I'm a week late on this one but thought I'd throw my thoughts in anyway before the thread disappears from the page.
Overall, I thought this was the best episode of the season so far, so it gets a grade of A- from me. I still couldn't quite give it the full A, however, for reasons to be covered later.
I thought there was an interesting thru line in this episode. The System. It was nearly another character, not just an abstract background or framework. It was something each struggled within, fought against, discussed, confronted, negotiated, questioned.
Excellent point. Thematically, this episode was well-written and the case itself was interesting. I also thought the writer(s) did a great job of balancing screentime and giving almost all the main and guest characters relevant, meaty scenes. Not sure who wrote this one, but hopefully, that writer will get some more opportunities with this series.
I was pleasantly surprised at how Adam's storyline was handled -- no obvious bad guy and no easy solution. And AJ Buckley and the writers managed to inject some humor into the situation while still making me sympathize with Adam's plight. Nice scenes at the end, too, with individual team members giving up their vacation in a show of support for Adam.
As usual Flack had some good scenes. Loved his and Hawkes' Scooby Doo references. His playground interrogation scene with Danny also worked well. It's always interesting to see how different facets of Flack's personality seem to come out depending on whom he is partnered with at the time.
And looks like someone finally remembered that Mac and Stella are supposed to be partners and close friends. Cute scene at the end with them going to dinner. Their "fight" also was interesting. As someone mentioned elsewhere, I think that's how their relationship works -- they give each other the support and/or challenge needed. And in this case, Mac was the one in danger of losing objectivity and going off on a tangent, so Stella had to rein him back in. Sometimes I think the writers try so hard to avoid romantic overtones between these two that they end up neglecting their relationship too much, which is a shame imo, because it's one of the strong points of the series.
There were a few things that kept me from giving this ep a full A.
While the lawyers as murderers premise was a nice twist, it seemed a bit much to have all three lawyers involved. For a normally law abiding person of conscience to knowingly decide to commit murder seems like a major moral and psychological shift, and it's hard to believe that all three lawyers made that shift at the same time, now matter how sympathetic the victim. Did none of the three lawyers have families of their own that would be impacted if they were caught and convicted of murder?
Also, the temporary vacation solution was a bit murky. I understand that the vacation hours (and pay) were somehow administratively transferred to Adam, but seems like it still wouldn't help the overall budget unless each of the CSI's actually took a week off from work without pay. So what did they mean by asking to be put back on the schedule -- would Mac actually put them back in the rotation but with some type of reduced schedule???
Re: Lindsay's comment....I agree it didn't really fit -- too personal and rather tacky. Perhaps this was just another way that the writer(s) were trying to have her fit in as "one of the guys?"
Anyway, there was much more good than bad in this one, and I hope the writers can keep the overall quality up going into sweeps.
