Re: Episode #608: 'Permanent Vacation' ***CONTAINS SPOILERS*
The pluses for me for this episode – I enjoyed this episode because it was intricate and a little complex. It also expanded from the initial murder, which introduced several other suspects for those crimes. I also enjoyed the fact that Tripp was in this episode without having to put up with Jake sidelining him all over the place. I love Tripp, no nonsense, funny guy – and despite his considerable lack of screen-time this season, which I think has been a big mistake, Rex Linn and David Caruso still bounce off each other really well.
Now the bad – There were two things that seriously bothered me about this episode and they are specifically to do with characterisation and continuity. One was Boa Vista doing ballistics and the other was the deal Horatio made at the end.
It really rankled me to hear Boa Vista talking knowledgably about something that would also have been a piss in the ocean for Calleigh. Boa Vista was employed as a cold case officer and yet it seems that
without any training whatsoever we have her talking knowledgably about something that she would, in my opinion, have little idea about.
So what was Calleigh, ‘Bullet Girl’, doing while this was all going down? For a while I could understand her being out in the field and what not because of her No2 status, however, ‘Ballistics’ is something she excels at, and enjoys – even Megan deigned to enter her own realm of expertise when an investigation was going on. This was not good at all in my opinion.
Anyway, on that, I think this is where the ‘team’ side of things is really going to pot to be honest. Characters are being given things to do, such as Boa Vista and her ballistics, that are not their specific areas of expertise, where in the earlier Seasons of CSI Miami there were characters specifically assigned to these specific jobs, which, in my opinion, defined the ‘team’ aspect of the investigation.
Now, I don’t have a problem with Calleigh and Horatio not sharing scenes, (though I do find it weird that when they do share a scene there’s no interaction between them at all) and I don’t have a problem with the characters going out into the field a lot more than they did. It’s nice. However, what I
do get annoyed at is when a pretty much superfluous character such as Boa Vista is showing an expertise of someone else's job that she really doesn’t have, and especially when one
essential character, Valera, has been MIA for a bit now.
The biggest grindy-teethy moment for me in this episode, but only because Horatio is my favourite character, was his deal at the end of the episode. It really pissed me off to be honest, because it damaged the Horatio character for me.
I remember a man whose business and home had been taken away from him by the IRS and it turned out that his two young boys (possibly 8 and 14?) had been directly involved in the death of an the IRS agent who had been forced to take their home and their dad’s business away.
I distinctly remember Horatio telling the father, who had rightly pointed out that they were just boys, that the court would take that into consideration, and yet here we have Horatio at the end of this episode making a deal for a teenager so that he doesn’t go to court and be tried for attempted murder. Things like this, the inconsistency concerning the core issues of a character, really piss off!
Horatio and the Father – It seemed to me that Horatio got Tripp following the Father not because he suspected him, but because he was afraid the father was going to go vigilante on them all, hence his “because he’s dangerous” comment... and in all honesty, he had every right to keep a hold of the Father until they could finish their investigation. Notice that Horatio did not say that the Father was under arrest, the Father came to that conclusion all by himself and, in my opinion, it was the wrong assumption.
As for the ending, I thought it was a great ending with the blackouts, but again, Vista letting slip about a suspect, been done before and this time it shows that she doesn’t learn from her mistakes. I wish Valera was back in the fold and that Boa Vista would go back to being the cold case expert, if only because I think the character is damaging the program a little, at the moment.
Anyway, all in all, I did enjoy the context of the episode and how it panned out, but what I didn’t enjoy was how an episode like this really does high-light the complete lack of overall teamwork that used to exist almost naturally in the earlier Seasons of the program. I also don’t like to feel pissed off and I am concerning the slate on the Horatio character and also over the fact that Boa Vista suddenly had somewhat expert knowledge that she shouldn’t have had.
But, still, I did enjoy it, though not as much as any other episode this season
Let’s hope it’s one of those hiccups and not the beginning of something bigger.
