Continuing to catch up on eps here
.
Was okay. Not brilliant. Warbled between Deliberately Sedate and Danged Slow. The ep felt tired.
Wasn't a fan of the intro/teaser. Yes, it is part of NY's staple bag o' tricks, the Long Drawn Out !Sexy to cut with a gruesome death. But. Damn, didn't it drag on for bloody ever. A teaser, two minutes or less, should not bore one to f*cking tears. The ep's intro, should not induce channel hopping twitch reflex, especially when the opposite is intended. Mallets in establishing venue, kewl, sexeh, character, and contrasting. And another example of how NY warps time, bends and stretches it and curls it around its pinky finger. Dragged on for bloody ever :lol:.
That said. I actually liked the ep. Rather, while it wasn't the most enthralling thing NY has done this season, it didn't irk me to the same degree that the previous one did, though it definitely did have it's irritations. Hm. OK. I recall being vaguely entertained moreso than irritated. and so, in balance, I liked it :lol:.
The alcohol bar was perplexing as a venue for inclusion, and I imagine, would have atrocious insurance rates, being a flammable liquid hot box wherein one could also run the risk of drowning in air :lol:. But, eh, NY periodically hasta be Kewl and Sexy and pushing whatever envelope, yada. Just often feels very contrived when they do, and this ep was no different.
It was interesting to have the Spanish CSI Equivalent dude present, and I think I was basically curious about that, and how they'd weave an ep around it, more than I was intrigued by the death (as opposed to "Homicide") in question.
(Which, by dint of the early goings, had me already suspicious it wouldn't be. A homicide, that is. Lo and behold
).
Jo understanding Spanish tweaked an eyebrow, but at least they 'splained in a reasonable fashion how it was feasible for her, and nicely tied it to her FBI past. The treaty that had sent her overseas was also neatly tied into Hector being able to put himself in the middle of everything in NY as well.
Lindsay and Spanish, conversely, felt a convenient add-on taking advantage of the fact that Spain and Spanish featured in the ep at all. (Not dissimilar to everyone immediately and conveniently being expert uber-high-end Formula racing automotive mechanics in an ep that featured it). That, or Lindsay apparently simply knows Spanish thru her natural brilliance. Or, she's been listening to instructional cd's under her pillow at night and picking it up subliminally. Cos it's also apparently a newly acquired talent, pulled outta left field, or somewherez else more dark and murky
. That's the discrepancy for me. One, is a feasible if eyebrow tweaking coincidence. Two ...is a Mallet.
I liked the bristly quality of interaction between Hector and the NY team, and that their hands were essentially tied in that regard. I also appreciated the hint at larger political issues/treaties both parties could use but were also constricted by. The ep was understatedly cagey, early on. It continued to be interesting with the revelation that the girlfriend called Miguel's mother in Spain. What detracted from that slightly was the Small World element of Hector being related. NY writes an ep that goes across the bloody ocean, ...and it's still a small world after all. Meh.
Was irked by the Sid/Lindsay scene. Sry, but AB just doesn't carry that sorta play off as well as some of the others do with Sid. It was, however, nice to see Sid again. I was wondering why the scene was written as such at all, and got the aha flicker in realizing it was setting up her arrival to the Adam/Jo/Mac scene that followed shortly after.
My curiosity ebbed by the time Mac suggested he wasn't necessarily prepared to dub the death a homicide, given the apparent lack of struggle, blood patterns, odd findings ie. bedsores, yada. The tension or at least the sense of urgency that had been driving the ep to that point, between Hector and the CSIs, was all but done.
Flack and Danny go to the mist bar. Should be fun. Became rather predictable. Leo runs. Of course. They chase. Of course. And damned if the taps did light on fire, but none of the other presumably pooling alcohol or damp surfaces did, nor any of the people drenched, nor any residual alcohol showering down :lol:. Whatever. It would qualify for Ridiculous had it been a tad more extreme, oh, say, like Flack's leap. It wasn't ridiculous. It was slightly flashy but in a somewhat half-hearted fashion. I like Danny /Flack scenes. But the in-joke on take-downs etc. isn't so fresh anymore. I recall thinking here that NY also needs to find new ways to use their characters. Their templates are showing again.
What regained some of my interest was Jo's interrogation scene. Just some little bit of business that set the scene off. Nice.
What felt further irrelevant as the ep went on was the tidbit Sheldon had been pursuing from the top of the hour, the galium-whassit results. I glazed vaguely at a few points thru the ep, and I think this was one of them. I know Sheldon was in the ep. He felt as prominent as Sid.
The mother arriving should have ramped up the urgency and/or tension again, but NY itself either glazed over, or took a more understated approach. Hard to say which. Hector was certainly more conciliatory by this point, and seemingly driven by finding some conclusive answer rather than by appeasing family, even if he was still adamant it was a homicide.
Jo/Lindsay. Talking to the girlfriend on the street. A horrible, horrible scene. The actress playing the girlfriend was poor here, AB matched it. Jo shoulda just gone for a bite to eat here and come back.
Ah. Lindsay's Spanish scene happened
hereabouts. I was irritated by her earlier, a few times, but couldn't be arsed to keep track of why. Here, I had been so annoyed that I scribbled "f*cking hell. f*cking f*cking hell." End quote. :lol:.
Flack & Danny's interrogation with the solar panel thief had a harder edge than I was expecting. Neither good nor bad. Just was. I suppose the only conclusion I'll draw from that was a lack of a cohesive pulse for the ep as a whole, just a whole bunch of different and sometimes erratic ones kitted together.
It was odd that only later in the ep did Hector reveal that Miguel's father died in unusual circumstances. He also admitted Miguel's death may not have been murder after all. And yet, I managed to ask, again, who tossed the knife. The characters weren't allowed to ask that yet. They had to go find a blood drop. So, Mac and Hector, now working together, went back to suss it out.
Can I also observe that NY's score for this ep was not the most subtle thing in the world, but, I can't argue that it didn't fit either.
May I also suggest that the death scene/renactment was rather awkward. I mean, yah, how the hell do ya depict something like that. But. It added to a disjointed ep.
The final, Mac/girlfriend interrogation. I had noted: "...pure. bloody. exposition. to wrap up the ep for lack of time." A whooooooooole lotta dialogue crammed in alluvasudden to 'splain everything, bring up suicide as an issue, without really addressing it, explain two Unusual Deaths, years separated and an ocean apart but part of the same Small World, enable a near-happyish !Poignant-Ending and then tucking the ep away for the week.
I glazed again a bit by that point. I wasn't particularly annoyed by the ending, case-wise, nor by the exchange the show felt compelled to plate, than by the feeling like it was basically in service of Theme of The Week, especially the feeling it wasn't given due time thru the course of the ep, if it was gonna be a weighty twist.
The mother's last minute defiance and seeming brittle exhaustion brought out a defensive barb at Jo, of "if it were your son, what would you have done?" One might normally take that as rhetorical, and Jo's response was saved by the prefacing shrug and "I don't know" before the hug quotient was spoken.
I dunno either. I shrug at the hour as a whole.
Wasn't a great ep. But, it had a few good points, lacked a few.
Thought Hector coulda been used to push Mac and the team a bit more, but can't really complain about how he was written. Well, other than being Related, of course. As for suicide. It was hardly a grand revelation by the time they uttered it aloud. Mebbe the story mighta benefited from playing at that possible family history earlier on and thru the whole ep. It needed something to keep the pressure on, once Hector & NY stopped overtly butting heads, and the Mother's presence wasn't enough.
The premise was interesting, the international angle, someone with credentials from overseas legitimately poking about. It felt a bit wasted. It got bogged rather quickly within what was essentially a family tragedy brought from one shore to the next. Once that happened, Hector was somehow a less effective foil. Once it became a family centric drama, any real pretense of murder by Unknown Villain went out the window, and it was a suspicious death. That made all the running about feel like, well, just running about. Setting bars alight, that sort of thing. All the running about made the extensive dialogue concluding the ep, anticlimactic at best, and rather separate from everything that had preceded it. Wasn't stitched together well enough to feel like a bait and switch, or even a grand revelation illustrated with all the pieces collected slotted in.
Sheldon seemed extraneous again in this ep. Lindsay was irksome again in this ep, whereas she'd been better the previous week. Sid was too brief. Adam/Mac/Jo was fun. DL was not. Flack/Messer felt predictable again this week. NY seemed obsessed with Kewl again this week. More old habits creeping in. The grind of mid season? Or the early holycrap improvisational mode has settled and they've re-established the status quo?
Keep pushing NY, don't Settle. Plz.
Meh. Forget what I graded it. B- or C+ or thereabouts.
hmm ok then. i was a tad underwhelmed by most of it tbh. i did like the angle of how they had to work with the foreign agency, but i felt it was overkill to make the foreign agent family too. i think for most law enforcement working with a foreign agency would be quite enough, thank you, without needing to overegg the pudding.
Agree.
I also wonder...wouldn't all that alcohol in the air burn people's eyes?
:lol:
