CSI: Crime Scene Investigation--'Disarmed And Dangerous'

<p><b>Synopsis:</b><p>Federal Agent William Ray Hatford is murdered in a bathroom at a gas station. His cohorts, Miles Beckman and Emma Stanley, call Las Vegas PD. Catherine and Ray Langston join Brass at the scene, where they discover a particularly gruesome crime scene awaiting them in the bathroom. One of Hatford's arms is found severed from his body, while Langston discovers a bloody lump of muscle mass by one of the toilets. The agent's gun, badge and wallet are missing. In the morgue, Langston attempts to take the dead man's prints and discovers his ridge detail seems to have been surgically removed. On the surveillance video at the gas station, Greg spots a large man driving a vintage car with blood on his face around the time of the murder. Brass speaks with Agents Beckman and Stanley, who promise him the full cooperation of the FBI. The pair tells Riley and Nick their assignment was infiltrating a human trafficking ring run by a man known as "Os Punho," which is Portuguese for "The Fist." Drs. Robbins and Langston examine the muscle mass Ray found in the bathroom and discover it was likely torn out of the attacker's body. Hemorrhage lines indicate the killer was on steroids. Riley and Catherine view tapes from the FBI agents that show Hatford questioning Vinnie, a large, heavily muscled man and think he might be their killer. They question a well known steroid dealer with only a few days left in jail and lean on him to get him to give them Vinnie's last name: Mingus. Brass, Nick and the feds go to apprehend Vinnie at a Supreme Force Fighter match. They find the crazed man with a fight doctor; he ends up charging them, seizing a gun as he rants about how there aren't any bullets in the guns, and shooting himself in the head!<p>Agents Beckman and Stanley return to their mission while Langston goes over the gun, believed to be Hatford's, found among Vinnie's possessions. He's surprised to find it's a street piece rather than a standard issue gun. Nick approaches Catherine: he's found a Jane Doe who was murdered recently on one of the FBI interview tapes. The girl, who identifies herself as "Rio" on the tape, was only 16 and had been forced into prostitution. On the tape, she made it clear she'd prefer jail to forced prostitution, but the Feds didn't arrest her. As Ray finds Hatford's prints all over the gun from Vinnie's bag, Wendy Simms makes a startling discovery when she sends Hatford's DNA to Quantico: the FBI have no record of any agent named William Ray Hatford. Brass arrives at a disturbing crime scene as the news comes in: Emma Stanley has been shot execution-style in the back of the head. When he looks for Miles Beckman, who was in the crowd just a moment ago, he finds the man gone. David Phillips runs her prints and finds that her real name was Emma Moslin, and she did two years in jail for prostitution. A real FBI agent, Paul Briggs, confirms what the team has now realized: the trio of Hatford, Stanley and Beckman were only posing as FBI agents. The team manages to track them down via the corporation they created to rent the offices in Las Vegas: I Can See For Miles. The street address is a Halfway Home where the man at the desk recognizes Miles as a resident named Miles Gelson, and also identifies Hatford as Billy Ray Salvo. He shows them to Miles' room where the traumatized man is sitting on the floor. Keeping up the pretense, he asks Brass to cuff him before leading him out. Brass acquiesces only to have a drive by shooter take a shot at Miles as they lead him to the car. Brass gives chase only to have the shooter crash his car. The man is dead when Brass catches up to the car.<p>Riley and Langston go over the trio's evidence ledger, but they aren't able to to figure out the codes Miles and his cohorts used to identify the evidence. Langston brings Miles an entry in the ledger that corresponds to the day Rio was murdered and talks him into identifying the code. Miles finally relents, telling Langston one code stands for "Little Guy Dropped Gun Down Sewer--Unable to Apprehend Perp" and the other, which matches up to a gun the trio had in an evidence box, stands for "Gun Little Bastard Dropped--Gonna Nail His Ass." Wendy swabs the gun for blood and finds that the shooter cut himself while loading the weapon. She gets a hit on the DNA: Reynaldo Fino--the fight doctor who was treating Mingus. The LVPD storms Fino's place and finds the doctor surrounded by the women he's imprisoned and forced into slavery. Ray tells Miles that Fino was caught and the girls freed--thanks in large part to Miles and his friends. Langston offers Miles a copy of Don Quixote and tells him that there are medications that could help him. "The windmills you tilted at really were giants," the new CSI observes.<p><b>Analysis:</b><p>Though there were little things about the supposed FBI agents that stood out as odd, I have to give writers <font color=yellow>Dustin Lee Abraham</font> and <font color=yellow>Evan Dunsky</font> credit for dropping the hints subtly enough that I didn't really start to suspect they were actual fakes until the end of the first act of the episode. There were little things that stood out, like how cooperative they were with the Las Vegas PD--since when have the Feds on a <i>CSI</i> show ever been easy-going and helpful? My initial thought was that the team had gone rogue--that perhaps they'd somehow run afoul of their superiors and were running their own operation. What really struck me was the way Emma smiled as Miles ran down the way the steroid dealer's prison sentence could be extended from a mere 22 days left to 22 years. Her pride was evident, and I wondered if perhaps she had feelings for her fellow agent. But I also found it off; after all, Feds aren't prone to being proud of each other for knowing the ins and outs of the law. <font color=yellow>Paula Malcomson</font> plays the moment well, letting the audience know there's something behind Emma's smile but not totally clueing us in on what it means.<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/disarmed_and_dangerous.shtml">here</A>.<center></center>

 

Excellent review, as usual.

The case was interesting, and Miles was a very sympathetic character - too often on CSI:NY, they don't do a good job of developing the guest characters enough for me to feel any kind of connection with them, so it's nice that this episode of CSI created that connection for me. Miles is someone I as a viewer could empathize with. While the world might have dismissed him and the others as crazy and useless, he went out and tried to do some good - and without him, those girls at the end would not have been freed. I do hate that his friends died, though.

I enjoy seeing Langston's personal connection to each case - although I think that will wear him down quickly if he always gets so emotionally attached. Either way, it gives the character a certain niche, a way for him to interact with the scenes and characters that will set him apart from the rest of the cast.

I also enjoy his rapport with Doc Robbins, and I like that he's still the new guy and the newbie CSI without making n00b mistakes all of the time.

Now that we've had a few episodes to introduce and focus on Langston, I hope the episodes start to spread out and encompass the entire team more. Riley never got much of a focus when she was the new girl, and the other characters deserve some focus too - I know Fishburne is the new leading man, but as Petersen always said, it's an ensemble cast.

 

Though it is certainly a plot hole in that the fake FBI agents aren't discovered sooner, it's possible the fake agents were convincing enough that Brass might have delayed sending a report until the case was concluded (Brass might also have believed the fake agents would fill out a report). Also since the fake agents claimed to be working undercover, I think it would have been prudent for the LVPD to keep "Agent" Hatford's death quiet until they caught the killer. On another note though I'm surprised Brass and the CSIs were taken in so easily (which is probably why there is a scene where even a real FBI agent mentions how real their operation was).

It seems the CSI writers have been keeping an eye on the spin-offs since Langston and Robbins this episode reminded me a lot of Sheldon and Sid scene (the CSI and coroner having a friendly chat over a dead body).