We begin with a shot of the mighty Sphinx, if by "mighty," you mean "two stories tall, with a handy walkway between its paws," and you're also okay with its pert nose and Las Vegas location. The Sphinx is the entryway for a roller-coaster, and our shot is of people riding the roller coaster in the lambent glow of late-afternoon sun.
We get a few more establishing shots so we know we're at an amusement park, i.e. a giant slide (lame), a Ferris wheel (also lame), and then everyone in the audience who gets sick on roller coasters doubles over on the couch because we get the you-are-there view of the coaster ascending its first big hill. Someone moans "I don't want to go." This is probably a conclusion they should have drawn earlier. We get a shot of some loathsome little monster unbuckling his seat belt to turn around and tell his mother and moaning sibling, "We're all going to die." Mom tells Joey to put his seatbelt back on, and unfortunately, he does, thus guaranteeing that he'll live through the first big drop and exit the ride to continue life as a low-grade irritant for all whom he encounters.
We get some fun you-are-there shots, which make me really want to ride on a roller coaster. We also get a shot of the wheel wobbling on the track, and of the car rolling around particularly tight curves, because the producers know we've all read the plot description for this week, and they're messing with our sense of anticipation. More fun roller coaster shots, and then this load of passengers pulls into the unloading area. The family gets off, and the load of passengers gets on. The kid who puts them into the cars is dressed likeit's almost Caesar's-themed with the togas and the laurel wreath, except it's too gilt-y and campy even for a casino. The second roller coaster takes off as the mom from the first ride ushers her kid over to a booth, where a Roman Centurion is on break from extending the reach of Caesar's realm to flip some burgers. She orders some King Tut burgers and Nile teas. You know, having the Romans run things in the Egyptian theme park seems off: it's like going to Busch Gardens: The Old Country down in Williamsburg, Virginia, and discovering the French food court run by Vichy concessionaires while the Germans and Italian ride operators plot together to blitz the Loch Ness Monster ride.
And then, we stop pondering the appropriateness of geopolitical incongruities in theme parks because a roller coaster's just run off the rails. We get a truly idiotic shot of some blonde in the front seat turning back to grin at the panicky people before turning around and finally noticing they've run off the rails and are about to land nose-first in the parking lot. Oy. The car lands, mashing a car in the process.
“ Oh, he doesn't name names. And he doesn't explain why, on this high-profile case ripe with potential for litigation, he's got two mid-level CSIs and a lab monkey working the scene instead of, say, all five seasoned CSIs. ”
In the shot, Brass is standing there and looking at the car. It's dark. Night must have fallen when the roller coaster car did. Gil ducks under the police tape and notices the bodies strewn hither and yon among the wreckage. I'll skip the description, because all you need to know is that there probably won't be any open caskets at the wakes. Brass then asks Gil, "So, Dr. Thrillseeker, you ever been on this coaster?" Gil identifies it with, "Pharoah's Fever. Yeah. But my ride ended at the platform. Which is all ironical and such since the victim's rides did not." Or maybe he stops before hammering the subtext home. Gil asks Brass what he knows, then pulls up a chair, since he neglected to get specific since this could take a while. Brass tells him there are six people dead and a park full of witnesses who saw the roller coaster fly off the rails. He spits, "401B." Gil replies, "Accident with injury." That's a fun game, making up all those letter-and-number combinations. Do you suppose that on slow nights, Gil and Brass amuse themselves by shouting out combinations to taunt and confuse Nicky? "55F!" "Organizing a cockfight? Gris, when was the last time anyone was booked on that?" Gil more or less heaps fodder on my supposition by adding, "It's also a 418." Brass says, "A runaway?" Gil clarifies, "Runaway train."
And we go to The Who. I have never been so grateful to stick with the same theme music, because otherwise we'd be hearing Soul Asylum's "Runaway Train," and I can't be having with that.
When we get back from commercials, Nicky, Sara, and Liam are all striding onto the scene. It's no Young Turks moment. Nicky explains that they were late because the writers couldn't think of a plausible way to work them into the opening -- I mean, "because a news van was blocking the entrance." Gil tells everyone that this is the first time a roller coaster's derailed in Clarke County, and adds, "Huge criminal and civil liabilities issues, so keep it quiet, Nicky." Oh, he doesn't name names. And he doesn't explain why, on this high-profile case ripe with potential for litigation, he's got two mid-level CSIs and a lab monkey working the scene instead of, say, all five seasoned CSIs. Anyway, Nicky looks chastened, and Gil continues, telling them, "Photograph the scene, bag and tag the detritus, forklift anything bigger than Liam. We're going to put up a tent on the other side of the parking lot for accident reconstruction. Any questions?" "Yes. May I be excused? I get sick on roller coasters," Liam says. Or not. Actually, he asks what one body is doing flung so far away from all the others. Gil looks at the body and remarks, "Curious, isn't it?" Then Gil wanders off, and Liam asks dazedly, "So when he asks if anyone has questions, he's not really asking, is he?" Sara smiles and takes mercy on him with, "Well, I don't know much about roller coaster accidents, but in auto collisions, the victims found furthest from the car usually aren't wearing a seatbelt. That'd be my bet." And we go to a re-enactment of someone flying through the air and splatting onto the pavement. Liam looks haunted. Clearly, he's had the same vision. Nicky galvanizes the troops, and Liam stops looking at people puree long enough to ask what he should do; Nicky assigns him the photo log: "Record everything we collect, okay?"
Meanwhile, Catherine and Warrick cross a bridge spanning a misty gorge, battle through a thick canopy of verdant deciduous tree branches, and join Emergency Backup David in the forest primeval that surrounds Las Vegas. They're all looking down at the body of a teenaged girl. Emergency Backup David tells us he's ID'd the body as belonging to 13-year-old Tessa Press (courtesy of the school ID in her pocket). Catherine shakes her head, trying to remember, "Young girl, young girl, young girlwhy does that resonate with me?" Warrick sighs, "I hate these cases." Catherine notes that body position is inconsistent with lividity, and Emergency Backup David explains, "After she died, blood settled to her anterior, and lividity fixed." Read: she had been facedown, and she is not now. Warrick concludes that someone dumped her face-up. It's insights like that which made him Gil's favorite. Catherine wonders how long the body's been there, and Emergency Backup David says he'll defer that question to the insects. Then he rolls Tessa's body over so we can get an eyeful of the little guys writhing in and out of the wound at the back of Tessa's neck. Yum! Good thing I was eating cavatappi, Catherine notices the instar maggots, which tells us nothing, as it's the stage of said instar maggots that will provide the timeline: First-instar larvae are maybe 2-55 mm long, growing to 10 mm as second instar larvae and swelling up to 15-20 mm before wiggling off the wound as pre-pupae; each stage helps pin down how much time has elapsed. But that has little to do with what these forensic professionals will conclude. Emergency Backup David decrees, "Given the ambient temperature -- which I won't mention since, you know, viewers can check the jackets and fog and figure it out for themselves -- and last night's rain, I'd say she's been out here 24 hours." Catherine notes that it does take that long for blowfly eggs to hatch. If it's been 24 hours, someone needs to test these maggots for steroid abuse. They're that bulky.
Warrick carps that the rain's washed away any trace evidence like tire tracks or shoe prints. Emergency Backup David asks, "If you're going to drive all the way out here to dump a body, why not take another ten minutes and bury her?" Because the drive back to Vegas from Oregon is seriously long, fool. Getting back to the desert from that coastal redwood forest takes time. Anyway, Warrick and Catherine make disgusted faces. You know, this might have been a much more interesting case for Gil and Sara to work, while the Frowny Twins took on the roller coaster; we'd have the fun of seeing people working on cases for which they may not have a natural affinity (read: bias).
Back on the A-plot, Liam photographs everything in sight. Or maybe, despite what Nicky said in the last scene about Liam doing the photo log, it's Sara putting her own Diane Arbus-like spin on the dead bodies. Liam appears to be drawing pictures. Maybe that's what they mean by photo-log?
“ 'There's eight wheels per train. They'd all have to be loose, and that just doesn't happen.' Gil looks accusingly at the nut, as if daring it to confess that yes, it fomented rebellion amongst its hardware brethren. ”
Brass is off doing what he does best: sacrificing his time and sanity via a series of soul-draining conversations with sullen dullards. Here, he's talking to the poor unfortunate sentenced to toga-wearing duty and light ride-operating. The kid is telling Brass that operating Pharoah's Phever is a promotion, what with getting the opportunity to meet girls his own age, as opposed to the not-yet-potty-trained set that frequented his old gig, the merry-go-round. Brass asks what training the roller coaster operators have, and Tony Toga snorts, "Training? I release the brake, I press a button. It's green and marked 'start.'" Brass looks like he's never going on a roller coaster again. He moves on to request, "There are six victims. It would be helpful to know where each of them was sitting." Tony Toga recounts, "Blonde girl sitting in front. She was cute. Followed by a punk, some old folks, and a dude." Brass points out, "That's only five." "That's all I remember," Tony Toga counters. Brass then notices the "See yourself scream" kiosk, and we establish that there's a camera stationed at the top of the roller coaster, taking pictures so that the people might record the moment when inertia and gravity fought it out on their faces. The camera's triggered by the train passing over a switch, with the pictures recorded on a hard drive. Brass notes that the last coaster train went flying through the air, but adds, "I'm still gonna want to take that computer."
Well, that scene was a whole lot of boring. You know how it could have been made more interesting? If Tony Toga had really gotten into the Roman imperial theme and demanded that Brass conduct the interrogation in Latin.
And now, it's time to introduce the colorful character of the week. Let's call him Red, as in herring. Red introduces himself as the park's chief engineer by saying he's been working on coasters since he was tall enough to ride them. Gil, who is instantly suspicious of anyone who tries to chat him up, asks, "You were responsible for maintaining this roller coaster?" Red replies that he keeps all the rides up to code. If by "code," you mean "horrific accident waiting to happen." Gil asks if Red has any idea why the train went off the track. Red replies, "Well, in theory, anything is possible. But there's never been an accident like this anywhere." Well, lucky you: whole schools of roller-coaster physics can now be founded on this occurrence, since it's now both apparently possible and probable. Gil may or may not notice the giant nut lying on the ground. He merely asks Red if he's an expert, and the other man replies, "On roller coasters? Hell, yeah. Ten years of service at Six Flags' American Eagle before moving to Vegas." Gil has found the nut and picked it up. He asks Red what that is, and Red tells him, "It's a nut. It, ah, secures the wheel to the screw." Gil asks if maybe one screw could cause the train to derail, and Red assures him, "There's eight wheels per train. They'd all have to be loose, and that just doesn't happen." Gil looks accusingly at the nut, as if daring it to confess that yes, it fomented rebellion amongst its hardware brethren.