CSI: Miami--'Flight Risk'

CSI Files

CSI Files

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<p><b>Synopsis:</b><p>A horrific sight greets passengers waiting for their luggage from Pathways Flight 88 from San Diego: the body of flight attendant Suzanne Grady is tossed out with the baggage from the flight. While Ryan questions several passengers, Dr. Price finds Suzanne's body in sad shape: she has broken bones, torn hair and a clipped carotid artery, which caused her to bleed out. Tara also smells alcohol leading her to conclude Suzanne was inebriated at the time she died. After determining Suzanne was stowed in a water ski case, Ryan goes to take a look at the route the luggage took from the plane to the carousel. Arterial spray along the route proves that Suzanne died while her body was thrown against a sharp edge while on the baggage mover. In the morgue, Kyle Harmon prepares Suzanne's body for autopsy and Tara finds traces of a French prescription drug called Dormal in Suzanne's system, leading her to run a sex kit on the flight attendant. Kyle notices a cigarette burn on the woman's hand. Calleigh and Delko retrieve the cigarette from the plane's bathroom and prints on it lead them to Marvin Duffy, who admits to sneaking a smoke in the plane's restroom and being caught by Suzanne, but denies killing her over the incident. He claims she burned her hand when she went looking for the cigarette. Natalia and Ryan return to the plane and find an entrance to the baggage stow from the front of the plane, along with hair from Suzanne. When they check the passenger manifest, they learn only one man was sitting there: Aaron Nolan, the federal air marshal. When Horatio and Tripp bring him in for questioning, he refuses to take off his weapon, and tells the pair that he went to help a passenger in distress when the plane hit turbulence, leaving the front of the plane unguarded. Calleigh and Delko go back to the plane and find another flight attendant named Carolyn Morrow cleaning out the first class area, which was the area Suzanne was in charge of. Picking up on Carolyn's jealousy of Suzanne, the two take the trash bag from her to go over in the lab.<p>Horatio and Valera come up with a hit from the military database for DNA from Suzanne's sex kit: the pilot of the plane, Grant Lawson. The married pilot admits to sleeping with Suzanne and noticed she was upset about something the last time they hooked up, but says that their relationship wasn't that deep. On the plane, Natalia and Ryan discover the secret hatch leading up to Lawson and Suzanne's love nest above the plane: a romper room completely isolated from the rest of the plane. Natalia discovers two Dormal pills among Suzanne's luggage in the room. Calleigh and Tripp talk to Jenna York, another flight attendant, who says that Suzanne was still drunk from partying the night before the flight and was worried about being caught by Carolyn. Jenna also mentions that Suzanne had a stalker, and hands over a picture of Suzanne sleeping with the words "I enjoyed watching you sleep" written on the back of it. Calleigh runs the handwriting sample against those from the flight's luggage tags and gets a match to Marvin Duffy. Duffy admits to being totally infatuated with Suzanne and that he attempted to draw her attention by smoking after noticing her acting more relaxed than she had in the past, but he insists he didn't kill her. Perusing photos Duffy took of Suzanne, the team finds pictures of Suzanne partying with Carolyn Morrow. Delko questions the flight attendant, who admits to spiking an already drunk Suzanne's soda with more alcohol so that she would be hung over the next day. Carolyn insists she didn't kill the girl. In the lab, Ryan and Horatio go over the trash Carolyn collected and find a neck pillow from the plane that's been emptied of its stuffing. Horatio finds a few Dormal pills inside, leading him to realize someone was smuggling the drug on the plane.<p>Horatio's suspicions fall on Aaron Nolan, who could have gotten the drug on the plane. Tripp and Horatio try to get the man to admit who he gave the supply of drugs to, but he refuses to offer up any information. They arrest him for drug trafficking while Natalia and Delko return to the plane. They discover blood on the door to one of the overhead compartments in the front of the plane, leading them to suspect it belongs to Suzanne's killer. The DNA matches flight attendant Jenna York. The blood places Jenna near the access hatch Suzanne was dumped down during the turbulence, but they don't have anything to directly link her to the murder until Horatio thinks to check Suzanne's uniform and finds a gravitational blood drop from Jenna on it. Horatio has the guilty flight attendant brought in: she was working with Aaron Nolan to smuggle drugs and Suzanne came upon her stash. Not realizing Aaron was involved, Suzanne told Aaron about the drugs. The Federal Marshal turned around and told Jenna to take care of Suzanne. Jenna drugged Suzanne, waited until she passed out, dragged her to the access hatch, tossed her down and stashed her in the water ski case, figuring that once she was discovered in the luggage, no one would believe her story about Jenna and the drugs. Her intention was never to kill Suzanne. Both Jenna and Aaron are arrested and taken away, while Kyle slides Suzanne's body into the drawer at the morgue. <p><b>Analysis:</b><p><i>Miami</i> has been turning out some great stories this season, but the ball is dropped somewhat with this slow-going episode, which rolls out too many of the clichés that the show has been moving away from. First and foremost among those are the all-powerful Horatio moments, when the fearless CSI team leader looks at someone, deems him or her a bad guy and...turns out to be absolutely right about the person. Federal Air Marshal Aaron Nolan doesn't do anything more than refuse to take off his gun before coming into the precinct, but Horatio takes one look at the man and is convinced he's done something wrong. Of course, Horatio is right, and Nolan didn't just leave his seat for the sole purpose of attending to a nervous passenger: he did it to give Jenna, whom he was trafficking drugs with, the opportunity to stash the drugged Suzanne in the luggage stow. Granted, Aaron is something of a jerk: he claims he's there to protect the passengers, not the flight crew and gives Horatio and Tripp attitude when asked to give up his gun in order to come into the police station. He's obviously arrogant, but it's Horatio's certainty that he's involved that clues the audience into the fact that he must be connected to the murder somehow.<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/flight_risk.shtml">here</A>.<center></center>
 
I know is a dumb question but Kristine=top41? I always loved your reviews.

I agree with you about the daydream.I like E/C but it was not appropiate at the time.The scene with the coffee worked better ,IMO.

However,I disagree about Horatio becouse he is still too cold with Kyle.
 
As always, a great review.
But as you wrote it, did it remind you of "Turbulence"?

If you think back to the beginning of this season, you'll remember an airplane murder episode. CSI: NY's 3rd episode of this season was investigating a murder of a pilot. Pilots played a role in this. So did having guns on a plane. And suspecting airline attendants. What is this, really?
There is no inital threat here, having the plane already landed, but this episode breaks down into the following...
Law-breaking cops, not new.
Homocidal flight attendants, again not new.
Theft, really?
Drug trafficing, like sex rings as seen in New York earlier this season.

I thought, as you said, that the episode moved too slow. I skipped through a lot of the evidence gathering, and still understood most of the case at the end.
 
Excellent review, as usual. :)

I thought the episode seemed...boring. It's like they couldn't fill it up with the actual plot, so they threw in crap to fill up time. (That odd sequence at the end was, well, odd - it was more Cold Case than CSI.) And the fantasy sequence was just ridiculous.

I really want to pin the new guy down and do something with his hair. :p
 
I love your reviews Kristen even though I disagree with them from time to time. :)

I'm a Miami lover, but even I'll admit that as much as I enjoyed this episode, I could tell it was a filler episode. You know, those episodes they just squeeze in before a really huge storytline. The next two weeks will probably prove to be intense as promised (I hope).

As much as I was a little bothered by the daydream sequence, I thought they did a better job of avoiding what they could have done. I commend the writers for showing restraint with regards of Eric and Calliegh's relationship. Let's hope it doesn't get too fluffy.

As always I loved Ryan, espeically his interaction with the little boy. And the scene with him and Natalia was so cute and gossipy.

I'll agree with you on the Horatio thing, now that I've watched a little of it again, I see what you're talking about. But I've been very impressed with how Horatio no longer starts the episode or goes into one of his one-liners. It's been a couple of episodes since I've seen it I almost miss it (Almost!) :).

I'm more looking forward to the episodes of the next two weeks and what the miami writers have in store for Ryan.

But I'm rambling....great review Kristen! Keep it up! :)
 
While the episode was very unbelievable, I actually found the plot interesting and fun. The chances of someone actually being able to do that and get away with it for so long on a plane is pretty much non-existant. But it was still fun to watch.

The whole Calleigh and Eric thing is going excatly the way I thought it would. We are going to be buried in stupid cutsie little moments now until the relationship plays itself out. Eric is not so irresponsible as to stop and daydream about Calleigh in the middle of processing a crime scene. Plus the scene was way over the top and bordering on being stupid.

And I'm sorry but the scene in the lab was just lame. All they did for over a minute was make goo goo eyes at each other in sloooooow moooootion. I wound up fast forwarding through it because it was so boring and eye roll worthy. (I was a bad fan again and watched Castle and recorded Miami)

I enjoyed Ryan getting a decent amount of air time. I would like to see him get a good story arc, one that has a positive effect on him.

I didn't get the feeling that Horatio was cold towards his son, I just got the feeling that he was feeling a bit out of his element. He may be good with kids, but it's a whole different ball game when your dealing with your own child. Especially if you've never raised one before. As long as they keep Julia out of the story I think I could enjoy that story line.
 
Ok I usually don't post in this kind of thread b/c I tend to read the review and to think about them for a while without expressing my opinion since most of the time I found myself disagreeing with the majority of the review (especially the E/C parts of it) ;).

But this time I found a really good pont about Eric's fantasy. As you said it was completely over the the top not to mention that it was ridiculous as Faylinn said.
Surely a man who's daydreaming on you while processing a crime scene with you is not that normal, not to mention that the scene was completely pointless considering the rest of the episode.

As for the second scene with the coffee, I do think there was a subliminal message in it, especially if you read what was written on that paper while Eric was holding that cup of coffee & staring at Calleigh.
One of the things I caught during that scene (since I wasn't paying attention to them while they were making goo goo eyes at each other) was "I enjoyed watching you sleep".
If you consider this kind of sublimanal message along with Eric's puppy face you can say that the situation is not that normal as everyone tends to consider.
All I can see from a scene like this is some kind of obession from Eric's side. I'm not saying he's a psychopath, all I'm saying is that he looks kinda obsessed by Cal ;)

As much as I tend to cope with this couple, I do think this episode proved my fear about E/C since I do think they're overwhelming the show and the other characters ;)

As for the rest of the episode I do think that the end was just weird since I thought I was watching a "Cold Case" episode and not CSI:Miami :lol:.
As much as I love this kind of endings, I'd like not to see them on Miami anymore.

I was really glad we finally watched a little bit more of Ryan and I did enjoy his scene with Natalia while they were gossiping on Eric & Calleigh.
Yep I think they were gossiping, but I was glad to hear them being part of this storyline especially if you consider they don't enjoy it that much as lots of people may think.

And I did enjoy Kyle's presence & I do think he's one of the best characters left on this show :)
 
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I don't think Eric and Calleigh's romance is in danger of overwhelming the show at this point, but I do see how it's very front and center and can understand why people who don't like the pairing are bothered by that. Ryan and Natalia have been greatly neglected over the past season and a half, while Calleigh and Delko have gotten terrific storylines. It's too bad there can't be more of a balance, but hopefully the focus will shift somewhat so that it's a little more evenly distributed among the cast. I'm optimistic after the preview that we'll have a good Ryan episode next week. I hope that both he and Natalia get a little more to do!
 
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