In what is not a startling break from tradition, we begin this episode with a shot of the Las Vegas strip at night, and zoom in so we can see the bright white beam of light shot out of the tip of the Luxor. It's all very splendidly vulgar, and on any other night I'd have a whole riff going. However, I'm in kind of a weird headspace right now, because I just finished watching the latest episode of The Wire and one of the most interesting characters on television ever, Stringer Bell, just got killed by two of the other most interesting characters on television ever, Omar the gay and surprisingly principled homicidal homeboy, and Brother Mouzone; Stringer more or less had it coming, but I am still reeling over here from how it was carried out. Thoughtful, intelligent storytelling that doesn't pander to sentimentalism has the power to really rock the viewer.
But enough about really good TV -- I'm paid to recap CSI. Would you like to know what's going on? In a word: bloodshed. Gil's in a dodgy neighborhood with the B-Minus Squad (Sofia and Liam the Erstwhile Lab Tech) and Brass is telling him that the dead body is 16-year-old gangbanger Tyson Plummer. Sofia asks how many holes there are in Tyson, and Gil tells her he counted four. As she checks out the scene, Sofia muses, "Eleven shell casings. Shooter emptied the gun, so he was moving and shooting. Only hit the vic four times." Gil assumes a long-suffering look and tells Brass tartly, "She talks to herself." "It worked for me," Brass shrugs. I suppose as long as Sofia doesn't begin delivering exposition, Brass doesn't care what she does. Sofia's off babbling about bullets buried in walls.
Speaking of The Wire, it looks like Liam's wandered onto the set. Not that I've been spending a lot of time in Las Vegas's dicier neighborhoods, but I have a hard time believing they're filled with tree-lined alleys. Anyway, Liam's trying to collect evidence and he's distracted by the little kids playing gangsta. He ducks under the police tape and begins moving down the alley to talk to the kids, but the minute the kids check out his J. Crew Fall 2004 Catalog ensemble (beat-up blazer, sweater, jeans), they scream, "Run!" and beat feet. Silly kids -- Liam needs all the positive wardrobe reinforcement he can get.
One of the kids runs particularly clumsily, and knocks over a Rubbermaid storage container. He scampers off, but the thud of the container's caught Liam's eye. We see why: crammed inside is a small, dusty, emaciated child. Liam whips out the cell. Fighting to keep his cool, Liam chokes out, "Grissom, we got a very young male D.B. by the dumpster." The shot switches to Gil's face; his head whips around and he looks alarmed, probably because Liam sounds like he can't decide whether to throw up or burst into tears. Gil promises to hop on over.
Just as he does, a young man ducks under the tape, despite police telling him it's not there for impromptu open-air limbo contests. Brass immediately assumes control of the situation, and finds out the kid's name is Leo Plummer. "Wow, what a coincidence! The dead guy's name is Tyson Plummer. Are you two related, by chance?" Brass trills. Oh, he does not either. Leo gets off the best line of the night by telling Brass, "They didn't have to do him like that, dawg." "Dawg"? Who wrote this dialogue, Randy Jackson? Brass musters all the gravitas at his disposal and tells Leo, "I know you know who did this." Leo thanks Brass to stay out of it, because "whoever did this is gonna get got." Brass is all, "Oh, noooo. Don't say stuff like that. Only one of two things can come of that -- you in shackles, or you on a slab. So let's break the odds this time -- what do you say?" I say that you lack the euphemistic touch so helpful to funeral home directors, but I applaud the sentiment. Leo feels similarly: "You done with me, bacon? 'Cause I got family to go bury."
Or maybe he'll be the family to be buried, as some mysterious figure has just burst out of the crowd and begun firing shots. Gil and Liam dive behind the dumpster, but Gil peeks out to watch the perp flee, and Sofia give chase with the rest of the uniforms on the scene. She'd fit right into the Miami squad. All they'd have to do is dye her hair so as to avoid confusion with Calleigh. Gil asks Liam if he's okay and Liam replies, "Hell, no, I'm not okay." Looks like candor will be a shared trait among the B-Minus Squad. Liam wants to know who's shooting at them and Gil says excitedly, "I don't know, but I think our single just turned into a triple."
The Who wants to know who this bearded stranger with the quips is, and what he's done with the mope of the first nine episodes.
Then we have so many commercials that by the time they're done, it's daylight. Sara ambles on over to the dead child's body. Liam's working the scene and Emergency Backup David is examining the body. Sara hunkers down and Liam gets all deep with, "Somebody just tried to throw him out with the trash." And they would have succeeded too, if it hadn't been for those meddling kids. Sara adds, "If the dumpster wasn't full, he would have ended up at the landfill." Emergency Backup David has nothing speculative to add, only the observation that the child hasn't been dead long, as he's just coming out of rigor mortis. Sara notes, "He wasn't in the box long enough to mummify, but the kid looks like an ad for hunger relief." Sara then says with slightly less composure than normal, "Let's transport him in situ. Be very careful moving the body." She catches the look on Liam's face and asks if he's okay. Liam lies and tells her he is.
Which is fortunate, as the rest of the folks on the scene have their hands full with wrestling some guy to the car as he screams, "Rodney King, dawg! Rodney King! Y'all see this? It's Rodney King!" Sofia cocks an eyebrow at the proceedings and saunters on over to Brass, who's wryly asking Gil, "You think these concerned citizens are taping the arrest of a vicious killer?" Gil ignores this aspersion against the character of the neighborhood and notes, "If they're taping now, maybe they caught the second killing on tape. Maybe you could collect the cameras." After he takes a moment to imagine what that garden of delights will be like, Brass turns to Sofia and grins, "I love this guy." He wanders off, leaving Gil and Sofia to smile awkwardly at each other. Gil eventually says, "It says forensics on our jackets." Sofia tells Gil she can read. He continues, "We had plenty of cops chasing the suspect." Sofia tells him, "I wasn't chasing the suspect -- I was chasing the evidence. I knew the idiot was likely to ditch the gun. All we have to do is ballistics match and match the weapon to both victims. Case closed." She hands over the bagged gun to Gil, who looks peeved at how his team member just…reduced his work load?
Cue a daytime aerial shot, and then Warrick and Nicky shuffling into subplot jail. They shuffle into the holding area and make much of the fact that it smells awful. But it looks delightful, since Vartann's there for them. He exposits, "Suspects wait in central holding before they're transferred to the jail. They assaulted the officers with feces, and then the cops who went in." Just in case we didn't grasp the full extent of the damage via the monologue, the camera pans down to the floor of the facility, which is covered in footprints made from excrement. So in this episode, we're either faced with starved children or shit-covered facilities. Merry Christmas! And all I got for the writers was my everlasting contempt. I hope it fits.
Nicky explains why we're in this cesspit -- one of the aforementioned suspects is a Samuel Mendez, his skull is cracked, and he's listed as "Death imminent." Warrick asks if Vartann's thinking the cops used excessive force, and Vartann chuffs that if they did, they were certainly justified. Nicky heads inside the cell -- by the looks of the walls, someone had been eating a lot of fiber recently -- and says, "Yeah, well, if they'd have thrown a bunch of feces at me, I would have cracked some skulls too." Just when you think the possibility for the Day of Rage has been eliminated, back it comes again. Warrick makes a discreet note to warn the rest of the lab boys. Nicky checks out the gun left in the cell, and Vartann tells him the gun was found under the victim. Warrick opines that the arresting officer must have done a lousy search. Vartann looks miffed. We then go into the potty monologues and find out that the prisoners weren't exactly feeling too fresh on account of the overflowing toilet, so they were lashing out with what they had on hand.
And now they're all cleaned up and wrapped in fresh white prison towels. We go to a shot of the inmates all lined up and ready for questioning; among them is one of the tallest human beings I've seen off a basketball court. Nicky gets to question them. The first guy he asks rasps, "Cops iced the kid. I could tell he was a fish from the jump, though." We learn that a fish is someone who's never been in jail. The giant man spits a giant loogie at Nicky. Nicky responds by giving the guy a giant look of "Hey! What did you do that for?" We then revisit the suspect Sofia and Gil put away, who claims that the police beat the fish as they did him, and adds, "Rodney King, yo." Hello, Continuity!
Catherine, meanwhile, is left taking pictures of the soon-to-be-dead Samuel Mendez. The laconic attending doctor, Dr. Franks, comes over to ask if Catherine's located Samuel's family yet, because he's hoping to usher them over a teeny tiny bump of shock over how their loved one was lethally wounded in a prison riot and into an agreement to get Samuel off a respirator and donate all the usable organs. Catherine asks Dr. Franks for the 411 on Samuel's injuries. Dr. Franks takes a deep breath before reciting, "He's got blunt force trauma to the frontal and spinoid bones. It fragmented his skull, damaged his temporal artery and embedded in his brain." We see all this in TMIcam. It will not be the most gruesome TMIcam of the night, by the way. Catherine tells the doctor, "Those are shoe prints on his face, which suggest that he was attacked while he was down." "Why the hell do I care how he was attacked -- I'm just tasked with the job of trying to fix what's broken," Dr. Franks snaps. Oh, he does not. He merely shares the head-stomping TMIcam with the rest of us, then notes, "Well, he came from county lock-up. Must have been a hell of a fight." Catherine rolls her eyes as if to say, "You think? You should see the walls in that joint."
In the morgue, Sara lifts the lid off the Rubbermaid container and begins examining the small boy's body. She notices some blonde fibers on his jeans -- this will be important later. Emergency Backup David lifts the body out, and the two of them plus Liam all work soberly and silently. I guess that's because nobody wants to be the Tacky Timmy raising their voice above the piano plinking poignantly. Sara gets the fiber. Liam's working the inside of the container and he notices finger scrapings on the inside, plus crumbly yellowish-white deposits on the bottom.
We finish the evidence-collecting montage and go to David the Sorrowful Coroner, who explains, "The victim's about five years old. He was just losing his baby teeth. X-rays show metaphyseal fractures to the right humerus and acromion. They're called corner or bucket-handle fractures." Sara says shortly, "Shake the baby." "It's more like snatch-and-shake," David continues, explaining, "Violent shaking creates shearing forces, causing fragment fractures at the end of the growth plate. It's highly specific for abuse." And then we see it in action with the boy in question, from a man ripping the child off the swing to the growth plates tearing. And that's still not the most gruesome TMIcam of the night. Sara wants to know how old the fractures are, and David places them at less than six months. Sara then notes, "He is emaciated. He looks drawn. The only thing missing is a swollen belly." David explains that away: "It's called cachexia -- the soft tissue's diminished and drawn around the skull, the eyes are sunken and there's prominent tenting where the skin should retract." Sara then notes, "His ribs are poking through his skin. He starved to death, didn't he?" David twists the knife a little with "C.O.D. is renal failure due to starvation. His intestinal tract was virtually empty except for these brown flecks I found. Hepatic steatosis, the liver goes yellow and greasy. Ketoacidosis -- fat stores are used for energy -- and then rhabdomyeolysis -- the muscles are broken down for fuel. Think of the body digesting itself." And NOW comes the most gruesome TMIcam shot of the night -- first, a blatantly manipulative shot of a little boy sitting in alone in a darkened room, as tears run down his face, and then a zoom in to what's going on in his tummy (hint: not digestion of food). We zoom back out from the shrinking flesh and Sara realizes that this took weeks. David somberly intones, "I have to admit that this seems especially cruel and unusual." Sara replies, "When kids are involved, it usually is."
And you know it's an especially cruel and unusual episode when a man getting his brains beaten in is the less ghastly case of the two. Warrick and Vartann are talking to LVPD Officer Russell Wong, who's busy giving the kind of speech that would curl the hair of the Western Las Vegas University ACLU student chapter if they were present. But they're not, probably because any WLVU student with an ounce of self-preservation is holed up in his or her room and taking classes online to avoid getting killed. Anyway, Russell Wong exposits, "Ten-by-18-foot cell built for 25, we got 35 mutts and no place to put the extras. Between the yos, the cholos and the rednecks, it was bound to happen." Warrick comments neutrally, "Thirty-five guys. That's a lot of men to fit in one room." Russell Wong explains, "The cops round them up. We process them. It usually doesn't take long, but today we got jammed." Vartann asks what the problem was; Wong more or less answers with, "What wasn't the problem?" The computers went down, the plumbing backed up, the people were surly. Warrick suggests, "You ever think an overcrowded cell mixed with bad plumbing was the reason they threw the contents?" Russell Wong does not: "They don't need a reason. Bad monkeys at the zoo." Warrick gives Wong the stink-eye, and Vartann makes a face where you can totally tell he's thinking, "Awkward…" He tries to change the subject by asking how the gun got into the holding cell and Wong says testily, "The arresting officer did a bad search." Warrick snipes, "Don't you search them again when they get to your holding cell?" Wong's all, "What?" and Warrick repeats, "Don't you search them again when they get here?"
For some reason, this perfectly valid query irks , and he blusters, "Is there something you want to get off your chest?" Warrick gives a humorless chuckle and opines, "A gun in a cell is just sloppy police work, man." Wong gets all menacing, snarling, "I don't like what you're implying about me or my men." What is this "implying" business? Warrick more or less employed the power of the logical syllogism to say that you and your men did sloppy police work. And now he more or less employs the power of the hot as he loses his temper and shouts, "Then maybe you need to dial down your attitude. A man is brain-dead here! I don't care what he was like when he was alive, and neither should you, don't you think?" Wow, that was hot. Is it wrong to find that hot? Is Russell Wong abnormal for not finding that hot? Because he doesn't -- he's all, "Hey, one less guy who wants to kill me. We're understaffed and dealing with society's dregs, so I'm not exactly in a position to coddle my bleeding heart for these guys." Or something along those lines. Wong tries to take off, and Warrick has another hot outburst, the upshot of which is that he and the lab will be processing a LOT of stuff thanks to his big mouth and his determination to make sure Wong and his guys suffer full investigative scrutiny. Rrrrrrrowwwr! Soooooo hot.
In the cool Labitrail, Sara is sitting in the coffee room, busy reading through a mound of paperwork. Sofia stomps over, no doubt wondering if everyone on the night shift is averse to electronic record-reading, and tells Sara, "I ran John Doe Minor's DNA against the missing persons database. I'm sorry -- no hits." Sara replies, "Yeah, I'm not surprised. They didn't care enough to feed him. Why would they report him missing?" Sofia then asks what Sara's up to, and she explains, "The victim had a prior abuse fracture." "And you're hoping Child Protective Services investigated?" Sara explains that "based on the age of the victim, the age of the break fracture and the pattern, I found ten possible matches." Sofia walks over to the files and casually notes, "It's going to take you forever to go through these alone…" Sara pauses, then says, "I'll get it done." Finally looking up from the file, Sofia says, "It took me a long time to get where I was, Sara. Now I feel like I'm starting from scratch. I miss sleeping at night. I miss my colleagues. I miss --" She breaks off, and Sara actually asks her to finish. Sofia does: "Being trusted." She walks off, and Sara looks thoughtful. Who knows? Maybe she's thinking back to her own rocky beginning on the staff? Or maybe she's thinking that her fiendish hazing plan can maybe wait until they're on a lighter case.
Meanwhile, love is blooming in the DNA lab as Warrick wheels in a metric ton of evidence for Mia to look at. He asks her to run the batons first and she asks, "Why? You thinking bad cop?" As Warrick explains that the batons were the only remotely weapon-like objects, his cell rings, and Mia's all, "Shouldn't you get that?" He checks the number and replies, "No." "Player," she drawls in disgust. On this show, that's practically Hepburn and Tracy-level banter. Warrick laughs, "Now I'm a player. You make up your mind pretty quick." Or the lab gossip grapevine is that efficient. Given the preponderance of left-brained individuals, I'd go with that option. Mia goes to give Warrick the blow-off and he shows her the phone -- it's Liam's number. Warrick explains, "He [was on] a rough one last night, so I called to check on him. But since I'm here, I can do it in person. Anything else you want to say to me?" Oh, where to begin? With directions to the house or promises of what you'll do once you're there? Mia recovers with, "Have a nice day." Warrick flirts, "Is that it?" "That's it," she assures him. Because she is evidently blind and/or oblivious to anything less subtle than Warrick, naked but for some strategically-placed parsley, served up on a silver platter. Sofia interrupts them, and Warrick wanders off so the ladies can have some girl talk. Sofia's all, "He's pretty hot," and Mia admits her problem is that Warrick knows it. We find out Mia's found one usable hair off John Doe Minor's coffin and several fake hairs she sent off to Trace.
Cut to Sara and David making an ID on John Doe Minor by examining the x-rays Sara pulled from all the matching cases; David's looking at the skull x-rays and explaining that people's sinus cavities are as uniquely shaped as their fingerprints, so if they can match an x-ray to John Doe Minor, they've got a name. Meet Devin Malton, age five, last known residence a foster home run by a Lorna Tenney.
And now we're at Lorna's house of kids. She answers the door to Brass and Sara with, "So which one of my kids is in trouble?" Brass replies, "No. You are, Mrs. Tenney." This does not throw the woman. She dryly drawls, "Oh? Which one of my kids lodged a complaint?" Sara wants to know if that happens a lot, and Mrs. Tenney shrugs, "That goes with the territory." Brass tells her they're here about Devin, and Mrs. Tenney says the boy hasn't lived with her for six months. Sara's all, "Since he fractured his arm?" and Mrs. Tenney says flatly, "CPS investigated. They cleared me." Sara persists, "Records show that he lives here." "Well, records are wrong," Mrs. Tenney shoots back. Brass tries a new tack, asking amiably, "You mind if we come in and take a look around?" "I do," she says firmly. Sara starts, "If you got nothing to hide --" "Oh, save it," Mrs. Tenney says. She continues, "Those mind games don't work on me. I deal with the police often enough to know better than to talk to you without my attorney present, or to let you poke around my things." This throws the good CSIs for a loop, as it's not often someone doesn't immediately fold. Brass regroups and points out that the records say she has Devin and is getting checks. Mrs. Tenney tells him she's been sending the checks back and she's made copies to prove it. Mrs. Tenney is who I would want in my corner if I ever had to deal with the police. Brass goes for the last resort: "It's either here or at the station. You choose." Mrs. Tenney's all, "Let me grab my lawyer's number. Y'all mind giving me a ride? 'Cause you're not setting foot in my house without a search warrant." I love Mrs. Tenney.
Cut to Liam about to fume the Rubbermaid container and bask in the sonic bath of a montage well done, when the irritating drone of the beeper summons him to Trace. He heads in, and Hodges looks up from Overbearing Coworker Monthly to snot, "I heard you had a real sphincter-pucker last night. So what kind of gun are you getting?" "The kind that kills supercilious bastard lab techs," Liam replies…in his head. Hodges continues to pick-pick-pick with, "CSIs get shot at all the time. Didn't they tell you that?" And Hodges knows this because? Liam's all, "I don't have time for this," and Hodges gets down to business: he got the results of the bin contents, and they are not good. Cheap "burnt sienna" foundation in the bin, and lead-based paint chips in the intestinal tract.
Back in the B-plot, a resigned-looking older gent is busy explaining to Dr. Franks that he can't sign off on donating Samuel's organs, because the Samuel Mendez currently staying alive only by virtue of the respirator is not the same Samuel Mendez he expected to see here, i.e. his bad seed son. Mr. Mendez walks off, and Dr. Franks sums up the turn the B-plot has taken with, "Either he can't accept reality, or the county made a big mistake." Catherine, her heart visibly sinking as she already suspects it's the latter, decides to find out which it is by printing the guy. Surprise, surprise, this Samuel Mendez is not the same one who's listed in the database as a suspect (for murder) with whereabouts unknown. Oh, some cop's head is going to roll for this. And good. Can you imagine getting pulled over, arrested, tossed in jail, and beaten to death, all because someone screwed up when they ran your name through the records? I hope Samuel Mendez's relatives get the bright idea of suing Clark County blind, thus sparking an investigation that leaves rivers of blood running out of the Sheriff's office.
But before we can reach that deeply satisfying dramatic apogee somewhere along the line, we have to trudge through the rest of this episode. Sara and Brass are back at the station. They agree to split up, with Brass handling Mrs. Tenney and Sara chatting up the baseball team's worth of foster kids Mrs. Tenney hauled to the station with her. (Or were delivered there, should the authorities find cause to remove them from the Tenney home, I guess. I prefer the former explanation, because I like the idea of Mrs. Tenney making life as rough on everyone as possible.) Anyway, Sara heads in and -- augggh! It's Egg. I mean, it's Ann, from Arrested Development, but you knew that already, right? Because you have flawless taste and, like all right-thinking TV viewers, watch TV's best non-animated comedy faithfully every Sunday night at 8:30 PM on FOX, right? (If you don't, I don't want to know. I'd prefer to keep thinking kindly of you.) In any event, the actress who plays the hated girlfriend of sweet kid George Michael is the alpha foster girl and the designated spokesperson for the group.
After Sara tries to make awkward small talk about the raptures of science, Ann (known here as Glynnis) calls her on it with, "Look, you can question me if you want. You don't have to pretend to be interested in me." Sara promptly and sincerely apologizes: "I'm sorry. That was lame. I guess I was just trying to put you at ease. I know what it's like." Glynnis wants a clarification on what is, and Sara tells her, "Living with strangers. Your fate being decided by social workers, advocates, judges." Glynnis realizes Sara was in the system. "For a while," Sara says. Glynnis has been in for ten years, and she assures Sara, "Believe me, Mrs. Tenney is one of the good ones." Sara notes that Mrs. Tenney is not the most pliant twig on the tree, and Glynnis thinks that it's not necessarily a bad trait for someone in that line of social work. Sara moves on to ask about Devin, and Glynnis asks, "Why all the questions? Did something happen?" Sara admits that it did. Glynnis asks if Devin's dead, and Sara admits that he is. Glynnis says, "I don't understand. His mom came and picked him up. That never happens. You could see just how much she loved those boys." Sara's all, "Come again? Boys?" Yes -- he's got two older brothers, Kevin and Raymond. And the fact that Devin had brothers wasn't significant enough to put in his file? Way to ratchet up the drama, guys.
In the time it took us to go through a commercial break, Sara and Brass have hunted down the kids' child welfare caseworker, who tells us that the boys' mother, Candace Malton, had been in the pokey for smashing a brick into her abusive boyfriend's face. "Sounds like self-defense to me," Sara says. The social worker manages the perfect blend of wryness and weariness with, "Yeah, if she would've walked after the first hit." We find out that Candace belted the guy a few more times; the caseworker adds, "It takes battered women a while to see the light, but once they do, there's no going back." Candace got out, promptly reinstated her parental rights, and beat feet because "after what happened to her son, she didn't want anything to do with child services." It's too bad we won't find out how Devin broke his arm. No, seriously -- how did it happen? How does his experience square with Glynnis's appraisal of Mrs. Tenney as "one of the good ones"? Why does this show insist on putting in tidbits of information that never go anywhere? Anyway, Candace has since dropped out of sight, as she's not registered with Medicaid, HUD, or any other social services organization. Brass sighs that he'll put out a BOLOL, but before this conversation is over, Sara wants to know why the caseworker didn't check into the kids' welfare after Candace was released from jail. The caseworker sighs, "Eight thousand child abuse and neglect cases a year? There's only so much we can do. Look, despite her taste in men, in my opinion, Candace Malton was a good mother." As the caseworker gets up, Sara calls out, "One of her sons is dead and the other two are missing -- what's good about that?" I don't know, but won't you feel like an ass if it turns out Candace is dead or something, Sara?
Back on the B plot, Catherine's checking in with Mia to see if the lab tech found anything on the batons. Aside from the usual -- blood, epithelials, hair -- the only notable thing is that the DNA comes from all sorts of sources except the victim. Catherine quickly realizes, "A police baton never connected with Sam Mendez. He had to be down already when the cops entered the cell." Speaking of cops, it's Officer Russell Wong. Or as he's finally introduced here, "Lt. Arthur Chen, watch command, central holding." At this point, we know him as Wong, be that wrong or right. Anyway, Wong has not come by because, like all other men between the ages of 18 and 80, he's been sucked in by the tractor beam of Catherine's pulchritude. Rather, he's here to bitch about Warrick getting shirty with him. He's also not too happy that the victim's prints don't match the Sam Mendez currently wanted for murder, what with that indicating the police made a huge mistake. Oh, please, please let the Mendez family get the bright idea of calling the press on this so the story of their relative's completely senseless death gets out there. I want to see the bloodbath as Sheriff Xander Berkeley goes down and takes all his toadies with him.
But before we get there -- if we get there -- we have to finish this episode. Sofia wanders over and asks Liam about the fingerprint he found on the curved lip of the container. He pleads, "I'm not sure of the best way to process this print." Sofia tells him she'll take his digital photos and reconstruct them so she can get a print to match in AFIS. Liam's fine with that, but Sofia tells him to keep processing the bin to lift the print, because "you're going to need an actual print for court." Liam's confused: "Are you saying that I have to cut [the plastic with the print on it] to lift it? Isn't that destroying evidence?" Sofia schools him: "No. You're recovering it. As long as you document it, you'll be fine." Liam's surprised to hear this. Sofia's got the ghost of a grin. It's a nice little interaction. It gets even more pleasant when Liam gets his print and tells Sofia, "I appreciate your help." Sofia shrugs it off, and Liam awkwardly insists, "I don't know if I'd be quite as accommodating after just being --" This is when Sofia whips her head around to give him a look and Liam finishes lamely, "Well, you know." "Demoted?" Sofia asks matter-of-factly. Liam silently mouths, "Yeah." Sofia grins, then gets back to business: there's no hit in AFIS, but she also ran the print against an FBI database and came up with an enlisted man, PFC Philip Riley.
PFC Riley looks like he can't decide which is going to be worse: talking to the cops, or having to do so while two MPs glower. He rattles on about how he's just been dragged off a transport to Tikrit -- not that he minds that part -- but Brass has embarrassed him in front of his friends Sgt. Grim and Cpl. Grimmer. Brass deadpans, "Well, you're an American hero. I mean that -- you all are." Paul Guilfoyle's delivery is priceless, especially as he snaps into interrogation mode with, "What the hell were you doing on D Street?" Riley had no idea he was on D Street. Bras snaps, "Explain to me how your fingerprints ended up on a plastic bin container off an alley on D Street!" Riley can't believe he's being called in for this, and shouts, "Oh, come on!" Brass snarls, "Did I forget to mention there was a dead kid inside?" Riley's not smiling no more. He blurts, "I thought this was about paying for trim inside county lines. All I did was take out the trash -- that's all I did." Brass wants to know for whom, and Riley sentimentally describes his rented romance as "some chicken-headed ghetto rat" named Devine whom he retained at the Seven Sins.
And now, some more B plot. Warrick saunters into Catherine's new office, leans against the door frame, and purrs, "It looks good on you." Wow. Just…wow. I imagine if he acts like that around all the female employees, they've had to print up warnings and post them to the tampon machines in the bathrooms: "If you find yourself babbling and entertaining the urge to fling your panties, close your eyes and pretend you're listening to Hodges." Catherine proves that her new supervisory powers come with what must be the Warrick-ian equivalent of kryptonite, because she is immune to the vibes he's sending off. Instead, she sits him down and tells him Officer Russell Wong stopped by. "Really. I wonder what for," Warrick deadpans. Catherine's all, "Guess. And thanks for keeping me in the loop on your conversation with him." Warrick: "No problem. I forgot the exchange five seconds after it happened." Catherine: "Now that I'm in charge, I feel like I need to cover my ass. Welcome to the world of human shielding." Warrick: "You know, Gil was okay with the idea of us having emotional reactions to cases." Catherine: "And that was an amusing situational irony, but I myself plan to infuse my management with light satirical touches, such as this one: Try to be more detached from cases." Warrick: "I'll consider the moral authority backing your advice, Catherine Braun." Or something along those lines. The upshot is, Catherine's made her first management blunder by not getting her charge's side of the story before acting all managerial with him. An irritated Warrick walks out, and Catherine watches him leave with the regretful expression of a woman who's realized she's never going to see this man naked.
In even more B-plot fun, Mia begins to work the gun from the Samuel Mendez case and finds it jammed with fecal matter. Fortunately -- if such a word can ever be applied to any workplace situation in which one is digging human feces out of tiny spaces -- there's also some pubic hair embedded in the material. As the montage grinds on, we see Warrick returning to his bailiwick and examining shoes, no doubt muttering darkly about Catherine as he does so. Lucky Nicky is busy shooting the now-clean gun in the ballistics lab. Warrick finds the tell-tale waffle-stomping print.
Cut to Catherine telling her team, "We now know the cops weren't responsible for the victim's death." Oh? I'd quibble with that assertion, since they were the ones whose screw-up resulted in an innocent man losing his life. But let's pretend for story-telling purposes that Catherine's right. That leaves 34 would-be suspects. Warrick helps narrow the list by telling us he's compared all 34 pairs of shoes and come up with a sole pattern that matches the bruises on Mendez's face. The boots happen to belong to Vincent Mendoza, who was booked for meth manufacture. Catherine points out that the official COD was blunt-force trauma to the head, not stomping, and now I'm wondering, why wouldn't that count? Isn't someone's boot coming at your head with a great deal of force? Would it not be traumatic? Doesn't a boot count as a blunt object? Provided it's not some Manolo Blahnik number? Warrick more or less argues as much. Catherine's all, "Well, that all sounds good, but why go to all that trouble?" "Because the gun was hot," Nicky says. The man looks relieved that he can start talking and stop trying to figure out what the deuce is going on with Warrick and Catherine. The gun was used in an execution-style murder. The team all realizes what went down: Mendoza didn't want to get caught with a gun that was hot, because then his meth charge gets a new friend named Murder One, so he dropped the gun on the new guy, then proceeded to kill him so it would look like it was his gun. Too bad he was foiled by the tell-tale pube, huh?
In the scene, Vartann and Warrick are staring across the table at Mendoza; I can only guess that these two were put on the case because they're more likely to distract the lady attack lawyer than a Catherine/Nicky match-up. Warrick tells the same story I just did in the preceding paragraph, so let's recap: Mendoza with a gun stashed in his cheeks, Mendoza needing to drop the gun before it's linked to him, Mendoza deciding to take advantage of the riot to beat Mendez to death and drop the gun on him, Mendoza getting foiled by his own fecal material. There's also a flashback to Mendez cowering in the cell shortly before his day gets even worse, just in case you were sitting on your couch going, "You know what this episode needs? Someone getting killed owing to someone else's giant, colossal screw-up. Can we see that, please?"
Or maybe you were really hankering to see what the Seven Sins looked like. Warning: sin looks like neon. That'll put the minimalists among us on the straight and narrow for sure. Brass and Sara wind their way through the bar and toward Devine, who is conducting a business transaction: "Forty buys the lips, a hundy [sic] gets you south, double for around the world." The guy nods and Devine continues, "You got a car? You sure about that? 'Cause you don't look like you got a car to me." Analytic skills like these are why she can charge…bottom dollar, really. Brass pops up, waving the badge and telling the skanky guy, "Take a hike, John. I'm her customer." As Devine begins giving Brass all sorts of static over his interrupting her workday, Sara yanks a sample from the wig and then asks Devine to open her mouth. Devine rolls her eyes and refuses, and Brass leans on her with, "Come on, you can do that in your sleep, honey." Heh. Sara gets her swab.
And now, some strange bearded man is hovering in Catherine's door. His presence…so familiar and yet, how long has it been since we've seen him? No -- it's not the dead pancake-making bastard Eddie returned from the grave. It's Gil, who's evidently had better things to do all episode. He's holding the jar in which his fetal pig floats. Catherine tartly asks, "Taking your pet for a walk?" Au contraire -- Gil's being generous with, "I know how much you like my little fetal pig, so I'm giving him to you as an office-warming present." Awww! Catherine ribs him by telling him it's thoughtful, and Gil chuckles. Catherine quickly snaps, "Tell me why you really stopped by. Are you checking up on me?" Gil sounds offended when he answers, "No!" Catherine sing-songs, "What have you heard? Who talked to you?" Gil smirks, "See? On the job for a week and you're already paranoid." Catherine finally deflates. She admits that she hadn't been prepared for the running-interference part of the job. Gil's still grinning, because now all the crap Catherine lobbed in his direction is now landing on her desk, and he tells her, "That's the job." Catherine asks abruptly, "Did you ever play politics?" Gil says, "I once ran for president of the science club in junior high. Mary Hardy beat me out by one vote." "I'm going to guess that you didn't vote for yourself," Catherine guesses. Gil says quietly, "I'm not any good at politics. And it's cost me. That's how I lost Nick and Warrick." Catherine's plays Job's Comforter with, "Your loss was my gain." Yeah, I bet Gil's thinking the same thing there, Catherine. Actually, he tells her, "At least they're in good hands." Awww!
Cut to Brass and Devine trying to out-stare each other. Devine finally cracks with, "We've been sitting here a long-assed time." Brass gives her nothing with, "What can I say? I like your company." Devine is still under the impression that Brass brought her down there on solicitation charges, but she's quickly disabused of that when Sara comes in and begins flinging the science: Devine's DNA matches that of one of the hairs found on Devin's body, and she's got seven alleles in common with the dead boy -- not enough to link them as relatives, but enough to justify a persistent interest in the connection between Devin and Devine. Brass growls, "I wonder why anyone would leave one kid with you, much less three." He then hips us all to one of Devine's aliases, Darlene Malton. Feigning surprise, he says, "That's the same last name as the victim." Sara jumps in then: "To starve anyone is beyond me. To do it to a child -- a relative -- that's unforgivable." We flash back to Devine just dumping the child into the container one morning as she's getting ready for work. Devine claims her half-sister Candy dumped the "bad-ass kids" with her and left no money for their upkeep. Oh, well, that justifies starving them, then. It's important to stay on budget, even when tempted by impulse purchases like food for little kids. "How am I supposed to feed them?" Devine asks. "You don't look like you've missed any meals to me," Sara shoots back. Burn! Devine cordially invites Sara to go to hell, and Brass is all, "Look, if it was a problem, why didn't you just turn them over to social services." And break a promise to Candy? Unthinkable! "She would have killed me," Devine says. Sara wonders how Candy will react to finding out that Devine killed her son instead. The CSIs then asks where the other two boys are, and Devine decides right then she wants a lawyer. Brass goes crusader on her with, "You can have a lawyer as soon as you give us an address. And let me tell you something: if those boys die, I'm going to make it my business to see you get the death penalty."
Frankly, those two boys may not be in nearly so much immediate danger as Liam, who practically has an "Assault Me" sign pinned to his back as he stands on the lawn outside Devine's house. Sara and Brass come out to inform us that there's nobody in the house; then get the bright idea to check the back, where there's a root cellar. As they trudge around back, it turns out that Candace did send $300 from Seattle for the boys' upkeep but, in Brass's words, "that skanky bitch used it to buy a new TV." Ah! Cellar! Liam looks dreadful -- he realizes they're going to have to go down there and there will be bugs and darkness and cellar smells.
There's a lot more than that -- Devine locked the kids in here and they've been forced to use the cellar as their toilet too. They see a set of small tennis shoes first and Brass mutters, "Oh, God," before shouting that they need an ambulance. Sara notices that the older boy is alive (but unconscious) and shouts that they also need blankets and water. The younger one comes over, crying, and burrows into Sara. She hugs him back, telling him it'll be all right now. Jorja Fox acts this scene into the ground and makes it her bitch, I tell you what. Good job!
Back at the Labitrail, a de-wigged Devine gets frog-marched back to a holding cell, where presumably she'll be beaten to death by crazed meth killers and embalmed in human feces. Or haven't they worked around to giving the ladies the same treatment the male perps get? Chauvinists. Sara and Brass watch her go, and Brass tells us Seattle P.D. located Candace and they're flying her back to Vegas that night. "They said she's pretty broken up," Brass said. "She left her kids with her hooker cousin. She should have known better," Sara says. Ah, the luxury of a childfree, middle-class perspective. Candace was an abused woman with no support network to speak of, and it's entirely possible none of her options were good ones. Sara asks Brass whether he'll take Candace to the hospital first, or to the morgue. Brass figures the morgue, because "once she sees the kids, she's not going to want to leave them. What do you think?" Sara replies, "Go with the living, Jim. The dead can wait."
And then the episode winds down. As Sara sits at her computer working, she looks to the right and sees Sofia perched on the edge of Gil's desk, and Gil leaning forward to talk to her. To her left, Nicky, Liam, and Greg are bonding in the break room. Sara turns back to notice Catherine walking down the hall. Catherine catches sight of the boys chatting and laughing. As she realizes she can't hang with them anymore, she gets an almost regretful look before heading out. Sara sighs with relief as Catherine takes off, then resumes her Lexis-Nexis search, and we see that she's searching for "The People vs. Laura Sidle W/2, Modesto, California, 1984." What does this all mean? We'll have to find out year.
And the rant of the week returns. Those of you who find these splenetic outpourings tedious can pretend I wrote an elaborate fantasy scenario in which Warrick replays the entire hot, hot, hot jail incident, only shirtless. The rest of you, read on. ["Or do both." -- Sars]
I have never confused CSI with public-service television. It's on the air to make money -- for the actors, for the showrunners, for Jerry Bruckheimer, for Viacom. However, I think it's offensive and hypocritical to devote an episode to a child's gruesome, Third World-style death, imply that it's all the fault of the foster care system in some small way, and leave an audience reeling from the bleakness of it all without taking advantage of the reaction to educate the viewer. It would not have been hard to point out via dialogue that it's easy to see how children slip through the cracks of the foster care system: according to a 2003 Las Vegas Sun report, Clark County has all of 47 people to investigate cases of child abuse or neglect, and each handles 113 investigations among 181 children -- 55% more than the national average of cases and 51% more than the average number of children.
And it wouldn't have been hard to work any of the following information into the episode: that the nonprofit Children's Advocacy Center works on behalf of children in Nevada's foster care system, and they can always use help. That even if you don't live in Nevada, you can consider donating money or time to any of the members of the National Children's Alliance, or to the Child Welfare League. Or that you can call and report suspected child abuse by calling: 1-800-4-A-CHILD. Even if working this into the episode would have been too much work, there was AMPLE opportunity to run a PSA spot at the end of the episode.
This episode exploited the sensationalistic nature of a child's death without taking a moment to examine why kids like this slip through the cracks, or what viewers could do if the episode moved them to action. I think that's immoral, and the people who make this show don't get the "it's only entertainment" pass on what basically amounts to being gruesome because they can.