I gave it a C+. I thought the scene in the morgue with the girl talking to her father was very moving and there were some amusing scenes with Flack and Danny, but Stella immediately managing to narrow down the man's identity due to the presence of a tiny S sticker was a bit too far fetched for me and I didn't like the (cheesy IMO) editing during the chase scene (except for the bit where they paused on Flack's chase face, which was the funniest thing I've seen for a while).
Flack is the master of crazy facial expressions..I love it! I gave the episode a B, it was good but a little boring. Points to them though for choking me up with Sid and the girl in the morgue, though.
I gave it an A+, I think it is now one of my fav episodes overall and definatly the best in this season so far. It had great character pairing moments, with Don/Danny and then Lindsay/Sid. I also thought this case bought out the best in the characters and Mac/Stella inparticular seemed to show a very personal take on the case even though they were not directly connected. This week I was so happy to see that the episode wasnt based around a rich guy in some big drug/murder case (or something like that) this one felt much more real to me because of the family element to it. Definatly a great episode over all
Before writing this I read all the posts, and I saw Fay's post that she is not going to do the type-and-watch thing and I felt sad, but then she posted Also it took me about 45 mins to write this, so if I repeat something someone said above me, I do apologize. Great episode (missed to type that in the NY thread). A from me! Strong points. This is me being shallow. Yes, I enjoyed the chase scene too much. I loved it even because Danny is always natural and playful and funny whenever he is around Flack. Especially chase scenes. Although I knew that nothing is going to happen to Danny while he was alone, I actually expected something to go wrong. But nice call on the cabinet sitting thing that was hilarious. Must thank the baddie that made Flack's suite stink, because he looked very good in that shirt. OK. I stopped being shallow. Hawkes was on screen for more than two minutes, which is amazing. Still babbling about evidence, but he had some good moments with Stella and Danny. Mac wasn't as righteous as he usually is, he even smiled so no throwing stuff at the TV this week. I loved Stella's reactions during the case, it wasn't too out there, and she showed the right amount of sympathy. Minus poins: No Adam. It would have been a clean A+ if Adam were there. Also, more Sid, please? Also in regards to the discussion about Ukrainian, yes it a different language from Russian. They have the same Slavic roots, but they are different. When Ukraine used to be part of the USSR, the official language was Russian, that is why most Ukrainian people do speak Russian.
I thought it was a pretty good episode myself. Thank God, they finally quit using the split screen! Danny's story about the sweatshirt was pretty cute, as were his scenes with Flack. Also loved Hawkes' little formula about the shirts as well. Did we really need Gillian to have a missing niece? Couldn't she just be doing this because the crime is so horrible? Why does there need to be a personal reason behind it? The scene at the end with the girl talking to her dead father was heartbreaking, in my opinion.
Ukrainian and Russian both use cyrilic alphabet, but they are completely different languages. Well, they are a bit similar (and perhaps sounds similar), because they are both slavic languages, but you wouldn't easily understand Ukrainian if you knew Russian.
The cyrilic alphabet is used in Slavic languages (Russian, Ukrainian, Serbia, Bulgarian...) as well as Mongolian and a few others. The same way the Latin alphabet is used in a slew of languages - English, Spanish, German, French, Portuguese, Dutch, etc..
As for the issue of Gillian and a missing niece, I thought I read that this issue is something that Julie Ormond cares about very much. If so, that might be why they incorporated it into her character. I do believe that the girl was speaking Ukranian. My DH is half-Ukranian, and I have heard the language spoken numerous times. Ukranian does sound a lot like Russian (I think that the Slavic languages sound a lot alike...). I didn't realize that the cyrillic alphabet was used for any language other than those that are derived from Russian. I honestly believed that Serbian, etc. used their own alphabet. I guess you learn something new every day!
Just got round to watching the episode in full and really liked. It didn't focus on one character and everyone had there part to play (except Adam, which was diappointing). Loved Danny and Flack together. I like the fact that Stella was very prominent as someone already said it was nice to see a lady come to the rescue instead a man. Mac wasn't self-righteous as he can sometimes be I did find it strange that in the morgue the girl spoke to her dad in English, surely she should have spoke in Ukranian, although it was a very touching scene. Also the conculsion that the victim was Ukranian from the facts he was Eastern European and showed signs of the Chernobyl fall out was a random leap as Chernobyl affected more vastly people in Belarus than the Ukraine due to the winds that day.
Oh... I'd give it a B+. It was entertaining, but not fantastic. My favorite scene was when Danny had the pick pocket trapped in the locker and was telling her to shut up he was making a phone call. I also liked where the girl took off her jewelry and wiped off her lipstick before speaking to her dead father. It just seemed like something a teenager would do. Although, I thought she would have spoken Russian instead of English since she was saying something private to him and English wasn't her native language.
Well. Happy for new eppies. It's been a few days now, so absolute test of memorability vs consumption !lite here. Thought it was B realm material. I appreciate the occasional ep that is purely a crime-based one. No persecution. No overt politics. No luvvy overly-melo-drama. Just a case to be solved, hopefully with believable people at the heart of it. In that sense, I was happy to sit thru it. But, for all of what is a very dark and gritty subject matter, it was not anywhere in league with it's S1 incarnation in how it might have really grappled with it. Hard to cram all that into an hour I guess. It came across more in the vein of an oft refurbished, delicately handled storyline. But still, it was reasonably well done. Misc. points. - those motion/sloooow/!Go! sequences: can't decide it they're annoying or meh. We're not in Miami. Oh no, not gimmicky or self-aware by design at all. Especially when they don't always seem to stylistically carry it thru the whole ep, or from one to the next as a deliberate overall visual style. Must be a tool on the roster for directors to say, yeah gimme dat. You wanna know why they're re-using action sequences? Possibly to put $ into that kind of post production mod. - Hawkes seemed to spend a lot of time narrating a lot of visual sequences. Did get some humour though. While not quite Scooby. Dooby Doo. or Late Nite Schnacks, postulating a theory about the correlation between distance of habitation from NYC with the willingness to wear an I Luv NY type sweatshirt was still fun. Usually the kind of realm Sid gets to hang out in. - speaking of. Sid was too busy trying to make Lindsay look good. Was his usual fabulous self with what he was given. Just a pity it's his turn as the next life buoy used as Lindsay is passed around. (Sounds rather distasteful don't it). They should all check the fine print on their contracts to see what kind of obligations they have in being the resuscitation units for any scene she's in. ...charging.... 100! !Clear! *phoomph: be funny! be brilliant! speak Chinese! If Fishburne can do Japanese you can say Happy New Year in, oh, Mandarin, right?* They should at least see what kind of culpability she has if they need physio for the monkey on their backs. - possibly a favourite moment of the episode was Hawkes narrating what Lindsay did in one sequence, thus explaining her purpose in being there and also avoiding having to rely on her to do so, and saving airtime to boot. Thumbs up, keep it up, I'm liking the strategy. ...and yes, I'll stop. - loved Stella, thought this was a good ep for her. But man, they've got some guy trying a line on her in just about every episode now don't they. - Flack and Danno's respective tackle/perp apprehension scenes were fun. Perp in a box. Who wouldn't want one. But the chase sequences were a little overly drawn out, methinks. - loved that wee little snide chuckle from Mac at perp humour. The only time he smiles regularly seems to be in interrogation. Hm. - loved Flack's suit being trashed: any excuse to divest him of it is good for me... - Nice to see some Danno/Stel moments too. Haven't had those inna bit. - pegged Katie/Carolyn/the Welcome Girl/"I was just Sleeping here" chickie as Baddie straight off, but hey, sometimes it's curiosity about the path even when you know the endgame that keeps ya watching. Miami hasn't boasted even that for me in years anymore. - Julia Ormond was a surprisingly pleasantly complicating factor. I'm not particularly keen on her, but I do like that she's not necessarily there to be liked, and that she's a character with her own agenda and backstory, early links to Mac notwithstanding. - thought the surrounding cast of characters in Rani, and Patrick, Tara's father were all pretty decent. - overall it surely wasn't a scintillating or even wholly original eppie, but it was a solid one, devoid of DL crappage, and was a straightforward crime episode. How about that. The C in CSI.
I'm way late to the grading party but I gave it an A. It was far, far better than I was expecting, and I liked that it tugged on the heartstrings more than a bit. The scene between Rani and her dead father at the end was really, really sad. I don't have a lot more to say than what has already been said. I love, love, love it when Danny and Flack work together--these two are hilarious. I love the way Flack calls Danny "Danno" a fair amount of the time--it's cute and endearing. I loved how they split up and Flack went after the guy. :lol: Danny getting knocked over with a broom was funny, too, and the way he knocked over the cabinet she was in and sat on it cracked me up. Poor Flack--his suit got ruined! I love the way he fessed up to Danny that he was stinky. :lol: On a more serious note, I like the way Stella was more in the forefront than Mac during the rescue scenes. It was nice to see Stella and Gillian front and center on this one. One of my issues with the other CSIs' sex trafficking stories was that it was all about the male CSIs rescuing the female victims. It was nice to see the women taking the lead here. There were some incredibly far-fetched reaches in this one, like the way Stella figured out that the victim was likely fresh off the plane from the Ukraine. A bit of a stretch there to say the least. Hawkes figuring out that the guy was Ukrainian in the first place from the simple fact that he had thyroid cancer was a bit much, too. There were other long shots in the episode, too, but overall, it was much, much better than I was expecting, and an episode I really enjoyed.
Did give me a giggle though, when Stella discovered that there was mustard on the glove. I called out 'hot dog vendor' just as Hawkes said 'disused mustard factory'. Ok, his was a better guess.
^A better guess maybe, but yours was the more logical conclusion! Sometimes those leaps the CSIs make are huge.