CSI Files
Captain
<p><b>Synopsis:</b><p>Calleigh and Ryan follow up on a call at a foreclosed house where a neighbor has smelled a foul odor. The pair discovers the body of a man in the attic, but before they can remove him, someone starts firing through the floor at them! The shots stop, only to be followed by an explosion below, which starts a fire. Ryan rushes out and moves to pull Calleigh to safety, but she refuses to leave without the body. The two pull the body out of the fire, coughing as they rush to safety. After the fire is put out, Horatio and Delko examine the scene. The body has no ID, and there are no witnesses to his death. Delko suspects the killer came back and set the fire to destroy the evidence of his crime. Delko finds a business card in the debris for a man named Jeff Peralta, who claims he was simply contemplating buying the house. He tells Horatio he doesn't recognize the victim. In the morgue, Dr. Price determines the victim was killed by a gunshot wound to the head the night before. She recovers some skin scrapings from under his fingernails, which DNA analysis proves belong to a man named Colin Astor. Astor claims he played basketball with the victim, but his questioning is cut short when Calleigh falls victim to a coughing fit. She collapses and is rushed to a hospital in an ambulance, Delko at her side. When they arrive, Alexx Woods, now working as a doctor at Dade General, meets them at the entrance. She is forced to put a tube in Calleigh's throat to help her breathe, and tells Horatio that Calleigh's respiratory problems are serious.<p>Lab tech Kevin Landau goes over the bullets recovered from the victim's body. The fatal shot came from a 9 millimeter gun and has no matches in IBIS, but the ones from the shooter who fired at Calleigh and Ryan are .45s, a match to a gun used in a robbery four months ago that was tied to a man named Ricky Gannon. Horatio, Ryan and several officers catch Gannon after an intense chase. Gannon admits he was squatting in the foreclosed house--and dealing heroin. Fearing the cops were there for him, he tried to shoot at them and then cause a fire by heating aluminum in the microwave. He denies killing the dead man, referring to him as "Doc" and noting that Doc was his best client. When they learn "Doc" paid for his heroin with prescriptions from Dade General, Ryan calls Delko and asks him to take a trip to the hospital's pharmacy. Delko reluctantly leaves Calleigh's bedside after putting his watch on her wrist to talk to the pharmacist, Teresa Vance. She identifies the dead doctor as Don Phelps and admits that they were sleeping together and that he had access to the pharmacy. She turns over Phelps' address, and Ryan and Horatio find it to be a large warehouse-like space. When they go in, they find what appears to be an underground operating room, complete with instruments and a table. Natalia and Ryan spray luminol over the plastic curtains, the table and the instruments and find large amounts of blood. Though it's clear the area has been cleaned with bleach, Ryan manages to find several blood smudges under the operating table.<p>Horatio talks to Wendy Kramer, the woman whose blood was under the table, and she tells him she needed a kidney and was on a long waiting list. Dr. Phelps offered her a quicker option--and saved her life. At Dade General, Delko asks Alexx for the kidney transporter. She refuses to turn over the box, noting that it could cost a life if it's not there when a kidney comes in, but she allows him to print it. He uses some materials in the hospital to get a print, which leads the team back to Colin Astor. Astor admits to being Phelps' assistant and tracking down people willing to sell kidneys for Phelps' procedures. He says Phelps' heroin habit cost the life of a patient, and tells the CSIs where they can find the body of the man who died during the transplant. After the body is recovered, the man is identified as Mauricio Colero. Dr. Price removes several staples from the incision Phelps' made, and Ryan recalls cutting himself in the attic on a similar staple. Tissue from the donor kidney leads the team back to Jeff Peralta. Horatio confronts the man, who is clearly in severe pain, and notes the incision in his belly. He admits to selling his kidney to Phelps, but he tells Horatio that after the operation, he was in agony. He followed Phelps to the foreclosed home and went to confront him, but the doctor refused to help him. Enraged, Peralta forced Phelps into the attic and shot him. Back at the hospital, Calleigh wakes up, able to breathe on her own. A relieved Delko returns to her side and promises to stay. Horatio asks Alexx how she's doing, and the former ME invites him over for dinner with her family.<p><b>Analysis:</b><p>When I first saw the title "Smoke Gets in Your CSIs," I laughed. I still can't decide whether it's the best episode title so far this season or the goofiest. Like <A class="link" HREF="http://www.csifiles.com/episodes/miami/season7/wont_get_fueled_again.shtml">"Won't Get Fueled Again"</a> or last season's <A class="link" HREF="http://www.csifiles.com/episodes/miami/season6/csi_my_nanny.shtml">"CSI: My Nanny"</a>, it's a clever little wink at the fans. Sure, they're a bit on the irreverent side, but I do enjoy the wordplay and the fact that the show doesn't take itself <i>too</i> seriously. There tend to be fewer joking interplay moments between the characters in <i>Miami</i> than in the other two <i>CSI</i> shows, so the humorous titles allow the writers to have a bit of fun without taking any tension away from the story itself. Though the title "Smoke Gets in Your CSIs" is a pretty funny one, the episode itself is serious, with the amount of smoke Calleigh got in her lungs in the house endangering her life, and the case tying back into an organ-selling scam.<p>Calleigh has certainly had a rough time of it these last few seasons. While bringing evidence back in the Hummer, she was forced off the road by a suspect in season five's <A class="link" HREF="http://www.csifiles.com/episodes/miami/season5/going_under.shtml">"Going Under"</a>. In season six, she was almost run over and killed in <A class="link" HREF="http://www.csifiles.com/episodes/miami/season6/stand_your_ground.shtml">"Stand Your Ground"</a>. Several episodes later, she was kidnapped in the two-parter <A class="link" HREF="http://www.csifiles.com/episodes/miami/season6/ambush.shtml">"Ambush"</a> and <A class="link" HREF="http://www.csifiles.com/episodes/miami/season6/all_in.shtml">"All In"</a> and forced by two men to clean up a crime scene. This time around, she chooses to go back for the body rather than to rush to safety as Ryan clearly thinks they need to, and it's a decision that jeopardizes her life. The severity of her reaction to the smoke contrasted with Ryan's also felt off. I realize Calleigh was in the attic longer than Ryan was, but how is it that she's in the hospital fighting for her life while Ryan is literally sprinting after suspects? Because her exposure was longer, I'd expect Calleigh to be worse off than Ryan, but the discrepancy between them seems too great. And after Calleigh was taken to the hospital, wouldn't Ryan have been ordered there as well, if for no other reason than to be checked out so that Horatio could be sure that another member of his team wouldn't collapse during an interrogation? <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/smoke_gets_in_your_csis.shtml">here</A>.<center></center>
