Grade "Communication Breakdown"

How would you grade Communication Breakdown?

  • A+

    Votes: 20 30.8%
  • A

    Votes: 9 13.8%
  • A-

    Votes: 3 4.6%
  • B+

    Votes: 12 18.5%
  • B

    Votes: 3 4.6%
  • B-

    Votes: 4 6.2%
  • C+

    Votes: 6 9.2%
  • C

    Votes: 5 7.7%
  • C-

    Votes: 2 3.1%
  • D+

    Votes: 1 1.5%
  • D

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • D-

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • F

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    65

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New ep tonight! Watch it and let us know what you thought. :cool:
 
Yea, vvonder if he's actually gonna talk to them in Danish, could be avvesome.


Excuse my vv, but I broke the real double v button :S
 
Spoilers for this ep below: Don't read if it hasn't aired where you are yet!

Ok.. so this week wasn't as good for me as the last couple of eps.

It's another one case week, which seems to be the norm these days, but I will give them credit for trying to branch out from the typical cases and remind us that NYC is home to more than just upper class white folks.

Right away I was suspicious about the death of the Chief of the Montiquan band. Even laying on Sid's slab he looked awfully rough for a guy who'd just died a few hours ago at most, by gun shot no less, so to find out there was something else going on with this guy didn't come as such a surprise.

*BTW: I've never heard of the Montiquans. Has anyone else? I've heard of the Mohegans and the Mahicans. And I'm not exactly getting any hits for them on google, and wikipedia hasn't heard of them either...

For all the languages we heard thrown around in this episode I found it interesting that Danny, the guy who's Italian American roots have been so insisted upon, didn't mutter a word of Italian. Even Sid got a little bit of a foreign tongue in there, but I never tire of hearing about the Hammerback family tree. :lol:

Something that has been bugging me about the morgue lately, is this ultra technology they seem to have shipped in via the TARDIS. Honestly, every time they power that thing up I expect to see Leia in her robe, "Help me Hammerback, you're my only hope!" I like science fiction as much as the next person but it doesn't seem to jive with this show all the time.

While I'm talking about technology, Don's little toy from the beginning is kind of cool. Like a Babel fish! (any H2G2 fans?) I wonder how much those toys run the NYPD? And while I don't mind most of Flack and Angell's shameless eye f@#ing, the bit at the end where they're fooling around with the NYPD's costly tech-toys was pretttttty cheesy. Angell's line: "stop by my place later and I'll show you the true meaning of international relations". Don't be too subtle now, Jess. :rolleyes: Ugh, that sounded a LOT better in French than in a rough translation from a computer generated voice.

Now everyone within earshot knows I'm the biggest fan of anything Messer, but Danny spends this entire show being little more than a bloody irritation. As if he's got to fill his new wife's shoes as the resident pain in the ass in her absence. His first conversation with Sheldon, that was cute. They rip on each other and he actually MENTIONS Louie in his naming process! It's too bad they couldn't take half a second to give us a suggestion about his livelihood, or lack thereof! But thanks to the Sheldon and Danny dynamic along with Hill and Carmine's talent the scene comes easy and brings a smile to my face.

As a side note to that scene: Sheldon makes the remark about Danny pulling these names from the cast of the Godfather, which I think is a pretty telling comment on the connections of the Messer family... so... he's NOT from a family of cops anymore? Or does that just depend on the plot this week?

The big problem here? Danny won't shut up about it! Honestly by the time he's pestered Stella and Mac with this name business Mac looks like he's going to snap if he has to hear this any more. And rightly so! Messer comes off like he's SO inside his own head that he can barely keep it in the game here. And if the boy can't focus on his work someone ought to be smacking him out of dream land. It's SO over done in fact that the episode ENDS on this topic again, and while it's nice to FINALLY see Flack broach the subject of this Danny & Lindsay mess, they're still just babbling about baby names? And the book? Like Dan popped out at lunch and bought that? :rolleyes: Good lord, talk about overkill. Thankfully the character interactions make that final scene a little tolerable. There's little I enjoy more than seeing Adam squirm and back peddle under Mac's scrutinous gaze. :)

To go on about this naming business, they couldn't have been more transparent in telling us it was going to be a girl. In fact that's been apparent for a few episodes, but the second Danny voiced his instinctual feeling towards a male child I knew it was a girl. This is Danny Messer. The ambassador of WRONG. Since when has this guy ever had a gut feeling that's lead him anywhere but astray? Silly Danny, don't count your offspring before they hatch.

Amusing to me how Lindsay is barely a factor in his naming decisions. Further supporting the notion that this pregnancy has little if anything to do with her. Even Danny, changed man that he is, doesn't really seem to give a crap that his wife might already have a name plan, or might just hate all of the names he's chosen. Not that I'm surprised with him, just that it's another point on the board indicating the shoddy foundation their relationship is built on.

So now that we know it's going to be a girl... and possibly a nameless girl. I can't help but feel like if we lose Lindsay in the finale this baby will be replacing her in namesake. UGH. :shifty:

This last scene also raised some more questions for me regarding this child and Lindsay's pregnancy. She flew to Montana, pregnant, and saw a doctor there for the prenatal? And to find out the sex of the child? I'm sorry, but some of the best medical facilities in the world are found in NYC. And isn't learning the child's sex something you ought to be doing with it's father? She must really have a thing, for her family doctor back in Bozeman. ;)

What ultimately pulled this ep up from the dregs is the character interactions and the use of some players who've been a bit absent lately. Namely Flack, Adam and Hawkes. Flack speaking Gaelic is just as hot as I thought it would be, and he has some other golden little lines peppered throughout the ep, like his reference to his Grandfather and referring to Ireland as "the old country".

Adam also shares some nice banter with Danny, and thankfully it's not about the bloody baby names for a minute.

The case itself... I thought it wrapped pretty weakly. The hand someone folded on a virtual poker game leads them to their killer? I hope they didn't try to obtain a warrant for that server warehouse based on this, or I'd be inclined to think that the issuing judge was on the take.

And the crook himself? He looks an awful lot like a suburbanite Caucasian to me, but ok, fine. He's supposed to be Montiquan too. I still have a problem with this kind of outcome. Sure they probably did it to avoid any specific ethnicity being villainized, but it really doesn't do anyone any favors. In all these ethnically charged relations making the young man sell out his own heritage only perpetuates this "doing it to themselves" mentality we have towards a lot of struggling ethnic groups.

A generous C+
 
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I really need to figure out a better system for watching the episode - it's a pain in the butt to drag a TV into my room from halfway across the house, especially when my mom wants to tape Life (so she can watch Criminal Minds), meaning I have to bring the TV in here during the first commercial break to avoid missing anything. *le sigh*

~ Angell speaking French gives me tinglepants. :devil:

~ Oh, Hawkes and Adam - I love it when you boys speak nerd. Together. Now go make out somewhere. :devil:

~ Lucky shot. How typical - I mean convenient.

~ SID!

~ Removing blood from the thigh? :confused:

~ I love Sid and Hawkes together. :D

~ At least Hawkes acknowledges that it's so damn convenient.

~ Lithuanian grandmother? :lol: "She drove me nuts." Oh, Sid.

~ Hee, Sid asked Hawkes for help. :p

~ "Find anything?"
"Yeah, but what the hell kind of murder weapon is this?"

My question exactly, Sid. :wtf:

~ So they say the name Louie but give no indication that they even remember that Danny had a brother with that name?

~ Danny's family sounds like mobsters - BUT THEY ARE TOTALLY COPS AND SUCH BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT THEY TOLD ME BEFORE.

~ I like the name Sheldon - STFU, Danny. *smack*

~ Danny, $100 says you're having a girl. Are you going to freak out when you don't see a peen on the kid?

~ Sheldon is a smart, sexy beast. Rawr! :devil:

~ Flack said 'schmutz' :adore:

~ "NYPD blue" :p

~ What, is Mac the designated 'mention Lindsay once an episode' character or something?

~ Also, I think this name thing is getting a bit annoying - does Danny have to talk about it in every scene he's in? Yes, we get it, he's trying to figure out a name for his kid. We might forget he's having one if they don't talk about it constantly. :rolleyes:

~ Irish ashwood from Ireland. :lol: Thank you for playing Captain Obvious, Adam. But you're adorable, bb. :adore:

~ How convenient that the Irish guy fed dogs nails in hamburger - can you say RED HERRING?

~ Flack speaking Gaelic was hawt. :devil:

~ Adam is so damn kewt. :adore:

~ This music is lame, though.

~ Swooshy camera shot. Swoooosh! And Stella is instantaneously transported from the lab to that office. :p

~ Sheldon is getting a lot of scenes this week - he doesn't get shafted when Lindsay isn't around, I suppose.

~ "Our little bearded friend from the tech republic" :p

~ Ok, I know I'm a slash whore and looking for such things, but - Adam's head was about half an inch from Sheldon's stomach. That makes my panties tingle. :devil: (Hey, what can I say, I'm easily pleased. ;))

~ Heehee, Danny looked back at Flack, and Flack followed him. (Seriously, boys, you make it so easy to slash you. :devil:)

~ Danny is a klutz. :p

~ 'Don't move...or make out in the dark.' - Mac didn't say the last bit, but it was implied. :devil:

~ Wait, that guy is supposed to be Native American?

~ Angell speaking French was hot - the tacky language translator, however, was not. :wtf:

~ Flack knows about the spawnling! :p

~ It was obvious that the baby would be a girl - they broadcast that fact pretty heavily with all of the talk of boy names. But WTF is with sharing the gender of your child via a text message? :wtf:

~ Hawkes totally put an arm around Adam for a second there. Just saying. ;) ;) ;)
 
Commentary typed as I watch, as per normal.

Totally didn’t start typing this until the opening scene was over. But dude, Angell speaks French. Cool.

Ohai Adam. And Hawkes.

Aw, Adam looks so excited about getting to run a simulation. Heehee.

Bang.

…conveniently lucky shot, that.

And apparently the theme of this episode is languages.

SID. <3

Why’s he using his fingers and not, like, tweezers or something to take the bullet out?

Eww, needle. I vote no.

Oddly enough, I don’t hate this music.

Microbes!

Ohai, green innards. Please to be going away now.

And Sid speaks Lithuanian. Now that is cool.

Multicolored lungs! That looks interesting.

Ooh, hologram thingy. I have no idea what it’s really called, but I still think it’s pretty freaking cool.

Flinging holographic intestine about. Nifty graphics!

Camera shot from inside the body. That’s different.

What on earth is it? I’m as lost as Sid is. Potentially more so, because I couldn’t really see what he was holding.

Vaguest mention of Louie ever. For the love of god, Danny, IS YOUR BROTHER EVEN ALIVE?!? (Black hole of continuity, oh how I loathe thee.)

“They waited six weeks to name you Sheldon?!?”

HCl, KCl, NaCl. What are we doing here? …Playing with thread, apparently.

Connover is suspicious. Not sure why, but he just strikes me wrong.

Danny. Baby names. Cute…perhaps.

Stella, sweetie, seriously. We NEED to get a translator for you. I desperately want to know what on earth she’s saying in Greek all the time.

Hawkes cracks the case!

Ah, that explains the HCl.

Interesting celebration.

Aw, Flack and Angell are both finicky. How cute.

Hey, now I know why Amos looks familiar. He was in Criminal Minds a couple years ago.

Schmutz? They’re preening each other, though, that’s cute.

Flack. Puns are bad. They cause pain.

Kurt? No. Just…no.

Very pretty purple shirt on Stella.

Has Danny actually DONE anything this whole episode, besides wandering around and talking to people?

Gaelic? I’m intrigued.

Ooh. Flack’s speaking Gaelic. *drool* Pretty language coming out of a pretty man’s mouth, me likey.

Angry accented dude.

Oh no, you do NOT mess with Flack.

And more Gaelic, excellent.

Puzzles. Where do the splinters fit?

And again, music I don’t loathe. I’m shocked.

Really old baleen?

Ominously empty pegs. Dun dun dunnnnnn!

“the wilderness of Manhattan.” That phrase entertains me.

I KNEW he was suspicious!

“our little bearded friend from the Tech Republic.” *snerk*

Sneak sneak, sneak sneak.

Danny. Seriously. Walk more quietly!

Ouch. Do not anger the Marine.

“game weasel.” Teehee.

Right, because the sudden change of attitude in like 5 seconds wouldn’t be at all suspicious.

Angell. Speak more slowly so I can understand what you’re saying! I only understand French when it isn’t being spoken at lightspeed.

…Ack. That was cheesy.

We’re having a baby-naming party?

Oh look, Don finally acknowledges that Danny is having a kid.


All in all, decent episode, but not the greatest. If Danny had done something other than mumble about baby names the whole episode, I would've been a lot happier.

Also, Fay, I'm starting to think you and I may actually share a brain. Or something.
 
I'm glad I'm not the only one that noticed that in the end scene, Adam and Sheldon hugged after Danny said it was a girl... :)

I thought this episode was in the middle... it had it's good moments and the moments where I was bored enough to turn away. I think my favorite part was seeing Flack speak Gaelic... that was freaking hot. Although the whole 'shmutz' scene with Angell was just too overdone on TV, the end bit between them was kinda cute.

I loved that last scene too with everyone. It was good to finally see some sort of interaction between Danny and Flack in relation to Danny's impending fatherhood. And Adam's so freaking cute. :) I loved the part where Danny and him figured out the online gambling site and were explaining it...

All in all, okay episode.
 
Overall I thought was a good episode.
I liked how they got into the whole cultural aspect, very nice.
It felt a little 12 Angry Men-ish to me there at the beginning, with the whole train thing. (It made a connection in my mind anyway)

I'm glad Louie finally got an...er...mention. I'd just like to know if he's still walking among us, honestly.

Flack sepaking Gaelic was hot. :D Everyone was just in sync with their foreign languages tonight, even Sid! The Hammerback's must be quite an interesting family...

And Flack finally has acknowledged the fact that Danny is gonna be a daddy. Finally.
I think Megan would be a mighty fine name for this child ;)

So decent episode this week I thought. :)
 
-Too. Many. Languages!
-Hee. Angell speaking French. If any of the writers forgot that Emmanuelle is French-Canadian, and tried to translate English to French for her lines, I'd love to see the look on her face.
-I want one of those translator things!
-That shot? There's no way...
-Adam is in this episode!
-Hee. Bitchy daughter is such a teenager.
-Gee, I hope there's more to this episode than that. Is the next 50 minutes just subtitles and the team demonstrating what languages they can speak? :lol:

-The chances of this; it's practically impossible. There's no way. What the hell, NY, what the hell.
-Where is this random room of holograms? Is it in the morgue? Were they just bored and felt like installing a virtual reality center?
-Robert Joy must have fun with this role. "Dig into a fake intestine and pull out a piece of something." "...Okay."
-Just punch him, Hawkes. Somebody needs to, and it's apparent that Mac won't.
-Up, IT guy will be back... if only because they brought attention to him. Or not. I think TPTB are catching on to my profesizing secrets. :rolleyes:

-Seriously, why is it that we never get subtitles on things not crucial to the plot? Why, writers, why?
-I'm voting for a Messer daughter. Why? Because WaT and CM already had boys, so we need some female children on CBS. *laughs*
-"NYPD blue". Oh, Flack. We remember, don't worry.
-Is Mac the voice of "let's remember that Danny is married"?
-I have no idea what this sport is. It looks like a weird combination of field hockey and soccer.
-Hee. Gaelic. Scene makes me laugh.
-That's actually cool, in a never-swallowing-anything-whole-again kind of way.
-Oh look, IT guy is back in it. Called it.
-Dude, you're subtle. "LCV: My Name is Jailtime". Cheater.
-Danny, what's happening to you, dude? Are you distracted by the fatherhood thing or something?
-Stealth mode!
-"Cheater. It's the best known translation for "game" and "weasel"." Hee.
-Way to be subtle, Jess. You totally should've given him headphones, unless you don't care about what you cared about in Rush to Judgment anymore. I don't care, I just like the flirting.

-"...Mac's a good name..." Oh Adam. Hee.

-Girl. Yay/how does she know this.

Okay. Episode Storyline: B. B+ because of plentiful Flack/Angell interaction, which I've been missing. A- because of subtitles, at least sometimes.
 
I've got to say some of they names Danny was coming up with were a bit out there and he seemed to spend the whole episode on names. Although I don't think I would go as far as to say Lindsay isn't going to have a say on the name - I think Danny was just preparing his list, I think a lot of people do that and then compare lists. Although I did find it a bit strange that Lindsay found out the sex of the baby when she's in Montana... and then text messaged her husband to let him know.

I enjoyed the episode though overall. There was some Angell/Flack which was kinda nice, because we don't see that every week.

As far as the guy not looking like he was a Native American, it doesn't surprise me that much. On my mom's side (she's originally from New York) I have Mohawk blood... but I don't look it all. I'm not so sure that the Montiquan Indian Tribe exists... I've never heard of them before. The Delaware, The Mohegan, etc... were in that area. It would have been nice had it invloved an actual tribe (Like I said I don't think the Montiquans exist - and I even goggled and the only results I got were links to stuff about this episode of CSI NY).
 
It's interesting (read: hilarious) that something as important as finding out the sex of the baby isn't done as a couple. Or going through names. Or anything else related to being first time parents. Danny might as well be married to an incubator.
 
roximonoxide said:
While I'm talking about technology, Don's little toy from the beginning is kind of cool. Like a Babel fish! (any H2G2 fans?) I wonder how much those toys run the NYPD? And while I don't mind most of Flack and Angell's shameless eye f@#ing, the bit at the end where they're fooling around with the NYPD's costly tech-toys was pretttttty cheesy. Angell's line: "stop by my place later and I'll show you the true meaning of international relations". Don't be too subtle now, Jess. :rolleyes: Ugh, that sounded a LOT better in French than in a rough translation from a computer generated voice.

I was thinking that too. Why would you go around using expensive equipment to flirt? And it was pretty damn cheesy.

tccidaisc said:
-Way to be subtle, Jess. You totally should've given him headphones, unless you don't care about what you cared about in Rush to Judgment anymore. I don't care, I just like the flirting.

Exactly! She was just freaking out over it in RTJ and didn't want it out and now she's saying this and he's listening to it in the middle of the precint? Wow, that was slutty!
 
I've got to say some of they names Danny was coming up with were a bit out there and he seemed to spend the whole episode on names. Although I don't think I would go as far as to say Lindsay isn't going to have a say on the name - I think Danny was just preparing his list, I think a lot of people do that and then compare lists. Although I did find it a bit strange that Lindsay found out the sex of the baby when she's in Montana... and then text messaged her husband to let him know.

Yes, texting the sex of the child to the father seemed a little nuts to me.

ETA: When Mac asked him if he'd even consulted Lindsay on any of these names he babbled:
"Yah.. I mean no. I mean not yet. I'm kinda just doin' my homework."
As if that was the first time he'd been posed the question and he needed a better answer than just no.

As far as the guy not looking like he was a Native American, it doesn't surprise me that much. On my mom's side (she's originally from New York) I have Mohawk blood... but I don't look it all. I'm not so sure that the Montiquan Indian Tribe exists... I've never heard of them before. The Delaware, The Mohegan, etc... were in that area. It would have been nice had it invloved an actual tribe (Like I said I don't think the Montiquans exist - and I even goggled and the only results I got were links to stuff about this episode of CSI NY).
I don't believe they exist either. My comment about the actor playing the killer not looking as though he belonged to the same band as the chief, isn't a condemnation towards his genetics. I'm saying that of ALL the people they could have chosen for the role, it went to a very Caucasian looking actor, when they were given an open opportunity to cast a Native American. But, all in all, I don't know who the actor is and he could very well have Native American lineage.
 
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