You can dance if you want to, and you can leave your friends behind. Because your friends are not going to be visible to the unaided human eye in the kind of club where all we see are quick cuts of pretty people writhing around under a strobe light. So they'll be understanding if you get separated from them in the crowd. You can dance, you can dance, everybody look at those hands...
Or, if you're the heavy-lidded guy sitting on the bed, look at the hands attached to the (presumably) half-naked body of the (presumably) female person sauntering toward you. I can't say with any certainty what's walking toward whom because the shot is so blurry, you'd think CBS is paying their $550,000 FCC fine by selling off their shows' camera equipment. Or perhaps making sure there's not another fine in offing. Anyway, it's safe to refocus the camera now that we're only looking at the woman from the clavicles up, and the two of them hit the sheets. There's a red light in the room, which is probably as subtle an allusion to the nature of this sexual transaction as you'll ever get...
And you can dance, you can dance, everybody look at your hands. We're back at the club, establishing that before patrons can go inside and join the safety dance, they've got to go through security. How else will you know it's the safety dance? A patron passes through. The bouncer manning the metal detector insists that the patron leave his switchblade behind. A mopey guy heads on through security, wondering why nobody told him it wasn't Dress Like Johnny Cash night after all...
Miles away, two kids get off their motorcycle and decide to deface government property by shooting at a sign. Their bad-assed vandalism is interrupted when one of them stumbles, and then looks down to see a hand sticking out of the ground...
Back in civilization, the music's shifted so that we can understand that our sixty seconds of establishing shots are up and we're on to the pivotal moment when it's all going to go pear-shaped for whomever's on-screen. This is bad news for the man currently sitting on a bed and sobbing as a bath runs in the room. This is even worse news for me, since I have no idea why he's crying. Is this part of some rock video about how everybody hurts sometime? Is he crying because when he asked Calgon to take him away, it took him to a dingy hotel room? We may never know, but the sobbing picks up in intensity...
We can dance if we want to, we've got all your life behind. The Man in Black burns a Polaroid on the dance floor. Isn't that against fire codes? Two men greet each other in anticipation of some big rap action, and as the music flips into a rap monologue, the guy continues staring at his burning Polaroid. Did the writers spend a weekend watching VH1 Classic and twigging on iconic video images before sitting down to this script, or what? Then we see the barrel of a gun, and the Man In Black is now the Man Who's On the Floor All Shot Up. Yeah, it's not as snappy, but it's still descriptive. The killer then blows their chance for a clean getaway by senselessly taking out a mirror ball. C.S.I.: Glaziers is gonna be all over this one. Coming fall to HGTV!
As the TMIcam does a nifty reverse-route from the middle of the dead guy's brain pan back out to an aerial shot of him on the dance floor, Brass assumes the narrative authority of Captain Exposition: "So witnesses heard multiple gunshots. They think." Gil gives Brass a somewhat irritated look, and Brass explains, "If it was during the blitz, the lights are out, sirens going off, search lights, the whole World War II experience," and, oh my GOD, how inappropriate a nightclub theme is "the German bombing campaign against London in World War II"? Gil share this sentiment: "When did war become a party?" Well, there was Beach Party Vietnam, but that's more of a surfing party, roasting hot dogs with napalm. Before Brass can riff in that general direction, Gil's beeper goes off, and we see that there's been a body found at 5311 Sephill Road. Gil shrugs and returns to the victim he was examining. Well, it's not like the other body's going anywhere. Brass holds up a shell and grunts, "32 auto. Belly got it." Gil looks over at the door and asks, "How'd they get it through the metal detector?" Brass is about to offer an explanation when his beeper goes off. Gil ignores him because he's all interested in the burned Polaroid he's just discovered. We finally see the shot -- a body sprawled facedown on the floor; the part where the head would be is singed away. Brass asks, "Another body?" Gil zooms in on the bloodstained papers by the foot of the body in the Polaroid and quips, "Another murder."
And then the Who kicks in to inquire who's who on this show. Fortunately, we have new credits to tell us.
When we get back from commercials, Liam the Lab Tech is busy strolling through the halls with a woman who, amazingly enough, doesn't look like she's ten seconds away from smacking him. On this show, that's a first. He's explaining, "There's good news and bad news. The good news is, this is the busiest lab in the country. The bad news is, this is the busiest lab in the country." The woman -- played by Reiko Aylesworth, who should know from business and tight deadlines after her stint on 24 says, "That's why I'm here." Liam flings an arm around her and declares his love.
Enter Prisoner . Behold the impersonal navy jumpsuit, the punitive crew cut, the enraged voice as he shouts, "Man, if I ever have to search another torched car --!" Liam turns around and, hey! That's Nicky. Taking his style cues from that Ridley Scott commercial introducing the Mac, I see. All this episode needs now is some hammer-throwing babe to shatter our world and introduce a revolutionary new technology that'll...end up with 2% of the personal computer market. Anyway, Liam introduces his lady love as Chandra Moore. Nicky extends a greasy, sooty hand in introduction as he exposits, "Oh, yeah! The DNA girl." Chandra recoils. Girl, given what you married on 24, acting like you're too clean to shake Nicky's hand is rich. ["You shut up. Tony is cute!" -- Wing Chun] Nicky settles for a friendly knuckle-bump. Chandra rattles off her bona fides: "B.S. in biochem, M.S. in molecular biology, five years of service in DNA at the C.C.L." Nicky and Liam act impressed, because their mommas raised them to be polite. Then Nicky takes his leave by announcing that he's going to use the "no-pressure, no-A/C, stinks-of-feet shower. So, welcome." Nicky, if you want her to join you, you're going to have to work on making the offer sound a little more enticing.
Meanwhile, in the employee locker room, we get a superdooper close-up of Sara sighing and saying, "So I had some time to think while I was away. Enough time to figure out why I made such a stupid mistake. I do not have a drinking problem. I have a, uh, me problem." The camera pulls back and we see that she's giving this speech to a magnetic mirror attached to the outside of one of the locker doors. I should be more interested in this but really, I'm wondering if this locker room is connected to the no-pressure, no-A/C, stinks-of-feet shower Nicky's currently taking, and whether he can hear Sara's speech. This whole set-up has the makings of a wacky Three's Company-style misunderstanding. Anyway, Sara continues: "My P.E.A.P. counselor suggested that it would be a good idea for me to talk to my supervisor, and that's you, Grissom, so..." And then Sara lapses into a Proustean reverie. Then she admits, "I never told you about my family." Possibly because this show used to be about crime scenes, and investigations, and oh, following the evidence. But before Sara can finish that thought about her family with, "Their last name is Manson. Perhaps you've heard of them?" Liam swings by with his replacement, Chandra. They exchange very distant greetings. Liam then asks, "How was it?" Sara's all, "How was what?" Liam digs, "You took some vacation time, right?" and Chandra just rolls her eyes, only with her whole body. Sara then lies about how great her vacation was, and I have to say, lying does nice things for her looks. For one, she's no longer looking like Death defrosted in the microwave; for another, the untruths give her hair extra body and shine. Chandra practically sprints out of the frame, and Sara goes back to looking like she's really not looking forward to seeing Gil. By the way, I think P.E.A.P. stands for "Police Employees' Assistance Program." So I'm guessing Sara had to talk to someone as a condition for returning to the job.
As Liam shepherds an increasingly impatient Chandra through the labitrail, he shouts to someone, "How was it?" Warrick shouts back, "I hate lawyers, I hate court, they all need to dry up and die. Hi." This last line is directed at Chandra. She looks ecstatic. That's understandable. Well, it turns out she's thrilled because she "saw [his] presentation on longitudinal striations in the toenails? In Dallas? A.A.F.S.?" Well, some women swoon over the prospect of a man painting their toenails; I guess Chandra's in a different groove. She continues to gush, "Really good work." Warrick eats it up with a spoon. "Thank you. Thank you very much. And you are..." "A groupie. Here's my hotel key," she replies. Oh, she does not. Chandra introduces herself as the new DNA person, and Liam steers her toward Gil's office. She gives Warrick a long, lingering look and big smile. That's got to get old for the other guys in the lab.
Liam walks Chandra into Gil's office and introduces her with a flourish. Gil turns around, wearing something that looks like a hard hat with a rear view mirror attached. He surveys Chandra as she steps forward and says, "Pleased to meet you, sir." We see the Gil's-eye view of Chandra -- lots of heat impressions -- and Gil says in a nearly sultry voice, "Wow. You're hot." Chandra's all, "What?" and Gil explains more matter-of-factly, "You're emanating heat. This is an infrared camera. It's good for looking at evidence in the dark." Or you could try turning on a light, Gil. He then asks Liam, "Did you get her blood yet?" and Liam flashes him a warning look as he shakes his head no. Chandra sharply asks, "Why?" and Gil replies puckishly, "So many reasons."
Before Liam can cut in and ask why Ghoulish Gil isn't busy making merry around the lab when he has to deal with him, Catherine barges in to complain about the size of her office. Since when did she get an office? Is this what you get when you blow up a lab? Did some pointy-haired supervisor decide, "Maybe you'll take better care of things if they're in your space, Willows!" Is this Gil's way of making sure she doesn't hang out in his office and ask uncomfortable personal questions? Whatever the reason, Catherine doesn't like her space. And she runs roughshod over Gil's attempts to derail the conversation vis à vis introductions with Chandra, and brings the topic back around to her office. So Gil decides to avoid the conversation by sending Catherine to check out a suspicious death at the Palermo. Catherine glares and stalks out. Gil continues to strike preemptively at those who might cross him by sending Warrick out to check out a "trash call" at a weekly hotel on 12th and Fremont, and exiling the remaining Young Turks to a shallow grave in the desert. Not their own, mind you: Nick and Sara have to investigate a body in a dry lake bed. He then tells Liam that they'll be working together that night on Liam's final proficiency. Liam pushes Chandra along with barely suppressed glee, telling her, "Let me show you to your new digs."
Everyone scatters except Gil and Sara. She gives a too-bright smile and asks, "Can I talk to you real quick?" Gil frowns but concedes. Sara begins, "Okay, first of all, did you know there's some sort of goop in your hair? I mean, it normally doesn't look this dark and flat. You might want to lay off the Grecian Formula. It's fooling anyone. Second, did someone pull your leg and tell you it was 'Dress Like The Reagan Administration' day at work? Because those glasses are just...no." "Good to see you spent your time off planting in front of the Queer Eye for the Straight Guy marathon, Sara," Gil snaps back. Oh, they did not. But I wish they had. Instead, Gil launches a pre-emptive strike: "Have you been seeing your P.E.A.P. counselor?" Sara's off her script now, but she tells him it's been interesting. Just as she's about to swing into her speech, there's the tinkle of expensive Pyrex shattering, and they both turn to the lab, where it looks like Chandra and/or Liam has just demolished a tray's worth of glassware. Sara looks back and says, "It's going to be a busy night, huh?" Gil looks deeply peeved, because now he can't use that line to cue the Who. He grunts his assent. Sara's all, "We'll talk later?" Gil -- still looking like Prince Thundercloud of Stormy Mountain -- asks, "Are you sure?" Sara assures him that she is, and then escapes.
We get a transitional shot over the last of the show credits -- oh, wow! New font for the credits! -- and then we see Catherine heading into a hotel room as a man yells, "I don't remember, okay? Why don't you believe me? I swear to God I did nothing to that woman, I have never seen her before!" It's a convincing speech, but his being all covered in blood kind of undercuts its effectiveness. Catherine takes in the blood-spattered wall, the blood-soaked bed, and the body lying on the bed. Detective Artan comes over and explains, "Housecleaning came in and found Mr. Johnson passed out on the bed to the victim. They alerted Security, and apparently, he just came to." "With the worst hangover a guy could have," Catherine adds, somewhat unnecessarily. Artan tells us that the guy's a golf-ball salesman from Ohio. That has no bearing on any of the case whatsoever, by the way. It's just a wacky little detail. Isn't it delightful? No? Let's just get back to the stuff that moves the plot along: who'd have thought the hooker had so much blood in her? She bled out of a single whack to the skull, and while there's no ID as of yet, her clear acrylic purse has a locker key in it. Catherine guesses the girl's a stripper, based on both her industrial-grade breast implants and the locker key.
As Catherine wanders around the room, she notices a bit of metal ornamentation -- the kind of pointy thing you'd find on the end of a towel rack if you were in a bathroom done by a Ren Faire fanatic. Catherine notices a bit of grue on the loose ornamentation, and flashes back to a scenario where the Golf Ball Guru whangs the woman upside the head in the bathroom, but she has one of those deaths that require a lot of messy staggering around. Catherine concludes, "Looks like she went back to the bedroom to call for help." Artan points out that nobody made any calls, but Catherine's already moved on to derisively snorting that men tend to pee on the floor and not in the toilet bowl. That statement probably says more about the kind of company Catherine keeps than it does about men. Artan merely replies, "If this guy took Viagra, you're lucky he hit the floor and not the ceiling." And apparently the guy pisses gold chains too. That's got to burn. Catherine asks, "How does a guy fall asleep after killing a woman?"
Continuing the question theme, Brass asks the nightclub owner, "How does somebody get into your club with a gun?" The owner's got no idea. Brass asks if the owner recognizes the dead guy, and he does not. But in the spirit of co-operation, he calls out, "Crystal! Hey, baby. Did you talk to the guy who got capped in your section tonight?" I love how he clarifies when the guy in question got capped, because that makes it seem like dead patrons on the floor are routine. Gil strolls in and Brass snarks, "You got something stuck to your shoe. Oh, it's just Sanders." Liam gives Brass a har-de-har look and goes back to wandering after Gil. Emergency Backup David pops into the scene and tells Gil he's gone through the dead guy's pockets and there is neither ID nor a wallet.
Emergency Backup David drifts off and leaves Liam and Gil standing there. Liam comments casually, "I've never seen the lights on in this place before. It's kind of like seeing a one-night stand in the morning for the first time." Gil just stands there, horror freezing his features as he's forced to contemplate a world in which Liam has a sex life. He turns to look at the younger man and Liam shrugs, "Beer goggles." Gil impatiently says, "This is your proficiency test, Liam. You might want to work the scene." Yes, like that. He's so irritated, the italics are audible. Liam promptly loses ten IQ points as he gives the scene as once-over. Gil prods him by noting that they haven't found a gun yet, and Liam says, "Victim was shot at close range in a crowd. Witnesses say there was a stampede. It would have been a good time to ditch the gun. Maybe it's still here." Gil tosses him a Liam Treat and then heads off in a different direction. Liam asks a little tremulously, "Where are you going?" Gil delivers the not-so-reassuring "Don't worry about me. Worry about you. It's going to be a long night."
Because we're cramming four -- FOUR -- cases into one hour, it's time to keep moving along, so we're hanging out at the weekly hotel where Warrick is checking out a dead body in a bathtub. I love how this hotel is named the Tod Hotel -- as the forum posters noted, "tod" is German for "dead." Anyway, it looks like Jose Zuniga's back as a police detective: he was Detective Cavaliere in the episode where Warrick waxed wroth about the wrongness of raggedy drawers, and the closed-captioning has identified him as O'Brien here. Cavaliere and Warrick go into the darkened bathroom and check out the supine form in the full tub. Warrick gestures to the electrical appliance also in the tub and wryly notes, "There's what blew your fuse." There's some badinage over the general merits of electrocution as a means of ending it all, and the hotel manager draws from his own well of experience to decree it a suicide: "This loser? He was here for four weeks, only paid for two. Wore the same clothes every day. No family, no friends..." Cavaliere asks if the guy had a name and the manager says wearily, "Lance 'I'll Have It For You Tomorrow' Frazier." That must have made monogramming expensive. Warrick checks Lance's wrist and sees several old horizontal ridges; he notes, "Yeah, he's got some old-school suicide scars." ["'Old-school'? Okay, we get it, Warrick's a CSI of colour. Stop giving him such lame-ass dialogue." -- Wing Chun]
From his lofty perch atop the social order, the manager of the fleabag motel says, "Told you. Loser." Warrick rolls his eyes and goes back to the body, while Cavaliere calls everyone's attention to the neatly packed suitcase in a corner of the room. We flash back to the guy crying on his bed again, and then packing his clothing before drawing a bath and climbing in with the hot plate; he then drops it in and electrocutes himself. In the present, Cavaliere notices a Bible on the bedside table, and Warrick asks, "For inspiration, or for Last Rites?" Cavaliere gives him an answer like, "What? You think I know?" Warrick then goes through the dead man's pockets: an empty wallet, an empty packet of Clark's cigarettes, some sweetener, and a hot dog wrapper. They're getting all gloomy about the paucity of clues, and then Warrick notices a fake-flower lei on the nightstand.
Zip! We're now in the fourth plot, with Nicky and Sara. Nicky brushes past a crowd of fanatics with painted signs like "Take me to your leader," and Sara snaps, "You are so late! What happened to you?" Nicky replies, "I'm late? It took the writers seventeen whole minutes to come up with sly jokes referencing how you and I were fired this summer over purportedly not turning in paperwork or showing up on time! Talk about a lag!" Or maybe he stops after that first sentence. Another detective comes over -- wow, it's like Las Vegas has an actual police force and not a phalanx of lab techs who do all the police work -- and introduces himself as Detective Travis, most recently of the Los Angeles P.D.'s homicide unit. Sara surveys the space nuts --some folks are in really bad astronaut suit costumes; others are holding up signs reading "Watch the skies" -- and asks, "Who are these people?" "Concerned citizens," Travis deadpans. He goes on to fill Nicky and Sara in on the nature of the body's discovery, and then we're right at the aforementioned shallow grave. It's so shallow, in fact, that it's practically convex. Nicky looks down at the body with its greenish skin, light bulb-shaped skull and mylar jump suit, and asks, "These kids think they found a space alien?" "We were the second call they made. The first one is to Dan Rather -- who I don't think is coming." And the second joke made at the expense of CBS operations in an episode, made at the eighteen-minute mark. (Only I don't think the latter was intentional when they were filming.) Sara wants to know why the space fanboys and fangirls are there, and Travis explains that they're always there, and calls their attention to the fact that they're within spitting distance of Area 51. He ruefully says, "I guess the killer should have dug a deeper hole." Nicky points out that it would have been hard with the dinky little shovel found near the gravesite. Sara adds, "Not to mention, Nevada desert is compact dirt, not sand. People usually give up before they hit three feet." I wonder if this is a feature of all high deserts? Anyway, Nicky concludes that it'll take longer to get the body out than it did to get it in, and Travis facetiously asks, "Can't you just beam him back in?" Just what this lab needs -- another workplace clown.
After spending precious minutes juggling the other three storylines, we now cycle back to Catherine's case. She's busy dusting Ye Olde Towel Racke while Golf Ball Guru insists that he has no idea why he woke up in bed to a dead woman: "She must have slipped me something." Catherine stops working the bathroom and comes over to ask, "You sure it wasn't the booze?" "I never touch minibars," he shoots back. Yeah, the $10 he saves on not touching the Snickers can defray the costs of the $750-a-night hooker. And then he sputters, "That bitch drugged me." "Deceased bitch," Catherine corrects. Oh, she does not. Instead, she points out that any drugs would still be in his system, so Golf Guru Guy might want to get a blood test.
Zip! Off to another case. Gil's off checking the alarm keychain on the dead guy's rental car tag against cars parked in what is presumably the club's parking lot. He finally finds the right car and unlocks it. There's a Polaroid camera on the passenger seat. Gil photographs the camera for his new photographic art homage to Magritte, Ce N'est Pas Une Caméra. Or he photographs it for evidence. Or maybe he does both. Gil notes the number 9 on the camera; it's either the number of shots left or the number of shots taken. When he looks through the back seat, Gil notices a length of coiled wire.
Meanwhile, Liam works the club in the usual if-it's-musical-we-must-be-working business. He finds the gun.
Catherine bursts into the morgue, and David the Sight for Sore Eyes Coroner tells her that the DB's mother is coming in from Reno to pick up the girl. Catherine tells us that he's looking at one Nicole Richards, aged twenty-five, working under the stage name Raven at the Embassy strip club. Whose embassy, I wonder? What's their version of diplomatic immunity like? Catherine then nudges David to make with the hot anatomy talk, and he does: "Sharp-force laceration to the frontal scalp with fracture of the frontal calvarium, contusion to the brain and subdural hemorrhaging. Tox screen pegged her blood alcohol content at .30." Wow! At that proportion, you might as well start referring to it as some blood in her alcohol, not the other way round. Catherine notes as much for those of us in the crowds who have never investigated the legal limits for intoxication and/or driving. David notes, "Chronic drinking tends to cause a reduction in platelets. Thins out the blood and retards clotting." Thus all the blood at the scene. David also says he found a swollen ankle. Catherine says absently, "You ever try shaking your ass in four-inch heels?" David looks up, and she adds, "Don't answer that."
In another autopsy bay, Emergency Backup David is doing some washing-up when a low, staticky whine issues forth from the corpse Nicky and Sara found in the desert. Emergency Backup David gives the corpse a dubious look, then heads over as the noise continues. It quiets when he walks over, and Emergency Backup David turns his back -- only to have the noise come back. Now he's all freaked out, and probably wondering why he gets the cases where the allegedly dead guy's actually still alive, or in contact with his alien overlords or whatever, but he musters the courage to head on over again and lean down to see where the noise is coming from. As we get a good shot of the desiccated, misshapen skull and the noises increase, the background music gets all tense...
...and Sara comes over to scare the spit out of Emergency Backup David by sneaking up behind him and saying, "We think it's a hearing aid. It's out of juice." "Good," he gulps. "Now if you excuse me, I have to go take a no-pressure, no-air-conditioned, smells-like-feet shower. And get a fresh pair of drawers." Nicky waylays him with a bit of exposition: "Hearing aids have unique numbers, Super Dave. If you get this to Detective Travis, he should be able to run it down for us." Sara notices the really long fingers on the body, and Emergency Backup David says, "Arachnodactyly -- abnormally long fingers." Sara pulls off a watch and says, "I know where's from. Planet Seiko." Har-de-har. Everyone's a comic. She reads off the initials "E.T." from the back of the watch. Nicky goes through the spacesuit's pockets and pulls out a speech. He says, "Oh, you're going to love this. 'Like a blinding supernova, your love is blasted throughout the universe. Two spirits become one, by the power of the sun, the moon, and all the planets of the universe.'" Emergency Backup David looks like he's all verklempt. Sara's more busy noticing that the jumpsuit came from Big City Costumes.
Gil's sitting at the computer, studying the burnt photo from the nightclub. He's scanned it in, and is going over it, section by section. Liam shares that he did indeed find the murder weapon, and name-drops Ballistics Bobby. Gil asks what the blue substance is all over the slide and the grip; Liam doesn't know. Gil says sharply, "It's okay to say you don't know. Take it to trace lab" Oh, now someone decides to give him a little formal instruction in the field. Gil studies the photo, notices a bottle with a prescription label, and enlarges it so that he can get a clue to the body's identity.
In another plotline, Warrick's visiting the Golden Nugget just as some woman hits a big jackpot at the slots. He watches the casino manager head on over and give her a lei, and the penny drops. Once the fuss drops, the casino manager walks towards Warrick as he asks, "You know how long I played here and I've never gotten lei'd?" There's some back-and-forth to remind us that (a) Warrick used to gamble, and that (b) he stopped, and then we find out that Lance won $50,000 from the slot machine yesterday around midnight.
Catherine barges on into the DNA lab and kicks things off: "Blood standard, unknown urine --tell me it's the same guy. Now, Liam mentioned to you that my stuff gets done first, right?" Chandra's not having any of that: "Well, I decide what gets run. And when. Unless Mr. Grissom tells me otherwise." Catherine looks considerably put out by this. She tries to recover by commenting, "It's quiet in here. [Liam] played music." "I find it distracting," Chandra replies. I find it unbelievable that anyone who interviews at the busiest crime lab in the country can't handle distraction. Hell, they should have interviewed candidates for the position while Liam rode around in circles on a tricycle, banging a pair of cymbals. That would have approximated the working conditions. Before Catherine can follow up with another awkward exchange, a pigtail-sporting Jacqui comes in with good news: there's a hit on prints Catherine lifted from the scene, but they're not Golfball Guru Carl Johnson's. They belong to the appropriately named ex-con George Craven. He happens to run security at the Embassy strip club.
We barely have time to marvel at the coincidences when we're whisked away to a soulless suburb, where Gil, Brass, and some extra who's promptly dismissed from the scene are busy scoping out an empty house. For once, Gil has his gun pulled. Brass asks, "You get this address off a pill bottle?" Gil says absently, "Herpes," then remembers he's talking to other people so he adds, "There was a prescription for Valcyclovir, so I cross-referenced the pharmacy logo." The tense creep through the house is interrupted by Liam's noisy pratfall through the front door. Oh, will the workplace comedy ever stop? After Brass recovers from a full-body glare in Liam's general direction, he happens to peer behind a large and ugly couch to discover a large and ugly body on the floor. It really pulls the room together. I suppose that doesn't speak well of the interior decorator. "That Polaroid doesn't do him justice," Brass cracks. Gil notes that he's been garroted with a length of the same wire Gil found in the car. Brass IDs the guy as Ken Willard, and then Liam proves useful by identifying someone as the Blitzkrieg owner, Manny. He muses, "So our first victim strangles this guy with wire, photographs it, takes it to the club, then burns it for some reason and takes one between the eyes himself?" Gil says, "Bring me the head of John the Baptist." Brass and Liam look confused, because we don't live in a theocracy where everyone's conversant with the same religious stories. Yet. Gil explains, "Salome wanted proof that he was dead. They didn't have Polaroids back then." Brass wonders who the hired-killer victim was hired by, and Liam guesses it was the person who shot him. Gil and Brass look shocked that this eminently sensible idea came from Liam.
Then this episode takes a welcome detour into the weird by showing us French Stewart as we've never seen him before. No, not playing an alien. He's playing an alien we don't immediately want to dissect without benefit of death first, or even anesthesia. His pointy bald head gleams as he lisps, "And like a thupernova, your love is blathting throughout the univerth. Your thpirith have become one, earthling to earthling. Tho by the power of the thun, and the moon, and all the planeth in the univerth, and the great thate of Nevada, I now pronounth you huthband and wife. You may kith that bride." The newlyweds kith pathionately. Thara and Nicky -- whoa. Thorry. This lithping thing is frighteningly eathy to pick up. Anyway, Sara and Nicky have slipped in the back entrance and watched this ritual reiterating the sanctity of marriage, and she tells him, "Don't get all misty on me." Nicky does indeed look like he's been moved by the power of the sun, the moon, and all the planets in the universe.
In the scene, we see that Sara and Nicky have collared the lisping man of the cloth. Excuse -- man of the mylar. He's peeling off his forehead dome while explaining, "I thouldn't be tho thurprithed. Thingth get tholen from here all the time -- thothe thi-fi nuth." I wonder what came first -- the sibilant lines or the lisping? Anyway, French Stewart is busy disclaiming any knowledge of how a man came to be buried in the desert while wearing a jumpsuit custom-designed for this chapel, and to him, a woman dressed identically down to the bald dome is smiling and nodding like the elephant tranquilizers have just taken effect. Nicky asks about the initials "E.T." and there's the gratuitous movie shout-out, and then Sara asks if business is going well. It is, although they've had to revise their Q4 profit estimates now that Britney Spears is off the market. Kidding! French says that business is fine: "Never better. People -- they come to Vegath to get rich or get hitched. I mean, that's not why we do it, though, ith it, honey?" His wife nods through a tranquilized haze. French continues, "We believe in love, you know, in jutht whatever form it might take. Are you two married?" Nicky's half-dreamy, half-amused look abruptly switches to one of vigorous denial, and Sara snaps from careful neutrality to an adamant no. They both say they're not, and check each other's expressions; Nicky grins at Sara and she goes back to studying the preacher. Undaunted, French says, "All right. Well, we're open twenty-four hourth. There'th a toll-free number on the back, all right? Don't let thith moment path you by." Ever the salesman, that guy. Personally, if I were either Nicky or Sara, I'd be so tempted to say, "Come on. Let's mess with the guys in the lab. The photos alone will blow Liam's mind, and if we play it right, we'll even get a response from Gil."
Sara and Nicky leave the chapel and end up on what must be Rue de Elopement. Instead of the usual Vegas sidewalk vendors handing out flyers for entrepreneurially minded hookers, you've got people beseeching you to uphold the sanctity of marriage by having pirates and mobsters deliver the sacrament unto you. While Nicky's fending off a commitment-minded Statue of Liberty, he notices a big pink Cadillac convertible. Sara looks shell-shocked. Nick shakes his head, and heads off with Sara, Nicky muttering, "Viva Las Vegas, man."
Back at the Labitrail, Artan's asking George Craven why his fingerprints are all over the murder weapon. George is all, "I don't need to explain anything. I didn't kill her." The camera appears to stutter, because we see the same shot, like, four times, interspersed with quick, jerky rewinds, and then we zoom in to his eyes. Oh, God, someone's decided to get arty with the interrogation scenes. Catherine looks disconcerted by this too. She nudges George on the thumbprint and he's all, "Yeah, lady, it's on the towel rack because I took a leak in the bathroom." Also, he apparently plays protective boyfriend by checking out his girlfriend's would-be tricks. That's so sweet. The camera goes arty again as George recounts how Carl the golf-ball salesman stumbled in from the Acid Drop (which Catherine's boyfriend happens to own), Raven picked him up, and George negotiated the deal. He checks out his girlfriend's tricks and negotiates the price? What a catch! Catherine notices the marks on his knuckles and asks George if he got those from bouncing people at the Embassy, or bouncing Raven's skull off the towel rack. Catherine tries to play the jealousy card ("I don't think you were cool with her ways...a big, strong guy like you, you didn't want to share her"), but he's not having any of that, even after he's subjected to both the arty-cam and a speculative flashback. George finally says, "I need a lawyer." Catherine shoots back, "I need your clothes."
Chandra needs a drink. She's doing DNA stuff in the fishbowl as Liam and Gil observe. Gil asks, "So. You like her?" "I like not being her anymore," Liam responds. Just then, Hodges skulks over to Gil and murmurs, "The sticky substance on the side of your gun is tape adhesive." Gil asks about the blue coloring, and Hodges tells him it's basic bathroom disinfectant. Gil asks, "So, Liam, how do you explain adhesive and toilet bowl cleanser on the gun?" Liam's all, "I don't know. I can tell you the toilets at the club had blue water." Gil looks impressed as he asks, "You inspected the toilet bowls for evidence?" and Liam promptly dashes his dreams of having the most thorough investigator EVER by saying, "Well, when you got to go, you got to go." Oh, please. Call me when you've just spent two and a half hours rerouted through a dusty, two-lane-road detour at 30 miles per hour, you've finished the last drop of the Big Gulp-sized Diet Coke you were drinking, and you're surrounded by nothing but empty, recently-cleared fields. That is the "when you got to go, you got to go" situation. Not that I'm still somewhat traumatized from that little diversion on the I-5 last July or anything. Hodges rubs salt in Liam's career wound by wildly telegraphing his disbelief, while Gil settles for asking incredulously, "At a crime scene, [Liam]?" And yes, he shouldn't have done it, but in his defense, did anyone ever tell him this? I mean, was there ever the moment when he and Nicky were checking out tire prints, and Nicky did the full-bladder tarantella? Or is Hodges right when he snarks, "Everybody knows you hold it"? Gil's working into a full rant: "You go across the street or door -- somewhere other than the crime scene -- until you've cleared the restroom. Did you clear the rest room?" No, Liam did not. Gil's actually raising his voice now: "You could have flushed away evidence! Wiped away fingerprints from the handle! Make sure you include this in your field notes!" Then he puts on the Mean Daddy face and stomps off. Wow, he's pissed. Meanwhile, Hodges turns back to a miserable Liam and leers, "I like Chandra. She's cute."
Meanwhile, Brass is talking to the Blitzkrieg owner Heinz Guderian, or as he's nicknamed here, "Manny." It turns out the gun used to shoot the hitman was (a) Manny's, and (b) unfortunately sporting a filed-off place where its serial numbers should have been. Manny counters that someone stole the gun the week before, and Brass is all, "What is this, the 'Dog ate my homework' defense?" I love Brass. The camera gets all arty as Manny makes the surprisingly logical argument, "Why would I kill somebody in my own club? I still got yellow tape across the front door." Brass points out that Manny only owns a 10% stake, and Ken Willard owns the rest. Manny points out, "The guy's not around, and things change." Brass agrees that they sure do, pointing out that Ken's metaphysical state changed recently from live to dead. Manny's so shocked, he registers his reaction three times, courtesy of the ArtyCam. He's genuinely rattled as he asks, "Yuh-you, you don't think I had anything to do with it, do you?" And then he backs that up with a vigorous no. ArtyCam replay count of the moment: 5 times. Personally, a small part of me is thrilled that we IDed one of those two bodies as Ken Willard.
Catherine walks into the Acid Drop during daylight hours, and asked the bored bartender if Krycek is in. The bartender pulls a David Spade: "And you are..." She snaps, "I'm Catherine." The bartender replies, "Oh, riiiiiiight. His cop 'friend.'" Yes, he's that precise about enunciating the ironic air quotes. This episode's marking all sorts of milestones for rendering punctuation marks in audible format. Krycek and his new mullet (HATE! HAAAAAAAAAATE!) pop on out, and he briefly canoodles with Catherine. She's ostensibly there on business, making sure he remembers dead Carl, whom he sent off to the Embassy when Carl got too drunk and embarrassing for this nightspot. The whole time, Krycek's demeanor is screaming, "I love how you dropped in unannounced! Never do it again!" He fishes for what Catherine's schedule's going to be like, and after she tells him she's working, he looks reflective.
Back at the lab, Warrick's been sucked into a musical working montage. He finds what looks like a piece of woven nylon burned into one of the hot plate coils.
Under Gil's baleful gaze, Liam wrestles a lid off a toilet tank and sees some duct tape tacked to the side of the tank. For the benefit of those who have never seen The Godfather, he explains what that's got to do with the gun: someone snuck the gun in earlier, possibly by simply walking it over from Manny's office, then taped it to the side of the toilet tank for easy retrieval later. Gil says as much: "Echoes of Michael Corleone." Liam sinks the Manny-did-it theory for once and for all by asking, "If Manny did it, why would he need to hide his own gun?" Gil approves of this line of thinking, and prods Liam into saying he'll check the tape for prints.
Back at the Labitrail, Sara and Nicky swing on into the DNA lab, which is now as quiet as the grave. Sara flips through a case file that's in a basket, and without looking up from her microscope, Chandra says flatly, "Please don't do that." Sara apologizes and says, "I was just looking for our alien DNA analysis." "Not yet," Chandra says tightly. Nicky ribs good-naturedly, "Come on. Where's your intellectual curiosity?" Chandra looks up from the scope. What, does the thing come with its own wind tunnel now? Her hair's all over the place. I guess this is TV shorthand for "frazzled." In my world, it's shorthand for "all the time." Chandra snits, "I hardly considered it a priority." Nicky's got a look like, "Oh, is that how it's going to be, missy?" Sara may actually be attempting brown-nosing, or maybe she's attempting passive-aggressive snideness, when she says, "It's very neat in here. You're very neat, Chandra." Chandra looks irritated by the observation, but thanks Sara. She heads off to deal with a truculent piece of equipment as Hodges comes in to tell Nicky, "Your shovel from the desert dug into the paint history of somebody's car. Black enamel undercoats. General Motors, 1960s vintage. Three layers of primer, plus an acrylic top, pink." Hodges may be delivering this information to the room at large, but he's watching Chandra with the kind of intensity that usually prompts restraining orders. Sara wonders if it's a pink Cadillac. Just then, Detective Travis comes into the tidy DNA lab, crowing, "E.T., phone home. I got an I.D. off the hearing aid. Our alien is Reverend Edward Thompson." Hodges has brought out his lunch, the better to sustain him through hours of fervent sexual obsession. Reverend E.T.'s home address just happens to be the Chapel of Intergalactic Love, known to you and me as the home of the lithping reverend. Travis asks, "If the reverend is dead, who's running the place?" From her perch in front of the microscope, Chandra slams something and asks in a tight voice, "Could you please take this someplace else?" Nicky's the first to respond to the outburst: "We know where there's a pink Cadillac. Thank yew, thankyewverramuch." The whimsical music plays the would-be Elvis impersonator out of the room, plus Sara, Travis, and the creepily enamored Hodges. He's so gone, he even sweeps up his crumbs so as not to disturb his inamorata even further.
Because Catherine needs a pick-me-up, she decides to pay Archie a visit in the A/V lab. In consideration of Catherine's feelings -- and the needs of a restive viewership -- Archie's wearing a shirt that's possibly been painted on. ["I don't have occasion to break into your recaps, so let me just state for the record that Archie is dreamy." -- Wing Chun] Catherine and Archie study the hotel's surveillance tapes and conclude that Craven couldn't have killed Raven, and that Carl was too doped up to do the job. The question remains: how did Raven end up with a big, bloody hole in her head?
Cavaliere swings by Warrick's work station to share: "If Lance Frasier won fifty grand, I can't find it. It's not in his room, no bank account, no car." Warrick asks what time the electricity went out; Cavaliere tells him it was 12:30. Warrick poses the head-scratcher: "How does a broke-ass guy like Lance lose fifty grand in thirty minutes?" Cavaliere notes that the walk alone would have killed ten minutes. Warrick says, "Well, they say gamblers are creatures of habit. I bet you Lance did the same thing every day, win or lose." Oh, they say, huh? Warrick concludes, "I need to take a walk in this guy's shoes." Because Warrick getting smacked in the noggin with the anvil reading, "GAMBLER, THIS STICKY END COULD HAVE BEEN YOUR OWN" never gets old.
Warrick retraces Lance's steps, confirming with a cigarette vendor that Lance used to swing by the stand every night to pay for his pack of smokes in quarters. Warrick repeats the "Do you know this man?" drill with a hot dog vendor and finds out from the amiable guy that there's been a personnel change at the vendor, since "some punk kid up and quit last night. Left the stand sitting right here." Say! That uniform happens to resemble a charred piece of nylon, much like that which was found burned onto the hot plate. Behold the magic of the post-48-minute-mark plot development. Warrick fishes for information on the punk kid's home coordinates and gets it. Then he invites eight of his closest armed and uniformed friends to take a visit to the punk kid.
Meanwhile, Liam prints the tape.
Meanwhile, meanwhile Nicky calls Sara over to look at the pink Cadillac, since it's got huge, massive scrapes along its side. "Let's go talk to the king," he says. Which one? King Juan Carlos? Jerry Lawler? Don King? Burger King? The King of Beers? Royalty is so confusing.
Things are getting serious in the Warrick plotline, because the tint's gone all green, a sure sign that we're about to plumb the depths of human depravity. Cavaliere shouts Daniel Halburt's name at the no-tell motel he apparently calls home, and when Daniel opens the door, everyone storms on in, protected by the warrant they had to search the premises. No dummy he, Warrick notices the size of the new flat-screen television Danny Boy is currently playing Quake on (or Doom, or Unreal Tournament -- it's a massive multiplayer game is all I know), to say nothing of the new PlayStation and the new stereo. ["The game also miraculously keeps playing itself in the background as Warrick and the cops question Daniel, nowhere near it." -- Wing Chun] And then Warrick finds the tell-tale hot dog stand uniform, with its even more tell-tale burn on the front. He heads toward Danny boy. With contempt seeping from every pore, Warrick says, "You must have sold a lot of hot dogs last night." He then yanks on young Danny's hideously tacky necklace -- frankly, anyone wearing something that ostentatiously ugly deserves to be choked with it, as punishment for capital crimes against taste -- and asks, "Did you get that from your old friend Lance? Did you sell a lot of hot dogs to him?"
We flash back to poor doomed, elated Lance sharing his good fortune with a familiar face as Danny serves him a hot dog. Lance burbles, "I'm kicking back in the tub, paying off that shifty super. Then I'm checking into the Bellagio." Danny tells Warrick, "I gambled every day of my life. I never won a damn thing." Warrick's righteous reply is drowned out by the clang of anvil against skull: this one reads YOU TOO COULD HAVE LOST YOUR MORAL COMPASS THROUGH YOUR GAMBLING ADDICTION, WARRICK. We then flash back to Danny entering the hotel room, rifling through the suitcase for the money and not finding it, then heading into the bathroom to threaten Lance with a hot plate to the tub. Lance gibbers in fear, so Danny drops the plate and kills him.
Back in the present, Danny says, "He should have just showed me where the money was. "Ah, the old the-victim-deserved-it defense. As a final dramatic touch, we find out that Lance had hidden the money in the Bible. Warrick looks extremely disgusted as he bids the police officers to take this punk away.
Nicky and Sara finally get an audience with the King, and he's in a marrying mood. It turns out to be the lisping French Stewart! My goodness, he's versatile. Sara thinks so too. Elvis catches sight of her and looks considerably less jubilant; Sara flashes him the Vulcan hand sign. Heh. It's nice to see her displaying a sense of humor.
Back at the labitrail, Nicky prods French to talk about the scratch on the Cadillac and he's all, "Come on, it'th more than jutht a thratch. I mean, it'th nothing compared to the vandalithm or the thtreth. I mean, come on. It'th a war out there, you know? Marriage ith money in thith town, and every shapel owner wantsth more. I mean, latht month, middle of the 'I do'th'? A rock cometh flying through my thtained glath." Sara asks if he was in a war with Ed Thompson, since they found the Cadillac-defacing shovel to the body in the desert. French claims Ed was at war with him, but that he was looking for a truce, and when he went over to talk to Ed, he found him slumped over in front of a television (which is playing old sci-fi movie footage. Nice touch). French continues, "He wath dead when I got there, I thwear it. It mutht have been a heart attack or thsomething, tho I took him out to Area 51, and then I buried him." Sara asks why he'd possibly want to drive out that far, and French explains, "Becauthe that'th what he would have wanted." Nicky looks moved for a moment, and then asks, "So then you just took over his business?' "Theemed like a good idea at the time, you know? Keep thpreading the love," French admits ruefully. Sara spreads some big-time bring-down instead, sharing the news that Ed suffered from Marfan's Syndrome, a genetic disorder that affects the connective tissue by impairing its ability to make the crucial elastic fiber protein fibrillin. Without sufficient fibrillin, there's not a lot of structural support in the tissues, leading them to weaken. For example, the walls of major arteries can rupture; it's the leading cause of death among those affected by the disease. This is all relevant because it turned out that -- surprise! -- Ed hadn't had a heart attack, but rather, had merely passed out because he was bleeding internally. French inadvertently buried Ed alive. French reels from the news; he's so affected, he loses the lisp as he tells Nicky and Sara tremulously, "I think I'm going to be sick. I'm sorry."
And now to wrap up Catherine's case. She's back in the bathroom with Artan, scanning the place with a UV light, and she muses, "The victim had a swollen ankle. What if this bracelet (we found earlier) was an anklet?" And then we go into a flashback-death scenario so beset with improbable coincidences, statistics professors will save it and use it in tests requiring students to calculate crazy odds. Here goes: Raven slips on Craven's pee puddle. She goes down, spraining her ankle and pulling the towel rack down on her as she tries to cling to it for support. It conks her in the head. She staggers out, gushing blood, but the trick she drugged is not awake, much less in any condition to call 911 for a woman who's effectively drowned her ability to clot blood. So she bleeds out in the world's most unlikely inadvertent suicide attempt.
And now to wrap up the shooting-at-the-nightclub story. Does the pace of this recap feel rushed? Imagine how the wrap-up felt. Gil asks Crystal if she's aware her fingerprints are in the federal system. That seems like something you should be aware of. Brass fills in backstory: she's awaiting trial on drug trafficking, and Manny posted her bail 'cause he's a pal like that. It's Ken Willard's drugs she was moving. Gil's all, "And here I thought you were only linked by your herpes." Nice. It turns out the prints Liam lifted from the duct tape were hers, and we soon find out that while Manny has a commendable sense of chivalry (he says of his former boss, "The guy was a snake! Picking up girls, using them as mules, throwing them away"), Crystal is the one who decided Manny deserved to own 100% of the club, so she hired the hitman to kill Ken, but after he finished the job, he decided to double the price, so she killed him because she couldn't afford to pay. Well, that's a brutal reminder that the market will only bear so many price hikes. She explains her rationale for wanting Ken dead in the first place: "The second I got arrested, Ken dumps me. Said he'd kill me if I rolled over on him. The way I saw it, I had two choices: either kill him, or go to jail." Manny looks stricken. Gil gets in the last word with, "Congratulations. You got both."
And now Catherine's back at the Acid Drop, since work let out early and it's not like she has anyone waiting for her at home, right? She heads on back, just in time to find Krycek getting his mack on with some waitress in appalling white go-go boots. Oh, this is going to be awkward. Catherine stands there on the verge of tears, and Krycek's all, "What do you expect? I run a night club." "I expect you to elaborate on the relationship between keeping overhead low and boffing the help," Catherine shoots back. Oh, she does not. She says, "I expect you to run the nightclub, not rut with the nightclub." Nope, not that either. The same woman who routinely delivers zingers to people who are confessing murder is speechless. Go, Catherine! Go grab Sara and get a beer! Well, root beer for Sara. As Catherine walks out, the waitress asks, "Who was that?' The older you, come back in time to warn you that some day, you'll be wronged by your man, honey.
Liam's night isn't ending too well either. Gil's reviewing his investigation and saying, "You committed a fatal error, Liam. You compromised evidence at a crime scene. A judgment like that can cost us a conviction. In order to solo in the field, you have to successfully complete three proficiencies." He closes the folder. I'm going to assume that in this context, "solo in the field" means "can work without an investigator's hand-holding," given all the drama confirmed CSI Nicky went through over being allowed to work cases solo. Liam takes the news like a man, and gets up to go. Gil stops him at the door: "But, since you found a suitable replacement in the lab, I'm going to give you one more chance." Liam's greatly relieved by this, but as he's walking down the hall, the tinkle of expensive glassware breaking pops his bubble.
We hear Chandra bellowing, "That's it! I am through with this!" She storms out of the lab as Liam calls, "How was your first day?" She turns around -- by now she's in her glasses and her hair's even more wildly disheveled, leading me to wonder exactly which member of the hair and wardrobe team has been stalking me. She whips off her lab coat, saying, "I can't do this. It's too much for one person. They all want -- they all want you. And I can't be you. I'm going back to Connecticut." Warrick and Nicky have discreetly drifted over from their office to watch this mini-passion play; as Chandra thrusts her lab coat into Liam's arms, Warrick hands Nicky the enabler a $5. Liam watches Chandra go with a look of horror on his face. When Warrick gives him a rueful shrug, all he can do is give the kind of weak grin Sara uses when she's trying not to throw up. And the whimsical music plays us off.