CSI Files
Captain
<p><b>Synopsis:</b><p>Adam is enjoying playing goalie in a street hockey game with his friends when he suddenly finds himself caught in the blast when a van explodes, destroying a house. Though disoriented by the explosion, Adam hears a man calling for help and pulls him out of the debris. The police, along with Mac and Hawkes, and the EMTs arrive. The man Adam rescued identifies himself as Felix Redman and tells Hawkes he was alone in the house--his wife was visiting her parents. FBI Agent Frank Richardson offers his help to Flack, who has his officers canvas the area while the CSIs start in on the wreckage of the house and the van. Mac recovers traces of an explosive called Nitromethane, and he and Stella find the remains of two large metal drums, allowing them to calculate that the bomber used 500 lbs of explosive. Flack learns that Redman owns an electronic recycling company--and hasn't received so much as a parking ticket. While digging through the wreckage of the house, Danny makes a startling discovery: the body of a young woman. Sid confirms that she died from the blast, and Stella brings Redman in to identify her. The man is shocked and horrified to see that she's his daughter, Allison. Stella later tells Mac that Redman assumed his daughter was at school, while the pair wonder if the bomb is the work of a terrorist cell, and if it was intended for another target.<p>Danny is able to trace the van to Classico Rental company, and finds that a man named Michael Elgers rented it last. Elgers has a record for committing hate crimes, so Flack brings him in. Elgers is unabashedly racist, disgusting Flack, but he claims to have no knowledge of the van and when Flack shows him the rental form, he claims the signature isn't his. Stella and Mac go over the van's remains in the lab. Stella discovers a watch used as the trigger, set to detonate at 2PM. Mac notices metal inside the van welded to one side of it, indicating that the blast was directed to exit out of only one side of the van. Mac realizes Felix Redman was indeed the target. Stella visits the shell-shocked man at work, and he tells her he just signed a contract with the city to handle all of Manhattan's electronic waste. Stella wonders if one of his competitors could have set the bomb. Adam returns to work and takes over for Hawkes, who joins the rest of the team in a meeting. Stella and Mac have matched the watch trigger to a bombing at a gas station carried out by a group of environmentalists known as the Purists. Their leader is Theodore Wicks, who goes by Teddy Mayhem, and his second-in-command, Len Burton, was a victim of Michael Elgers. The team puzzles over why Redman was targeted by the group.<p>Mac pays Wicks a visit at the eco-friendly club he owns. Wicks denies knowing Redman but defends his cause--and the possibility of casualties in his attacks. Adam goes over Allison Redman's clothing and finds a picture from Guiyu, China, in her pocket, which he shows to Stella, but no promising leads. Hawkes reassembles the rearview mirror from the van and finds a print that matches Allison Redman on it. Mac studies footage from a Purists' protest and spots Allison among the crowd. Recalling the photo Adam found, Stella looks up Guiyu, China and discovers the city is the "E-waste Capital of China." Lindsay is able to connect Wicks to the bombing when she matches markings on a pipe used in the attack to a vice Wicks purchased. While Mac interrogates Wicks, Stella questions Redman, who was shipping electronic waste to China. Stella tells Redman that the Purists targeted him because of the hazardous--and illegal--exportation of the waste, and that his daughter died trying to save him. A disgusted Mac asks Wicks why he involved Allison by having her rent the van, and Wicks tells him every member of the group played a role. Wicks told Allison her father was the target, but only after he thought it was too late for her to stop the bomb. Mac vows to catch all of Wicks' compatriots. After a heart-to-heart conversation with Mac, Danny drags Lindsay, who is about to return home to Montana to visit her family, to the courthouse on a pretense and brings up marriage again. After telling her that they "make sense," he's able to persuade her to take the next step with him, and the two marry in front of Mac and Stella.<p><b>Analysis:</b><p>Irony is the name of the game in "Green Piece," with a man surviving the destruction of his house only to learn after the fact that his daughter was inside--and that she was killed in the blast. A daughter learns that the target of the attack she's been planning is in fact her own father. That very father, who on the surface would seem to be a champion of environmental causes with his electronic recycling company, was in fact shipping the waste off to China, where it would burn in junkyards and poison both the environment and the people of Guiyu. Of all the evidence that seems to be significant--the man filming the crime scene, the Neo-Nazi's signature on the rental form--it is a picture from Guiyu that Adam deems insignificant that ends up clinching the case. The biggest irony of all, of course, is that it is the daughter and not the father who ends up perishing in the blast.<p>As Felix Redman, <font color=yellow>Bobby Gant</font> turns in a sympathetic performance--but not <i>too</i> sympathetic. Given that the man just lost his daughter in a bombing when she wasn't even supposed to be anywhere near the house, I would have expected the team to dwell on his sad plight a bit more. Stella is compassionate when questioning him, but not overly so. Then again, it's a bit surprising to see the man back at work so soon after his house collapsed on him and he found out about his daughter's death. Gant plays him as very shell-shocked, but his quick return to work made me suspicious of him and I suspected there was some reason behind why he was targeted. In the end, after we find out what he's done, it's not clear whether we're supposed to feel sorry for him or find him as reprehensible as Stella clearly does. Perhaps some mixture of both.<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/green_piece.shtml">here</A>.<center></center>
