Tom Mularz said:
While Vega never gave any hint of being dirty in past episodes (and wasn’t dirty in the cases we saw him work), it had been a little while since we last saw him... it seemed reasonable that he could have gotten caught up in some seedy practices since we last saw him.
Reasonable? To who? A drunk skunk?
I know it's been said multiple times already, but... seriously, WTH, mate? Vega's been a straight-shooter since the very beginning. He's never shown any indication of being a dirty cop, or a renegade, or anything but a successful, upstanding member of the LVPD. But because we haven't seen him in a few years, all of a sudden we're supposed to assume a switch got flipped somewhere and his character did a freakin' one-eighty?
And... for what? Shock value? I just... that's unbelievable to me. Not only is it extremely disrespectful to the character that Geoffrey Rivas and the writers have spent the last twelve years working to create, but it's also hugely disrespectful to the show itself. Were it not for the ending, this
would have been my favorite episode of Season 12, if not one of my favorite CSI episodes in general.
Like most of the episodes in this season so far, this episode was good all around. It was well-written (funny and fascinating), well-acted (even the guest stars were on their mark), well-directed – in other words, it was strong enough on its own that it didn't need any "surprises" at the end to buoy it up. That someone didn't have enough faith in that fact is, in my mind, a massive insult to all the hard work that has been and is being done to (pardon the pun) bring the flagship show back to life.
TL;DR: Great episode, except for the ending. That s*cked like a Hoover.