CSI: New York--'The Party's Over'

<p><b>Synopsis:</b><p>The blue flu sweeps the NYPD following a pay dispute for officers, resulting in 40% of the force calling in sick. Mac Taylor, on his way to a charity function for the Manhattan Museum Restoration, notes the lack of cops on the street and at the precinct when he stops a shooter himself. Stella is at the function with fireman Brendon Walsh as her date. The two watch wealthy newspaper publisher Robert Dunbrook unveil a million dollar donation to Deputy Mayor Stuart Kaplan's charity, but when he calls for Kaplan to accept the check, the man doesn't appear. The reason is quickly revealed: a multitude of balloons are released from above, and with them falls the body of the deputy mayor. Hawkes and Danny arrive at the scene, but Danny quickly pleads illness and, despite Hawkes' scorn and skepticism, leaves the scene. Stella finds a circular trace pattern of blood on the floor and thinks that the origin of it might lie with Brendon, who rushed to help Kaplan after his body landed. She goes off to collect his clothes, leaving Hawkes and Adam to process the scene. Neal Weston, Kaplan's brother-in-law comes looking for Kaplan's thirteen-year-old son, Jake. Adam searches for the boy and finds him hiding in a cabinet. He's able to draw him out with the offer of a soda and the use of his iPod. Stella tracks Brendon down and retrieves his clothes. At the morgue, Sid determines Kaplan was strangled, noting an odd bruise pattern on the side of his neck, possibly made by the murder weapon. The team gets a lead when Hawkes finds a broken off part of an NYPD badge belonging to a detective named Stan Miller at the scene. Mac questions Miller, who admits to confronting the deputy mayor over the pay cuts and confesses they got into physical fight, but insists he left Kaplan alive.<p>Hawkes is irritated when he gets a call to fill in for Danny on a court case and expresses his frustration to Lindsay, who defends Danny. Stella recovers a small bloody wood chip from Brendon's clothes, while Lindsay discovers several hairs on his body came from a horse. Deputy Inspector Gillian Whitford pays Mac a visit: someone left a copy of The Ledger, Dunbrook's paper, on her windshield after the gala with the words "Follow the money" written over Kaplan's picture on the front page. Gillian is determined to get her hands on Kaplan's financial records, and Mac points out that before being named Deputy Mayor, Kaplan was the Commissioner for Construction and Renovation. Adam matches eyelashes on the balloons Kaplan fell with to his son, Jake, and he and Stella posit that the boy is likely OCD. Because the transfer occurred right around the time of death, Stella wonders if Jake killed his father. Despite Adam's skepticism, Stella notes that the boy could have strangled his father by applying pressure to the right places. Lindsay offers up another lead: the horse hairs on Kaplan's body belong to a thoroughbred owned by Robert Dunbrook. Mac questions the man, but Dunbrook tells the CSI that he ran into Kaplan in the bathroom and urged the man to put their differences aside, patting him on the shoulder as they walked out. Mac is skeptical; Kaplan was a roadblock for the powerful Dunbrook. Lindsay IDs the wood from the chip as balsa wood, but she and Stella are interrupted when a chagrined Hawkes calls and tells Stella that the case Danny was supposed to testify at was thrown out because Hawkes was railroaded by the defense. An angry Stella goes to confront Danny at home, but when she gets to his apartment, she has calmed down and can understand his point of view--even if she doesn't choose to make the same stand.<p>Gillian brings evidence against Kaplan to Mac: the deputy mayor was running fraudulent charities. Mac points out that the person who left the newspaper on her car left it two hours before it was published, leading him to suspect it could have been Dunbrook. Adam finds trace on his iPod and is surprised when it matches trace found on Kaplan's neck, linking Jake to the murder. Stella is finally able to identify the bruise on Kaplan's neck as one made by a clip on tie. Stella and Flack go to Weston's house to find Jake, and Stella spots a board game with pieces like the one found on Kaplan's body. Flack recognizes the boy as the same one who he saw sitting in the precinct earlier, waiting for Adam. Stella and Mac try questioning Jake to no avail, so they turn the boy over to Adam. Adam recognizes OCD traits in Jake, and draws the boy out. Jake tells Adam that his father found him hiding during the party and snatched away the game piece he was holding. Jake lost control and attacked his father in order to get it back, accidentally killing him in the process. Jake tells Adam that even though his dad was mean sometimes, he really loved him. Adam leaves the precinct upset, followed by Stella, who is concerned about him. Mac gets a call to meet Dunbrook and is surprised when the man opts to end the union stand off by handing Mac a check for twenty million dollars for the NYPD. Though Mac has qualms about taking the check, Gillian does not. Danny returns to work, and immediately offers to help Hawkes with his workload.<p><b>Analysis:</b><p><i>CSI: New York</i> can be very, very unsubtle at times, not only making its points, but driving them home with a heavy mallet. With the constant snippets of radio and news commentary about the blue flu and the chaos in the city, and Mac and Stella, our two leads, showing up to work but sympathizing with the officers staying home, there's nothing delicate about the way the issue is addressed. Oh, I sympathize with the plight of the underpaid officers, but Danny--the one member of the team who does decide to play hooky--looks like a louse for going home while his pregnant girlfriend slaves away over wood chips and horse hair. Danny, while certainly a champ at making "unpopular decisions" as he himself points out, has never been one to let down his team, so for him to leave everyone in the lurch--and even jeopardize a court case--feels out of character. The way the story was set-up necessitated someone from the team taking a personal stand on the issue, but it might have been wiser to see Mac angrily take up the point with someone in power or Stella get incensed on the job about the serious consequences of being understaffed.<p><HR ALIGN="CENTER" SIZE="1" WIDTH="45%" COLOR="#007BB5"><p>To read the full reviews, please click <A HREF="http://www.csifiles.com/reviews/csi/the_partys_over.shtml">here</A>.<center></center>

 

Nice read

I took Danny`s comment about family as he talked about his work family then as his bloodrelatives family.
But I do agree that it was a wrong descision on his part.
It was actually refreshing to see Lindsay take Danny`s side,cause while she wouldn`t have agree with him,she is gonna be the mother of his child.
And to be honest,in this case I would liked to have seen her confront him.

I thought Stella was a bit too bitchy for my taste in this episode,and I honestly have to say that Stella sinks down more and more for me as a character.
Lately scenes with Stella rub me just the wrong way and she comes off as too strong.

 

It sure sounded like he meant blood relatives to me. Wasn't there a CSI novel that had said the same thing: Danny was from a family of cops?

Anyway, that just felt off. I have to agree going along with the strike doesn't seem like something Danny would do. I felt so sorry for Hawkes when that case got thrown out!

The debate between Hawkes and Lindsay was actually pretty good. And it was nice to see Lindsay take Danny's side, and not mind working.

Stella was cute with her boyfriend, hopefully he'll stay alive and sane, and if they do break up it will be normal and healthy.

 

Excellent review, Kristine.

I agree that the Adam stuff was the best part of the episode. Poor dear. It will be interesting to see if we ever get more information about Adam's past and/or his possible OCD. Seeing him get emotional when Jake said his dad was mean but he still loved him said a lot to me - Adam knows just what that feels like. Yes, he's a bastard, but he's still your dad.

Poor Jake. He killed his father, but he's a very sympathetic character. Skyler Gisondo did a good job.

As a random note, I'm not sure trying to figure out what's on your iPod is an acceptable use of lab resources - yes, it turned out to be relevant to their case (broke the case, actually), but does Mac really allow them to swab and run any old stain they come across, whether it's related to a case or not? Is Flack going to come into the precinct one day and go, 'Hey Hawkes, the vendor said this was chilli, but I don't trust him - run it for me'?

Brendan Walsh was largely unimpressive in his second appearance. I'm all for Stella having a good boyfriend, but they didn't do much to make me fond of him in his few scenes. (The one where he started to strip in the middle of the fire department just struck me as odd.) If Ethan Erickson comes back, I hope they give his character something better to do.

The part where Danny suddenly said he's from a 'family of cops' made me wonder if the writers had this planned all along, or if they're retconning their own continuity again. Mac was apparently told not to hire Danny, and we've seen where Danny doesn't get along with other officers ("On the Job", when he mouthed off to Gerrard in "Raising Shane", etc) - but now we're supposed to believe he's such a true blue cop that he'll abandon his team (and his pregnant girlfriend) when they need him, risking his job and putting a criminal back on the street in the process?

I believe in "Tanglewood", Danny commented that the fathers of the Tanglewood Boys all had 'connections' - which implies that Louie, as a Tanglewood Boy, had a father who was also connected. That doesn't preclude Danny's father (or other members of his family) from being cops, but it just seems very odd without being given any amount of development. Was Danny from a family of cops, and perhaps having a dirty cop for a father (or maybe a father who was involved with the mob despite himself being from a family of cops) made him want to be more loyal to the badge? I guess I could buy that if written and explained well, but I really don't see TPTB bothering with it. It'll just end up being one more unexplained bit of random writing. (Having a scene between Danny and Flack about the issue might have been interesting and helped the audience understand where Danny is coming from, but those two only seem to interact when they're bantering or Flack is saving Danny's ass. Mac and Stella seem to be the only characters who are allowed to have genuine discussions with the other team members. Yes, we know they're the leads, but I'm sure the underlings can have discussions amongst themselves.)

Anyway, like you said, Danny might have been the best choice of the characters they had to work with, but that doesn't make him a good choice. He's not working in the precinct, surrounded by other like-minded and angry cops - he's in the lab, surrounded by people who all clearly chose to do their jobs. It stands out, and it's in a way that doesn't make sense to me. Maybe if they'd set up this Blue Flu thing ahead of time instead of having it pop up for the first time in this episode, I might have been able to buy it. A casual mention or two in the past few episodes about the possibility, and Danny commenting that he wouldn't work if the NYPD wasn't getting the respect it deserved, could have made it more believable.

One of the problems with CSI:NY is that they don't usually build things up well, and they rarely follow through in a satisfactory way.

(BTW, Carrieattheprom, one of the NY novels definitely had a line about Danny being from a family of cops - which I, and many others no doubt, dismissed with a roll of the eyes at the time.)

Anyway, moving on - I liked seeing more Hawkes, but I'd prefer to see more of him when he's not in a shitty mood. I did, however, like that when Danny came back to work, he went to see Hawkes to make nice - and that Hawkes let it go.

I'm sorry to see Julia Ormond leave - having characters join for three episode arcs doesn't give them much time to connect to the audience or the other characters, and it doesn't give them much time to, well, do much of anything. (That's not to say they can't bring Gillian back - Claire Forlani was only signed on for three episodes to start with and did more, so it's possible that we'll see Julia return at some point. In fact, it's a shame that they're setting up this storyline with Dunbrook and probably won't have her around to see the arc through.)

I'm curious to see where things go with Dunbrook himself - Craig T Nelson did an excellent job of making Dunbrook just slimy enough to get your hackles up, without being so slimy that you wonder why anybody buys what he's selling (figuratively).