For those who have wearied of my lengthy screeds on why CSI:NY sucks, I offer you an abridged review of last night's episode: I couldn't have asked for a bigger, more insufferable pile of shit if I'd fed an elephant some Ex-Lax alfalfa and asked it to build me the Leaning Tower of Pisa in my living room. "What a bunch of shit," I opined when the episode was over, and my Roomie, who's quite accustomed to my one-sided conversations with the TV, just started laughing.
What a pile of shit. Thus ends my abbreviated review. Those of you who can't stand my negative witterings but are too lazy to put me on your Ignore list may now proceed to the next post.
For those of you who enjoy watching a macaque seize, allow me to elaborate, because if I don't, I might explode.
Stella, who has been Mac's partner for ten years as of S1 and fourteen years as of this season, is thirty-four. Also, even though she graduated from the academy ten years ago in S3's "Cold Reveal", she graduated in 1998 last night(It said so on the banner behind her in the graduation flashback).
Bzzt. Wrong. If Stella had been Mac's partner for ten years in season one, which took place in 2004-5, that means the latest she could've graduated from the academy would've been 1992, since it takes a minimum of eighteen months to earn a detective's shield, and in "...Comes Around", Stella mentions her first collar as a beat cop, so we know she didn't immediately work for Mac and the lab. Since Stella would've been sixteen or seventeen in 1992 according to this concession to Melina's vanity, er, revised timeline, she cannot be thirty-four. She must be at least thirty-eight. Even if we accept the retconned timeline offered in S3, which aired in 2006-7, then she graduated in 1997, not 1998. That also means she would've graduated in the same academy class as Flack, who joined the NYPD in 1997. So, if Stella was born in 1975, that would've made her twenty-two in 1997, and Flack, who probably attended juco, no matter what "Bad Beat says, twenty.
So, Stella who's been working with Mac for fourteen years, is only two years older than Flack. My ass.
Don't even get me started on the astounding convenience of Mac just happening to find a picture of Stella's mother while poking around. Are you kidding me? Aside from the unintentional hilarity of seeing Melina in a dated bouffant wig that should've breathed its last in 1968 and not 1975, it assaults credibility to think that the Greek detective would just hand Mac a picture of Stella's mother. Then again, this episode also tells us that Dr. Papakota is probably Stella's father and that he stole Alexander the Great's dagger from his undiscovered tomb, so perhaps I should regard that coincidence as a mere trifle.
Dr. Papakota "rescued" Stella from foster care at an undetermined age and placed her at St. Basil's Academy. This wouldn't happen to be St. Basil's Orphanage, would it? You know, the place Stella claims to have spent her childhood in "for as long as she can remember" in "Three Generations are Enough". So, it's an academy now, and not a lowly orphanage run by nuns. All right then. If he really was her father, why not claim her and raise her rather than leave her to languish in a boarding school? And why do I even care? What dreadful Dickensian melodrama fanfiction am I reading?
That was this episode was, Melina's wish-fulfillment fanfic put to film and presented as canon. Super!Tragic but plucky heroine who defies her crusty boss and flouts numerous rules of the office she's sworn to uphold in the name of a revenge quest, and who eventually softens his tight-assed heart with her determination. Oh, and those rules she broke--the lying, kidnapping, and disobedience of a direct order--? There won't be any consequences for those. In fact, the crust old boss, who once yelled at another subordinate because a victim had his phone number in her pocket, will just smile warmly and return her badge, because she's just that damn awesome and feisty.
And ooh, bonus angst: she discovers her father only to have him die tragically in her arms in the former family peach orchard. Woe! Woe! And the super!Tragic plucky heroine who has heretofore kept her head under pressure will suddenly throw a fanbrat angsta-tantrum about her father holding out on her during a firefight. If I wrote that and presented it as fanfiction, the fandom would roll its eyes and declare it soppy Suefic, but because it's canon, I'm supposed to find it awesome and compelling?
I don't. It stinks.
Speaking of fanfic come to life, are we really going to see baby hijinks in the lab every week? Because I see no problems at all with distracted lab techs leaving evidence unattended to coo over the Messer crotchfruit, nor do I foresee howling outrage when a defense attorney wonders why there is baby powder in a DNA sample. Because there's no potential for contamination there at all. And never mind the dangerous chemicals to which the baby's developing systems could be exposed. The sheer power of Danny's throbbing Daddy boner will keep the toxins at bay. Just like he fended off the innocent lab tech.
If my ass could've clenched any harder, my glutes would've been peering balefully from my eye sockets.
A sheer embarrassment to the franchise. F-
But I agree it could've been better vvritten. Still enjoyed the episode very much.
