CSI Files
Captain
With the strike delaying any new CSI franchise episodes until late March/early April, <font color=yellow>CSI Files</font> is taking the opportunity to go back to the beginning, offering reviews of episodes from the early seasons of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and CSI: Miami, many of which aired before the site's 2003 founding! The retro reviews will run until new episodes of the franchise start to air in the spring, and then pick back up in the summer while the shows are on hiatus.
Synopsis:
A skeleton is found in the concrete foundation of a house in Summercliff and Grissom and Nick set about recovering it. Grissom calls in a facial reconstruction expert, Dr. Teri Miller, in to create a mold of the dead woman's face in the hopes of identifying her. The coroner, Dr. Al Robbins, determines that in addition to being stabbed, their victim suffered blunt force trauma to the head. He also finds grains of sand preserved in earwax. The woman is identified as Faye Green, who went missing just after moving in with her boyfriend, Jason Hindler. The CSIs go to Jason's house and question him while his wife, Amy, looks on. Grissom notices a fish tank in one of the rooms of the house and Nick finds a loose floorboard with sand underneath. The CSIs obtain a warrant and discover blood on the floor. Positing that Jason and Faye fought and he slammed her into the fish tank and stabbed her before hiding her at Summercliff, where he was working as a contractor at the time, they arrest him. Grissom takes him out, leaving Nick to process. The CSI is shocked when Amy Hindler aims a gun at him. She admits it was she who killed Faye, enraged that Jason had left her for Faye. Grissom returns and draws his own gun, getting Amy to lower hers and arresting the right person for the crime.
Sara and Warrick investigate a shooting of a fleeing suspect. Officer Joe Tynar claims he pursued a suspect in a car down the strip who suddenly pulled over and shot himself. Brass is irritated that the CSIs feel the need to throughly investigate Tynar's story, especially when a valet comes forward and claims the officer was the one who shot the suspect. The CSIs scour the scene for the bullet, but can't find it anywhere. When they turn to the suspect's car, Warrick finds the bullet buried in the treads of the spare tire. Bobby Dawson runs the bullet and finds it matches the suspect's gun, not Tynar's. The officer is exonerated. Catherine faces a case that gets even more personal when her ex-husband, Eddie, is accused of rape by a stripper named April. Grissom urges her to turn the case over to Warrick, but Catherine pushes forward, going to the club where April works and finds vaginal contraceptive film in her locker. When Greg runs the rape kit, he finds glycerin, proving April used the contraceptive prior to having sex with Eddie, and therefore the sex was planned, not forced.
Analysis:
The tensions between the cops and the CSIs come to a head in this episode. It's easy to forget now, but early in its run, CSI had the burden of distinguishing itself from the numerous cop shows that came before it. This episode underscores how different what the CSIs do is from what cops do; if this was a cop show, the valet's eyewitness testimony might have been enough to convict Tynar. But the CSIs don't deal with he said/he said; it's all about the evidence. Though he's clearly on the cop side, Brass knows enough to realize that the CSIs need to find that bullet before drawing any definitive conclusions. Neither Tynar nor the valet is a perfect witness: Tynar has a laundry list of complaints against him and was investigated by IA twice, while the valet was joyriding and may have been drinking. The theme "people lie, the evidence doesn't" is one that's emphasized many times during the show's first season.
Like he was in the "Pilot", Brass is argumentative and aggressive, very much a typical cop to the CSI team's somewhat more diverse and quirky roster of scientists. Though he's clearly old guard to the CSIs' more progressive point of view, Brass isn't simply a clichéd arrogant cop by any means, and he's got a point about how the bullet needs to be found before any conclusions can be reached about Tynar's guilt. <font color=yellow>Paul Guilfoyle</font> proves he was the perfect choice to play Brass with every performance. He's grizzled and tough but there's a depth to his performance: even if our sympathies are naturally with the CSIs, Guilfoyle always allows us to see where Brass is coming from.
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Synopsis:
A skeleton is found in the concrete foundation of a house in Summercliff and Grissom and Nick set about recovering it. Grissom calls in a facial reconstruction expert, Dr. Teri Miller, in to create a mold of the dead woman's face in the hopes of identifying her. The coroner, Dr. Al Robbins, determines that in addition to being stabbed, their victim suffered blunt force trauma to the head. He also finds grains of sand preserved in earwax. The woman is identified as Faye Green, who went missing just after moving in with her boyfriend, Jason Hindler. The CSIs go to Jason's house and question him while his wife, Amy, looks on. Grissom notices a fish tank in one of the rooms of the house and Nick finds a loose floorboard with sand underneath. The CSIs obtain a warrant and discover blood on the floor. Positing that Jason and Faye fought and he slammed her into the fish tank and stabbed her before hiding her at Summercliff, where he was working as a contractor at the time, they arrest him. Grissom takes him out, leaving Nick to process. The CSI is shocked when Amy Hindler aims a gun at him. She admits it was she who killed Faye, enraged that Jason had left her for Faye. Grissom returns and draws his own gun, getting Amy to lower hers and arresting the right person for the crime.
Sara and Warrick investigate a shooting of a fleeing suspect. Officer Joe Tynar claims he pursued a suspect in a car down the strip who suddenly pulled over and shot himself. Brass is irritated that the CSIs feel the need to throughly investigate Tynar's story, especially when a valet comes forward and claims the officer was the one who shot the suspect. The CSIs scour the scene for the bullet, but can't find it anywhere. When they turn to the suspect's car, Warrick finds the bullet buried in the treads of the spare tire. Bobby Dawson runs the bullet and finds it matches the suspect's gun, not Tynar's. The officer is exonerated. Catherine faces a case that gets even more personal when her ex-husband, Eddie, is accused of rape by a stripper named April. Grissom urges her to turn the case over to Warrick, but Catherine pushes forward, going to the club where April works and finds vaginal contraceptive film in her locker. When Greg runs the rape kit, he finds glycerin, proving April used the contraceptive prior to having sex with Eddie, and therefore the sex was planned, not forced.
Analysis:
The tensions between the cops and the CSIs come to a head in this episode. It's easy to forget now, but early in its run, CSI had the burden of distinguishing itself from the numerous cop shows that came before it. This episode underscores how different what the CSIs do is from what cops do; if this was a cop show, the valet's eyewitness testimony might have been enough to convict Tynar. But the CSIs don't deal with he said/he said; it's all about the evidence. Though he's clearly on the cop side, Brass knows enough to realize that the CSIs need to find that bullet before drawing any definitive conclusions. Neither Tynar nor the valet is a perfect witness: Tynar has a laundry list of complaints against him and was investigated by IA twice, while the valet was joyriding and may have been drinking. The theme "people lie, the evidence doesn't" is one that's emphasized many times during the show's first season.
Like he was in the "Pilot", Brass is argumentative and aggressive, very much a typical cop to the CSI team's somewhat more diverse and quirky roster of scientists. Though he's clearly old guard to the CSIs' more progressive point of view, Brass isn't simply a clichéd arrogant cop by any means, and he's got a point about how the bullet needs to be found before any conclusions can be reached about Tynar's guilt. <font color=yellow>Paul Guilfoyle</font> proves he was the perfect choice to play Brass with every performance. He's grizzled and tough but there's a depth to his performance: even if our sympathies are naturally with the CSIs, Guilfoyle always allows us to see where Brass is coming from.
<HR ALIGN="CENTER" SIZE="1" WIDTH="45\%" COLOR="#007BB5">
To read the full reviews, please click here.<center></center>
