<p><b>Synopsis:</b><p>The "Running of the Gowns" comes to a halt when a young woman ends up dead. The CSIs quickly notice the dead woman seems out of place: she's in jogging gear, and doesn't appear to have any money on her. The woman she scuffled with, Marie Lowe, tells Flack the woman just came up to her and grabbed onto the dress. Stella notes that she was killed by a cut to the arm that severed a major artery caused when one of the beads on the dress sliced into her. Flack finds her ID, identifying her as Laurel Downs, but finds no cash on her. Stella discovers a possible explanation: a number on her back indicating she was participating in a race. Across town, Mac and Hawkes stand over the body of Eleanor Ravelle, found dead in her bathtub. Hawkes notices abrasions on her body suggesting her skin was rubbed dry on her chest, abdomen and thighs. Suspecting she was raped and then murdered, the CSIs get her body to the morgue. Sid confirms she was raped, but finds no semen, indicating her killer wore a condom. He finds traces of steel dust in her nasal passages from the subway and recalls seeing her himself--she was a subway musician. He shows Hawkes that she suffocated when the rapist put his fist in her mouth, causing Hawkes to have a sudden realization: Eleanor's killer is the same man who raped his ex-girlfriend, Kara, eight years ago. He rushes to tell Mac that he believes Eleanor was a victim of the Gramercy Rapist, who raped fifteen women in Manhattan between 1999 and 2001 and used his fist to silence them during the attacks, and then forced them to clean up afterwards.<p>Danny finds a GPS device in Laurel's sneaker and traces the route of her race right past where the brides-to-be were waiting for the running of the gowns. She easily could have seen Marie Lowe in line. Danny has also found a connection to Eleanor: Laurel was a victim of the Gramercy Rapist eight years ago. Though Stella and Danny find the connection too strong to be a coincidence, Mac tells them to work the cases separately until they find a definitive link. Flack approaches Mac with a discovery he's made: a tip line set up during the Gramercy Rapist's spree received 10 calls from Hawkes. Adam gets a print off a guitar slide from Eleanor's apartment and Hawkes brings him Eleanor's blouse, asking him to run DNA on the sweat on it. Mac interrupts and asks to speak to Hawkes alone. He confronts Hawkes about his connection to the Gramercy Rapist and Hawkes tells him about Kara. Mac removes him from the case. Sid comes to Danny with a possible connection between Laurel and Eleanor: cuts on Laurel's hands had Eleanor's blood in them. Lindsay identifies tiny bloodworms found in Eleanor's bath tub as a species found in Brazil, and Mac suggests getting DNA from the worms. Adam gets a hit on the prints from the guitar slide: they belong to a musician named Trey Fager, who has a history of sexual misconduct. Flack and Angell pay Trey a visit in the subway station where he's playing, but Trey insists that he and Eleanor were friends and that he gave her the slide. Danny and Stella match the pattern of cuts on Laurel's hands to a necklace Marie was wearing, and posit that it may have been stolen from Laurel when she was raped. Flack and Stella venture down to the club Marie and her fiance Colin own together and question the couple. Colin tells them he bought the necklace five years ago, and can't clearly recall the man who sold it to him, but says that it could have been Trey. After Adam discovers that Trey pawned Eleanor's guitar at a pawnshop, Flack and Angell go to arrest him, only to have him flee. Flack catches him on tracks but Trey swears he broke into Eleanor's apartment to steal the guitar, but that he didn't kill her.<p>Lindsay determines that the worms in Eleanor's bathtub could have come from their killer's blood after he cut himself. As Hawkes looks on, Kara tells Stella detail she recently recalled from being raped: the killer went through her jewelry box and took a ring she had. After she leaves, Hawkes tells Stella that the stolen ring was meant to be their engagement ring. Adam matches DNA from the sweat on Eleanor's shirt to DNA on the clasp of Marie's necklace, which came from Colin Clark. Mac gets upset with Hawkes when he finds out about the sweat analysis, since it isn't up to FBI standards and won't hold up in court. Hawkes is convinced of Colin's guilt, but Mac won't act until they have evidence that will hold up in court. Sheldon goes to the Colin's club and watches him from afar, but Mac finds him and tells him Colin isn't worth it. Hawkes tells the older CSI how Kara's rape devastated him, and Mac promises they'll get Colin. The team does some digging and learns that seven of the Gramercy Rapist's victims reported jewelry stolen sometime after they were raped, and confirm that Colin lived in the Gramercy Park area between 1999 and 2001. He was in Europe from 2001-2008, and went to Brazil last year to scout out a new club. Stella realizes the jewelry is a solid connection and goes to Marie to persuade her to turn it over. She's successful, but before Marie can give her the jewelry, Colin bursts in. Stella goes to arrest him, but he resists and attacks her, forcing Stella to shoot him twice. She notices worms in the blood pool from the second shot, confirming that he's the killer. Laurel's death is ruled an unfortunate accident, but Stella muses that if Laurel hadn't seen Marie wearing her necklace, they might never have caught Colin. Sid invites Mac and Stella to join him in the subway station to sit and listen to a musician.<p><b>Analysis:</b><p>I'm not usually one to rail against product placement. I don't care if a character gulps down a prominent can of Coke or if for years, Jack Bauer on <i>24</i> only chased terrorists in Ford cars. I was irked when Mac went off to play bass with CBS recording artist <font color=yellow>Will Dailey</font> at the end of <A class="link" HREF="http://www.csifiles.com/episodes/newyork/season4/times_up.shtml">"Time's Up"</a> after being dumped via letter by Peyton in season four, but that pales in comparison to the ending of "Help," which robs Hawkes of much needed closure of some sort in this episode. While Sid's lament that he never took the time to appreciate Eleanor's music before she was killed was a nice observation, by no means was it worthy of closing the episode when another character had such major emotional ties to the main storyline. Why was plugging <font color=yellow>Sharon Little</font>--surprise, surprise, yet another CBS recording artist--more important than giving Hawkes some sort of emotional closure in the story?<p>Maybe I wouldn't have been so annoyed by the ending if what had come before hadn't been so good. Of all the characters, Hawkes has long been in need of a really significant, hard-hitting storyline and this episode certainly gives <font color=yellow>Hill Harper</font> a much deserved chance to shine. We truly see a different side of Hawkes here: the brilliant scientist can't box up the feelings of helplessness and despair he felt when Kara was raped. It's obvious that all of those feelings have come rushing back for Hawkes; he's been thrown back eight years, back to the time when the person he loved the most was hurt in a way he couldn't fix. As he tells Mac, he could sew up the cuts but he couldn't make the pain both he and Kara felt go away. Hawkes is a healer and what happened to Kara was something he didn't know how to make better. Harper conveys Hawkes' agony, still clearly very fresh and near the surface, in a moving, powerful way.<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/help.shtml">here</A>.<center></center>
Great review, as always. Yeah, this is a case of me being very disappointed in the changes that happened from the spoilers to the final episode. The spoilers indicated several good scenes in the present between Hawkes and Kara - I believe that second flashback we got was from one of those scenes. It's a shame that showing their interaction wasn't more of a priority. Between random plot devices and worms and everything else, the case could have been far more simplistic in order to highlight the character moments. Not every episode needs super cool science to be well done. Hawkes is definitely in need of good development, so it's a shame that he wasn't in this episode as much as he could have been. I dunno, wasn't Hawkes supposed to be the 'encyclopedia of tidbit information' in season 2? I miss his random little nuggets of knowledge. This wasn't the time for him to be talking about coincidences, but we haven't seen him do anything of the sort in several years - it's a shame, really. And I'm not so sure about it being a good fit for Lindsay - to be honest, I just expect the writers to have her say/do/know anything that is convenient to the episode, whether that ever comes up again for her or not. They do it for all of the characters, having them suddenly Know Things that magically help the case, but with Lindsay it's more annoying since the character isn't as defined in other ways. He did a good job, definitely - a much better fit than Furtado.
Glad you enjoyed Alex's performance. He does indeed have a solo album coming out this summer. He currently has an EP out and you can buy it on my website. www.alexmaxband.com. He's an amazing musician and a great person I loved the show last night.
I really liked your review. It was brilliant, especially since I agreed with every word, ha ha. Hill Harper and Mac were particularly good in this eppy, but I also found the ending sadly empty after such emotion. The Lindsay thing. I actually cringed. I felt bad for Anna Belknap, because I honestly don't see how she could have delivered that line convincingly given the set up. It's almost as if the producers thought, "Dude, this is too dark. Let's add some humor!" Anyway, once again hoping for more consistency.
I do believe that this was an excellent episode to show the "Murder Sings the Blues" side of Hawkes; however, this episode was a big disappointment. The only note-worthy part was the brawl between Stella and Colin, resulting in Stella shooting him twice. Stella's line, while talking to Mac, referring to emotions would have been a perfect way to use something against Mac to get Hawkes back. Instead Mac deflects it and walks out of HIS office. This episode had a good start, but with only a minor conflict between Hawkes on several occasions, and not even ending with anything about him made it turn for the worse. Next week does look like an impressing episode, with a different side of Flack. We've seen his alcoholic sister and that part, but when someone dies in his custody there should be some great anger-acting scenes.
Did anyone else notice that when Angell and Flack were chasing Trey in the subway that Angell ran into the side of the subway car when attempting to cut him off? It went all dramatic and showed it in slow motion, and I thought she had injured herself. She seemed fine when pulling Trey up, but I noticed she was alway quite a bit angry with him.