It was a fast moving episode. Nothing really stuck out. I wonder why the girl picked every single thing that Stella pointed out in the class to put at the crime scene. At least Danny wasn't hanging on the phone or trying to come up with baby names.
Well. It's been a coupla days now. Not a very memorable ep, all told. It was definitely better than the last few we've had, but wasn't nearly as good as the few better ones they've managed this season. So. Half a step up from it's usual par. I suppose the overall current was the Injustices of Law. For all the good things it did, still, for me the ep was a vehicle, not a ride, if that makes sense. B -. INTRO/TEASER Started with the suicide, to indicate the impact of emotional duress on a person (though I can't recall if it was indicated that it was stalking that drove her to her suicide at the time). It was as puzzling as it was poignant. But a helluva nicely crafted sequence, wintry and melancholy, the inserts were good, some very nice city shots, the music fit very well. I actually thought there should have been indications of this kind of impact thru-out the whole show; difficult, I realize, when the stalker's dead and therefore the menace is gone and we're finding everything out via shards after the fact. But we didn't get to really know the victims, only the brother, and moreover Odessa was introduced as a 'show-off' of a perp. As well done as the intro bit was, the weight of it didn't carry thru the rest of the ep. That's something that I kept coming back to, while watching the whole thing. Moving indoors, we then shifted back to the present to breakfast in bed with FA and cuffs that serve recreational as well as professional uses. One question: does the man not even own a coffee maker? woulda meant he didn't hafta go out at all... Course, he didn't seem to have an excess of furnishings and all... Fun scene. Terribly (terribly) PG. What can I say. What kept it from being purely FA was the fact that Angell too reappeared later in the ep with Mac to work the case. Made the first scene far less gratuitous than it otherwise woulda been. Theme: Home Entertainment Vs. Going Out to the Theatre. Some days you shouldn't get out of bed. Rule 27. Well. That's just me. Ramp: Product Placement showing a tip of a murder emailed as a photo to the NYPD. *Twizt* Wuz from the perp. FIRST SEGMENT - or what I might call Act I, with the opera element they brought into the mix. A death staged at the theatre, where a voice-coach is found carefully displayed for a select-invited audience. Question: why bother to invite anyone at all? Wouldn't the dry ice have impacted the reading of time of death whether Flack and da Team had arrived within a specific window of time or not? But it's not a show without an audience now is it. Felt compelled to look up the opera, seeing as they made a point of referencing it a few times with who was in what wheelhouse, or what was in who's. Apparently Don Giovanni's about 'the libertine punished;' victims swear revenge; statue of one who lost their life reads to the unrepentant: 'vengeance here awaits my murder.' Profound stuff. Nice reference, actually. I thought it was nice to see all hands processing the scene. Back in the labs I noticed that Adam got a retro-processing/expo sequence of the sort Lindsay'd been doing. Nice to see he got some airtime, though he didn't feature too much. (Can I also just say I'm not missing whassername in the slightest...? ) Onto the usual Bizarre Evidence roll-call. I gotta give a Thank You to the writers. Shocking, I know. It's not gonna be the only one either :lol:. It's for a small thing that made me happy. While the show's often had the CSI's making leaps in possible connections considering sources of trace, Mac actually added "... or who knows what else..." to his list of possibilities. Appreciated. :bolian: Miscellaneous notes: Was happy we got to see Sid. If only briefly. And I don't usually manage to pick out music used on the show, but I think they gutted MGMT tonight. Stood out for some reason. Wow but we got squinty Messer tonight. The scene with Stella and the rejection hotline was kinda cute. Bike Polo? Brutal. Looks like it would be a helluva lot more fun on unicycles . Bemused shake of the head at the person who thought up the name Gavin Skidmore as the bike polo player. Okay, a person of interest naming herself after a seaport on the Black Sea. Hope Messer don't get any baby-name ideas, who knows where he'd take it. Might get Vladivostok or something. Yay, more Adam, ...and more ubertech talk. Well, there hadda be at least one scene spouting multi-syllabic hoo-ha, best to get it done with early. Sid again; here I have a question: how did he come up with a volume of 25 pounds of dry ice to calibrate a revised time of death off the top of his head? Mebbe I should pay more attention to the multi-syllabic stuff... Theme of Act 1: Hinky. Staged evidence versus real evidence left in staging the scene. Everything Connected is not what it seems. Ramp: Stella's recall. She's the VIP on the invite list, apparently, the key to it all. *Twizt* "...I'm the connection. It's me." How could our beloved Stella be the key to a murder? Key master and gate keeper to not so randomly random evidence. Talk about putting one's education to practical use. ACT II Oo!! Holy Crappage!! A reference to a past ep! What, whoa, - there's more?? Wow. The past exists!!! What, even more??? More! More past cases!!!! Where's Count Dracula when ya need him. ...one reference stunned and impressed me. Two got a head tilt, three had me :shifty: and then I was reaching to take something to ease the pounding on my head. TPTB does Mallet Recall. They seem very much prone to doing too much of a good thing to make sure we clue into whatever it is they're trying to retro-remedy in a given week. This week: TPTB acknowledges Continuity, and The Past Exists. And of course, Stella hadda use the meteorite dust as an example. Bring up examples of useful things likely to be encountered in a career in law enforcement why doncha... :lol: That said, Thank You Writers, for the effort of looking back upon what's gone before. Appreciated. I liked the scene of Mac and Angell working together. The whole wheelhouse thing was amuzing, as was Fluffy da Cat. I always like Flack and Hawkes working together (maybe my mental vibes do have some sway...) And while I'm not surprised to hear Adam's a packrat, I was surprised to hear that wee nugget of info coming from Flack... :lol: (how wouldja know, boyo?) It was additionally amuzing given what we saw of Flack's taste in interior decoration earlier. Otherwise, the only other thing that stood out to me was Hawkes rummaging and poking about without gloves on. :shifty::wtf: Theme: What the law couldn't do. What's perfectly legal. Who pays what price. Ramp: dude's a stalker. *Twizt.* The victim's a perp. The perp's a victim. ACT III Flack faced difficult scenarios tonight. The interview with Phillip Langdon; Hawkes unburdening to him about Kara. Difficult areas to address sensitively in general. They used personal links and connections with the characters to do it, Flack with Sam, Hawkes with Kara. More of The Past Exists, Continuity, and Cops&CSIs Have Lives. Again, I applaud the inclusion, and the fact that the mallet used was a softer one in this scene. NY also acknowledged a slightly wider world, Rhode Island, Boston, Jersey, which also helped to put themselves on the map a little by so doing. Thank You Writers, for all the above. It was nice to see Stella branching out into teaching, perhaps being inadvertanly pulled into it. I could see her as someone who would now be good at it (I don't think she always would have been), maybe unexpectedly found she enjoys it, might also see it as a way of giving back somehow. It does seem like it could have been something worthy of using to develop Stella more outside the labs, and not simply a Good Idea included in an ep as a plot device. Ah well. Maybe this is something that can be revisited again down the road. More Squinty Messer. Seriously. Go find yer damned glasses, Danny. Or get someone to find them for you, if you're having trouble. An interesting nod in using Idol contestant Katherine McPhee (an ordinary person suddenly thrust into extreme attention and focus) as a victim of stalking. It was obvious by this point Odessa was guilty of an incredibly elaborate and calculated murder. It seemed to take away from feeling for her as a victim of stalking on one level. I was wanting and waiting to feel more for her, that impact I was talking about. I do think that up until the very end of the ep the method outshone the motive in this one, and then at the end she was somewhat overshadowed by Hawkes. Theme: Everybody pays, no one's unaffected. Ramp: Stella's amazing Recall continues. I can only think Odessa must have sung her question on forensics to Stella, cos man, I wouldn't remember a voice in a class where I couldn't even remember all the faces (all what, 19 of them?). Another note: lectures are often recorded. But I guess that woulda been far too conventional to be interesting. ACT IV Another ep that's had a round table meeting to discuss the case. This nod to Investigation makes me happy. Thank You Writers. A few bemused asides though. Geographical Profiling. And a murderer who carefully staged the scene in great detail, clearly displaying intent and planning. On another show that might be called Behaviour, and looked upon as Evidence in itself, to be considered alongside the otherwise Circumstantial. While these are tools I'd expect all police forces to employ or consider, I'm only just saying mebbe we're not the only ones what got remotes...? Or an office down the hall. Follow the hunter, find the prey; got hard to tell which was which. Onto Odessa's apartment. Generally low key humour in this ep, but I did note Flack's comment "...can't say I like what she's done with the place...," made me smile. I also liked that Mac and Hawkes then had scenes. I liked that they mixed up all the partnering work done in the ep. Yeah, the flyer was another eyebrow tweakage moment. Was the club in Jersey? Did they arrest her in Jersey? I got nuthin, only wondering if they could do that? ...aaaaaaaand, of course, there's a singing gig. Nicely stitched in, all things considered, with the whole voice coach thing etc. The only reason I comment is because I was expecting worse from Stunt Casting. Mcphee did pretty well, and so did the show. Not over the top at all. Thank You Writers. (and don't be getting used to this :lol: ...though I'd be happy if it was the norm rather than out of the ordinary). Another note here, that stage set-up was reminiscent somewhat of where we've seen Mac playing in various eps. I suppose it also amuzes me to think Mac might play in bar bands in Jersey on his off-time I did appreciate the regret and reluctance Mac brought to bear as he was obliged to arrest Odessa. I believed the weight behind his words "...this is the toughest part of my job." And of course, there was an interesting moment between Mac and Sheldon too, as so many have noted. I couldn't tell if Mac was seriously upset or not. He might have been, but the look on his face also seemed to suggest he wished he could have said something similar, and was more surprised that Hawkes actually did in such a pointed fashion. It seemed that Mac held his peace while conflicted, while Sheldon, rubbed a little raw by his own personal history with Kara, had no such compunction. - The ep actually addressed some pet peeves; the writers referenced past cases and episodes, the personal lives of the characters, acknowledged a wider world than NY and gave themselves a context. They didn't overuse Ubertechnology, there were no guts flying about via virtual autopsies. DL was non-existent. The ep involved ordinary people who got caught up in unforeseen things. There were moments of humour, there were many different pairings among the team, I loved that Hawkes was more involved, there was a nice display of handcuffing sizzlage even, ...and yet. And yet and yet and yet. It wasn't a resoundingly amazing episode. It was even keeled, not much for rise and fall, not much of an emotional impact, though I can see the intent and efforts made. Stalking is heinous. But not even the melancholy tone of the opening sequence permeated the rest of the ep. It would have helped if it had. We did get to see the older brother Phillip Langdon, even suing the Rhode Island police. The path to an emotional 'in' for the ep seemed to be thru Hawkes, and it was effective, to a degree. I cared about how he felt about this case due to his past with Kara; it still somehow did little to heighten the impact of what happened to the stalking victims who never had a voice at all, not until Odessa, and even that final scene was more memorable for Hawkes than for her. The scenario's tricky, when the victim's a perp (Baxter) and the perp's a victim (Odessa). Shades of grey. If that really was the point then maybe I'm more impressed than I was willing to give the ep credit for. The premise was good. I couldn't tell how much I was supposed to feel for Odessa, but the writers clearly wanted there to be an emotional impact, and used Hawkes, and to a lesser extent Flack and Mac to achieve it. I dunno how to explain why this episode didn't manage to rise above a certain plateau with all that it managed to do. The only comparison I can use here is the ep 5.06 Enough, where the lawyers killed their clients, and that woman was going to testify, regardless of what had happened to her. That ep, from god knows how many months ago, is one that still stands out for all the right reasons. This one was fading after just a few days.
I liked this episode much better than the last couple of eps. it was more CSI-like - finally, I really missed it.
i didnt realy know what to put for this episode although there wasnt much action or thrill there was certainly drama and it was quite emotional. i liked the flack/angell bit until i remembered about the finale then i was pissed off about it. i was glad to see a bit less of danny and more of the others he has been front and centre in many episodes this season and although i like him its getting kind of boring. its sooo much better without lindsay there and her not even being mentioned made me a whole lot happier. i was glad hawkes and flack got bigger roles but i was a bit dissapointed about stellas role when she played a key part in the investigation.i think in some episodes she has a bigger role when she doesnt need it and in this one it was the oppisite. i thought the bit at the end with hawkes could have been a bit more discreet i mean come on you dont say that in fromt of your boss.:lol: all in all it was a quiet but sort of sweet episode