I guess it's time to step in and discuss last night's ep. I've been sorta on the fringe of the boards since last night, but now I'm back in action.
Sara's case: I know it's the B-case, but I want to get it out of the way because it's shorter and I don't have NEARLY as much to say about it.
The case itself wasn't that twisted, wasn't that interesting, and I'm still completely confused about what went down. I mean, the handcuff marks on the DB seemed really deep, as if the handcuffs were on for a while and the homeless man was struggling against them for quite a while. But, maybe the pronounced nature of the wounds was due to lack of bloodflow, or some other condition that just made them show up more... I don't know.
I still don't understand what happened. I don't know if he just suffered a heart attack, or if he was the victim of police abuse.. no clue.
That case was really fuzzy for me, but usually by Friday I've seen the episode twice, and I only saw it once last night because my hubby had to get up early and we decided to wait on it.
The A Case: I felt it was really jumbled at points. At first, I was really excited. It felt like a season 3-4 episode to me. That might sound bizarre, but there was this dark quality to it, and the mystery of what happened to these people who were in this rather seedy hotel.
I don't know... Parts of the case really hit, others didn't seem to. I thought we spent way too much time talking to the extremist preacher at times. I did like how creepy he was. I did LOVE that last moment when he went in to talk to the girl, and how we had no idea who it was who wanted to talk to her until he was closing the door. The look on his face as he made sure no one saw him was absolutely chilling.
Ronnie pissed me off, and you could tell Sara was trying to be accomodating at first, answering her questions. She was trying to be understanding, but after the third about wondering if brains tasted better than flesh, I could understand Sara's frustrations. She doesn't really dwell on those things because she wants to solve the case.
However, I also understand Ronnie being fresh out of college, and still in "lecture" mode where you get to ask lots of questions, and where you want to ask as many questions as possible to make sure you ace your test.
I do think it worked out, though, and Ronnie seemed able to stick to the 20 question rule, since she was in school recently and understands boundaries and rules, and Sara seemed to be able to deal with that.
I think the line was crossed when Ronnie, naively, or whateverly, decided that not questioning the cops was a good idea. The way she said it, made it feel like she didn't think that this matter, the death of a homeless man, warranted stirring things up with the police. And, that stung me, too.
So, while Sara did chew her out a bit, I think it was a necessary wake-up call for Ronnie. She's fresh and alive and awake and eager to learn and please, but she's not yet tough. And, I think that's what the scene was illustrating. She doesn't want to stir things up. She wants to be able to do her cases, and enjoy her work, and go to bed at night without any significant worries attached to work.
Wouldn't we all love that? But, it seems to me, that Ronnie's not yet built up that tough skin. I do think she can get there, because the sad reality is that in some professions, you have to have a bit of a tough skin on top to be able to handle stirring up things that you might not want to. Sometimes, you have to tlak to people, and deal with people, that you never would if you had the choice.
And, I hope Sara doesn't snap at Ronnie again, because I think this one time made the point. Ronnie's sweet and eager to learn, and Sara tries to accomdate the questions by limiting her to 20 rather than telling her to shut the **** up... But Ronnie will eventually need to toughen up a little for this job, and I think Sara just snapped a little because her job is so important to her. She wants to know what happened to the least of these, and the most honored in the physical world. She doesn't care about status, or whose door she has to knock on if she's going to get answers about what happened. She's driven and determined, but she's also had years of experience and a lot of crap in her life to toughen her up.
So, in short, I think Ronnie's going to go through a lot in her short period, but if she ends up getting overwhelmed and breaking down crying, I don't have a doubt that Sara would be there to comfort her.
As for the scene when Sara went to he crime scene, it didn't strike me as particularly strange until other people pointed it out. See, people come and visit our workplace all the time. They still have their keycards (a major security issue, in my mind, but that's not my department). So, it's not unusual for an old photog or PA to show up for no reason but to chat.
So, when I watched the episode I really didn't see anything weird with Sara going to see where everyone was working. However, it does raise a bunch of questions. I mean, maybe she was meeting Gil for breakfast, and he was supposed to be at the crime scene line to meet her, so she went to talk to Greg.
I mean, Greg did seem to know that's who she was there to see. So, that's the easiest scenario in my head is that she was there to meet Gil, and he still wasn't down, and she's just so used to walking into crim scenes that she went upstairs to get him without thinking much of it.
However, I do think that this once can slip by in my mind, but I do hope they don't have people walking willy-nilly onto crime scenes in the future.
That said, the moment reminded me a little of the go-kart moment at the end of the last episode where Gil was all "little boy with candy" and Sara was just smiling and shaking her head. I'm a wife. I do that often.
When the episode was over, though, I felt a mixture of being overwhelmed and underwhelemed at the same time.
I think the B-case was a throwaway to introduce the new girl and quickly introduce new conflict in Sara's new shift. The A-case was interesting enough, but after a while there were TOO many variables that got confusing. I figured early on that the shirt had not been worn by whoever they were implicating for the murder... It just felt wrong, for some reason, but I'm good at guessing.
I DID love Mandy having half a dozen fingerprints. That works for a seedy hotel, and is as it should be. I liked Warrick trying on the shirt, then giving it to Cath because it reminded me of Gil's experiment with sweater splatter when that boy who wet the bed killed his little brother who idolized him...
There were elements that I loved of the episode, but I think the superfluous B-case pulled me out too much.
YMMV
