CSI: Miami--'Open Water'

CSI Files

Captain
Synopsis:

To the horror of the passengers on a luxury cruise ship, Mike Harris has gone overboard is torn to pieces by sharks before he's rescued. Horatio Caine suspects foul play as soon as he spots blood and a shoeprint on the railing of the deck. The shoeprint belongs to first mate Keith Murray, who claims he found Mike on the deck, disoriented, and struggled with him to get him away from the railing. A glass from Mike's cabin explains his state--he was drugged with diazepam, a sleep aid. There's also seventy grand missing from his safe, so the CSIs turn to Mike's new wife, Gwen Creighton, who Mike met and married on the cruise ship. Gwen tells them Mike was planning to take her teenage daughter, Mandy, to a show the afternoon he was killed in an attempt to bond with her. Mandy claims Mike never arrived to take her to the show. Delko recovers one of the sharks that consumed Mike, and Alexx is able to recover the man's leg. She notices a wound made by a knife, and not a shark's tooth, sending Delko and Ryan back to the ship to discover who stabbed the man.

Horatio is distracted from the case when Marisol Delko tells him an Agent Wynn from the FBI interrogated her about the situation in the lab and her arrest for marijuana possession. Angry, Horatio confronts the man and tells him to stay away from Marisol, though Wynn remains skeptical about the lab. On the ship, Ryan discovers blood spatter on the newly painted molding in a hallway, and a trip to the ship's sickbay reveals another mystery: the ship's doctor was treating Rebecca Faraday, a patient who she suspected may have had bird flu. The ship's captain, Quentin Taylor, asked her to hold off on alerting the CDC. When Delko angrily confronts him about it, Taylor insists he was trying to avoid creating a panic. Fingerprints on Gwen Creighton's access card, which was used to open Mike's safe, come back to Barry Judd, the ship's magician. He says Gwen was flirting with and he performed a trick to impress her--stealing the card, but he claims he gave it right back. His story doesn't hold up when Calleigh finds the stolen money in his magic kit. He denies killing Mike--he noticed the man on the bed after he took the money, but ran out without confronting him.

Valera finds dandruff in the glass that was spiked with diazepam, and she matches it to Mandy Creighton. The girl admits she didn't want to spend her last night on the cruise with her new stepfather; she was embroiled in a shipboard romance. Her paramour turns out to be Keith Murray, the first mate--he was the one who gave her the diazepam. Keith denies killing Mike; he only tried to calm him. Delko is looking for Rebecca Faraday, but no one has seen her on short. Delko and Officer Jessop scour the garbage room on the ship, which is virtually empty because Taylor was dumping most of the ship's waste into the ocean illegally, but they do find the body of Rebecca Faraday, with ligature marks around her neck, which Horatio recognizes as matching those of a strap from a pair of binoculars, which leads him to Taylor. Taylor claimed she was endangering the entire ship, but Horatio tells him the diagnosis of avian flu was an incorrect one. Another piece of evidence from the shark's stomach reveals Mike's killer: fabric from a dress, which matches the one Mandy is wearing. Calleigh talks to the girl--she resented her mother for marrying for a fifth time and took out her anger on Mike, stabbing him and pushing him overboard. The cases closed, Horatio finally gets to spend some time with Marisol, and the two decide to marry.

Analysis:

A cruise ship is the perfect setting for a Miami murder, and this episode does not disappoint. While I think the secondary case, with the girl who possibly had avian flu was unnecessary, the primary case was engaging and had a powerful resolution. Even though Mandy took her anger out on the wrong person, and took that anger way too far, she was still a sympathetic character, and Calleigh's quiet reaction underscored that. Calleigh doesn't have an answer for the troubled girl when she asks, "Why am I not enough for my mother?" <font color=yellow>Courtnee Draper</font> gives an emotional performance that allows the audience to sympathize with her character even if we can't approve of what she did.

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To read the full reviews, please click here.<center></center>
 
aparently, there is going to be a sex scene between H and M, that should be enough heat..... ew.
 
Well, I mean I like the HM pairing, just the fact that DC is brave enough to do a love scene again after his reviews for cold around the heart, well, it's admirable, yet scary. I think I also spelled apparently wrong on my last post... jeez.
 
There's going to be a sex scene? Well, I guess that will put to rest some of the concerns I brought up in my review. I don't think Horatio is cold to her--on the contrary, he's very sweet and attentive. It just comes off as more paternal than romantic, at least from what I've seen on screen.
 
Top 41, what was your take on Horatio threatening the federal agent?

BTW, I love the synopsis and reviews, they really catch some details I missed and get me more analytical!

Tiger Girl
 
Did anyone else feel like they missed a few episodes? It was like the review said, they never really developed the relationship between H and M.

There were a few encounters at the lab and now they're getting married? I feel like I missed something.
 
you ain't missed nothing cause until Dead Air there was nothing there. Now all of sudden he's touching her & calling her sweetheart. Give me a break..LOL!!!!!!!!!!! May be sweet but, i just about fell over when he called her sweetheart.
 
TigerGirl said:
Top 41, what was your take on Horatio threatening the federal agent?

I was kind of puzzled by it--can't an FBI agent question anyone he/she wants, be it a private citizen or civil servant? I think Horatio was irritated that Marisol got questioned about the stuff going on with the lab. I wasn't sure what to make of it--whether the FBI guy is going to become important in the finale episodes (or even next season), or whether he's just another example of the scrutiny the lab is under.

BTW, I love the synopsis and reviews, they really catch some details I missed and get me more analytical!

Tiger Girl

Thank you! :D
 
Well, I really like the story line... It gives Horatio someone to actually be with, instead of being lonely, but since she'll die reportedly before the end of the season, I think that the writers have been heaping too much sorrow on him...
 
I like the idea of the story line too, and love that Horatio is in happy relationship. I just wish it was being played so that we could see just a little bit more of the romantic side of the relationship. We don't need additional scenes or anything like that--just more emphasis on the romantic/sexual connection between the two as opposed to the sweet side of it. Not that I don't like the sweet moments, but it makes the relationship seem more ambiguous.
 
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