Oh, sure, Las Vegas looks super-glamorous with its fancy blinking lights and dancing water shows, but out in the 'burbs, you're lucky if your street light works. At least, that's the message I'm getting a scant 45 seconds into the show. You'd think the residents who actually live in Las Vegas year-round and nurture the businesses that bring in the tourons would be all, "Hey. Hey! You think this no-lights thing is funny? Start laughing when nobody's changing light bulbs in the giant lotus over the Flamingo's entrance, funny guy."
Anyway, the light flicks on again, and the camera cuts to what is presumably the interior of the house. We see a framed photograph of a happy couple, then pan over to the door, where smoke is rolling up smoothly and quickly. The camera pans back over to the bed, where an elderly lady is sleeping. Then we focus on the smoke again as it steals across the floor of a little boy's room. We see the boy. Are you alarmed yet? Does the sight of old people and children in peril make you all anxious? The people who put this episode together will be so disappointed if you answer "no" to either question; you might as well politely lie to spare their feelings.
We see one more shot of the smoke swirling around another bed -- this one unoccupied --and then in the shot, the fire practically explodes. We see the firemen leading out the old woman -- she's looking pretty dazed -- and the woman in the photograph (they plucked someone out of the "Mom" files at central casting) is freaking out and asking where Sam is. The fireman conveniently comes out with the child, who happens to be quite bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and clad in PJs and slippers. I put the show on pause to wonder when Sam found the time to put on his slippers, because that detail is what's bugging me, and not, say, the part of this scene where a billion people are congregating on the front lawn watching the bonfire, as opposed to being knocked back from the heat and force of the fire as we saw it a minute ago. There's a brief mother-and-child reunion, and the fireman asks if anyone else was in there. Mrs. Abernathy -- that's the Mom lady -- says there wasn't. The firemen turn on the hoses, and the little boy turns back to look at the house. Oh, look. All the subtlety and suspense are crumbling into cinders, leaving us only with fifty-odd minutes to burn as we head toward an inevitable conclusion.
The firemen continue dousing the fire, and Catherine shows up with Nicky and Warrick in tow. Nicky's wondering why they got a 911 page, since the fire's not even out yet. Warrick replies, "Jack's an arson investigator. We were here on this same street ten days ago." Jack adds that it was a garage fire a few houses down, set deliberately. Catherine asks Warrick -- the non-arson investigator in the bunch -- if he thinks this is the work of a serial arsonist. Warrick's all, "I don't know, but I'm keeping my eyes peeled. Maybe they came back to take a look." Nicky and Catherine turn around to see if there's anyone in the crowd sporting an inappropriate smile and trousers in need of changing.
“ And now The Who want to know when the writers stopped making the effort to come up with a snappy one-liner during the credits. ”
Just then, the firemen come out of the house shouting that they've got another person. As the fireman heads over to the lawn -- miraculously free of smoldering debris or sparks, for all that there's a house belching fire ten feet away -- he notes that the girl's not breathing. Mrs. Abernathy says shakily, "Sabrina?" The fireman bellows for a paramedic. Mrs. Abernathy takes this as her cue to crowd into her daughter's airspace. The paramedic pushes Mrs. Abernathy back as she exposits that Sabrina wasn't supposed to be in the house, and begins compressions. Catherine and Nicky both look like they know how this is going to end, and they're not too happy that they do. Warrick joins them in the looking-rueful department, and then Catherine recovers enough to say tartly, "I think our arsonist just turned into a murderer."
And now The Who want to know when the writers stopped making the effort to come up with a snappy one-liner during the credits.
Aprs commercials, Sabrina's being zipped into a body bag as her mother mournfully tells Catherine, "She wasn't even burned." Catherine points out that smoke inhalation happens really fast. Well, that's small comfort. Catherine passes on her condolences, then smoothly segues into interrogation mode, asking, "I heard you say she wasn't supposed to be here tonight. Was she supposed to be with her dad?" Mrs. Abernathy says that her husband died five years ago in a car accident, and Sabrina was supposed to be over at her friend Molly's; she adds that so far as she knew when she went to bed at 11 PM or so, Sabrina was at Molly's. Catherine asks if Mrs. Abernathy knows of any possible cause for the fire; Mrs. Abernathy does not. She mentions that she locks the doors and goes to bed, and that's about it. Catherine then asks if Mrs. Abernathy maybe has anyone in her life who might be inclined to set her house on fire; Mrs. A replies, "I go to work. I take care of my kids and my mother, and that's my life." For once, Catherine does not follow this up with a commiserating comment on how tough it is to be a single mother; this could be because she's been brainwashed by her little friend Krycek into believing that the short person she's sharing a house with is merely a domestic worker who can't dust the tops of bookcases. I'm just guessing this is how Catherine's handling the work/kid/paramour thing.
Nicky's snapping pictures of the crowd as it checks out the fire. Sure enough, there's someone there with a furtive smile on her face; the state of her drawers is as yet unknown. Nicky immediately channels Snicky and notes this without anyone else pointing it out. He's busy telling the crowd to feel free to give him a buzz any ole time they have information to pass on, when Grandma interrupts him to ask, "How am I going to get my Fosamax?" Somewhere in New Jersey, Merck's attack lawyers brace to make sure this is an innocuous product placement for their osteoporosis drug. Anyway, Nicky's totally in his element with, "I'll make sure you have your medications by breakfast, okay? You're going to be all right." A fireman guides the confused-looking old lady off-screen.
“ Sam pats the man on the hand and assures him it's okay. I wonder if they made Sam a boy because a girl would have invited too many unsolicited The Bad Seed comparisons? ”
Warrick then approaches the fire truck where Sam is being all winsome and asking the fireman behind the wheel what button produces what result. The fireman is, of course, under the impression that children are also idiots, so he talks down with, "That's the siren. So we can get to fires real fast." Sam plays along: "To help people burning inside?" The fireman confirms that this is so. Sam then gets the sad face and twists the dagger with, "But not my sister." Warrick visibly cringes. The fireman looks like he's about to cry. "I'm sorry, buddy," he chokes out. Sam pats the man on the hand and assures him it's okay. I wonder if they made Sam a boy because a girl would have invited too many unsolicited The Bad Seed comparisons?
And then, we're back in shiny, sparkling downtown Las Vegas, complete with lounge music. We switch quickly to what must be a casino bathroom, its floor currently decorated with an obese dead guy. Brass is explaining to Sara and Gil, "So the morning cleaning crew found him. No ID, but this [piece of paper] was in his pocket." Sara notes that it's some kind of code. We get a gander at the piece of paper, and it's not unlike looking at those Word Jumbles certain comics sections run because they're approximately as wide as a Family Circus and a Marmaduke panel side-by-side. I tend to skip those things, as I find my eye inexorably drawn down to the lame comics below, and then I spend the rest of the day muttering, "Who went on a murder spree and axed four twee tykes. Not Me!"
Gil has no time to examine the mysterious paper. He purses his lips as he looks around, and turns back to the body on the floor. We get a nice shot of its blackened face, and the little pool of blood beneath the head. Gil reads off the tee with, "Seven-thirty-five?" "His goal weight," Brass cracks. Heh. Sara and Gil both give him an unamused look. Oh, come on. I know pining after your emotionally boss -- or being an emotionally constipated boss -- is draining, but you're in trouble if you've completely lost your sense of humor. Brass takes off so the two of them can humorlessly assess the scene. Gil whips out a camera and begins snapping the dead guy's livid face, paying special attention to the cut above one eyebrow. He tells Sara, "That's a nasty head wound." She elects to continue the conversation she was having in her head with, "It's always reassuring to see an empty soap dispenser in a public bathroom." Then she looks back at the mirror -- but not to admire her hair, which looks decent for a change, with waves that manage to frame her face and make her look like she's not about to go fill her pockets with rocks before heading out on a jetty somewhere. I guess all that beer Sara's having has been good for her hair too. Sara's actually examining the pattern of cracks in the mirror and guessing, "I'm thinking, this is how the vic got his head smashed in."