Day breaks on Vegas, and we are instantly whisked to the rich-people suburb. We know it's Yuppie Acres because it's got rolling green lawns and a verdant canopy of leafy trees blanketing the premise, so we can safely conclude that everyone's paying the kind of home-owner's association dues that cover the cost of importing your own biome into a desert.
Anyway, a woman with a lot of showy jewelry and an even more abundant quantity of showy blonde hair is rinsing out her coffee cup in the morning -- oh, like she wouldn't just leave it for the help -- and a man comes up behind her, kisses her good morning, and tells her he'll go get the paper while she goes to get the car. Hope he can read fast -- he's up before the credits, which means something's about to happen to ensure that he won't be reading "The Family Circus" this morning.
The guy heads out his front door, takes a short cut through the remaining rain forest in Borneo, and heads back toward his garage. The wife pulls out, and it's a testament to the elasticity and tensile strength of the human skin that her giant lips and extreme cheekbones come with her instead of lagging behind a moment or two when gravity registers their immense mass. She's checking for her husband in the rear-view mirror, which affords her a prime view as some black-clad thug bolts out of nowhere and zaps the guy with a stun gun.
Then she gets a little distracted as her own thug opens the car door and drags her out. In the very shot, which is dramatically introduced by a crescendo of ominous background music, we see her dead on the driveway, wearing the same peacefully blank expression she had in life. Her husband, however, is on his back, a long slide of blood indicating that he was dragged somewhere from his execution spot.
Crime scene personnel are all over the scene, wandering around the grounds warily as they check out the giant swath of rainforest in the middle and get distracted debating whether they just heard a Bornean gibbon (Hylobates muelleri) or an orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus) hooting in the front yard's boreal belt.
Catherine gets out of a CSIMobile and bitches about the early-morning call. She snarls at Gil, "Where did you come from?" He replies, "I sprang from the forehead of Zeus fully-grown, got a sex change in Sweden back in' 74, then entered the forensics field. Why?" Oh, he does not. He tells her, "I was watching The World Series of Poker, waiting for Sam Farha to light a cigarette." Why? Is there some sign or portent attached to that?
Brass approaches them both and asks, "Ever been to the Acid Drop?" "Not since Woodstock," Gil replies. Or not. Catherine drawls that she tries to avoid those places. Brass tells us that the victims, Mike and Laurel Trent, were the owners. Brass dons the mantle of Captain Exposition and says that both victims were shot execution-style, and a neighbor walking the dog found them. Brass further reveals, "Mike used to own a semi-pro hockey team with one other guy. Made a ton of money, sunk it all into clubs like the Acid Drop." He made a ton of money off semi-pro hockey? Why isn't he bailing out the NHL with his superior financial skills? Both the Sabres and Senators could've used his help. Hell, the Penguins still do. Anyway, Brass is called away right after telling us that the Trents also owned the Psychedelic Hoedown, which frankly sounds like the bastard offspring of Hee Haw and Laugh-In.
Catherine checks the bodies and uses her keen CSI skills to note how the two dead bodies lying on the driveway never got off the driveway. So the killers got up pretty early to try and pull one over on her, and it still didn't work. Gil makes the first useful observation with, "She dropped where she was shot, but he looks like he was dragged." Catherine puzzles, "You drag a body away to hide it, not down a driveway for the world to see it." Gil stops and gives the 500-yard stare; it's half as profound as the thousand-yard stare. And then he says, "Unless that was the point."
The Who get to the point and want to make introductions.
Once we're back from commercials, Catherine and Warrick are letting themselves into the house and checking out the foyer, which has at its circular center a round table blanketed with photos of Laurel draped all over Mike. Man, I just don't get those couples that erect shrines to their relationship. You already live together; do you really more than one photographic reminder that you might dig the person you're sharing the place with? Mind you, this is coming from someone who took nearly three years to actually pick up her wedding photos, so take my critique with that information in mind.
Anyway, Warrick checks the photo and notices that Laurel's dripping in diamonds. "Bling, bling," he says. Catherine cynically comments, "The ol' trophy wife." Warrick asks skeptically, "You think?" Catherine snorts, "Classic Vegas. He pays for her boobs, tummy tuck, Prada, weekly spa, French manicure. And she's just hanging on his arm like she belongs." And the downside is…? Catherine should have mentioned the more hair-raising parts of being a trophy wife: not being married to relatively attractive younger men like Mike Trent, but to hairy old goats like Donald Trump who assess you like property and expect you to earn your keep in trade. Otherwise --who wouldn't love someone bankrolling spa days and Prada wardrobes? Anyway, Warrick deadpans, "Tell us how you really feel, Catherine." "Bitter that I passed some whale by and blew my chance to be a trophy wife by marrying the fast-talking Dead Eddie the Duplicitous Pancake-Making Bastard, then discovering, to my dismay, that I'd have to support him," Catherine replies. Oh, she does not. But she might as well. She doth protest "I wouldn't want to be her for the world" too much. Catherine does admit that she wouldn't mind being a trophy wife for a day. Warrick points out, "Well, not this day." Warrick notes that the Trents didn't appear to have any little knee-biters, and Catherine seconds that.
Warrick's phone rings, and when he picks up, Liam snots from somewhere in Oregon that he's been waiting outside the gate for 20 minutes. Warrick tells him he's at the wrong gate, and gives some complex directions. Liam and his faux-homemade punk shirt look disgusted. If a real punk came along right now, he'd shave Liam's head on principle.
Meanwhile, somewhere on the outside, Nicky and Sara are loping around the perimeter with Brass, and Nicky's saying, "Mike Trent? Boy, he's a big dog in the club world." How would Nicky know? He's so square, geometry classes drive by him on field trips. Oh, wait: he reads Us when he's getting his hair done: "Rumor has it he once paid Li'l Kim $10,000 just to walk in one of his clubs, turn around and walk back out." Celebrities -- they're just like you and me! Except not at all. Brass is also checking out Bonnie Fuller's dubious contribution to the world of publishing: "That's also what Ja Rule got." Both Nicky and Sara look over at him, and Brass replies defensively, "That's what I heard." The closed-captioning reads, "That's what he told me," and frankly, that's a scene I would love to see. Or maybe Brass chewing the fat with Outkast and their Grammy dancers. Or maybe just regular musical guests hanging out on the show. Gil and Warrick can be all somber about some hideous first-grade slaying, and then Linkin Park will come on and help them solve the crime. It'll be like the The New Scooby Doo Movies show, except it'll be live-action, and Mama Cass obviously wouldn't be able to attend. But I bet you everyone would watch the week that Trent Reznor was on to give us a lesson in tolerating role-playing high school students and the friends they accidentally kill.
Okay, I seem to have wandered. Brass, walking with Sara and Nicky, blah-blah-blah…Sara pops a cough drop, and Nicky says, "Let me have one of those." Sara smiles tightly and says it's her last one. Dude, she should get the bag. Nicky nods, and Brass gets all paternal with, "You got a cold, Sara?" Sara turns her bug-eyed sunglasses on Brass and tells him she's been feeling a little run-down lately. Brass lets it drop for now, and goes back to expositing away. It's a gated community; residents are required to key in their gross income figures from FY'03 before entering (or something like that), and there are only two ways in and out of the place, both of which involve security measures. Nicky tut-tuts that you ostensibly move into gated communities to prevent being gunned down execution-style in the driveway. No, Nicky -- you move into gated communities so you can exclude people from them. What's the point to having a gate if there's nobody to keep out?
Liam claims he is, but really, he hasn't been writing any of this down, so his takeaway lesson will probably be that Warrick has replaced gambling with an addiction to the Container Store. I do give props to the Thomas Guide. I keep mine in my car. And if I felt like pulling the stunt I just recapped, I'd provide even more filler for you by rattling off everything else I keep in my car too; I was a Girl Scout, and I can justify carting around all sorts of esoteric crap in the name of being prepared. Liam just snits that no one ever told him. Oh, Christ, what did I just recap for the last two minutes? You've been served.
Sara galumphs on over to the side yard. I don't know if she's supposed to be staggering around under the weight of her "cold" or if she's got a case of vertigo or what, but the sideways lurching thing coupled with the platform shoes makes me think the exciting subculture this show will explore will be the mad-scientist-reanimating-corpses one. Eventually, she recovers her footing and begins poking around the side yard. She instantly finds orange peels and several cigarette butts. Sara whips off the glasses so we can appreciate her dramatically squinting while she hallucinates a translucent black silhouette of the hooded killer counteracting the deleterious effects of smoking with a hit of vitamin C, courtesy of the nearby tree. Sara keeps staring, and then flashes back into the present, where we transition into Nicky standing where the killer was and telling her there's no sign of forced entry from the rear. It was consensual. Sorry, I had to. Seriously, no sign of entry at all. Sara lisps of her discovery, swirling the cough drop from side to side. Nicky comments, "You still sucking on that same cough drop?" Sara awkwardly explains, "I'm a slow sucker." Talk about your trophy wife assets. Nicky gets back to the case with, "Assuming the killer didn't live in the community, how did he gain entry?"
And then Nicky answers his own question by noting the narrow treads in the mud ringing the estate walls. The killers got in and out on bicycles. Nicky formulates this theory while standing in the street and hallucinating like Sara did. I do approve of this new special effect.
Inside, Catherine's rattling off scene particulars to catch Liam up to speed as they head up the big spiral staircase toward the Trents' bedroom. Liam asks what they're looking for, and Catherine replies, "Anything inside that'll make the outside make sense." She orders Liam onto his hands and knees to check the carpet for trace. While Catherine checks the closet and dresser drawers, Liam crawls around the floor. When Catherine gets to the jewelry box, she notes the opened clasp. She lifts the lid and calls for Liam; she needs him to photograph something. He's entranced by the tidy canvas-covered storage containers under the bed -- which I covet, even though I know rationally that it's a sucker purchase since they live under the bed, and you can therefore pick up cheaper and uglier containers that are just as useful -- and instead of saying, "Okay!" he asks Catherine why he's photographing something. We'll assume he's asking in the spirit of scientific inquiry. Catherine swings out the empty trays where jewelry should be and tells him, "It's what I didn't find." Over by the bed, Liam tells her he found blood. Catherine heads on over to check it out. Liam is looking through the storage containers, which hold…porn movies. Porn movies starring the late, great Laurel Trent. Catherine gets all judgmental with, "Porn. That figures. Sunburn Sin, mmmm. Starring Laurel Lust. That's Laurel Trent." Liam confirms that Laurel Lust and Laurel Trent are one and the some. Catherine notes that Sunburn Sin was a Goode/Mike T production, and deduces that Mike T = Mike Trent. Catherine quips, "I bet he seduced her, and then he produced her." So it's an old-fashioned love story, is what she's saying.
After some time elapses, David the PG-13 Coroner is telling Gil, "Laurel Trent had some work done. Implants, which she later had removed. She has a four-centimeter long scar at the edge of the areola, collapsed fibrous capsules in both breasts --" Gil cuts him off before we go into a further discussion of the many ways in which breast implants can be harmful for one's health, like: capsular contracture, where tissue can contract around the implant and looks distorted in addition to being rock-hard and extremely painful; deflation and rupture leading to granulomas when the foreign material you stuffed in your chest migrates around (the FDA notes, "Breast implants are not lifetime devices and cannot be expected to last forever. Some implants deflate or rupture in the first few months after being implanted and some deflate after several years; others are intact 10 or more years after the surgery"); toxic shock syndrome; hematoma (collection of blood) or seroma (watery portion of blood) requiring draining around the implants; implant extrusion; necrosis; chest wall deformities, et cetera. (For some reading that'll keep you up nights, check out: "Safety of Silicone Breast Implants." Institute of Medicine National Academy Press, Washington, D.C. 2000. {IOM Report}; Gabriel SE, Woods JE, O'Fallon WM, Beard CM, Kurland LT, Melton LJ. "Complications leading to surgery after breast implantation." New England Journal of Medicine1997; 336:679-682; Duffy MJ, Woods JE. "Health risks of failed silicone gel breast implants: a 30-year clinical experience." Plastic Reconstructive Surgery 1994;94:295-299; Berg WA, Caskey CI Hamper UM, Kuhlman JE, Anderson ND, Chang BW, Sheth S, Zerhouni EA. "Single- and double-lumen silicone breast implant integrity: Prospective evaluation of MR and US criteria." Radiology 1995;197:45-52.)
Anyway, Gil cuts him off with, "Fascinating. Cause of death?" Getting shot in the back of the head, of course. David sent the bullets off to the lab, but saved Mike Trent's body for Gil so they could gaze upon the two neat little burns from getting hit with a stun gun. This strikes David as overkill: "If you're close enough to stun him, you're close enough to shoot him."
More time elapses, since Warrick and Nicky are checking out the crime scene at night, having presumably dispatched Liam to go stock his car and Sara to the cold medicines/analgesics aisle at Rite-Aid. Warrick is telling Nicky, "And I always make sure each place setting has a salad fork, a meat course fork, a soup spoon, a tablespoon and a tea spoon. There's a bread plate on the left, with butter knife, with water and wine glasses on the right. I always make sure I've got extra coffee cups and saucers, just in case someone drops in around the dessert course…" Get him started on being prepared, and he'll carry on all night.
I'm making that all up. Warrick and Nicky are actually jawing about a possible chain of events that would let the suspects bicycle in, kill two people, rip off the jewelry inside, and ride off into the sunrise. Nicky's all, "That's a little low-rent, don't you think?" Clearly Nicky has never actually walked inside a bike shop. Warrick points out that bikes provide a stealthier getaway than a car would.
The two men then stop at the number pad outside the gate that Liam couldn't get in. Nicky says, "Sara found an orange peel in the side yard. What do you think -- sticky fingers?" Warrick asks if citrus will illuminate (under UV light). Nicky says that sugar will, if it's derivatized. For those of you who are all, "De-what?" or getting confused because you thought you left derivatives behind in calculus, in this context, "derivatization" means to chemically modify a compound so the new compound has properties that allow for easy gas chromatography. In the case of a sugar, derivatization involves increasing its volatility by getting rid of its polar hydroxyl (OH) groups (among other functional groups, or clusters of distinguishing molecules that give each chemical compound its unique composition) and targets oxygen, sulfur, nitrogen and phosphorus functional groups.
Nicky asks if Warrick has any fluorescent reagents, and Warrick mercifully does not recite the whole list. Instead, he veers in the opposite direction: "I've got ANTS. And not the insect." Nicky shoots back, "Amino-naphthalene-trisulfonic acid," instead of making a Gil joke. Y'all are on your own for figuring out what this does; I can't explain it beyond "it's a flourophore," i.e. a fluorescent molecule attached to a chemical that aids in the visual detection of the chemical. Anyway, Warrick sprays, and they determine that the 1, 3, 5, and 6 pads were pressed in some configuration. The killers had the code.
Back at the Labitrail, Catherine is complaining, "We're mid-case. Why do we have to do this now?" and Gil tells her that unless he gets his evaluations in, he'll be written up. Catherine realizes she can't push Gil on this, so she'll just vent and make it an unproductive meeting for both of them. She says, "My goals…all right, for starters, I'd like two consecutive nights off. I would like to cut my triples down to 10 instead of the usual 20, and I would love to find a reliable babysitter so I could have myself some kind of a personal life." Gil, who has been scribbling all this down, doesn't look up as he asks, "You don't have a personal life?" Catherine snaps, "Write this down: I haven't had sex in six -- no, seven months." I'm not sure what reaction I should have first: astonishment that Catherine told her boss this, or curiosity as to who Catherine last hopped in the sack with and when. Gil looks up, opens his mouth as if to say something, collects his thoughts, then finally asks in as professional a tone as he can manage, "How can I help?" Catherine cocks an eyebrow, and Gil clarifies, "You. Advance, I mean. Do you have any interest in changing sections in the lab, for instance?" Catherine keeps on venting with, "How do you do this? How do you schedule juggling scheduling and vacations and time off --" Gil replies, "The goal of any supervisor is to teach someone how to take his place someday." And here I thought it was to establish a petty middle-management fiefdom predicated on power-tripping and making up palace intrigues by the water cooler. Catherine asks, "Are you going someplace?" "In May 2007, yeah," Gil shoots back. Oh, he does not. He merely replies, "You never know." Catherine asks if Gil's considering her. Gil replies, "Why not? You're certainly qualified. But a CSI who uses the DNA lab to establish her own paternity calls into question her judgment, don't you think?"
Gil hands over the evaluation, and Catherine flips through it before commenting, "You've left that out. Are you covering for me?" "I believe that we've dealt with this issue, handled it internally. And as far as I'm concerned, it's dead." I'm guessing this is writer-speak for "Don't ask us to explain why Catherine didn't get fired after that stunt. We've stuck a fork in it." Gil continues, "Besides, you'll never do it again, so just sign your name by the red X." Catherine has an attack of conscience and admits, "Before I sign, since we're putting all of our cards on the table, there's something you should know. Sam Braun wrote me a check and I cashed it."
Gil does not take this well. He asks about the amount, and Catherine cagily replies, "Enough so Lindsey and I can do anything, but not enough to go where we can do nothing." Gil points out that Sam Braun was a murder suspect in one of her cases, and asks, "How does this not look like a payoff?" Catherine claims that a lawyer she consulted told her it wasn't, conveniently forgetting years of professional experience that should have demonstrated that lawyers are extremely good at crafting arguments for an audience that may have no actual bearing on reality. Gil asks about the potential for comprising the lab, and Catherine protests that she'd never compromise either Gil or the lab. Gil actually raises his voice when he replies, "Maybe not legally, but ethically?" Catherine's got no good reply for that, since now doesn't really seem to be the right time to reveal that she's something of a situational ethics kind of gal. Gil presses, "What else should I know, Catherine?" She's kind of taken aback that Gil's so upset about this, and replies, "That's everything." Catherine signs the evaluation and leaves the office while Gil sits and stews over this. You can't really blame the guy.
Naturally, the thing Catherine needs to do is go work with her least-favorite CSI, so she heads in for a chat with Sara. Sara rattles off all the detritus she's working on, then smacks Catherine away from rifling through the evidence with, "Stop. I-I got a system here." The relevant piece of information from this scene: there was a release form folded into the purse, seeking permission to shoot an adult film at the Acid Drop. The petitioner is Drake the Snake Productions. Could the guy have chosen a more obvious porn-producer name?
We zip across a brightly-lit neon Vegas to the Acid Drop, which seems pretty lame for a must-go-to club. It's the white patent boots the go-go dancers are wearing; that material will forever scream,"1970!"to me, and the ironic retro reinterpretation of the 1970s is over. All those designers who want us to ironically embrace repressive 1950s style said so. Catherine heads on in with nobody giving her a second look, and bids the floor manager to take her to see the boss.
Instead, he takes her to what looks like an extremely bad light installation. I expect Carrie to flip over this nonsense, but this show has better things to do. Or, if the sudden flare Catherine's pheromones sent up at the sight of the manager (whom some of you will remember as Krycek from X-Files) is any indication, this show has a different sex-obsessed plucky single gal to focus on.
After Krycek-the-manager gives some lame, commerce-bloated pep talk to the waitresses -- evidently tonight's effort to separate the patrons from their money is a memorial service -- he and Catherine repair to the club's VIP room to blabber at each other long enough to establish that a) Mike and Laurel really dug each other; b) Krycek has been running Mike's clubs ever since he dissolved his partnership with Kyle Goode; c) Drake the Snake is "harmless. He saw one Ron Jeremy movie and now he sees dollar signs." Catherine is bizarrely charmed by this. Then Catherine and Krycek -- a.k.a. Chris Bezich -- finally get around to making introductions while "Foreplay Fugue in a F-Me" tinkles in the background. Chris smilingly shows her over to Drake the Snake.
Drake is exhibiting profound respect for the dead by calling Laurel "a cash register in panties." And here I thought porn was an underwear-free profession. Drake explains that he didn't want to be partners with Mike because "the guy would chew you up and spit you out as soon as you look at you." Kyle Goode was evidently equally delightful to deal with. Anyway, Drake said he had a plan for a porn movie -- somehow, that sounds less impressive than "I have a plan for a movie that ends with people hanging off Mount Rushmore" -- and all he wanted was a location, but Mike wasn't exactly the go-to guy for favors, since he tended to answer questions with his fists. Drake is nothing if not a creative problem-solver, so he began working on procuring his location by "pull[ing] a Geffen. I went straight to Yoko." My mind just tried to conceptualize what being the Yoko Ono of porn might entail, and I think I hurt something. What Drake means is that he gave Laurel the release to give to Mike. Catherine smarts off about the porn biz and murder raps as a way of getting Drake to open up and say, "Aaahh."
Back at the Labitrail, Warrick and Nicky are wheeling in all of the swanky subdivision's abandoned bikes. The two bikes the guys were looking at were found in the alley behind the fire department, and are therefore suspicious. We go through the usual rondo of dusting, peering, and pronouncing some kind of evidence-based plot point ("Sugar on the handlebars of both bikes"), and Warrick figures out how to ID the bikes. He pulls off the seat and pulls a rolled-up receipt out the stem. Nicky laughs delightedly and asks, "How did you know that receipt was in there?" Warrick replies, "I used to read point spreads. Now I read books. And obsessively catalog my possessions over and over and over again." We find out one Ross Davis owns one of the getaway bikes.
Make that owned. The poor kid is saying indignantly, "This is a little intense for getting my bike stolen. I already gotta new one." Warrick asks if Ross reported the bike stolen. Ross snorts, "You're kidding me, right?" I gotjumped, man…by two bucked-ass brothers. They were both yoked as hell. Ripped. I thought for a second they were going to kill me." We flashback to Ross's near-death experience. When we come back, Gil notes that Ross is grabbing his neck; he comments, "It's killing me. I don't know what the hell they hit me with." Ooh, ooh, ooh! Gil knows! It's a stun gun!
When we get back from commercials, Liam and Catherine are heading toward an afternoon at the sexual-harassment-in-the-workplace seminar. I mean that in a purely metaphorical sense: Catherine's charging on through the Labitrail while Liam trots behind her and leers that he's found something on her butt. Catherine breezily asks, "You checking out my butt?" and Liam hastens to assure her, "I was. As well as the four cigarette butts Sara found at the crime scene." Catherine replies, "Oh." Is she disappointed that the techs are actually working, as opposed to just lurking in the halls, hoping to catch a glimpse of her hinders? Liam tells her he sent the butts over to Hodges, then adds, "Your butt's fine." What, did he read Catherine's evaluation and the part about her not getting laid for months? Is he hoping that ninety percent of success is showing up? Liam then mercifully switches gears and tells Catherine that the blood found in the bedroom is a match to Drake the Snake, as are three of the four cigarette butts. The fourth butt is a match to a mystery woman, and the orange seeds were spit out by two other anonymous male donors. Oh, whatever.
Brass is now talking to Drake, wondering why the Snake's blood was in the bedroom and not in the kitchen (where Mike presumably whupped him before), and why Drake might lie about it. Drake admits he was in the bedroom, and defends the lady's honor by saying, "[Laurel] wasn't on her knees. I was. I was begging for a job, not for sex." And then Mike comes on in and smacks Drake around. Drake also disabuses Brass of the notion that he and Laurel were an item; during Laurel's movie-making days, they used to have a strictly-business relationship insofar as carnal activities went, but that was a long time ago. Brass asks, "So what does killing the Trents get you?" Drake answers, "Zero." From this angle, he looks like Josh Lyman's seedy younger brother -- the one who's a jerk to everyone in the San Fernando valley, as opposed to the one who's a jerk to everyone in the Potomac Tidal Basin. Anyway, Brass drops the news about the multiple cigarette butts, and Drake tells him, "I don't know what you're talking about. I don't. I smoke one place, okay? I smoke at work. I'm down to one a day. Right after happy hour, I have my one cigarette, and it's out back, by the service register. You ask anybody."
Back at the Acid Drop -- and frankly, the only thing vaguely acidic about it is the citrus-hued lighting -- Chris is telling Catherine that Drake's telling the truth. It seems a lot more straightforward than what I just wrote. Catherine dismissively "mmm-hmms" and adds, "We still have to verify it with evidence." Chris gets a bit of that WOCKA-chicka-WOCKA-chicka action in his tone and asks, "You verify everything?" "Everything," Catherine assures him. And if this were a porn film, he'd be unzipping his fly and smarming, "How would you verify this evidence? Oral swab?" and then…well, y'all can take it from there. And probably already have, in the "We Don't Work Theories" section of the forum. Anyway, Catherine informs Chris all sultry-like that she's also verified him. Chris muses, "You can't blame Drake, you know? He's trying to give up cigarettes. That's like me trying to give up…" Scharffen Berger? Chubby Hubby? As of Ash Wednesday, I'm going cold turkey on both. I feel Drake's pain. Anyway, Catherine oozes, "Sex?" and the camera comes in for a close-up avec fromage. Mmm, cheese. At least the no-sweets-for-Lent deal doesn't include cheese. I could go for some Wensleydale right now, with some thinly-sliced pear and Digestive biscuits. And I'm babbling about food as an avoidance tactic for this scene.
Okay, having shrieked, "Ethics! Ethics! Ethics!" at the screen, I can continue. Chris insinuates himself on her wavelength by saying, "Everyone needs to indulge in their vice at least once a day, right?" Catherine obliquely inquires about the competition (the cadre of youthful cocktail waitresses) and Chris tells her he's cleared the field. Then he almost asks her out and they engage in some super-lame banter, and then they suck face. Gil must be so proud: Catherine's barely had time to ponder her evaluation, and yet she's already headed toward accomplishing one of her goals.
Conveniently enough, the two stop kissing right around the time my eyeballs finish their defensive circuit of my sockets and point screenward again. Catherine conveniently remembers that Gil's views on rutting with possible murder suspects may be as dim as his views on taking money from them. She extracts a promise to return to this situation at a later date.
Meanwhile, we swing back to the woman on this show who apparently can't get laid without egregious complications. I blame the hair. Brass comes over to ask how Sara is, and she turns around, shouting in a slurred voice, "There'sh only coffee in thish mug! I'm not drinking!" Oh, she does not. But she might as well. Brass continues, "You were popping cough drops at the scene the other day a mile a minute." Sara explains she was only waiting for the yodeling dude from the Ricola commercials to appear. Brass then kicks into his own story about his debilitating Metho-Lyptus addiction, if by "Mentho-Lyptus" you mean "Scotch." ["Oh, brother. Don't we already have a Lenny Briscoe?" -- Sars] Brass finishes with, "There's more problems than answers in the bottom of a bottle." Which is a fine argument for Jell-O shots in paper cups. Instead of telling Brass to take the bottle and shove it someplace problematic indeed, Sara admits, "I had a couple of beers with breakfast, and then I got called in." Just then, Warrick pops up to tell Sara how he always keeps a plate of Saltines and a quart of water by the phone so he can sober up on call. Oh, he does not. This is just a little avuncular Brass and pathetic Sara. Because apparently three seasons of an accomplished CSI grooving on her job and eying her boss with a little lust in her heart were three seasons too many, so we've got to punish Sara for not having openly worried about whether she's pretty or maybe too threatening to the boys in the lab.
Speaking of father figures, Gil's brooding at his desk, either chewing on the Catherine situation or wondering if the evaluations can possibly get worse. I personally wonder if we'll see another evaluation again: I dug the last round because we got a subtle look at all the characters in the context of their jobs. Brass asks what Gil's doing after work, and Gil replies, "More work." Who among us is surprised? Brass notes that Gil's been eyeballing photos of Laurel Trent's jewelry, all $2 million of it. Brass has one eye on the pawn shops. Gil's got a funny feeling in his stomach, "like you just can't put your finger on something?" Brass replies, "Like the feeling that maybe you've turned Sara into a drunk?" Oh, please. What he really says: "Aside from the clock-out button, what can't you put your finger on?" Gil's puzzled by why you'd want to drag a body down the driveway. Brass clumsily segues into how Mike Trent was also being dragged into court by Kyle Goode.
In another part of the plot, Catherine's managed to take a cold shower and come back into work to face Hodges. Or maybe she merely visited Hodges, since the effect is not dissimilar to taking a cold shower. In any case, Hodges shows Catherine "the evidence in context." Translation: when you examine the butts under a microscope, they have ashtray sand on them, so they were clearly lifted from the Acid Drop and planted at the scene. So Drake and the unidentified female are in the clear, and all that's left is to figure out who the two mystery bicyclists are.
Or we can sit here and get spoon-fed the answers to all the forensic mysteries. Kyle Goode's in a games arcade with his son, honing the little tyke's bloodthirsty bent and aim with a shoot-'em-up game. Brass heads on over and introduces himself, and Kyle laconically notes, "I was wondering when you guys would get around to me." Brass asks, "Why's that?" Kyle drawls, "My ex-partner's murdered, I got a lawsuit against him, he owes me millions. I'd like me for it." Well, we all like knowing people like us. Brass replies, "Great! Then we won't have to pull teeth to get to the truth: where were you yesterday morning?" Why, with Billy the Kid here -- I mean, "Alex." Kyle gives Brass the go-ahead to talk to Brass by booting Alex off the game and ordering, "Tell this policeman just what I told you to say." Or something along those lines. Alex chirps that he went to visit his grandma in Laughlin, but he's hazy on the timeline because he was sleeping. They stopped for a breakfast sandwich over at Sunny Side's first. Kyle then orders his son, "Let's go over to Circus Circus. They've got a real arcade." He conveniently leaves a smoldering cigarette butt there, so Brass picks it up. Hey -- it's in public.
Over at the fast food joint -- ask now about their Choco-Bees tasty vanilla flurry! -- a heavily made-up girl who's one six-pack and a willing friend away from her first eyebrow piercing is lilting the company patter at customers when Nicky comes in. It's so wrong to hope this, but I would love it if Nicky ran across some Emily Strange-type girl and the two of them flipped over each other, to their mutual consternation. It'd be like Dharma and Greg, only more like Morticia and Nicky. But I digress. The girl asks if Nicky would like to try the Sunny Side special, and he nervously replies, "No, I'm Nicky Stokes. I'm with the Las Vegas crime lab. Can I talk to you for a second?" And my dream of a wacky nothing-in-common romance dies, because Nicky seems scared of any woman with Urban Decay makeup. The girl -- Missy Wilson (who also happens to be underage, further discouraging any contemplation of a mismatched affair, since Nicky doesn't seem like the type who would shrug off statutory-rape laws) -- happens to have been working the breakfast take-out window when Kyle purportedly ordered his breakfast sandwich. She immediately recognizes the guy: "That's the creep who was hitting on me. He was so repulsive. You know what he said to me?" Kyle apparently offered to bend her over the counter. Missy asks indignantly, "And he said it in front of his kid. What kind of father acts like that?" Nicky has a Snicky moment and says, "Sounds like he wanted to make an impression." Missy assures him that it worked. As Nicky tries to forge on with the questioning, Missy vents, "I get allthe creeps and weirdos in this drive-through. Teenagers, perverts, walk-ups. Those are my favorites -- 'I'm on a skateboard. Can I have a burger combo?' No, dork!" Nicky almost cracks up, but catches himself in time and asks instead if the window has a surveillance camera. It sure does.
Back in the lab, Nicky's reviewing the footage and tells Gil matter-of-factly, "It confirms his alibi. Every suspect Brass's talked to seems to have a case of the
airtights." Gil, who's also looking at the footage, orders Nicky to run it back, and asks what Alex has around his neck. Why, it's a pair of binoculars!Gil then takes a call, and promises the person on the other end he'll be right there. Then he teleports to a seedy hotel room, where a body with its own set of stun marks and a big bloody wound in the back of the head is lying on the floor. Brass quips, "Well, he lived by the stun, but I don't think he died from it." Emergency Backup David looks up from the body -- which is pretty muscular -- to say, "He didn't. Two gunshot wounds, back of the head. TOD's within the hour." Gil notes the blood spatter everywhere, and in multiple directions, too. There's been a tussle. Gil also notes the guy's pockets, which are stuffed with Michael Trent's keys. The big question is now, "Where's the jewelry?" Gil looks out the window, as if expecting to see it waving from the curb.
But, no. It's here -- with the second extremely buff and dead guy that Gil just happens to find in the underbrush. Brass comes over with a bloody knife, and he and Gil do a little version of the "You've got your peanut butter in my chocolate!" thing, and we have dead guy, his murder weapon, the murder weapon for the guy he shot one paragraph back, plus a big bag of jewelry with two $10,000 bricks (i.e. big stacks of crisp bills). It's a hit for hire. Gil realizes, "We're still looking for somebody."
When we get back from commercials, we've passed the magical 48-minute mark, which means we will be wrapping up the episode with all due haste. Verily, 'twas a murder-murder deal: one guy stabbed the other either mid- or pre- or post-stun -- the flashbacks aren't clear on the timeline, and the stabber was shot, and that was that.
Catherine and Brass are walking through the hall, and I pray to a benevolent power that Brass will not start checking out Catherine's ass, or giving a random lecture on how lips that touched liquor should never touch suspects, or something. Catherine quips that there's no honor among thieves, and that she suspects the jewelry heist was kind of an improv move in a planned execution. Brass says, "You could be right. I talked to the Trents' bank, and they were on their way to the safety deposit box this morning, and then off to Hawaii by the end of the week." Catherine realizes Laurel Trent cleaned out her own jewelry box -- and no, that's a censor-friendly euphemism for anything. Brass quips, "Murder was their wage, and jewelry was their tip."
Warrick and Sara are busy scanning the bills one at a time. Warrick asks how Sara's hands are. She replies that they're sore and this is damn tedious work, more or less. Warrick replies, "That's why I like to make sure I've got a manicure kit from Bliss Spa with me -- emery board, cuticle cream, orange stick, hand lotion, paraffin dip, moisturizing gloves. This way, I'm ready to prevent RSI and the digits are tight, like my game." Oh, he does not. Instead he marvels at how smart the casinos are: "This is a $10,000 brick, right? I could either lose this in a hand of blackjack, or I could lose one cranberry chip. What's worse?" Sara demonstrates her awesome immunity to marketing by snapping that losing is losing. But she wins the evidence hunt, because she finds a bill with a bloodstain.
Cut to Liam rambling on in that way he thinks is both amusing and esoteric, and yet is neither. And yet, when Hodges does this, he gets booed on the forums.
Cut to Gil and Nicky following up on that footage -- Alex was monkeying around with the binocs, to Kyle's general approval. Both men wonder what Kyle's damage is.
Gil and Nicky hie to the crime scene, and Gil checks out the giant bluff overlooking the house. He then flashes back to the dragged body, and has a little epiphany. Nicky asks, "What are you thinking?" "That you're going to be pissed when Warrick runs this department." Oh, he does not. He tells Nicky to heel, and heads to the hills. The two engage in a little can-you-see-me-now? game, and Gil realizes the two hired killers dragged the body out so that Kyle could view it through his binoculars. Gil then calls to put out an APB for the Kyle Goodemobile.
Time elapses. In the interrogation room, Brass slaps down a security camera still and establishes that yes, it's Alex and "his" binocs, not Kyle's. Brass name-checks them: "Zeiss 20x60BSGA. $4500 a pop." I can't help but think of William Gibson's Tally Isham, "The Girl with the Zeiss-Ikon Eyes," every time I hear that brand name. Anyway, Kyle claims $4500 is a cheap price to pay for keeping junior occupied in the car. Gil points out that Alex slept all the way to Laughlin, so there goes that money down the drain. The attack lawyer yips meaninglessly -- by the way, that's current Las Vegas mayor Oscar Goodman playing the attack lawyer. Brass continues laying out all the motive Kyle has to take a hit out on his ex-partner, then lets drop that the ex-Mrs. Kyle okayed a hair sample from Alex. Gil explains why: "The good thing about drugs? They work their way out through the bloodstream and the urine, but not the hair. Our lab found trace elements of Ambien, which is a hypnotic sleep sedative, in your son's hair root." The attack lawyer says they're withholding comment until they can review the test results. That's why he's the mayor and all the other attack lawyers are not.
Brass then drops the news that the hired killers are, themselves, dead. Kyle's visibly appalled. His consternation only grows as Brass gleefully details how the jewelry was at the scene too. Kyle finally snaps, "I hated that son of a bitch! Mike Trent was a scumbag, the worst of the worst! He'd use you up and breeze right through you. I brought him in on my nickel, and what does he do? Invests our money in clubs and kicks me out! Do I run off into the sunset with my piece of sushi? It's not just me -- there are a lot of guys out there who wouldn't mind a little revenge. I'll even go so far as to say I'm not sorry he's dead, or rotting somewhere in some box. But I'll say this for sure: I didn't kill him." Brass points out that nobody's saying he did. It's the hired-killing thing the law enforcement types find problematic, especially when there's blood on a $100 bill tying you to the crime. (They matched the blood to the cigarette butt in the arcade.) Gil notes that Kyle had a thing for revenge -- and we flash back to the Trents' being executed in front of one another. The attack lawyer points out that Kyle was with his son, and Gil absently says, "Yeah, that's where he screwed up. Your hatred of Trent was stronger than your love for your own child. You drugged your son so you could use him as an alibi." Brass adds, "That's all a jury's going to need to hear to convict you. Kyle Goode, you've been bad. You're under arrest."
More time elapses, and Gil's chugging away at his desk -- the papers look like more employee evaluations. Catherine goes scooting by, then notices that Gil's still there. She shrugs on her coat over a spangly, low-cut corset top and says unnecessarily, "So, I'm leaving." "And here I thought you were going to troll for suggestive comments from the lab techs we didn't see in tonight's episode," Gil, replies. Oh, right. Catherine asks if Gil needs anything. He's busy getting an eyeful of sequined cleavage; he absently replies, "No. I'm good." Catherine presses on, "Are we good?" Gil stops looking so bemused at Catherine's go-get-'em attitude toward her evaluation goals, and shuts down his expression before replying calmly, "We'll be fine." Catherine says her goodbyes, and Gil asks almost sadly, "Going out?" Bizarrely, Catherine hesitates before saying, "I've got some unfinished business to take care of." I'm sure Chris will be delighted to learn he's in the business category. Then she takes off, leaving The Tinkling Tunes of Twee plinking along poignantly in her wake. Gil watches her go sadly. Let us hope it's only because he's mulling over his supervisory work, and not because he's apparently just discovered the raging crush he has on Catherine or something. Please.