From the teaser, this seemed on the surface to be a bog-standard episode - people getting shot, CSIs come to investigate (nice little effect with the gravitational drop - very similar to one in NY) and Grissom once again takes over One Liner Duty (mind you, this has been pretty rare this season - Brass has had one, Archie has had one and Nick has had at least three).
After Drops became a part of it, however, it changed. I really like how they've experimented with the format this season - from the comedy of
You Kill Me to the heartbreaking story in
A Thousand Days On Earth, the writers have shown us that it doesn't need to be a strict formula.
The second half of the episode in particular was a virtual three-hander as Nick, Brass and Drops travelled all over Vegas looking first for Dana, then for her kidnapper. In a lighter show, you could imagine this episode spawning a couple of spin-offs -
Vegas Five-O starring Nick and Brass, and of course... "I'm just trying to be a better person -
My Name Is Drops". (Especially considering that Earl is also in jail at the moment).
Yet again we see just how much Brass has developed in the last eight (ok, seven-and-a-half) seasons. In the pilot, he seemed to be just a watered-down version of the character Ecklie has become, and I could never have imagined him becoming such a likeable character. His deadpan "Yippee. We're going to the hood." had me in stitches. He didn't refute Drops' accusation of racism but I think he was just refusing to take the bait - his dislike of Drops seemed to be more from Drops being a convicted criminal than anything to do with colour.
I also like how we were kept guessing what side Drops was really on - the pause before he shook his chess opponent's hand, convincing Brass to get him released but then happily wearing the electronic tag, then tricking them by getting it deactivated - only to discover he was only trying to escape because he wanted to save Dana and their unborn child. I really felt for him at the end when she said she wanted nothing to do with him. He did seem happy that the recovered money would go to them, though.
