By Sobell
The episode begins with some bedraggled hoser blowing a perfectly good hand of blackjack. His gaffe attracts the attention of the security cameras. Big Ed asks, "Who sticks on a 12 when a dealer's showing a nine?" "An idiot?" Danny guesses. "Or a cheat," Big Ed replies. They review the tape, and Danny says, "I'm going with idiot." He would. Big Ed moves in on the guy with yet another camera, then watches again from another angle. Danny notices the dark glasses and hearing aid, and comments, "Birth-control goggles and a hearing aid? Must be a bitch getting a date." Or maybe not -- if you can neither see nor hear your potential paramour, the dating pool may become much broader and deeper. Big Ed then goes to the micro-pico-close-up, wherein the camera zooms in through a tiny piece of sunglasses lens and shows the marked cards on the table. Big Ed orders Danny to run down there and shut the table down. That seems like a waste of time -- don't they just have people on the floor they can call? It would seem that any good security operation would have folks strolling on the floor and folks manning the security station, and the two work in concert to stop sticky situations fast, not this whole "Danny! Sprint on down to the table before this guy runs the risk of winning money!" thing.
In any event, Danny soon slides into a conveniently empty seat at the blackjack table and tells the dealer to shut it down. He then turns to the guy with the glasses -- who, for some mysterious reason, has not noisily protested the closing table and then moved on -- and asks, "Nearsighted or farsighted?" The guy turns around. We finally get a good look at those glasses, and they look like the kind of Ray-Bans that give you giant bug eyes. Anyway, he's all, "Huh?" Danny persists, "Nearsighted or farsighted? See, I always forget -- does farsighted mean you can't see far, or you can't see near?" The guy responds in a British accent of some sort, "I think it depends on the eyes." Bzzt! Nearsighted means you can only see that which is near you, while farsighted means you can more easily things the farther away they are. Danny yanks off the glasses, and it takes the ear device with it. He drawls, "Dude, you've got a battery stuck in your ear. That's gotta hurt." Well, here we are, only two minutes into the episode, and I'm saying, "Gosh -- he's like Ben (sigh) Browder's little brother. Same build. Same cocky I'm-smarter-than-I-look attitude. Given that this show is crawling with female regulars, what say we even up the ratio by ditching Delinda and bringing on Ben (sigh) Browder as Danny's older brother?" Y'all, I'm creative. I can and will find a way to lobby for Ben (sigh) Browder on a weekly basis. In any event, Danny puts on the bug-glasses and notices the marked cards and the thumbprints the dealer's left all over the table in invisible ink. Danny comments, "Sloppy work with the magnesium silicate -- you can't tell the tens from the deuces. No wonder you're losing." The bedraggled cheater rubs his hand over his sweaty brow, and through the lenses, we see that his hand must have been covered in the stuff, and he was therefore responsible for marking the cards. Danny chortles. It must be nice when something goes right for him.