The peril of recapping two separate shows which take place in Las Vegas is that occasionally, I will happen into a scene -- say, a smooth valet chatting up an attractive blonde -- and suffer some serious disorientation. Am I watching a show about intermittently crime-fighting hotel staffers who sleep with lots of people, or am I watching a show about people solving crimes, some of which take place in hotels, while only intermittently enjoying the pleasures of the flesh? The presence of neon confuses me.
Anyway, a desultory check of the TiVo tells me I'm watching CSI, and the presence of glad-handing Sheriff Xander confirms that. Apparently, he's hanging out at the "Orpheus" casino, the only place in town where the showgirls hunt you down and tear you to pieces after they've had a little too much to drink. Then someone who is about to become either a victim or a witness pulls up in his car; we know we won't be seeing him again after the credits, because it's rare for anyone who gets a few minutes of pre-credits attention to get anything other than a scene or two -- usually when they're being loaded in an ambulance or coroner's wagon -- afterward. The guy looks familiar, but I can't place him. It doesn't matter, because he's about to be blown sky-high, what with the car he's driving blowing up very dramatically. Some poor bystander also becomes a human croquette. Sheriff Xander, to his credit, does not shriek and duck during these goings-on, but gives the scene an irritated look.
When the camera cuts back to the smoking husk of the car, the fire department's dousing the flames, and one poor, charbroiled guy is getting wheeled into an ambulance. Gil and Catherine stroll through the melee, and the sheriff hones in on them with unerring accuracy: "Car bomb. Driver and valet are dead. Another valet is critical. Got at least a dozen injured. I was having dinner here -- I was on my way out. If it'd gone off a few seconds later, you'd be picking my badge up off the ground."
Either Gil's still retained the poker face he developed during his playing days, or he's sincere when he says, "Thank God you're all right."
Then Gil asks if the area has been swept for secondary bombs; the sheriff says the bomb squad took a pass through and saw nothing to get excited about, and just as Catherine blah-dee-blahs about how they're going to work the scene -- for someone who has no problem beating other people over the head with the seniority hammer, she's sure ignoring the fact that both Gil and Xander outrank her here -- there's another series of short, sharp pops. Gil tackles Catherine; S.S. Geek Love passengers across the land aren't sure whether to swoon over this matter-of-fact display of heroism or sulk over Gil tackling a non-Sara female. As the melee continues, Gil and the sheriff look around, as if to determine where the noise is coming from. Or maybe Gil's looking around for his cue to deliver the pre-credits zinger.
The Who kicks in. Looks like Gil's snappy line got blown up, huh?
When we get back from commercials -- and is Pier One's goal to drive us all screaming toward an anti-materialistic celebration of the holiday season, or are the Kirstie Alley ads misfiring yet again? -- Gil and Sheriff Xander are staring at the trunk of the car. They show here why they're seasoned law-enforcement professionals and I am not when Sheriff Xander looks at the smoldering slag pit and decrees, "Guess it wasn't a sniper." Gil clarifies, "Fixed ammunition in the trunk. The gunpowder must've heated up and the, uh, rounds cooked off." We get a flashback: the whole deal is not unlike watching Jiffy-Pop heat up on the stove, only instead of talking popcorn and a cute foil container, we're looking at a case of ammo and the lid of a trunk. Catherine tells the world at large that she's off to log evidence. Gil is too busy to notice; he's looking at the trunk and telling Sheriff Xander, "I believe the, uh, glass pressure traveled from the rear of the vehicle through the front, and evidently separated the driver's boots at the ankles." Which we see. Gil calls out, "David, we have body parts in the car." Emergency Backup David looks up with a distracted expression and says, "I've been looking for the feet." Gil cheerfully directs David to come on over. Xander wants to identify the driver; Gil, who's peering at the smoldering car's dashboard, notes that the Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) is somehow not melted down. Xander dispatches a minion to do the DMV legwork. Gil stands around and looks wise, or wanders off to the Excalibur (huzzah!) for Krispy Kremes or something. In any event, we're off to spend some quality time with Catherine.
It should surprise no-one that Catherine's wearing The Very Serious Crimefighter Face. Nicky pulls up and apologizes for being late; apparently, a car blowing up in front of a Vegas hotel will cause a traffic jam on the Strip. You'd think Nicky would be conscientious enough to have plotted alternate routes by foot, by back road, and by casino monorail. Catherine tells Nicky she found a Sig Sauer -- considerably mangled by the blast -- and he replies that he'll begin the bag-and-tag drill with all the little metal parts scattered hither and yon.
Gil's back from his doughnut break. As a news van shrieks to a halt in front of the scene, Gil gives Sheriff Xander a faintly supercilious smile and says too-brightly, "Here's the press! You're on! Wish I could help, but I have a vehicle to process!" This is yet another way we can tell Gil is nothing like Horatio: in addition to not arousing the fear that exposure to direct sunlight will make him spontaneously combust, Gil doesn't look at the press as an opportunity to grandstand about stalking the mean streets, Javert-like, in the name of avenging whatever victim set off his outrage meter this week. No -- Gil just places a big, smoking block of evidence between himself and the Fourth Estate. Sheriff Xander attempts to persuade Gil: "A bomb goes off these days, [the media will] assume it's a hit. What do you think?" Gil goes all empiricist on Sheriff Xander: "I'm not thinking. I'm just looking." Sheriff Xander walks off, saying, "That's good. Can I use that?" I wonder if management training for law enforcement's top brass includes a seminar like "Grissomics 101," where everyone reads PowerPoint slides with bullet points like "You cannot stop his contempt; you can only hope to contain it."
Meanwhile, a B-plot is unfolding up the Strip. We see it from 500 feet away -- literally. There's a big sign at the "Mediterranean" casino for Myles Rueben, crooner especial. And then we're inside a suite that looks like the domestic spawn of Doug from Trading Spaces and the Michael Graves collection from Target. Some detective I don't recognize tells Warrick and Sara that the woman floating face-down in the Jacuzzi is Amelia Rueben, age 25, who just happens to be married to Myles Rueben. Sara asks who found Amelia, and the detective tells us that 40 minutes ago, a maid came in to do turn-down service, saw the missus bobbing like a cork, and called hotel security. And then, hotel security called in the most discreet Las Vegas police investigation ever, since there's nary a paramedic, coroner, or other crime-solving type lurking around the scene. As Sara fishes out a wine glass, Warrick asks the detective if Myles knows his wife's dead. The detective replies, "He's still onstage."
And how. As Myles sings lyrics that are probably contextually relevant -- the line "Why you want to start giving me / all of this responsibility" wafts out -- the camera cuts back to Sara "There's plenty of room at the top -- now SCOOT OVER!!" Sidle working the scene. Warrick finds a nearly empty wine bottle, and the camera cuts down to Myles and his hand telling us, "Love ain't gonna get me / 'til I know I'm ready." Warrick tells Sara, "Alcohol...hot tub...a little bit too relaxed." Myles is telling everyone they're only seeing just a part of me. Back in the Doug Target suite, David the Demurely Dressed Coroner is giving the body a once-over and explaining, "The temperature of the suite makes the liver temp irrelevant. Given the redness of her eyes, I'd estimate she's been dead less than an hour." Downstairs, Myles is telling everyone, "You'll be having visions of / happy ever after love." Ooh! Prescient! Sara's printing what looks like the temperature control on the Jacuzzi; her expression hasn't lightened since Warrick produced the bottle of wine. What, is she flashing back to a misbegotten evening with Hank the duplicitous body-moving bastard? Where he whipped out a portable foot spa and a Bartles & Jaymes, then wondered why Sara failed to swoon? Anyway, Warrick tells us that he just remembered Myles' biggest hit -- "Amelia."
Sara and Warrick are now waiting in the wings while Myles tells the audience for what must be the hundredth time that love ain't getting him until he's good and ready. Myles's manager Sam -- whom some of you may recognize as Bob Pinciotti from That 70's Show -- tells the two CSIs he's going to break the news to Myles before the encore.
Myles finally finishes the song and bounds backstage for a quick fret over his performance; I get the feeling this is as much a routine as the way he bounds back on stage for an encore. With some difficulty, Sam the manager introduces the CSIs and says, "There's been an accident." You know, there's breaking the news gently, and then there's just kind of tapping on the news and waiting for it to crack on its own. Myles is all, "An accident! Did something happen to my mother back east?" because he, too, is in on the conspiracy to draw out this breaking-the-news scene as long as possible. Sam finally works around to not managing to break the news, so The Piano Player of Plinky Poignancy kicks Sara with a free foot and nudges her into saying, "Mr. Rueben, I'm very sorry to have to tell you this, but your wife is dead." Myles turns to Sam, who looks abashed as he nods. Just then, the audience begins chanting for Myles to come out and sing his dead wife's eponymous song. O, situational irony! Laying it on a little thick, aren't you? Anyway, Myles head off to handle his grief in private while Warrick stands there and makes a beleaguered face.
Back in the lab, Gil's in one of the CSI auto bays -- given how frequently these folks crawl through cars, I wouldn't be surprised if they had a parking structure to rival the MGM Grand's -- and standing on a stool as he pokes around the surprisingly intact shell of the blowed-up car. Liam the lab tech, who's kitted out in a CSI jumpsuit and yet another hairstyle that looks like he tried combing his hair with a hand mixer, pops in and says resolutely, "I heard about the bombing. I'm here to help." Gil doesn't even make a scornful face; he just adopts a sink-or-swim attitude and says to Liam from on high, "I located the seat of the explosion. The bomb was attached to the fuel tank." Liam looks up like a good little supplicant and says, "Gas-enhanced. Bomber got the most bang for the buck." Now Gil looks a little impatient, and tells Liam that in this situation, "help" means "crawl around under the car and find the initiation switch." Liam lies down on a dolly and goes to work. He tells Gil the ignition didn't kick the bomb, and Gil realizes the bomb was a time bomb cued to the car's digital clock. Liam, still lying under the car and looking like something out of an anime book courtesy of the giant goggles he's wearing, asks what happens . "Nick has to reconstruct the bomb," Gil replies.
Cut to Nick solving a jigsaw puzzle, except all the pieces look like they came from a hardware store, none are the same size, and he has no picture on the box against which he can measure the results. That's putting a bomb back together.
Time elapses, and Nicky visits Gil in his office to give him the 411: "It was a pipe bomb. Initiated by a light bulb filament." Sheriff Xander looks suitably impressed with Nicky's incendiary intelligence. I'm betting Nicky nearly lost a finger in grade school when he held a lit firecracker for too long to see how it went off. There's some more back-and-forth about the bomb, the upshot of which comes down to this: while Sara's off dealing with Amelia's sodden body, Nicky's looking all competent when it comes to assembling bombs and figuring out how and why they go off. Not that I'm all eager to see more of this plotline, because we're running perilously close to this being CSI: Britain with Gil as Lear and Catherine, Sara, and Nicky as, in no particular order Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia, with David the Coroner playing backup as Fool and Warrick as Kent, and then we'd have people mooning around saying,
"Thou, forensics, art my goddess; to thy law
My services are bound. Wherefore should I / Stand in the plague of crime
scenes, and permit / Sheriff Xander to press-conference with me,
For that I am some twelve or fourteen crimes solved / Lag of a CSI
III? Why bastard? Wherefore base?"
So you can see why I'm not all keen on dwelling on this promotion storyline, but I would still like a little continuity, you know? Anyway, Nicky takes off to do some more bomb testing, and Sheriff Xander sits down to ask, "So? What's it all mean?" Gil gets the guileless look and asks, "What does what all mean?" Sheriff Xander rolls his eyes; you just know he's recalling the slides from the Grissomics 101 lecture. And then he says, "Don't play dumb with me, Gil. Explosions lead the news. I need to know who, and I need to know why." If he'd just chill for 26 minutes, he'd have his answer. Oh, wait. He's not actually watching the show -- he's in it! Gil points out, "The evidence is only teaching us about the bomb, not the bomber." Sheriff Xander pins his hopes on this being an unusual bomb, and Gil shoots him down.
David tells the Somber Twins that Amelia didn't drown, explaining that she lacks the typical fluids in the sinuses -- which we see courtesy of the TMICam. Sara asks what the cause of death was; David tells her it was cardiac arrest. Warrick points out that Amelia was 25, and asks if there was some sort of cardiopathology. David replies, "Nope. Her heart was in perfect condition. In fact, I have it over here." Everyone moves over to the surgical cart, where the heart's resting in a steel container. David pokes as he explains, "No hemorrhage, infarctions or scarring. No coronary occlusions. I can't explain it." Warrick muses, "It's like a mystery of the heart." Sara and David are simultaneously struck with the suspicion that Warrick's writing romantic thrillers, and they both turn to goggle at him.
Meanwhile, Catherine's hanging with Bobby in ballistics. The gun itself ain't all that remarkable, and neither is the mystery blue goo they scraped off it. But the bullets in the trunk of the Camaro are pre-fragmented; Bobby explains to Catherine, "Copper contains lead shot, sealed with a clear epoxy glue...it's designed to enter a target, but not exit." We get a TMICam demo. Catherine, catching on, says, "Penetration, not perforation." That sounds like a sales pitch from Lady Heather. We find out that this kind of bullet comes in handy on commercial flights. As Bobby explains, "The plane gets hijacked. U.S. air marshal needs to take down the hijacker --" "But not the plane," Catherine fills in. Long story short: the man in the passenger seat who died with his boots on -- what? He did! It was the rest of him that took off! -- that guy was a federal air marshal.
The Somber Twins are staring glumly at a computer screen while it matches the print Sara lifted off the hot tub dial with Myles's manager Sam. Warrick's eyebrows shoot up as he asks, "Amelia was butt-naked in a hot tub. What was he doing in her room tweaking dials?" "While her husband's onstage," Sara helpfully adds. Liam comes in just then to announce, "Spectroscopy just came back--hydrofluoric acid in her system." Really? It's amazing so much of Amelia remained intact. Sara asks, "Isn't that an industrial solvent?" "High-powered stuff. Mainly used to remove rust, clean glass, brighten aluminum, dissolve silicas, and commit murder." Warrick helps out all the slow viewers by concluding, "She was poisoned." Or cleaned from the inside out. But if this cleaner's so hard-core, why didn't it do the kind of damage to Amelia's system that David would notice or write about?
In the scene, Sam is making the lighting guy's life miserable as he checks on the position of Myles's spotlight. As it turns out, he was also making the Somber Twins' lives more difficult by delivering this long harangue in lieu of asking whatever question Warrick put to him off-screen. Warrick snaps him to with, "Mr. Hopkins, could you answer the question, please?" He does: "Yes, I was in Amelia's room. I'm in there all the time. We're like family." Sara tags in, "We know you were close. Do you always turn on the hot tub for her?" Long answer short: yes.
We see a flashback where Sam is telling Amelia as she sulks in the tub, "Here's how this works. You give him his space, he sings his heart out -- honey, we all prosper. Let me set up a dinner for you two: quiet, alone, after the show." Amelia snits, "No work? It'll never happen." Oh, please -- any headliner is going to have a healthy workaholic streak: it's how they moved ahead of the competition. If Amelia wanted to marry a balladeer who sat around the house all day, she should have had a civil ceremony with Jessica Simpson. Warrick presses, "Boss's wife. Naked. In a hot tub. Looks kind of funky." And not in a James Brown kind of way. Sam angrily points out, "The reason I've succeeded in this business? I don't squat where I eat -- you know what I mean?" Yes. Thank you for that vivid imagery. Sara eliminates the possibility of Sam sharing wine with Amelia -- the grape interferes with his ability to be on call for Myles 24/7 -- and Warrick asks, "You'd do just about anything for him, then?" And now is when it occurs to Sam to get suspicious and ask, "What's this all about?" Sara says with some satisfaction, "Amelia didn't drown. She was poisoned." Sam asks, "Poisoned? By who?" Warrick replies, "That's what we're trying to find out."
Back in the A-plot, Brass is tracking down who rented the blowed-up car: one Adam Watson, who rented insurance since the government had him covered. Brass tells the rental guy, "Well, we have reason to believe Mr. Watson was a U.S. air marshal." The clerk immediately breaks into eye-rolling: "Right. That guy. How could I forget him? He threw it in my face when I told him we were out of compacts." We flash back to that scene, and Watson's sitting there waving the badge around and bloviating like a pro wrestler with, "I travel for a living! I don't need this crap!" After more bitching and moaning, Watson takes the Camaro; a tax advocacy group immediately vows to fight this abuse of their dollars and force government employees to rent tasteful cars. We find out that Watson drove his bitchin' Camaro off the lot at 9:40 PM. As Brass goes to make his exit, the car rental guy asks, "He worked for homeland security. You think terrorists blew him up?" Brass insincerely tells him, "When I find out, you'll be the first to know."
Then he rounds the corner and recaps the scene to a waiting Gil. Now here's my question: did Gil duck out of questioning the guy because he's all introverted, or did Brass bar Gil from coming along because he makes civilians nervous? Gil then uses the 9:40 figure to determine that, because the bomb blew at 10:10 PM, and because it takes 30 minutes to get from the rental lot to the Orpheus, the bomb had to be in the Camaro when it was on the rental lot. Brass points out that the Camaro had been in the lot for all of ten minutes. Gil replies, "It takes longer than that to wire a bomb, which means the bomb was already in the car when it was returned." Brass gets the faintest of smiles on his face before asking, "Well, who rented the car before him?"
Cut to Brass answering his own question as he orders through an apartment door, "Roger Dunbar! Open up! Las Vegas police!" The uniforms batter the door open, and after they've secured the personality-free apartment, Gil and Catherine head on in. Brass notes the sparse decor and comments, "This guy was obviously on a week-to-week lease." Gil and Catherine quickly process the place, and Catherine dusts a magazine to find the impression of a written reminder for a doctor's appointment.
In the scene, Catherine, Brass, and Gil are in an interrogation room facing Roger Dunbar, who crankily tells them, "You drag me out of the dentist's office, you handcuff me and throw me in the back of a squad car...now you're accusing me of planting a car bomb?" Brass points out that a mere half an hour after Dunbar returned the car, it did blow up. Roger finally gets it: "It's all over the news. That was my Camaro?" Brass nods. Roger's all, "This is crazy!" and Brass takes advantage of his disorientation to ask, "So, what happened? You have a beef with the rental car company?" Roger pooh-poohs that hypothesis. Brass snidely tut-tuts, and Roger instantly demands his attorney. Off to Brass's left, a seated Catherine rolls her eyes and thinks about catching more flies with honey than with vinegar. Or maybe she's just thinking about a different, more flavorful brand of vinegar, since she's about to smack Roger with a warrant and the command, "Strip."
Nicky, meanwhile, is chained to a lab bench, continuing to test bomb parts so he might identify what the chemical residue on them is. Gil comes in to release the shackles and maybe find out what the explosive is, but before Nicky can tell him, Gil ruins his fun and says, "Ammonium perchlorate." Nicky nods, "Yeah, rocket fuel. GCMS picked up the other half of the equation -- gasoline." Gil tells would-be bombers at home, "The combination of the two creates an unstable mass, both shock and friction sensitive." Nicky points to the ubiquity of both ingredients. In addition to being rocket fuel, our friend NH4ClO4 is a salt commonly used as an explosive in mines thanks to its relatively low temperature elevation. I'm guessing miners don't typically mix it with gasoline.
Just then, the sheriff pops up, and Gil says with false brightness, "What can I do for you?" Sheriff Xander says, "I know Brass has a suspect in custody, but here's where it gets a little hazy for me. I'm not getting his connection to the air marshal." Gil replies, "Well, it's entirely possible that Mr. Watson was in the wrong place at the wrong time." Or karmically speaking, it's entirely possible Mr. Watson had hectored one too many travel industry professionals. Sheriff Xander adds, "Another thing. You said the switch was a digital clock? The bomb had been wired to go off at a designated time? How do we get a wrong time?" Nicky rides in to save the day, explaining that a short in the wire compromised the timing device and made the bomb unreliable. Gil tells an unhappy-looking sheriff, "We may never know when that bomb was supposed to explode."
Meanwhile, Liam's sitting in the lab pretending to be a sommelier. Warrick comes in and says, "I got your page. You'd be a good maitre d', checking glassware for spots." Even Liam's fantasy life gets busted down to the scut work, y'all. Liam comments that hot tubs make fantastic dishwashers, as they wash away all impurities. I have the urge to take a glass of pinot gris down to my apartment's outdoor hot tub and test that theory. Liam then moves on to fulfilling a tiny portion of a wine snob fantasy: "'93 pinot. Either it was a bad year for wine, or a bad year for Amelia. I found trace amounts of hydrofluoric acid in the vino." So there was enough of this highly corrosive substance in the wine to kill someone, but not enough for her to notice the taste, or for the glass to be affected by a substance historically used to etch it. Okay then.
Cut to the Somber Twins casting a pall over the hotel's bustling kitchen as a HITG! from The Sopranos ["you'll remember him as Big Pussy's FBI contact, Skip Lipari" -- Sars] explains how he was hooking Amelia up with a Russian River '93 pinot noir (and this is where I whimpered; if the wine has "pinot" in it, I love it), to the tune of "$350 a bottle, 20 percent delivery charge. You do the math." Okay! Seventy dollars. Round percentages are so easy. Anyway, we establish that a) Sam was not there, and b) he's a rotten tipper. However, "when the prince of soul is there, that's a different story. He'd give you $500 just to get lost." Sara persists, "But you didn't see Myles the other night." HITG! clarifies, "Yeah, I saw him for a sec. He came in between shows. He showed me the door." And then we flash back to a scene that totally reminds me of The Onion's most inspired creation, Smoove B. Myles sees HITG! preparing to uncork the wine as Amelia sulks into the middle distance, and stops him with, "Who, whoa, whoa! My man. There's only one man that practices chivalry around here. That ain't you." He then uncorks the wine for a faintly appreciative Amelia. Smoove HITG! protests that the two were in love, but Myles was a workaholic, and Amelia's hobbies (being needy, being lonely, being uncomfortable alone) didn't really give her the fulfillment she craved. She should have turned to literature or dabbling in the occult or something.
But not chemistry, because, as Roger's about to find out after Catherine busts him for having rocket fuel on his clothing, that hobby can blow up on you. Roger explains, "My son, he's got this science project due -- you're not supposed to help, but really, all the parents do -- we made a volcano." Out of rocket fuel? Is the kid making a scale model of the 1883 Krakatoa eruption with the intention of affecting the classroom weather? Brass is all, "We've been to your apartment. What volcano? What kid?" Roger explains that Timmy is in third grade up in Mesquite, and he lives with his wife and son on weekends. Because Roger's in sales, he's on-the-go all over the place, so he rents a car in Vegas. Brass is all, "Still doesn't explain the empty apartment." Roger tries: "I like being married. I love my wife, my kid. But I need my space. I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, so I just tell them I'm out of town, even when I'm not." Because all the best long-term marriages are based on deception and the need to get the hell out of Dodge. I'm amazed Catherine isn't rolling her eyes with some bitter comment about a no-count spouse -- oh, that's right. Eddie the duplicitous pancake-making bastard is dead, and Catherine's just guilt-ridden enough about his unsolved killing and her messed-up kid to have whitewashed the guy to a state of secular sainthood. Anyway, Brass wants Roger's home address -- emphasis on the home -- and Roger says urgently, "I'm begging you: please don't blow things for me with the wife." Brass and Catherine exchange baffled looks.
Cut to a modest ranch in a well-maintained neighborhood, and a kid asking, "Mom, what's going on?" Mom doesn't know either. There she was, wandering around a bunch of old clothes dragged out of a box marked thirtysomething, when a cop shows up with this woman waving around a warrant, and there's this sunglasses-wearing guy glowering silently at her. In other words, Gil and Catherine have arrived to search the Dunbar home. Catherine begins focusing on the framed family snapshot, while Gil wanders over to look at the volcano sitting on the table. "My God...it's full of stars," he says. Oh, he does not -- but for some inexplicable reason, there are cutout stars pasted on the side of the volcano. I think maybe they mark the projected pyroclastic flow, or the river of toxic gases and solid objects, after the magmatic eruption? Instead, Gil says, "Catherine, there's a volcano on this table." He says it like a miniature Plinian eruption column is searing his beard. Catherine checks out the volcano, plus all the assorted chemicals that the Dunbars will be using to make it erupt. Catherine goes into a nostalgic monologue that, surprisingly, does not feature some anecdote about her days as a stripper. I'm so thrown -- first this episode shows all signs of having no violent rape and murder in it, and now no tales from the stripper pole. What is this show? Anyway, Catherine muses, "In fifth grade, I built one of these. It was awesome. First place should have been mine, but they ended up giving it to this kid with some lame red ant colony." And now it's Gil's turn to smile mistily. I bet he named all the ants in his. Probably with little test numbers, but I bet he could tell Subject 813-AA from Subject 813-AB at fifty paces. Catherine realizes, "That was you!" Gil replies, "Yeah, only my ants were black Argentineans. I learned at a very early age that bugs always win." I never learned that lesson, which is why my bedroom doubled as a hydroponics lab for three years while I tried to come up with a model for large-scale beet farming using only aquarium gravel, water, and children's vitamins. The irony is, I don't even like beets --they were just the simplest test organism.
And now, the scene where we find out why Roger maybe likes escaping the wife on a regular basis. She calls Roger "inept" and basically derides him to Catherine, helpfully adding that she's quite handy with tools. We also find out that Roger told his wife not that he was in sales, but that he occupied a sensitive position in the State Department. Right -- because the State Department wouldn't be in that police building like black Argentinean ants in a science fair display. We find out that Roger's conveniently an orphaned only child with no friends. His wife actually suspects he's CIA. See my comment above viz. sensitive positions, governmental and police detainment, paranoid Feds swarming around.
Gil's brought Krakatiny back to the lab. Nicky sees it and immediately begins reminiscing about how he made a volcano in third grade, and should have won the science fair. Gil advises him, "Gotta let it go, Nick." That's a typical Gil joke; Nicky still doesn't get it. Instead he tells Gil they've got tool marks for the bomb cap that are consistent with vice-grip pliers. There are no pliers in the Dunbar toolbox, but Gil notes that Krakatiny's built an awful lot like the bomb, so they can rip apart the volcano and compare tool marks. I hope the science fair's already over, otherwise that kid's gonna be peeved. Surprise, surprise, the end-cap from the bomb does not match the end-cap of the volcano.
Meanwhile, Catherine's down with the wizards in questionable documents, and those wily QD guys have reassembled the contents of Roger's shredder to find two separate Visa accounts -- one for Roger A. Dunbar and one for Roger B. Dunbar. So the "A" is for "adultery" and the "B" is for "bigamy," right? QD guy invites Catherine to check out the gas bills for three different meters -- one for the Las Vegas apartment, one for the Mesquite rancher, and one for a place in Henderson. Just then, Liam comes in and announces, "I got the DNA results back from the bloody Band-Aid Grissom found in Dunbar's apartment. Compared it to his DNA -- not a match. But I did find seven alleles in common...it's female. Mother, sister, daughter." Well, since Roger's an only child and orphan, that limits your options. QD guy helpfully points out that there was no sign of a little girl in the apartment, and Catherine snorts, "Forget secret agent -- Roger Dunbar was living a secret life."
And now, we meet Mrs. Roger B. She takes Catherine and Gil's introduction with, "Has something happened to my husband? He was supposed to be home Monday; I couldn't reach him on his cell, and he's not at work." Gil contents himself with only a little suspicious glaring, then scampers off to check out the trash while Catherine breaks the news that Roger's a suspect in a criminal investigation. She does not add that he's also married to someone else. I imagine it's simply easier to let the wives introduce themselves during any court hearings later. As Gil opens the trash and finds a big bottle of NH4ClO4, he asks this Mrs. Dunbar if she has a daughter (yes) who just entered a volcano in the science fair (yes). Amy the daughter is glaring at Gil as if to say, "Hands off the volcano, bub." We eventually find a pair of pliers, and Amy tells us that her dad helped her build it. Catherine recalls the conversation with Mrs. Roger A., and skeptically asks, "Your dad helped you build it?" Mrs. Roger B says apologetically, "I teach yoga. I have no idea how this works. It was all Roger." Gil wins points with me by asking Amy, "When's your science fair?" "Friday," she responds. Gil assures her, "Well, we'll do our best to get this back to you by Friday. And in the meantime, be super-nice to the kid in your class who's bringing in the ant farm." Or maybe he stops after the science-fair reassurances. Gil does wink at her. Hee!
Warrick and Sara are back in the Doug Target room. Warrick asks Sara which side she wants. She replies, "I'll take the West Wing." Oh, har-dee-meta-har. At this point, I think the fans are ready to hand it over. As the two of them work, Warrick engages in a little fantasy role-play by playing a jazz riff on the piano and ruminating on how sweet it is to be a celebrity, while Sara counters that it seems like living in a fishbowl. Warrick interrupts a monologue on having the benefits of a vast army of domestics to pick up a sheaf of paper and comments, "Sheet music? Guy writes his own stuff." Well, Myles has the time; he's not exactly hustling to get dry cleaning, is he? Sara continues looking generally somber while Warrick digs out a bunch of dry-erase markers, rubber gloves, and some industrial-strength glass cleaner with hydrofluoric acid. You know, I can't believe anyone would ingest any of that without either noticing the taste, or having their teeth melt from hydrofluoric acid's fondness for inorganic materials. Anyway, we've found the poison what killed Amelia.
And in the shot, Myles is nervously twisting his wedding band as the detective asks, "Are you sure you waive your right to an attorney?" Myles says he has nothing to hide. We find out that he writes songs on the windows at night, using them as a big chalkboard, while Amelia sulks in the background because her husband has the nerve to ply the trade which keeps her in the manner to which she is accustomed. Myles uses the industrial strength glass cleaner (which comes in a little plastic bottle, by the way) to clean off the windows so as not to put out the maid. Throughout this scene, Sara's looking downright grim. Maybe she finds this plot as ludicrous as I do. Or maybe the space aliens have taken over her body this year, since the sullen, suspicious, petulant crank who's been working cases bears no resemblance to the prickly-yet-humane workaholic of seasons past. In any event, Sara more or less accuses Myles of poisoning his wife, he more or less tells her to pound sand, and then he justifies any fights with, "Fighting, laughing, loving -- it all comes from the same place, man. It's passion. We loved each other passionately. When we met, it was fate." It's to the actor's eternal credit that he sells this pap. We flash back to the night Myles and Amelia met (he sang to her during a concert); Myles talks about how success made them fight, but that's the artist's lot. He takes off for a sound check.
As Myles leaves, Sara comments, "His wife's been dead for 48 hours." Oh, like Sara the WORKAHOLIC wouldn't try to return to the lab after a major tragedy. Warrick adds, "There's a man who's got his priorities straight." And I'm clarifying mine: no more of this ridiculous scene.
Meanwhile, Brass is explaining that bigamy is a Class B felony. Roger spins a long and mostly pointless story about how he came to have two wives, and does mention that he keeps the apartment as a way to keep the bills straight and get a little breathing room. Catherine gets around to the relevant point: "We found a pair of pliers at your home in Henderson. Those pliers were used to make both your children's volcanoes." Roger says he borrowed the pliers from his Mesquite wife (Beth) for use at the Henderson wife's (Debbie) house. We found out that Roger watched Beth while she made Timmy's volcano, then headed over to Debbie's to make Amy's volcano. We also establish that, although Roger borrowed the pliers, he hadn't returned them recently. Catherine remembers the broken hose at the Henderson place and has a Eureka! moment.
Cut to Catherine matching the end-cap tool marks to the hose at Beth's house and ordering the uniform to take Beth in.
Stupid plot about which I don't care anymore, with physical evidence that makes no sense. Long story short: Amelia poisoned herself with a substance so corrosive, it left burns on her hands and holes in the rubber gloves she used to mix a drink she was about to imbibe, yet not corrosive enough to do any internal damage at all.
In the scene, Myles is all, "I knew she wasn't happy...I never took the time to make her happy." 'Cause he's a slave to the crowd, y'all. He heads on out to sing a tender love ballad about his dead wife whom he claims he neglected. Oh, whatever. There's a reason I listen to complaint rock: it's more direct.
Catherine and Gil are now getting Beth to confess. She knew about Debbie for a while and was apparently okay with living in a state of "don't ask, don't tell," but when she opened the car trunk one day and saw the makings for Volcano #2 -- plus stars she had cut out for Timmy -- she realized there was another kid as well, and that pushed her over the edge. Catherine asks, "Why didn't you just leave him? Turn him in?" Beth replies, "He made a fool out of me. A mockery of our life together." Catherine points out, "Mrs. Dunbar, you killed three innocent people." Beth points out that she only meant to get one guilty one. Or something to that effect. Gil finally speaks up and asks, "Why a bomb?" She replies, "It's not much harder to make a bomb than a volcano."
And then the episode ends. Yes! What the hell? Did they run out of film? Did nobody think of a scene where all the CSIs talk about how they're never getting married because it will drive them to kill, but the viewers totally know Warrick moonlights as a wedding musician and Nicky collects bridal magazines? It's just...weak ending. That's all.