CSI Files
Captain
<p><b>Synopsis:</b><p>A body is discovered at the Wham Bam hotel by housekeeper Lila Wickfield--who promptly disappears after the discovery. The team is shocked when she's identified as Anabel Pino, the wife of former ME Marty Pino, who was fired by Sid Hammerback after Pino's gambling problems led him to falsify his overtime claims. Hawkes finds white powder on Anabel's body, while Danny lifts a shoe impression off the bathroom door. Pino is brought in for questioning, but the grief-stricken man insists he didn't kill his wife. After Pino confirms the dead woman is his wife, Sid is unable to autopsy Anabel, whom he knew well, and tells Hawkes he'll give the case to another ME. Flack and Danny go to Lila Wickfield's apartment and find a man matching the suspect's description--wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses--fleeing the building. Hawkes determines the substance on Anabel's body is heroin--and not just any heroin. It's made from human remains. Sid matches the remains to the body of an addict brought in a few weeks ago missing several organs: the kidneys and bladder. Danny processes Lila's computer and finds the suspect opened two programs on it: an e-mail from her boyfriend, Chester Bryson, and the address book program, which contained Chester's address. Hawkes determines the bullet that killed Anabel went through a wrapped kilo of heroin first. Danny is able to trace the bullet to a gun owned by Steve "Little Stevie" Alvarez.<p>Mac, Flack and Danny go to a massage parlor owned by Little Stevie, but Mac forces Danny to wait outside when he realizes the younger CSI has forgotten his bulletproof vest. Flack and Mac go to apprehend Little Stevie, who fires at them with a semiautomatic weapon and runs from the building. Danny sees him and gives chase, cornering him in a warehouse, where the two exchange gunfire. Danny is finally able to take Little Stevie out, and elicits a deathbed confession from the man: Little Stevie killed Anabel because she and Pino tried to give him heroin instead of the $75,000 Pino owed his employers. Pino locked himself in the bathroom and fled out the window after Little Stevie killed Anabel. Flack brings Mac to a storage locker Pino was renting, revealing the lab where Pino made heroin from human organs. The two realize Pino is the man in the baseball cap and sunglasses--and he's on a mission to get his heroin back. Sid exhumes the bodies from Pino's last 15 OD cases with the lab and finds the kidneys and bladders missing from all of them. The team is able to track Lila and Chester, who are about to sell the ill-gotten heroin that Lily took from the Pinos' hotel room, to a warehouse. Pino arrives first and is about to make off with the heroin and the money, but the team shows up before he can escape. After a tense standoff, Sid convinces Pino to turn himself in, putting an end to his twisted drug manufacturing business.<p>While the rest of the team pursues Pino, Stella and Angell go forward with their plot to entrap George Kolovos and Sebastian Diakos, the shady Greek nationals who are after rare ancient coins. Stella looks up Professor Papakota, her archaeology instructor in college, who tells her that Diakos and Kolovos raided tombs in Cyprus and were double-crossed by their partners. Now the pair are seeking to buy back the coins their partners took from them. Angell lures Kolovos to a shipping yard with the promise of a big batch of the coins, but she and Stella manage to trap the man when he arrives, threatening to send him off to Cyprus, where he's wanted for theft, in one of the big shipping crates if he doesn't give up Diakos' location. He finally tells Stella that Diakos is in Jersey City, but the two lock him in the crate and ship him off anyway. Stella and Angell rush to the apartment in Jersey City, where they make a shocking discovery: Diakos is dead on the floor, Greek coins covering his eyes. Discouraged, Stella returns to work, where Mac tells her about Diakos' murder. Stella requests to work the case, but Mac turns her down, promising to see to it personally. Stella almost tells him about her involvement, but backs down and simply thanks him instead.<p><b>Analysis:</b><p>What an episode! "Point of No Return" becomes a nail-biter the minute Marty Pino, a former coroner who turned up in several second season episodes of <i>CSI: NY</i>, is connected to the case. Seeing Marty isn't just a flash from <i>CSI: NY</i>'s past--it also hits home for several members of the team. Sid, Hawkes and Danny all react to Pino's plight in very different ways, based on their experiences with the man. Though Pino only appeared in three episodes back in season two--<A class="link" HREF="http://www.csifiles.com/episodes/newyork/season2/trapped.shtml">"Trapped"</a>, <A class="link" HREF="http://www.csifiles.com/episodes/newyork/season2/super_men.shtml ">"Super Men"</a> and <A class="link" HREF="http://www.csifiles.com/episodes/newyork/season2/run_silent_run_deep.shtml">"Run Silent, Run Deep"</a>--the personable young coroner really made an impression, in part due to <font color=yellow>Jonah Lotan</font>'s charismatic, energetic portrayal. Marty's slick, carefree demeanor in season two gave no hints as to the demons that ended up costing him his job--the flashbacks we see from the earlier episodes highlight his confidence and breezy banter with his co-workers. Hawkes greeted Pino with obvious glee in one flashback, while in another Pino drolly walked Danny through an on site body examination over the phone while Danny was trapped in a panic room. In just three episodes, it was clear that Pino had a great rapport with his colleagues.<p>The character hit the hardest by Pino's sad decline into drug dealing and murder is the one who never actually shared a scene with him prior to this episode: Sid Hammerback. Sid is so gutted by the sight of Anabel on his autopsy table that he's haunted by memories of her voice, asking him to give her away at her wedding. Sid attempts to go through with the autopsy and finds he can't--he's too close to the dead woman on the table. He tells Hawkes that he was the one who told Pino that Anabel was the one for him and refused to let him come to work until he proposed to her. At their wedding, Anabel leaned over to Sid and thanked him. Marty and Anabel used to come to Sid's house for weekly dinners. His close ties to the Pinos make the revelation that Marty was an organ thief while at the MEs office and later a murderer a real blow to Sid. The coroner clearly feels responsible. Firing Marty for falsifying overtime couldn't have been easy, but finding out what Marty went on to do is clearly far worse for Sid. <font color=yellow>Robert Joy</font> is excellent in these scenes, conveying Sid's anguish over Pino's fall from grace and his wife's murder with pathos and humanity. <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/point_of_no_return.shtml">here</A>.<center></center>