He's pacing around the interrogation room, telling George and his attack lawyer, "Something about your case bugged me. It kept me up at night. It's not because you called your insurance company and filed a claim the day. It's your policy; it's your right. It's not because you bought a new Ferrari; it's your money. Or because you're with a beautiful girl. You lost your wife; you need some companionship. No. It's because of something you said." We flash back to George weeping, "What am I going to do? She was my life." In the present, Brass explains, "You said, 'She was my life.' Not is." George attempts to argue the "how dare you expect the bereaved to be grammatically correct!" argument, but Brass is having none of it. He says, "I've been a detective for half of my life. I can count on one hand the number of times surviving spouses used the past tense, and I gotta tell you -- I'll be damned if every one of them wasn't guilty of something. Now, I mean, that's just me. In a court of law, it means nothing." Cue Nicky to point out that in a court of law, the evidence will mean something, and they've got that. When confronted with autopsy photos that show a big left-handed bruise across Shelley's face, George attempts to throw the grieving widower card one more time and bleats about how he didn't give anyone permission to dig her up. Nicky points out that a judge gave them permission, and that's all he needs. Brass whispers, "You killed your wife, George." George protests that he loved his dead drowned wife. Brass replies, "And she loved you. Which is why she didn't react when you walked into the bathroom that night." We then flash to the actual drowning event, which is every bit as awful and explicit as any other CSI death. I do like how the tub water is an opaque green color, the better to shield any actual anatomy from the prudish eyes of the morally correct.
Back in the present, Nicky and Brass do the "we know you staged the crime scene" song, accompanied by the "watch as we tow away your Ferrari" dance -- a breezy outdoors number in which the widower shows more genuine grief over this parting than his wife's, and Brass practically capers as he explains, "We don't have enough to file criminal charges, but the insurance company feels they have more than enough." Nicky steps in with, "Civil charges." Nicky needs new sunglasses; the Ray-Bans he's currently sporting make him look like a bug-eyed blockhead. Brass can barely contain his schadenfreude as he smirks, "Translated: they want their cheese back, man. They want their $750K." George is all, "They can just take my car!" Well, yes. Nicky adds, "This isn't the end of our criminal investigation there, George. It's just the beginning." George looks haunted at the prospect of justice's bug-eyed blockhead stalking him. Brass smirks, "That's the present tense," and takes off. We can safely assume he and Nicky barely make it indoors before doing some touchdown dance.
We still have to wrap up the A-plot. The beginning of the long slide down: Liam announcing to Gil, "The coffee you bagged from the club doesn't match the tainted Innoko water. That's the bad news." Gil puts down a file folder and says, "Still listening." It must be a good week for Gil's inner ears, then. Liam continues, "What do I have that you want in the mornings? Aside from my devilish grin and rakish good looks, of course." A ball gag? Gil points out that he likes Liam's coffee. Liam says Gil loves his coffee. Gil claims he only likes the coffee as a friend. Kidding! Liam explains why Gil loves the coffee: "It's Blue Hawaiian. Forty bucks a pound, hand-picked --" Gil interrupts, "The finest money can buy." Au contraire, Gil; Liam's about to take you to school on gourmet coffee. He explains, "Caffeine by itself is not distinctive; it's in all kinds of coffee by definition. Now, the trace amino-acid complex, on the other hand, is a signature." Gil's beginning to catch on: "You've identified the type of coffee." Liam continues, "Kopi Luwak. The most expensive coffee in the world. Revered for its rich, chocolaty texture and also made from excrement of a small Indonesian cat-like creature known as a luwak." Gil's actually taken aback by this information. He manages to ask, "Cat feces?" while across the country, countless cat owners are making faces as they to map the contents of the litter box to the stuff they pick up at Starbucks in the morning. (Insert your own joke about the relationship between the two here.) Liam nods, grinning, "The luwak eats only the ripest beans, which pass through its digestive system intact. However, during the process, enzymes break down a number of amino acids that cause bitterness." Gil's not going for the feces frappuccino just yet, but he is hip to the Kopi Luwak chemical signature. Liam tells him to find the coffee snob, and he's got his killer.
Or find Borland, and there's your killer too. Oh, come on -- there's no other reason why he was in so many scenes, or for the scene where he was complaining about the coffee earlier. Borland's got the mike, and he's ranting in the same vein in which we began the evening -- closed-minded intolerance bad -- and getting roughly the same results, i.e. a silent or hostile audience. That all changes when he borrows the drink 'n' spew tactics of Dougie Max. Suddenly, the audience loves him, which says more about the moronic habitues of the Comedy Hole than it does about the humor levels of a comedian. Anyway, this sets Borland off: "You know what you'd like? How many people would like it if I just dropped trou and peed on Vin Diesel's head, huh? Would you like that? I'll do it. I'm willing to do it for you good people. Oh, I'll do it." Shortly before Borland pulls down his pants, we see Gil standing at the bar and watching the act. Borland drops trou, and the audience goes wild; Gil looks disgusted and curious, in an "is this what you hu-mans call 'laughter'?" kind of way. Borland pulls his pants up, crowing, "Open wide! I'm flattering myself, ladies and gentlemen. You don't have to open up that wide. See, I'm implying I have a tiny, tiny penis. That's what that joke would be. Ergo the comedy." This is the moment where Borland grabs a cup of coffee, and toasts everyone with, "I'm talking about penises." Gil cocks an eyebrow, and Borland veers back into his contempt-driven M.O.: "You just want to eat out of that toilet bowl, yum-yum!" Gil nods to Alan to flip the light, an action that does not pass by Borland unnoticed. He then orders, "Shut up!" and the audience eats it up with a spoon. A FOX executive in the wings gloats, because he's just found the perfect test audience for whatever Fall 2003 sitcoms they'll be inflicting on the public.
Borland loses it: "Don't you get it? Are you that stupid? I am making fun of you. I am the lowest common denominator in comedy when I do that crap." Gil has resumed studying Borland with contempt. Borland visibly deflates; his stage persona drains out of him and he says, "The only way I could get you to stop laughing now is if I went to every single table and slit every one of your throats. I can see that I am getting the red light, ladies and gentlemen, and that means it's time for me to stop. Stop with the hate, and stop with the fear. Stop with the lies. Comedy, uh, comedy's supposed to be about the truth. You know, I killed tonight. And I killed two nights ago. Dougie Max, uh, on this stage. Because I despised everything he stood for. Dumb people, like you. You think I did a disservice to the world by killing Dougie Max? You ought to give me a parade. But the shame of it is, is that an innocent kid got killed too." As Borland's been talking to the silent audience, he's been getting off the stage and walking toward Gil. Bizarrely, the blue spotlight follows him. Borland then tells Gil, "I blame you. I didn't think you were going to get the joke." Gil says, "Oh, I got it. I just didn't think it was very funny." That Gil, the unkindest critic of all.
The episode goes dark as the husband and I have this conversation:
The husband: At least he'll be the funniest man in prison.
Me: Not with his luck. Bet you there's a rapping drug dealer who's funnier.
The husband: Or a neo-Nazi.
Me: Or a gang-banger.
[Fade out as we continue to argue over just who the funniest inmates are.]