The episode opens with a shot so clichéd, it should come with its own Word Macro already built in: a well-toned young adult, clad only in skivvies, ripping across a deserted landscape as ominous music plays. The ostensible twist here: the person's wearing a bra and panties because he's being hazed by their Omega Zeta Psi brothers and surely nothing is more demeaning that being a girl, and he's running because...well, probably because someone told him too. The fraternity brothers chase the pledge straight into a seminar on feminist theory, where enraged scholars beat them about the head and shoulders with copies of Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex until the fraternity brothers are forced to admit that they define women as aberrant from a so-called gender norm because how else can they cope with the twin burdens of tiny penises and premature ejaculation?
Kidding! The Second Sex is too small to do any real damage. The brothers chase the guy into something considerably less frightening: a big old pile of manure doubling as the number one spring break for maggots in the greater Las Vegas area. The pledge, who is blindfolded, registers this only with, "Dude! What's crawling on my face?"
Following the panoramic shot of maggots writhing as they practice their maggoty pickup lines and maggoty calls to arms ("I'm gonna be a pupa in May! I need to live a little before I grow old!"). And a woman explains in voice-over that she got called in to explain the giant pool of writhing maggots and she tells Gil, "You were the first person I thought of."
Gil deadpans, "Well, thank you, Eva. I'm honored." You know, you get the PhD in entomology, you have to take the Heteromorphic Oath, to swear to fulfill to the best of your judgment and ability to put up with people waving around half-squished things and saying, "I found this. What is it?" So sack up and fulfill the professional obligations there, Dr. Grissom.
He notes that Ava makes her own mulch, and she explains, "The university is self-sustained." It has to be, to survive in Biosphere II with the huge redwoods and the mists like that in the middle of the desert. Ava goes on, "State institutions are encouraged to practice xeriscaping." Gil fills in those of us who didn't take Latin: "'Xeri' meaning 'dry.'" Ava confirms this: "Using drought-tolerant plant life. Conserves water. There's no reason for these maggots to be here."
Some unnamed flunky brings Gil a cup of tea, hold the tea bag, so it's just hot water. Gil then selects some lucky maggots for a hot tub party, inquiring as the composition of the compost, and breaks the news that they're probably looking at a body with, "If the devil requires a pound of flesh, this many maggots would require over a hundred."
"Pounds of flesh?" Ava asks. No, devils. Gil's planning on staging a musical version of Dante's Inferno. There won't be a dry eye in the house during "Beatrice, My Baby." Gil then plucks a bone from the writhing morass of larvae and asks Ava, "Were you aware that the average college student weighs 135 pounds?"
The Who wants to know if that's before or after the Freshman Fifteen.
It's now daylight. Nicky's hunkered down, scooping up the hung over larvae while some officious university type asks, "How long is this going to take?" Ava rebukes him with, "If something happened to one of our students, wouldn't you want to know?" The university suit blah-blahs about the fine line between caring about the students and caring about their sweet, sweet tuition checks. Actually, he blah-blahs about curiosity and panic and Gil looks up to cluck, "This stopped being about my curiosity when I found a human tooth." The university suit is all, "Well, fine, but did you have to announce your find in front of a huge crowd of yammering students?" Gil continues to create a university PR nightmare with, "We're now investigating a possible homicide."
Nicky tries to change the subject with, "Hey, Grissom, why is it hot?" and Gil executes the Heteromorphic Oath by explaining, "Maggots generate heat of up to 125 degrees. Heat increases the rate of putrefaction, which speeds up the digestive process." And it's maggot spring break, so it's hot fun for all the larvae. Nicky asks how long it'd take for the maggots to pick a body clean, and Gil says, "Assuming it's just one body? A few days." Nicky moves on to the logical question: "I have a hard time believing if a corpse was here, no one saw it. These bones? They're uniform. Same size and shape." Gil points out that the bones are the same size as the woodchips covering the wet, maggoty area.
So Gil takes a trip to the woodshed. He asks the wood chipper operator, "Can a human head fit through there?" "You planning something?" the guy shoots back. Heh. Gil likes his pluck, so he introduces himself: "Gil Grissom, Las Vegas Crime Lab." "Walter Beerly, Master of the Universe," Walt says. He waxes rhapsodic about the awesome crushing power of the machine, a topic I find vastly boring. Long story short: Gil finds human blood in the wood chipper.
Ten minutes in, and it's the first montage of the episode. Liam's sorting the maggots, separating them all with the cruel caprice that kept Justin from Kelly until the very end of the most boring bad movie I have ever seen. (My only consolation: it was on HBO for free, and when I switched over to the Spanish-language HBO channel, it became more viewable simply because then actual actors were dubbing the lines. Anyway.) Nicky comes in and ribs Liam that he's on the clock, because in 24 hours, the maggots' bloom of youth will fade and they'll be hairy old flies. Is this the larvae that I once knew / Is this my friend up at the corpse? / I don't remember getting older / When's the second course?/ Sunrise, sunset…
As Liam continues picking fragments out of the maggot/manure/wood chip/ bone chip stew, Mia comes in to ogle Gil. She asks him what he's doing, and he explains that since she didn't get any DNA results off the porcelain crown, he's dissecting the little maggots, as they're going to be filled with juicy victim DNA. This is where the maggot spring break metaphor runs completely off the rails, because Gil is committing wholesale maggot murder, and that can only conjure up a little maggot Horatio Caine, intoning, "That maggot was somebody's daughter. She left behind 856 grieving sisters." Also, it doesn't help that Aisha Tyler played Calleigh's doomed friend Lawyer Janet in the last episode of CSI: Miami I recapped, so she triggers flashbacks. In any event, Mia coos about what a freakin' genius Gil is, and promises him "one maggot colada, coming right up."
Catherine heads back into Liam's lair, where he's still counting out maggots. She asks if there's a reason he's got them all clinging to duct tape, and he quips, "The evidence wasn't cooperating, so I stuck it to them." "Cute," Catherine says, and Liam grins. Then he tells her he's found black plastic shreds, as if from a garbage bag, plus this handy fake fingernail covered in tacky blue paint.
Cue Catherine kicking Sara off the microscope. Sara's all, "I have three more samples to run. When I finish it will be your turn." Catherine doesn't go for the doctrine of prior ownership. She's all, "This can't wait!" Without looking up from the screen, Sara asks, "It can't or you can't?" "Both," Catherine shoots back. She invites Sara to have a cup of coffee on her, and Sara takes off with, "The coffee's free." Wow, the PEAP counseling has really worked wonders for Sara. Either that, or she headed off to tell Gil that he's nuts to consider Catherine supervisor material. Anyway, Catherine discovers blue paint mixed with motor oil. The soundtrack gets alarmed in response.
Catherine then sashays in to drop her lab results in Gil's lap: "Oil-based blue paint mixed with motor oil." The music gets all ominous as Gil decrees, "He's back."
"He" would be the Blue Paint Killer. Let's re-acquaint ourselves with the said killer, as per Season 3's "The Execution of Catherine Willows." I've excerpted all the relevant stuff from the recap for you, thus recapping a recap and plunging us all into a post-modern abyss of self-referentiality. Do you feel like a French deconstructionist yet? Here's what you need to know:
Catherine exposits for all of us: "People v. John Mathers. Serial. Western LVU. I was a rookie." Western LVU is turning into UC Sunnydale with the mortality rate. I wonder if they're in the same athletic conference -- the DEAD 10? Gil recognizes the case -- three dead coeds, all sexually assaulted with no semen found. The women were found dead and bound in garbage bags. Catherine explains, "The strongest evidence was victim #3, Charlene Roth. Mathers, a campus security guard, got murder one for that."
But just before he's executed...
Cut to Catherine catching Gil in the Labitrail and telling him, "A stay. New evidence -- hair analysis. I've already overnighted the six pubic hairs found on the victim to Norfolk Department of Criminal Justice for mitochondrial DNA analysis."
And just to rachet up the stress:
Detective Buzz has called her to Western LVU because "your name's on the memo." Catherine wants to know what memo, and Buzz tells her, "Young female, bound, trash bag. Copycats come out of the woodwork every time there's an execution." Damn, Texas must have its hands full. Come to think of it, so does Virginia; I wonder if the Norfolk Department of Justice lab is open 24/7 to handle all the work. Catherine groans, "Mathers's attorney's going to have a field day."
The attorney's having a better time that the CSIs, who were facing the problem of a killer on the loose instead of being in jail:
Catherine says, "Doc, you were here back then: tell me why this one's different." David can't: "Must be intimately familiar with the minutia of the prior cases. What's identical: cause of death, strangulation. Bruising on her wrists. Plastic zip-tie. Navy blue paint. There is one new element -- defensive wounds on the hands. Whatever she grabbed on to shattered and caused these lacerations." We see the glass embedded in Debbie's palms, and Gil asks, "Was that before or after she got the paint on her hands?" David tells him it was after, noting that one of the cuts sliced clear through the paint. Ouch. Gil notices that the paint is still wet, which is odd because Debbie's been dead for at least twelve hours. Gil asks, "What kind of paint doesn't dry in twelve hours, I wonder?"
Fortunately for the CSIs, the mtDNA tests peg Mathers as Charlene Roth's killer, but there are still two open questions: who killed the other women, and who killed poor Debbie Reston? We get two important clues: the blue paint used in Charlene Roth's death was different from the other deaths, and the ex-boyfriend of one of the victims, Cody Lewis, played the role of Red Herring in this evening's episode.
In the end, Mathers gets executed. Catherine watches, while Gil and Brass mutter uneasily over the idea of the Blue Paint Killer re-emerging:
The camera switches back to Brass drinking (my guess: whiskey) and saying, "He's going to kill again." Gil takes a drink and says, "Yeah. And all we've got is a partial fingerprint, and an M.O. that may lead us in the right direction." Brass comments, "Sometimes in this job, I'd rather be lucky than good. Maybe time, we'll get lucky." Gil stares morosely at his drink and says, "I don't believe in luck. My only real purpose is to be smarter than the bad guys, to find the evidence that they didn't know they left behind, and make sense of it all. It makes me very uncomfortable to realize that this guy may be smarter than me."
Cut to Captain Exposition doing what he does best -- expositing in front of a whole group of people. He gives basically the same recap I just did, only without dramatic and contextually appropriate quotes. As Catherine explaining how the killer's MO is to apply never-drying blue paint to a hand rail and nab victims at a nearby fountain when they're washing their hands, we see Nicky inspecting a handrail while Sara prints a fountain. And then Brass is all, "No rest until we bring in this guy!" while Gil sits in a darkened room and ponders the killer.
Catherine, meanwhile, has decided she'd rather get some sun, even if she has to run a press gauntlet to do it. Damn the media and their pesky insistence on informing the public that a killer may be on the loose!
Gil, meanwhile, is getting the unwelcome news from Mia that the maggots coughed up male DNA. This totally screws the whole Blue Paint Killer angle, since that guy was known for preying on women. As Gil's digesting the bad news, Warrick comes by to complain that the building's crawling with press. Gil's all, "Tell it to the hand," and Warrick pleads, "If you don't say anything, they're just going to fill in the blanks --" "Screw the press, because for all I know, the dead body is an auto mechanic who just painted his house blue." Or it's an old member of the Blue Man Group.
Liam, meanwhile, has found a fraternity key, or what pieces survived the wood chipper. Catherine then takes the key to the Omega Zeta Pi, and the president smoothly explains the key: "Plebes are asked to swallow [the key] the first night of Hell Week." Nicky adds, "And then retrieve it and return it by the end of the week, am I right?" The pres grins, "You got it!" Catherine brings up the pesky little detail that hazing is illegal, a point that is as lost on this clown as physics on a milk cow. The guy smirks and says, "It's not hazing. It's a voluntary loyalty ritual." Catherine asks, "Political science major?" "Just back from Abu Ghraib," the kid shoots back. Oh, he does not. But can't you just see it? Catherine asks the would-be lawyer to explain how the kid who swallowed the key ended up dead, and the guy's all, "Ah…who...what now?" Nicky asks if any pledges have maybe gone missing in the past few days, and El Presidente's all, "Let me get back to you." Then he realizes the pretty, pretty legacy pledge Jonathan Avery Haywood III hasn't been around much. Catherine asks acidly, "So he's been missing for days, and you didn't bother to call anyone." El Presidente pleads Guy Etiquette -- "for all I knew, he was getting laid. Look, I'm the fraternity president, not his mother." Ah, the benefits of brotherhood -- being ignored to the point to wood-chipper disposal. Where do I sign up? As Nicky's getting ready to collect tooth- and hairbrush from the missing JAH III, two pledges come in, and El Presidente makes them fling their arms skyward and chant, "I'm a loser, I'm a loser, I'm a loser!" Nicky uses his SuperCSI vision to zoom in and notice the wet blue paint on one guy's hand.
Cut to Gil examining the painted rail in the dark and asking peevishly, "Why didn't Nicky find this before?" Catherine tells him Nicky was working from a campus security schematic that didn't have the rail listed, which is our first clue that all is not what it seems with said rail. She then inspects the base of the railing and notes that the cement fixing it in place is still fresh. Gil says in a tone of great upset: "So now he's not just painting railings, he's installing them!" You know, considering that this guy later goes on to rape and murder women, doing a little freelance landscaping seems like the least of the guy's crimes. Gil decides they need to dig up the railing, cement and all. Perhaps then they can search the fixture for clues as to how someone smuggles a whole railing onto campus and installs it without anyone apparently noticing.
The two then head over to the water fountain they know will be nearby, and propped up to it is a black trash bag. Something that appears to be blonde hair is sticking out. The music gets all dramatic for a moment as Catherine opens the bag, and then a sex doll pops out. Duh-DUNH-duh! Gil looks supremely peeved, and his voice reflects that as he snots, "He knew we would find this, and now he's taunting us." Catherine's got a look like, "Gil, that's just the reaction he wants. Don't give him the satisfaction."
And then those two head back to the lab for the second montage of the night. It's basically an excuse to show a sex doll on prime time network TV before the indecency fines triple for all offenses, real or imagined. And to bring in the cast of Stomp to run fingerprints through CODIS, if the soundtrack is anything to go by. Nicky works the railing during the montage; Catherine and Gil process the sex doll as if she were a real woman. (Insert your own Real Doll joke here.) Catherine eventually finds the folded-up note in the doll's mouth: it reads, "I HAVE HER."
Gil and Catherine look at each other, appalled by the realization that the Blue Paint Killer's got another victim. As Gil lifts a single human hair off the note, Catherine notes somberly, "Two years ago, DNA found a hair on Debby Reston that belonged to the serial's first victim, Janet Kent." Gil prods our memories of sweeps periods past with, "Planted hairs. It's his signature."
And then he goes to look at the note for a while. As Gil scans it, he shakes a little fingerprint powder on it, and shadows the impression of whatever was written on the page above the note. In this case, it's a drawing -- an amateurish facial study of a gagged blonde woman, with a tear spilling out of one eye.
Catherine confirms with the rest of the guys -- Sara is evidently still off having that coffee on Catherine -- that DNA confirmed the hair as belonging to Debby Reston. Gil points us all to the art -- which, in addition to its obvious Robert Crumb-like influences, also shows a similarly comix-influenced lack of proportion when it comes to head and limb size -- and says, "I tested the note with ESDA because I saw some indentations in the paper." Because this show sees no need to educate us on the actual forensics techniques used -- choosing instead to have characters like Warrick state the obvious with, "He must have written 'I HAVE HER' on an underlying page" -- I will tell you what ESDA is. The acronym stands for Electrostatic Detection Appartus, and it's one of two methods commonly used to recover indentations on sheets of paper. The paper with the latent writing is covered with a transparent material, which is fixed to the paper via vacuum drawn through an underlying porous bronze plate. This makes a tight covering-paper-plate sandwich, so the cellophane can prevent damage to the document. The sandwich is then subjected to a repeated high-voltage static charge, which creates a variably-charged surface; any impressions retain a heavier static charge relative to the flat paper. Black toner is then shaken over the surface, and it adheres to the charged area, effectively replicating the writing that caused the impression. The impressions are then photographed and preserved by covering the cellophane layer with an adhesive-backed clear sheet. As a result, the entire process is non-destructive to the original document.
Now that you know what ESDA is, now you also know that the CSIs used it to gaze upon some comix-inspired art. Catherine points out that prior investigations had concluded the killer was an artist or had some connection to the university's art department. Nicky notes, "Serials typically photograph their crime scenes. If we're dealing with an artist here, maybe he drew the crime scene instead." The CSIs all take a moment to thank their lucky stars they're not dealing with a macramé weaver. Then, because we haven't seen enough of this particular drawing, everyone analyzes it for a while. Warrick points out that it looks like the bound and gagged woman is in a small room. Gil wants to know what the small seat is in the foreground; Warrick thinks it's a chair or sofa. His interior design skills are tight, like his game. He's conscious of flow, and creating classic compositions balancing texture against shape. Oh, who am I kidding? Warrick is a shoe man. Nicky is the one you ask about interior design. Nicky notices the square window in the upper left corner, and after they blow it up, we see that it's backwards writing of some sort. Catherine figures it's some some sort of signage; Gil signals his contempt for the sign with, "The letters are backwards." Nicky dons the helm and mantle of alter-ego Snicky and says, "Cramped space, chairs in the foreground but no other furniture, no shutters or curtains on the windows. Maybe it's not a room. Maybe it's a vehicle."
Catherine warms to the idea, asking, "He was in the front seat, but looking at the rearview mirror?" And we flash back to him sketching the victim in a car. Gil's all, "So he can attack her, abduct her, rape her and strangle her, but he can't look directly at her?" Well, he's a sensitive serial killer. The CSIs quickly conclude that they're looking for a Chevy van, and then Nicky takes one for the team by admitting he's familiar with the signage -- "It's the Erotic Boutique on Tropicana." Nobody buys his explanation that the font is distinctive. Nicky takes the high road and shuts up, instead of saying, "So I pick up a few issues of Big Bodacious Babes. It beats mucking about with a Mensa-level dominatrix, Gil, or humping suspects in an investigation, Catherine."
Maybe he thinks it in the car as a dozen squad cars descend on the boutique and its parking lot. Brass darts over to the van and opens it up, and everyone recoils at the scent of Eau de Dead Girl. Yet she looks surprisingly good for someone so smelly. Catherine notes the props in the van -- a pump for the sex doll, and beer bottles, likely used as a phallic substitute in a rape.
After dispatching his subordinates to process boring things like bodies and vans, Gil strolls on into the porn shop, which seems intent on creating its own little red-light district via the creative use of neon and strobe lights. Gil wanders around for a while before finding the inflatable dolls. How come this is okay, but a little face-suckage like last week's requires the warning? Maybe it really does come down to the apparently offensive idea that women like sex too. As Gil picks up a doll similar to the one the Blue Paint Killer used, the clerk remarks, "Hunh. I would've picked you for a leather guy." Gil ignores that and asks if anyone's bought an inflatable doll recently, and the guy yawns about the customers who buy the latex dolls in the sex-toy equivalent of a committed relationship versus the one-night stand quality of the inflatable numbers. Gil's all, "I'm more interested in the clientele than the merchandise...I'd like to take a look at your credit-card receipts." The guy -- who looks like what Vin Diesel will look like once the Riddick residuals can no longer cover the gym membership -- snorts and points down to a sign reading, "cash ONLY pervert!!!" Gil desperately asks if there's any surveillance camera, and Vin says, "Bad for business." My God, this store's a shoplifting pervert's dream. Gil's discouraged until he notices the literature by the cash register -- magazines and comics, one of which looks like it was drawn by the killer. The cover totally reminds me of the stuff I saw this one time, when I was sent to cover an "alternative underground" comics convention for the magazine I worked for, and discovered that "alternative underground" was a euphemism for "Dungeons and Dragons meets My Little Pony porn." You haven't lived until someone's whipped out an eight-by-eleven panel devoted to the female anatomy and explained how many different Photoshop filters they've used to make the labia majora look like it belongs to a feisty bisexual demoness.
In any event, I'm in the throes of an "alternative underground" flashback and Gil's in the throes of a "hey, this is the killer" moment. He recovers enough to find out the guy trades comics for store credit, he recently traded credit for a doll, and the artist in question, one Zippy Tee, is "average-looking."
David the Déjà Vu Coroner is checking out the body -- now stink-free, if the lack of pursed lips and wrinkled noses is anything to go by -- and commenting that this body reminds him of many others: blue paint on the hand, physical signs of sexual assault, ligature marks around the neck. Catherine follows a hunch and compares a picture of late pledge Jonathan with the Jane Doe on the slab; they're both pretty in a blond, fine-boned way. Catherine comments, "None of his other victims looked alike." "So why these two?" David asks. "Maybe it was a mistake," Catherine theorizes. "Mistaken for a girl?" David wonders. We flash back to the waify blond people wandering through the misty bracken. Catherine points out that Jonathan wasn't mistaken for just any girl, but this specific girl. Catherine concludes, "We thought he selected his victims at random. He didn't. He chose her. He hunted her, he trapped her."
And she had a name: Kaitlin Rackish. Her roommate, who sounds moments away from breaking into fresh tears, is talking to Catherine. Although the girl hadn't seen Kaitlin since Monday, on account of it being pledge week and all, she can still recall what the two of them did on their last day together: they went to the gym, went to the dining hall, picked up their term paper orders from the campus copy union, bought sodas from the bookstore, went to the library to study, and then Katy headed off to her 7 PM class, "Introduction to the Female Form." The music gets all ominous as Catherine tweaks the ol' memory banks with, "Cody Lewis?" He was a glasses-wearing, art-committing suspect the last time. The roomie betrays a glimmer of a crush with a wistful look and a sighed explanation: "He got me interested in art."
He's made quite the aesthete out of Brass too. Cody is looking at the X-rated comic Gil picked up as Brass snorts, "Introduction to the Female Form. That's deep. I bet that brings in all the 17-year-old pre-feminists." Yes, and then they head to the book-hurling seminar I mentioned back on page one. Cody looks up and says that the comic art isn't his; he elaborates, "The technique isn't bad, but it's raw. This person hasn't had any formal training at all." This has got to be hard on him. Do you suppose he's looking at the art and wondering how much of it was inspired by his old dead girlfriend? Brass doesn't think so: "Maybe it's your alter-ego. You know, the bad boy side. The Mr. Hyde thing." Cody points out that he came in voluntarily, out of a sense of civic duty, but that sense is rapidly dissolving. Brass insincerely says, "I appreciate your help, I really do," and let me just admit right here, I have not given Paul Guilfoyle the credit he deserves for what he does with his lines. So it's time to rectify that: he does a great noir delivery, skating the thin line between cordial and hostile, and his scenes are consistently enjoyable for the characterization he brings to Captain Exposition.
And now that I've shared the love, it's time to return to the episode, where Brass is sharing the hostility. He points out that Cody ditched the old suspect van, picked up a new presumably non-suspect wife, returned to the campus around the time victim number four was killed, and taught victim number five. Brass asks, "You see what I got here?" "A string of seemingly unrelated events grouped thanks to a hackneyed idea of how killers go undercover?" Cody guesses. No, he does not. Brass presses some more, and Cody says with barely restrained anger, "You know what it's like to be told you lead the life and fit the profile of a serial killer?" Brass swats another one out of the park with a cheerily unrepentant, "Nah. I wouldn't have a clue." Cody replies, "You make all these assumptions, and you're not asking questions here. You're attacking me to see how I'm going to react to what you have to say. And nothing I say is going to make a difference with you, so what's the point?" Brass tries a new tack: "Why don't you just confess?" Cody glares in frustration and says, with a lot less asperity than expected, "That's my point. I didn't do it."
Nicky and Liam work the van where Katy's body was found. Liam finds a WLVU parking pass dating back to 1986. Nicky finds a pair of shattered eyeglasses, and reminds us all that two years ago, Debby Reston wrecked her killer's eyeglasses before he took her down. The glasses prescription was 20/80; Liam offers to run these glasses and see if they match. Nicky tells him to run the parking pass too, as the VIN for the van's been obliterated. The two hop out of the car and move around to the back, where Nicky notices that someone's gone to the trouble to spoof the van registration with fake stickers for years. Liam's poking around the cargo-loading area in the back, and he finds a load of black powder. At first he figures it's fingerprint powder, but Nicky quickly debunks that idea. So Liam's officially found something. And yippee for him and all, but I really wish TPTB would scale back on him a little and rotate Sara, Warrick, and Nicky into more regular rotation. I miss the Young Turks being all...young. And Turk-y.
And in response to my cosmic plea, we switch to Sara. Oh, this is exciting! If I write that I wish for a big basket of Scharffen Berger to plop on my doorstep, will that happen too? (Runs to door to check …) Well, I can live in hope. Sara's hanging with Jacqui, asking about the prints pulled from the van; Jacqui tell her, "The prints from the dash and the rearview mirror were a match to the partial we pulled off the trash bag that Debbie Reston was found in two years ago. Same guy, still no hits from AFIS." Sara asks if "the X-rated comic books" are ready -- and poor Sara, forced to handle bad porn in the name of solving a case for the second time in two weeks -- and Jacqui grimly says there's nothing comic about them. She flips open a page and says, "Double-D cups, tiny waist, bondage. Dehumanization. I'm all for visual stimulation, but these images are about domination, not sex." The images in question: a tight close-up on a weeping, made-up eye, the caption, "This will be a GOOD hurt!" and tied wrists. Sara concludes, "This artist gets off on dominating women. This is his sex."
The camera zooms in on one of the artist's renderings -- a blonde woman, infantilized to look like a lewd, terrified Shirley Temple and clearly being regarded from her assailer's perspective -- and then transitions onto the pictures of the victims. Warrick and Catherine try to look for connections between the many victims: "Janet and Marsha both lived in Dakin Hall. Charlene and Debby took Econ 101. Marsha and Debbie took English lit. Janet, Debby and Kaitlin all ate at McGraw dining hall. Janet dated Cody Lewis, Kaitlin took his art class…" What is this, "88 Lines About 44 Victims"? Catherine concludes that none of the women had anything in common, other than their killer.
Gil heads out to the van and slides in the driver's seat, the better to understand the killer's perspective. He imagines the muffled pleas of the victims, and their subsequent brutalization. The camera snaps out of flashback and onto Gil's face. Either's he's all resolute now, or he's come to some sort of insightful conclusion, or he's fallen asleep with his eyes open.
Sara's downstairs filling out paperwork. I can't quite make out what the heading is on the form, but it's divvied into five categories: paraphelic, demographiv, situational, relational, [something of] perception. Her partial answers: "rape with foreign object," "young, caucasian, long hair," "small, temporary, mobile space," "fear-based, depersonalized," "dominant, disassociative." We see more of the comic art, none of which repudiates any of Sara's assessment. I can't help but suspect that there's some reason that TPTB gave Sara, the one CSI with a track record of not shrugging off violent crimes against women, the solo task of logging this misogynist tripe.
Meanwhile, Nicky's pried Gil out of the van so he can share his discovery about the expertly-faked van registration. Gil's not pleased to learn that they're no closer to knowing who owns the van, and Nicky whips out the Reagan-era parking pass. He recounts how he called the school to find out who owns the pass, and tells Gil, "Not a student, but an employee executed two years ago." Gil's all, "John Mathers?" None other. The van matches the partial VIN Nicky was able to scare up. Gil's a little gobsmacked by this: "So our killer's driving around in Mathers' old van." Nicky offers the smartest theory anyone's trotted out regarding the baffling pattern of killings: "I don't think these two guys were an original and a copycat. They were partners." Gil's expression is illuminated by the light bulb that just went off over his head.
Nicky then scampers off to re-watch interviews with Mathers, where the guy's explaining how killing him won't solve anything. Catherine comes over to watch, and I brace for the inevitable flashback, since what would a Season Five episode be without the moment where Catherine yanks the focus around to herself? Surprisingly, this scene goes on with Gil and Sara coming in to watch as Mathers continues to assert that the real killer's still out there. Sara breaks the post-interview silence by sharing the news that the prints on the comic books' comb bindings match the prints pulled from the van. Remember, those match the prints pulled from the trash bag, so the artist-killer connection's been forged with two different pieces of evidence (the ESDA and the prints). Gil asks if Sara analyzed the comics, and she replies, "Yeah, and the drawings indicate a dominant, disassociative sexual sadist." I probably shouldn't find it so amusing that she looked at Catherine while saying that. Nicky points out that the prison doc found Mathers to be a psychopath with a dependent personality disorder. Also, it's kind of funny that Gil's glaring at Nicky while the Young Turk makes that assessment. Silly Gil! We all know Nicky has rage issues, not a dependent personality disorder. Sara bolsters Nicky's theory with, "Which means [Mathers] was predisposed to violent crimes, but he might have needed some encouragement." Gil points out, "To invite someone to join you for torture and murder would require a great deal of trust." Really? You can't just post it on Craigslist? Gil continues, "You would only do it if you could completely control your partner." Catherine concludes that Mathers' partner was the alpha male. Gil elaborates: "Sexual sadism can go hand in hand with sexual dysfunction. Mathers said that he wasn't the killer. But we know he had sex with Charlene Roth based on the fact that we found his pubic hair on her body." Catherine corroborates the Mathers-as-murderous-marital-aid angle by pointing out that the beer bottles found in the van tested positive for a vaginal contribution, so the Blue Paint Killer's now achieving rape via objects, as his detachable penis got a lethal injection a few years ago. Nicky voices as much: "Maybe Mathers was this guy's surrogate penis." Sara looks squicked by that, then looks down like she's working on a crossword puzzle. Catherine continues that the one thing throwing off the theory is that there was no killing last year, and Gil points out that occasionally, life gets in the way of performing hideous ritualized murder.
At the magical 48-minute mark, Hodges appears to tell us that the black powder Nicky and Liam found in the back of the van is toner powder associated exclusively with commercial copy machines. Catherine is now illuminated by her own above-the-head light bulb, and she recalls that Katy went to the copy center that Monday. to her, Sara continues to stare at her paper with an expression best described as "Hmmm…ten-letter word for extra cast members, starts with an E…"
Sara's gonna have to put down the puzzle soon, because Catherine's hurtling toward the victims' common denominator, powered by the magical velocity of the 48-minute mark. Long story short: all the women had visited the copy shop right before their abduction.
Within seconds, a dozen squad cars have converged on the copy center, and Brass has identified the long-term Xerox jockey Kevin Greer. He's been on the job since 1983. Brass has a talk with the laconic undergrad who's probably just there to satisfy the terms of his financial aid package, and we quickly establish that Kevin just took off, he's not what you'd call popular with the kids, and he uses the handy comb binding machine to assemble his comic books. Catherine finds a cache of black plastic trash bags with a lot of toner on them,
Then everyone teleports to the Kasa De Kevin. As they go through the darkened house, a rhythmic racket makes it hard for anyone to hear themselves think. This is when I expect Brass to turn to someone and snap, "Just once, I'd like a New Age serial killer, so when I go through their empty house, it's all chimes and lit aromatherapy candles. This way, I can hear myself think and see where I'm going." Because, really. The dank little hovels get old.
At least everyone can find the root of the racket and fix that problem. It's a professional-quality paint shaking machine, busy agitating paint just in case we've all forgotten that this is the Blue Paint Killer they're dealing with. Catherine realizes, "He mixed his own paint so we couldn't trace the origin of his purchase." And because -- as we've established earlier -- serial killers have a lot of time on their hands. Rejecting society's codes frees you up to pursue a lot of new hobbies.
Like calling the police at your own house and taunting them: "Las Vegas's finest. Nice job. Impressive turnout. Have a look around. I'll be at the station waiting for you." Gil does not look pleased by this invitation at all.
Cut to a shot of a door opening on the Blue Paint Killer. My God, it's Berke Breathed! Opus, no! Kevin cheerily greets the guys with, "Gil, Jim." He smiles, and we see that Kevin evidently grew up in a household without access to fluoridated water. Either that, or he's been gargling coffee nonstop for the past twenty years without brushing his teeth once. Kevin says, in the same mild and amiable tone, "My rule was, if you made it to my house, you deserved to meet me. I mean, how much time did you guys spend picturing the size of my hands?" Gil has put on the glasses and the remote expression. ("Default expression 1.1," the husband cracks from the depths of the couch.) Kevin holds up a pen-wielding hand and says, "Not very big."
Mr. Sobell: This scene is not so chilling as --
Sobell: The first time we met Horatio?
Mr. Sobell: Yes. But it's also not so chilling as the writers would like it to be.
Sobell: And I agree, but I'm wondering if that's intentional, because it seems evident that Kevin's hoping to control the scene and have a big dramatic moment, and he's not getting that satisfaction.
Mr. Sobell: Well, the music's trying to be creepy and failing.
Sobell: The music tries to be a lot of things and fails. I'm digging this scene, okay?
Mr. Sobell: I just think it's a shame Courteney Cox drove David Arquette to kill like that.
And then we cease debating the merits of the scene and keep watching as Kevin keeps talking. He explains, "You don't need big hands, though. Not the way I do it. Just a little at a time." Gil tries to wipe off the disgusted look before replying, "Take life, give it back...God-like." Kevin begs to differ, then adds, "There must be something angelic in the way I look. 'Cause even in the last breath, they didn't think I'd do it." Maybe they were hoping a real serial killer would come along and finish the job, Kevin. He more or less groks that sentiment by asking Gil, "Am I disappointing you guys?" Frankly, yes. Can you even twirl your moustache? Kevin asks if we wish he were scarier. Why? Did you bring masks? A list of Bush administration Supreme Court nominees? Gil takes off his glasses and casually asks Kevin what happened to his.
Kevin looks genuinely irritated: "Stupid Lasik." They never tell you about the side effects, do they? Accidentally killing men instead of women, disappointing the cops when you turn yourself in...Kevin explains that the Lasik is what caused him to get caught, because "when that Debby bitch busted my glasses, I decided they were a liability. But the procedure didn't take...and my night vision still sucks." Gil says, "Johnny." Kevin looks angry and embarrassed. Brass looks like he would welcome any line whatsoever. Kevin finally says, "I don't want to talk about him." Yeah, the other serial killers won't stop giving him guff over killing guys. Gil notes, "Well, you kept him for several days." Brass asks, "Were you having a little fun?" Brass is awfully quick to go to that particular well. Is there something we should know, Jim? Will we one day find out that there's a cabana boy and a Sondheim soundtrack waiting for you at home? Kevin looks up and asserts, "I'm not into boys." He's into men.
As Kevin explains that he kept the fraternity boy on ice, Catherine and Sara are checking out the Maytag in his house. It doubles as a portrait gallery, with drawings of Kaitlin Rackish, Debby Reston, and Marcia Reese readily visible. There's also another drawing of a sixth woman --something that causes Catherine no small amount of chagrin as she picks up a drawing of Brit Mosscoe.
Back at the Labitrail, Gil's making small talk about Charlene Roth. This is the woman Kevin's surrogate penis went down for (as it were); Kevin's still peeved about that. He says he tried to talk Mathers out of it, but "he didn't understand that we were better together than we would ever be apart. He needed me." Brass simpers, "Soul mates." Again with the gay! What is this, Good Cop, Homophobe Cop? Good Cop, Closeted Cop? Kevin snots, "Contrary to popular belief, even people like us have souls." Gil rolls his eyes. Kevin whines, "I spent fifteen years looking for a solid replacement, but you only get that lucky once in a lifetime." Gil realizes, "You miss him." "I created him!" Kevin shoots back. Brass points out Kevin let his boyfriend take the fall, and Kevin shouts, "He got caught! That's the price you pay for incompetence!" Brass presses, "Death?" Kevin explains, "That's what you deserve when you make a mistake." This philosophy will become relevant in about three minutes.
Just then, Catherine knocks and breaks the news about Brit Mosscoe. Sara's looking into Missing Persons. Gil's none too happy about the news. He heads back inside and asks, "Where is Brit Mosscoe?" Kevin looks up, and looks almost hopeful. Brass looks pretty pleased. Kevin looks calculating for a moment before saying cheerily, "There's a lot of fight in her." Gil asks, "Is she old or new?" Kevin declines to answer. He merely finishes his sketch and promises, "I'll take you to her. You'll need a full tank of gas." That he's changing his M.O. so suddenly doesn't raise any suspicions?
Sara's back at the house, confirming that there's no such person as Brit Mosscoe. She looks at the composite drawing, which includes an uncharacteristic cheesecake pose, then looks up, puzzled. Her eyes happen to fall on a calendar; the pin-up, Miss October, is in the same incongruous pose. Sara quickly concludes that "Brit Mosscoe" is an anagram for "Miss October."
Meanwhile, everyone's trudging through the Labitrail, intent on taking Kevin up on his word. He stops everyone outside the bathroom and pleads to go. Brass gives the okay, provided Kevin's been patted down. After an examination less thorough that the one I got the last time I flew out of Dulles, Kevin gets to go into his very own stall and close the door. Because police respect the privacy of an admitted serial killer more than they respect any safety considerations.
A quick phone call from an excited Sara later, and Catherine's telling Gil and Brass that Brit Mosscoe is Miss October and they're on a serial snipe hunt. Gil wonders, "So where's he taking us?"
Someplace strange and metaphorical, because the physical trip stops here. Brass charges into the bathroom and opens up the stall as Officers Frick and Frack stand there with their thumbs up their duffs. This is the point where Mr. Sobell loses it and begins gibbering incoherently with rage. Why? Because evidently the sounds Kevin made while dropping a plastic bag over his head and securing it with a rope procured from God-knows-where weren't at all out of the ordinary. So, yeah, Kevin's suffocated himself. Because people who make mistakes deserve to die, remember? ["If anyone is interested, this entire storyline is taken from real-life events. I'm a little surprised the writers didn't name-check Lake and Ng in the dialogue." -- Sars knows way more true-crime shit than she should]
Brass sends the ineffective deputies off to get a paramedic -- let's hope they bring back a paraplegic instead -- and he stands around with Catherine while Gil...well, Gil is electing to go nowhere near Kevin's dental work with his own mouth, forsaking the opportunity to do artificial respiration in favor of bouncing up and down on Kevin's chest like Tigger. Ah, Gil. If you just stop now, you'll save the taxpayers of Nevada a lot of money. The logic of reviving a serial killer so the state can kill him is lost on me, I'm afraid.
Anyway, Kevin is now wherever serial killers go after they've shuffled off this mortal coil. Perhaps Millander will be his spirit guide.
After all the fuss, a tired Gil heads back to the interrogation room and notices the drawing Kevin was working on. Why, it's a picture of Gil, kind of. He's shown with Kevin reflected in his glasses, and the glasses are drawn twice. If you turn the picture 90 degrees, you get a shot of an unnamed crying woman, and a dead Kevin body in the background. And then Gil notices you can fold the picture like the back page of Mad magazine, and the folded picture is of Gil, with Kevin reflected in his glasses. The word "Good Bye" is inside Kevin's mouth.
Cue Gil standing there, horror-stricken, as he realizes a lifelong Xerox jockey manipulated the entire encounter, beginning to end. He was out-thought, and it's only because Kevin decided to turn himself in that the killing stops.
No rant this week. Try to contain your glee. It's just…when the episode keeps me guessing, and everyone acts less than annoying, and I enjoy it, I'm a lot more forgiving of glaring logic holes like why Kevin got to go to the bathroom by himself. We'll see if the tuxedos week have a similarly pacifying effect.