Fur and Loathing

Our intrepid investigators follow the paw prints into some underbrush by the side of the road, where they're soon confronted with what appears to be a dirty, amorphous lump of fur. The director heightens the "What is the hell is that, an elephant with alopecia?" suspense for as long as humanly possible by instructing Gil and Catherine to only shine their lights on bottom half of the corpse. Eventually, however, we do get a shot of the thing's head, and it's soon revealed to be an actual human being in a full-sized, extra-fuzzy raccoon costume, complete with striped tail and oversized headpiece. Hmm. Millions of Americans wait on the edges of their seats for the expected snappy wisecrack, but the ever-diplomatic Mr. Grissom decides instead to simply observe a moment of silence in honor of the absent Sobell, and we go shockingly quip-less into the credits.

The Who, however, have noted the StC reference, and are understandably curious as to my identity.

When we come back, Catherine is just removing the raccoon's head to reveal the dead guy inside. Gil is shocked by the extensive detail work on the mask, but Catherine is rather blas�. "I once dated the Detroit Lions mascot," she explains. "Off-season. His name was Dutch." Ooh. Ouch. The Lions? Off-season? Dutch? That's just harsh. What's , an affair with that University of Colorado buffalo that craps on the field every time they bring it out? Although dating a former stripper would seem to be about par for the mascot course. The Pittsburgh Pirates' former mascot once did a season of Road Rules and then came home and got busted for having sex with a sixteen year-old in a public pool at three in the morning. His name wasn't "Dutch" (and there's no word on whether or not he was wearing the costume at the time), but if you read enough recaps, it's not real hard to figure out who I'm talking about. "The breadth of your social experience never ceases to impress me," offers Gil. But not the depth? That doesn't exactly bode well for dear old Dutch. Also impressive, incidentally, is Catherine's ability to find the evening's real first clue, in this case a tiny clump of blue fur that was lodged in Rocky Raccoon's teeth. "Dutch never had furballs," she observes with a curious tone. Well, thank God for that, at least.

onto the scene is Emergency Backup David, who looks surprisingly queasy for man who's dealing with what must be the tenth corpse he's seen this week. "It's justdisturbing," he confesses. "There was a raccoon who hosted an after-school kids' show when I was little. Stripey. Everybody loved him. I loved him." Sniff. Aww. Stripey, of course, was exactly like Barney, although not purple and without any other elements that a reasonably talented attorney could possibly construe as a copyright infringement. Gil explains that "Stripey's brother" took a Ford to the face at 250 knots, which leads us into a flashback that starts with Rocky Raccoon waving cheerfully at Sherri's oncoming car and ends with his now-mangled body getting flung straight into the camera. Hee! Then David finally overcomes his childhood anxieties like the emergency backup man that we all knew he could be, and manages to wheel the body off to a waiting ambulance. And then, at long last, Catherine finally coughs up a quip: "The eternal question: Why did the man in the raccoon suit cross the road?"

To get to the other plot, of course. Nick and Sara are standing in giant freezer, staring down at a young man whose corpse is actually frozen to the floor. Nick notes shotgun spatter on the shelves behind him, and then Sarah shivers a bit and complains about the cold. Me? I like the cold. I always enjoy it when they remember to have a plot-based reason for busting out the blue filters. Outside the freezer, Petey the security guard is being interrogated in front of a row of smashed-up vending machines. And yes, it is "Petey" and not "Tweety." He even spells it for us. Although given what happens in the rest of the episode, you can be forgiven for possibly mishearing. Random Cop # Cinco de Mayo reports that the perps got away with about $600 in change, and Nick is astonished that anyone would be willing to commit murder over a vending machine. Oh, I don't know about that. There's a vending machine at my office that sells microwaveable Veal Parmesan. And frankly, if I ever saw anyone actually buying the stuff, I'd probably kill them where they stood. Trust me. I'd be doing them a favor. Sara asks Petey was he was up to when the shooting went down, and Petey does a highly unconvincing job of claiming he was in his guard shack. Then Nicky takes over, and makes excellent use of both canny reasoning and his vast knowledge of fast food preparation times to coax Petey into admitting that he was really out picking up a "double-double, animal-style" at the local In-and-Out Burger.

Now I know everyone was really impressed with Nicky's Rico Suave interrogational skills in this scene, but being the mindless pop-culture sponge that I am, I still can't help but notice that he's basically just recycling Joe Pesci's infamous grits bit from My Cousin Vinny. You know, because no self-respecting Vegasian would ever get non-grilled onions on their double-double animal-style. And unless the laws of physics cease to exist at In-and-Out Burger (which shouldn't be discounted, as I have tasted their food), that means Petey must have been off-site for at least half an hour. "Look, if my boss finds out I'm leaving the site every night to get my burger on," moans Petey, "I'm toast." "You keep lying to us," replies Cinco de Mayo, "you'll be toast in a jumpsuit." Mmm, toast. I love toast. Petey does a passable job of portraying the "ih-oh, I've watched Oz, and I really don't want to be a prag" face, and then immediately gives up the real story. It seems some day-shift dude named George showed up to talk to the dead guy (one Al Sesto, an employee on the night shift). Petey sent George back to the freezer, and then went off to chow down on his double-double animal-style gritsburger. Oh, and George's car is still in the lot. That'll be important later. The cop escorts Petey away, leaving Sara to opine that "unless he was slick, the guy who did this definitely left behind a print. And frankly, nothing about this looks slick." Except the fancy lens filters, of course.

Back at the morgue, Gil and Catherine meet up with EB David. He gives the bullet on Sherri Lewis (Name: Linda Jones. Age: 35. Cause of death: Blunt force trauma), and with the boring victim thus disposed of, all attention turns to the corpse of Rocky Raccoon, which is laid out on a nearby slab. Gil takes a moment to inform us that raccoons have opposable thumbs, which was definitely news to me. Then again, I'm a city boy who doesn't know the difference between a raccoon and an opossum, so that's not saying much. Catherine notices that the guy is wearing a 30-day AA chip, although why he's got it on the outside of the costume will forever remain a mystery. After noting aloud that the costume itself is completely lined with latex, Catherine goes on to compliment its impressive craftsmanship and fine Corinthian polyester. EB David responds to this by grabbing a pair of scissors and slitting the thing right up the side. Heh. He doesn't get far, however, before a huge pool of blood spills out, and shortly thereafter Gil discovers a bullet hole in the costume's front panel. They roll Rocky onto his side so that Catherine can open the Velcro clasps in the back, and why they didn't just do that in the first place is totally beyond me. In any event, the bullet wound is "through-and-through," which is indicative of a high-velocity round. "So he was shot AND hit by a car," realizes Catherine. "Bad night," agrees EBD. Gil then quips, "Even for a raccoon," but seeing as how getting shot and hit by a car would a bad night for pretty much any living thing on Earth, I'm not really sure what that's supposed to mean.

Hey, look! It's Regular Non-Emergency David! He's out of the morgue and into the freezer, and he's telling Nick a story about another frozen corpse he once had to deal with. "Last time this happened, they tried to chop the guy out," he remembers. He also remembers that the dead guy lost an arm and a leg in the process. Ew. As a result, the city of Las Vegas apparently decided to send all of its medical examiners back to re-take ninth grade chemistry, so that time they'd just be smart enough to use hot water like everyone else on the planet. In a shameless and most likely ultimately vain attempt to win your affections while Sobell is away, I now present you with this very special link, which will take you a 100-percent true, real-life news story that perfectly blends this episode's two main plotlines. So don't say I never gave you anything.

Anyway, we get a TMI-cam of the ice melting, and thanks for reminding me that I have to go defrost my freezer tonight. Then poor Al Sesto's completely rigid body is raised onto a gurney and wheeled out. This segues us into one of your more standard evidence collection montages, as Nick bags and tags a handful of shotgun pellets, and Sara dusts for prints. Nick also finds a wood chip. Fade to black.

And then the saucy, fair-haired commercials pressed him deep into their heaving alabaster bosom. "No!" cried the Olive Garden waitress. "We musn't!" "We must," whispered the strong, virile Pac-Life whale. "The electric touch of your grease-soaked fingers on my blowhole has thrown me into a passionate rage! Our love cannot be denied!"

PAFcon. The director starts off slow, with a couple of guys in plastic masks and a kid with a stuffed animal backpack, just so we can get our bearings. "The 'Plushies and Furries Convention,'" observes Gil. "And we're looking for a bright blue plushie. I think." They round the corner, and that's right about when things start getting weird. The room is filled with people in fuzzy animal costumes, including a Dalmatian chatting up a chipmunk, a duck who struts around like John Travolta in Staying Alive, and a donkey posing for a picture with a gorilla. "This is fascinating," gushes Gil. "A whole tribe of people who prefer to interact as fuzzy animals rather than human beings." "I think I'm having Hunter S. Thompson flashbacks," replies Catherine, before taking the actual punch line to that joke and wadding it up in a ball of Saran Wrap so that it'll still be fresh when they need it thirty-five minutes from now. ["I, meanwhile, think I'm having ERflashbacks. Way to keep it current, Zuiker." -- Sars] Gil goes on to pontificate at length about the plushie lifestyle, using terms like "Native American war dances" and "Jungian archetype," which only serves to make me use terms like "blah blah blah furcakes." Mmm. Furcakes. They spot a rather humorous sign announcing the day's schedule (which other TiVo users have already freeze-framed for you in the forums). After deciding that they should "divide and mingle," Gil announces his intention to take in a lecture.

Back at the lab, Nick and Sara are told that the wood chip Nick found comes from the stock of a Mossberg shotgun. Then they go in to visit Hodges, who tells them that said stock was recently repaired with some fairly cheap glue. "So some budget-minded garage-gunsmith glues his gun stock together" begins Nick. "And kills Al Sesto for $600 in change," finishes Sara. Nick is of the opinion that "even Petey can do better than that," which seems to be a shockingly generous assessment of the intelligence of a man who eats In-and-Out Burgers five nights a week. "There's always the elusive George," answers Sara.

Except he's not really all that elusive. But we don't know that yet. Some random really dumb guy with random really bad hair wanders into the station and asks to report a crime. Cut to Hair Brain, explaining his hare-brained scheme to Sara and the cop. He was there at the warehouse that night buying expired ice cream for resale with Al Sesto, or "trash for cash," as he calls it. "It's still good," he assures the disgusted Sara. If you haven't figured it out yet, Hair Brain is actually the not-at-all elusive George, and he's now claiming that it was some dude in a ski mask that shot and killed Al. George, meanwhile, was knocked out, blindfolded, stuffed in the trunk of a car, and driven around for a couple of hours. Eventually, Hair Brain managed to miraculously find the trunk latch, pop it open, and jump out somewhere in the vicinity of a town called Pahrump. "All right, MacGyver," snits Sara, "I just need to check you out." Aww. I miss MacGyver. A thorough examination of George's apparel yields a strange blue paint-like substance from his shirt, and a few small drops of dried blood on the inside of his pants cuff. "I'm afraid you and your pants are going to be here for a while," announces Sara, and George just stands there looking thrilled that the hot police lady wants to get into his pants.

And now it's time to wrap up the big B-plot. The hook here is that George actually knows the killer. It's his cousin, and given the context, George seems weirdly happy to see him. The killer cousin, however, is not amused. "My own blood, and you set me up?" he shouts. "I should have shot your ass in that freezer!" The Killer Kousin is led away in kuffs (which is totally Sars's favorite movie, by the way ["what can I say, I love Tony Goldwyn" -- Sars]), and George finally admits what everyone who has actually been paying attention since just after the teaser already knows: "I'm so stupid." Heh. Nick and Sara try to cheer him up (but not very hard), and George ties up all of our loose plot ends by explaining that he told the Killer Cousin all about Al and the vending machines. "Sometimes people, uhdisappoint us," says Nicky. "Why?" asks Curious George. And then a jaunty little musical segue ends the scene, and I never have to care about these people again.

Gil and Catherine are still out in the desert, but now theyve located a dog-breeding rancher who lives near the crime scene. They establish that the guy knows all about the car crash, and then Gil asks him to run down his schedule for the evening in question. "Had dinner with the missus," the guy says. "Then I fed scraps to the dogs. Uhwatched Jeopardy. Could hardly hear it, because the dogs were so stirred up. Went outside to take a look, and spotted a coyote." In order to protect his "pure-bred" dogs, he promptly shot the coyote and went back inside to watch Final Jeopardy. Which I can pretty much guarantee you he got wrong. Gil nods knowingly, and the mystery of Rocky Raccoon's death has been solved at last. Thank God.

And finally, we head back to the station for an after-action report featuring Gil, Catherine, and Brass. Brass can't believe that anyone would mistake Rocky for a coyote (and I'm totally with you on that one Brass, my boy), but Catherine is ready to rule the death an accident. They explain all the same things that I just spent umpteen pages recapping (complete with flashback illustrations for those of you in the audience who are too stupid to understand people talking in short, single-syllable words), and then Brass wraps everything up with a nice tidy bow: "Well, the rancher's going to get off, Linda's dead, and Wolfie skates with a misdemeanor." "We took one look at those furry suits and thought foul play," sighs Catherine. "But this was really just a domestic dispute gone mad." "Hmm," mutters Gil. "Fur and loathing in Las Vegas." Fade to black.

And if you needed any further proof that Gil misses Sobell terribly, just check out that StTM score. 3,023, people. And that's after I adjusted for commercials. Come back, Sobell! And never leave us again!