CSI Files
Captain
<p><b>Synopsis:</b><p>Picking up where <A class="link" HREF="http://www.csifiles.com/episodes/csi/season9/19_down.shtml">"19 Down"</a> left off, Brass identifies the fresh victim found under the bridge as Jeffrey Masters. His wife Maureen is missing, and Brass estimates that the team only has about 24 hours to find her alive. After the Sheriff is briefed by Brass and Ecklie--slated to step into the Undersheriff position--Ecklie tells Grissom that the sheriff has personally requested he stay on until the conclusion of the case. Continuing to work with Dr. Ray Langston, the professor whose class Nathan Haskell was speaking to from jail, the CSIs focus on what drugs Haskell might have used to subdue his male victims. Positing that Haskell had an accomplice in Langston's class, the CSIs also turn their attention to Langston's students. Brass speaks with Dan Forrester, the student who suggested getting a serial killer to talk to the class and corresponded with Haskell, but when he realizes he's a suspect, Dan tells the detective the idea came from multiple students in the class. The team visits Langston's classroom and plays the video of Haskell speaking to the class, trying to pinpoint if he made eye contact with any of the students during key comments. They zero in on a student named Thomas Donover. Though the police find him missing when they go to his house, and his wife Kelly insists that she doesn't know where he is. The CSIs search the Donovers' house and Greg finds shoes that match the treads found at the scene of Ian Wallace and Justine Stefani's murders. Tom is definitely the accomplice. While Tom torments Maureen, the CSIs race to isolate the location of the house where Haskell took his victims--and where Tom likely has Maureen now. Hodges discovers a kind of moss on Tom's shoe that narrows their search to the north side of Lake Mead, but that still leaves the CSIs with a lot of ground to cover and not much time in which to do it.<p>Nick finds a box of video tapes in Tom's house--but no VCR around and recalls that Gerald Tolliver had a VCR but no tapes. Kelly confirms Tolliver was a friend of her husband. Catherine finds sage extract at Tom's house that Henry confirms could have been used to subdue Haskell's male victims. A print leads them to the dealer, but he's killed accidentally when he runs from the police. Nick views the videotapes and see Haskell's first victims, Joel and his fiancée Tiffany, with Tom Donover and Gerald Tolliver--and later with Haskell. Grissom consults star charts hoping to find a way to identify the location of the house, while Langston pays Haskell a visit in jail, hoping to get the information out of him. He tries to trick Haskell into thinking they already have Tom and Maureen and just want the location of the bodies of his female victims, but Haskell sees right through his ruse and gives him nothing. Grissom uses the moon in the videos to find the house's location and discovers it's in Black Mesa. Brass and his team rush there and Tom is killed by a shot to the head just as he's about to murder Maureen. Brass frees her and the CSI team canvasses the house and Grissom discovers the bodies of Haskell's female victims under the floorboards of the house. The case closed, Grissom visits Langston at WLVU and suggests he apply for the new vacancy at CSI. Grissom finishes packing up his office, and despite an impassioned plea to stay from Hodges, exits CSI, catching only Catherine's eye as he walks past the team hard at work. Grissom heads to Costa Rica where he reunites with Sara Sidle, kissing her passionately. <p><b>Analysis:</b><p>There were quite a few powerful moments in "One to Go," but three in particular really got to me. All three occurred towards the end of the episode, as the focus shifted from the tense case to Grissom's departure. The first was from an unlikely source: David Hodges. Hodges reacted to the news of Grissom's departure with a huffy, wounded demeanor in <A class="link" HREF="http://www.csifiles.com/episodes/csi/season9/19_down.shtml">"19 Down"</a>, hurt that he heard the news second hand. But as Grissom packs up his office and prepares to leave CSI, Hodges turns up at the door, full of honest-to-goodness sincerity. In most of his interactions with Grissom, Hodges has been something of a suck-up, hoping to impress the boss he so clearly admires. But there's none of that here: there's a real earnestness in <font color=yellow>Wallace Langham</font>'s delivery. I found everything he says to Grissom in this scene to be heartfelt and touching, but something about the line, "The bad guys will win more if we don't have you" really resonates. So often people who suck up are dismissed, and that's usually how Hodges has been treated. Most people assume their flattery is false or just has some selfish end behind it. This line shows just how sincere Hodges' admiration for Grissom truly is. Maybe his way of expressing it usually landed on the obsequious side of the line, but what he says in this scene is completely genuine.<p>Grissom responds in an equally forthright way. When Hodges laments, "Who was Watson without Sherlock Holmes?" Grissom responds, "Watson was a genius in his own right." It's a real compliment to Hodges, who has always longed for acknowledgement and praise from Grissom. Hodges, for all his bravado and facade of arrogance, is really just looking for praise and affirmation from the team--especially Grissom--more often than not. He doesn't want to be a CSI--his disdain of fieldwork has been made clear on several occasions--but he wants the CSIs to respect and appreciate him and the work he does. Poor Hodges has a bit of an inferiority complex that he masks with an affected air of superiority. So I have no doubt that Grissom's response means a lot to him, as does Grissom's honest answer about why he can't reconsider his decision to leave: "It's the right time for me to go." It's gratifying to see that Hodges is able to get over the hurt he felt at the news Grissom was leaving--and the fact that he didn't hear it from Grissom right off the bat--and tell Grissom in a really sweet way how much he thinks of him. Hodges is the last person I would have thought would have the final (verbal) farewell with Grissom, but it's a perfect choice.<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/one_to_go.shtml">here</A>.<center></center>
