Grade "Hammer Down"

How would you grade Hammer Down?

  • A+

    Votes: 6 12.2%
  • A

    Votes: 10 20.4%
  • A-

    Votes: 5 10.2%
  • B+

    Votes: 6 12.2%
  • B

    Votes: 7 14.3%
  • B-

    Votes: 5 10.2%
  • C+

    Votes: 2 4.1%
  • C

    Votes: 5 10.2%
  • C-

    Votes: 1 2.0%
  • D+

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • D

    Votes: 2 4.1%
  • D-

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • F

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    49
I'm going to reserve most of my judgment until I see the conclusion of this little trilogy, but there are a few things I can say.

While it's clear they tried hard to get everyone in there, that wasn't an easy task, what with the inclusion of Langston adding to the number of players in this cast. For lack of time no one really shines, except maybe Flack, who has a lot of moments that actually reflect his character's current state of mind as well as benefit the progression of the plot. Everyone who's name isn't Mac, Flack or Ray have little more personality than the lab equipment in this one.

Danny's still physically incapable of running around chasing suspects with the big boys, which they usually have him doing, so they keep him at Lindsay's side in the labs and throw in an awkward line about their personal life, presumably for those of us who don't watch NY but are following this story because it involves the other CSI's. I assume this is also why they toss Sheldon into an interrogation scene involving a doctor and why they, not so subtlety, point out that Mac is a veteran. Although the last one was kind of a decent nod to Memorial Day so I'll forgive them that one.

Overall, I think being the middle of the three shows means NY gets the short end of the stick. They're not kicking this story off, they're not wrapping it up, they're just kind of bridging the gap and so far it hasn't even been in a way that seems necessary to the overall plot. Ultimately that might change when they finish the story, and I had some fun watching it, but by the time this episode ended they didn't feel any closer or father from the resolution to me.
 
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~When I first saw the driver, I thought he was the Demon of Fear.
~Mac is more powerful that Spiderman. You heard it here.
~The length suggests female? Depends, Lindsay, your hair is about the same length as Dr. Spencer Reid's...
~If Sid looks disturbed, we have problems.
~Speaking of Criminal Minds, Casey Steele is played by the serial killer from the episode Ride the Lightning.
~Adam's got his serious face on.
~"I'm on the first thing smoking" ...What? What does that even mean?
~I'm assuming it's the Veteran's Day Shoutout?
~Ooo. Angry!Hawkes.
~Hawkes and Don are both bleeding? Jeez, I check the CMAs for three seconds and I have no idea what's going on.
~Lots of targets... I mean cops...
~Convenient bike of convenience.
~"Poof."
~And...... End Part II
 
The episode dragged a bit - as with Miami, trying to write in Langston's character was slightly awkward because he's a new (and one-time) addition to the lineup (and thus the chemistry between the established characters). Not that he spends much time with anybody but Mac. (It felt like everybody was talking to Mac and Mac was talking to Ray - with a bit of Stella talking to Ray as well.)

I agree with roxi about some of the stuff seeming obvious for the benefit of people watching for the crossover (who are potential new viewers, of course) - but at the same time, we did get some good moments that had the subtlety to appeal to long-time fans. (Lindsay talking about the pregnant girl, Flack looking into the operating room, etc.)

Adam was adorable, Flack was great (NOT THE FACE! :eek:), Hawkes did really well in his few scenes, Stella didn't get much, and Danny and Lindsay were just sort of there. Sid had a good scene, though, when he was talking about the vic (although it wasn't personal - I would have liked a mention of his daughter, but I guess it's just good that he's even there this week :p). The guy that played Casey was creepy. (I remember him from an episode of Criminal Minds where he was equally creepy.) The Big Bad Baddies are kind of over the top because damn, how many different things can one gang be involved in?

Overall, the episode was pretty interesting as part of the overall crossover, but it kind of dragged as an individual episode of NY. I didn't have anything against Mac's interaction with Ray (it was much better than Ray's interaction with Horatio IMO - I'm not a Horatio fan), but I watch NY for interaction between NY's characters, so any episode that doesn't offer enough of that isn't as great as it could be. The good news is we'll be back to 'normal' next week.

BTW, did y'all notice that Edna* was white instead of pink this week? I guess you've gotta be classy when you've got a visitor from the Las Vegas crime lab. ;)

* The new sampling library, aka the newest techno gadget with the robotic arm. :p
 
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I thought Hawkes was cool tonight. Grrrrrrr!

I did like the father talk...Mac wants to be like his father and the unspoken flip-flop is that Ray doesn't want to be like his father. (actually it was spoken but on Vegas)

The harvest stuff is like that old urban legend with the people waking up in the tubs of ice.

I still want a pure NY/Vegas cross, it would be awesome getting certain characters together.
 
I liked it, in the same way I liked "Blacklist" -- not so much for how the main characters came across, but more for the case. And the action. As far as stereotypical prostitution-ring plots go, this case was really well done for me, I got pretty invested in it. Three extremely powerful moments: Mac and Ray's talk next to the WW2 monument (less for the Memorial Day references and more for the stuff about kids, and being parents, and stress); the part where Flack corners the doctor right before he goes into surgery; and the Flack/Hawkes interrogation with said doctor, this one possibly being my very favourite. I loved how angry Hawkes got with the doctor breaking the Hippocratic Oath, and how Flack seemed to really be feeling/understanding that anger, too.

Screentime was spread pretty evenly among all the cast as well, something else I was very impressed with. And like with the Miami ep, I'm kind of surprised with how little screentime Ray Langston got -- even more so here, because we didn't see Langston even helping out in the lab at all, or contributing very much until that final shootout scene. Not complaining, just finding it a little strange.

That being said, this one didn't come across as a sequel to the Miami episode at all. The two cases were barely connected, the one perp from Miami that apparently crossed state lines (the boy who kidnapped Madeline initially) was shot before even reaching NY...and something else that seemed weird to me was how with Miami, there seemed to be a type of link, a kinship almost between the Vegas and Miami labs (I got the sense that the employees from each lab had heard about each other before, knew about each other...kind of like they were coworkers who just lived/worked far away from each other).

That link was missing with NY, making it feel like NY's the odd lab out, so to speak. If I weren't a fairly-regular viewer of these shows, Langston could easily have come across as just a random guest character to me. There was not much to indicate he was from one of the other shows in the franchise, or that he routinely did the same job and lived with the same problems as the other main characters. There was nothing to really connect NY to any of the other labs -- even that scene where Stella and Mac were talking to Ray and Dave Benton over the TV-phone didn't manage to forge that connection (although that could just be for me, because I've barely seen Dave Benton, so don't really register him as a member of the Miami cast). That is the only big way this episode fell short of "Miami/NYC Nonstop" and "Manhattan Manhunt" for me; those episodes felt like crossovers, this one didn't.

LOL, I totally agree about the convenient bike of convenience, though :lol: What was that, really?

So, this gets a B+ from me. Not fabulous, but not exactly a disappointment, either.
 
I liked it. It did seem a bit crowded because they did give everyone a bit of screentime but I would rather it be crowded than to leave someone out.

Dialogue between Langston and Mac seemed very stilted when they were at the veterans memorial. Loved that they included a mention of the WW2 vets...my dad is one.

Danny and Lindsay out in the field again...nice. Danny's agility must be improving. The ladder in front made it appear that it was the only way in.

Flack clearly doesn't have the same ebb and flow doing interrogation with Hawkes as he does Danny or Mac or even Stella. He didn't say a word. I have to give Hawkes a point...he did okay attacking the guy with all the pictures and the reference to the oath doctors take (not even gonna try and spell hippocr...)

Hawkes needs to practice his running.

The fact that they were the middle of the story meant there wasn't a resolution but at least at the end we knew where to look next. I don't recall a reference to NY in the closing scenes of CSI:Miami, but I could be wrong.

ETA: Another thing. Did some of the references to the Zeta gang get left on the editing room floor? They seem to be drifting around in the background but other than a minor reference at the beginning they weren't mentioned much at all. I guess they have to leave something big for the LV office to work with.
 
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I didn't have anything against Mac's interaction with Ray (it was much better than Ray's interaction with Horatio IMO - I'm not a Horatio fan)


Really? I thought Horatio and Ray interacted well with one another, even slightly better than Ray and Mac did. Anyway I liked the Miami episode a lot more than this one. I think CSI:NY has had the worst season of the three this year, but that's another topic.;)
 
I didn't have anything against Mac's interaction with Ray (it was much better than Ray's interaction with Horatio IMO - I'm not a Horatio fan)
Really? I thought Horatio and Ray interacted well with one another, even slightly better than Ray and Mac did. Anyway I liked the Miami episode a lot more than this one. I think CSI:NY has had the worst season of the three this year, but that's another topic.;)
It could have been the way Horatio kept saying "Dr Ray" that made me grind my teeth and colored my opinion of their interaction, I suppose. :p
 
I thought this was episode was okay. I didn't love it but I didn't hate it. I'll put my short list of reaction throughout the episode:

- Anyone play Rockband, the first one where in the intro the Semi is speeding along and there's a rock band on top of it. Was this a homage to Xbox's rockband because they had a speeding Semi with the exact same music they played in the "Rockband" intro. I'm a nerd, shut-up

- Aww, Flack's smile is so cute. We need to see more if it but he's all angsty all the time. *sigh*

- I don't understand why they need to put the girl on the floor. Anyone smarter than me?

- Ok, I thought there was something more gross and crazy than a little room in the Semi. Like, perhaps a dead body like Danny and Lindsays reactions conveyed. If that were me I'd be like "Hey look it they made a room for the guy to sleep while he's on the road. I need to get me one of those"

- The suspect looks creepy. I wouldn't offer him help in an accident if I saw him

- Flack is surprisngly untalkative during this interview.

- Wow Adam is very serious this episode - love the green sweater! Brings out his eyes

- Does anyone else think the dead girl kind of looks like Cameron from House MD. Not alive but when they pan to her dead on the autopsy table.

- Stella's wearing another ridiculously low cut shirt

- This moment between Mac and Fishborne (Don't think that's right) is kind of boring and the slow motion walk away with them going the same pace was really cheesy.

- Ahaha, Flack cracks me up all the time. just walks right in like he owns the place.

- Sheldon sounds like a preacher when he interrogates. haha - oh wait never mind got to the swearing part

- Ugh, Danny shaaaaave!

- Flack, Nice slide!

- Jeez, is Hawkes a super hero. If I got kicked in the face I'd go doooown not magically turn around and catch a convenient bar that's sticking out.

- Awww, Flack trying to pronounce the medicine is hilliarious.

- Wow, Danny said Boom - it's been a while

Blah, blah, blah - they caught him - blah blah.

Overall, it was okay. If anyone can get me a good screencap of Adam with that green shirt I will be eternally greatful. haha
 
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F*cking hell. Dunnowhat's up wif my browser and settings here, esp. post formatting. Will try again. Again. Getting very pissed and cranky. Bloody effing hell.

So. Two thirds thru the trilogy now. I did watch most of the Miami ep. Briefly: Was okay. Walter's funny. Ryan's still good. Ep was visually very nice, though it'd been awhile that I'd forgotten about their propensity for excessive slow motion stuff and odd musical juxtaposition with montage sequences only 90 seconds apart. That and "Doktor Ray," which just seemed somehow odd. (ya beat me to mentioning that Fay :p). I guess with all the various Rays the show was associated with they wanted to make him especially distinctive :p. The show doesn't seem to be missing Delko very much, but what do I know about Miami.

I dunno how the NY ep woulda come across to one who hadn't watched the Miami ep, or is only a casual viewer. The recap was pretty clear, and the storyline is definitely only a very superficial treatment of all that the Megopolis Uber Ebil Axis of Zeta are into :p.I thought the ep suffered for odd pacing, that it kind of stutter-start/stopped repeatedly, didn't have any sustained momentum, or even an ebb and flow. Stilted. I agree with Roxi, and observed the same, in that NY's hour also suffered somewhat for it's slot in the cross-over. Transient, and a bridge to get from the start of the trilogy to the concluding ep.

I thought Michale Massee as the driver/perp was excellent, (just as he also was excellent on CM); thought there were some nice visual moments, especially some of their NYC location shots. I appreciated the nod to the veterans' memorial today of days, and the planning and foresight that allowed for its inclusion. I just don't think it will be a very memorable episode this season, aside from being a part of the cross-over at all. The set-up of the accident seemed to take ages, between showing viewers the rig and the car about to plow into it and the various factors creating the accident. I liked that Flack got his Mac on (his words, not mine) :lol:. They still managed to squish some DL into the ep (one might say the honeymoon was over long ago). The sun now also shines on DL, it rainz no mo'. Danny wasn't even limping that I noticed. He didn't feature as much as some, though they did also manage to stick in his signature "boom." That just neeeeeever seems to get old :shifty: :lol:. I liked that Sid got some decent screentime, though apparently meeting Ray isn't on his to-do list as it was for the ME guy in Miami :p. Bob Joy had lotsa big multi-syllablic words spoken very fluidly impressively. And then he was gone. Ah well.

The first segment did manage to set up the premise pretty well of all that was going on, the human trafficking and organ harvesting, and the tie-ins to Miami, and Langston.

The second segment started with some of the NY footage, complete with the prisoner offering cell-mate chat info being a woman. An odd location for it, but it kept things moving, at least at that point, and was mostly a vehicle for Ray and Mac's heart to heart in front of the memorial. The scene seemed to drag, but concluded on a pretty decent note with what's "worth a phone call." Flack had a helluva choice to make in the face of letting a harvested organ from a victim go into surgery or let a guy die. Included for drama no doubt, but a bit of an odd moment for me. What the hell would you do.

The third segment had a pretty good scene for Sheldon, with Flack questioning the smarmy surgeon, essentially getting his Mac on too :lol: with "you stupid, greedy sonuvabitch." Was among the best scenes in the ep for me. And oh, hullo soapbox, what lovely mallets you have there. Overtly explaining the stakes and scale with all the nastiness of trafficking. And then the stop/start momentum kicked up again with Flack and Sheldon apparently being the action heroes on steroids that PL was referring to in their chase sequence :p. I do like that Sheldon's mixing it up a little more action-wise than he has previously. Don't worry, Danny, I'm sure your time will come sooner rather than later (too soon, which is the point) but I'm not missing ya in that role, really. Sheldon's doing fine. Both he and Flack took their bloody lumps, and it's nice to know action heroes are human too, or that they at least bleed while they keep going.

By this point it was plain that New York wasn't going to get a very satisfying chunk of storyline real estate within the cross-over. Theirs was basically a manhunt ep, if you will, still one step behind and trying to get a handle on the system in play let alone the roster of players they were chasing, with each perp they tracked a cipher cog in a much larger machine. I would guess, regardless of what happens in the concluding episode in Vegas tomorrow evening, that the Zetas are going to be an ongoing nemesis. In a way I suppose that's also fitting, as I also recall chat here about how the scope and scale of human trafficking storylines often come across as oversimplified in their portayal on teevee.

Can I also just comment briefly that as annoying as sound f/x on cuts and zooms have been in other eps, especially montage sequences, that the sound clip smear of car horns on city shots, cuts and aerials is also going starting to go beyond signature to noticeable and will soon be just as annoying.

Segment four, after Flack's boys :p found the car, saw a little more Adam, a little more Lindsay, and a little more Edna. And then Adam, Stella, and Danny got to stare at tubes of dirt. A rather long montage of it too. More of that stutter start stop odd pacing. We know Danny's on the mend as his Boomage has returned. And then Flack, Doktor Ray and Big Mac are whisked off to a suddenly determined one particular scrap yard in Corona. Flack's party favor is Mac's price of admission :p, one shotgun, complete with Langston refusing it and then commenting on it thru a history of it's social evolution. With the last dose of steroids taken, the final hide and seek and then chase was on, to get that phyrric victory done.

The choice of a scrap yard was disturbingly fitting, as the girls were essentially traded and dealt wholesale or for parts and discarded in pieces. Super Mac got some spidey skillz, car hopping like that :lol: Ray got a handy dandy dirt bike to go wif his shotgun. He's having a helluvan eventful fieldtrip :p. By the time they caught the guy, I half-way did hope he'd give Mac a reason to put a hole in him. It was indeed a phyrric victory, but better for it than just the level of NY being the bridge in the middle of a trilogy. They got the driver but Madeline was already handed off. It was satisfying to have one that got away for NY, a case not fully solved that is, but it would be more impressive if NY might do that thru the regular season here and there, and not just to enable the chase and case to continue in Vegas; I also liked the return of a somewhat dark and gritty ending to NY, but I wish they'd manage to do that too a bit more often for themselves and not just to hand over the unresolved baton.

It was also satisfying to have such a well-played skeevy perp also be just a minor cog in the machine, that it was such a hard fought catch for an incremental notch up in the battle. The whole main cast got an appearance in the hour, and while most had little enough to do, they at least each got something. And so the ep ended as it began, typically cyclical, girl in a new rig and back on the road with a new and equally anonymous driver. The show heads to the mothership. Motherland? Motherload, the franchise probably hopes. And I'll probably tune in.

Call it a B-. A half step up from average for the scope of the trilogy undertaking alone. As an individual ep, was decent but like a miscellaneous snack on the go, when ya might wanna sit down to a memorable meal now and then, and what better time would that have been than a special occasion with guests. I feel like Edna handed me an overpriced undersized ingot of a granola bar from a flashy but well used vending machine. :p

This better effing work and go thru without mucking all this about. Was painful to put this post together. And I give up. I have actually started shouting at the inanimate digital objects that are the current contrary absurdity of my computer and intarweb. :lol:Except, I'm not laughing anymore, I'm going hoarse.
 
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this ep was good, but not great. i watched miami and it was more on the go, brighter and lighter. i don't know if it's just because of the lighting lol. NY was dragging a little bit imo.

by the way fay, i love your avatar. that bear scene with walter, jesse and ryan cracked me up. "you're safe now, girls." :lol:

this ep was kind of confusing for me. in miami they had cut up body parts, and now they have internal organs taken out. the only connection (as far as i know) is madeline. or maybe i just don't get it. haha.

ray, mac, hawkes and flack were definitely highlights of the episode. only the four of them did chases, interrogations and the investigating. the others seemed in the background though they had a number of scenes.

favorite parts were definitely flack's sliding thing. lol. good thing they didn't make it in slow motion, unlike his jumping on the suspect on the train tracks last season. and hey it's world send again. wasn't that the delivery service used in episode 6? lol. loved the interrogation scene of hawkes and the doctor. the doc was silenced, and so was flack. :lol:

casey was so creepy. great actor. he played a villain on 24. haha no wonder he looks familiar. and is it just me, or does the girl who played madeline look like leighton meester? lol.

i give this episode an A-. looking forward to next week's episode!
 
I found the episode incredibly cliché and uninteresting. I watched it because I thought there would be something apart from the oh so exciting crossover. I was wrong and I regret not skipping it. I've only liked two things:
-Go, Doc, go! Sheldon seriously wishing to beat the crap out of that surgeon was love.
-Not much Ray Langston. He had annoyed the hell out of me in Miami.

Things I didn't like:
-Veteran talk. Yeah, they've all served the country. Lovely. Irrelevant.
-Evil driver is so evil he laughs evilly. I wish he had been the cold-blooded type who doesn't care if he's transporting humans, cattle, guns or uranium and who doesn't laugh at the cops. Cliché!
-A working motorcycle! How convenient!
-EDNA. Really, why do we need to see that freaking thing in every single episode?
-Can the characters get any more two-dimensional? They forced them all into the episode and they became robots.
-Langston talking about the invention of guns. Boring and pointless. I don't need to be told he's oh so smart. I don't care, really.
-SuperMac comforting poor little Ray. I missed a man-hug there.

I'm sure I'm missing something, but it doesn't matter *yawn* Booooooring!
 
I only gave it a C+. This little “story idea” has given truck diver a bad name. Being a daughter of a truck driver I know there will some people who think all drivers are like this, and their not. Also there was no real ending other then they got the guy.

The highlight for me was Hawkes with Flack. They have a good chemistry starting up there. Hawkes showing his concern when Don was hit in the face with the metal trash can was very nice. Did anyone else notice that Mac and Stella never asked him if he was okay?

What’s with no promo for next week? Hopefully tonight’s CSI will finish it. I’ll get off my soap box now.
 
I was intrigued and I was wrong, fortunatly next week back to normal:):)

End of the glorious Langston around the CSI' lab.... definitively don't like him.

Gave a D
 
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