As quick as I am to rail against CSI:NY, I have very little to complain about. The shoplifting case was rickety, and I'd eat my shorts if it wasn't all a setup for the last scene, where Stella played agony aunt to Nelly Furtado. I give kudos to the writers for heeding continuity for Stella-something they have steadfastly ignored for Flack and Danny-but this constant reaching out to women in even remotely similar circumstances is overkill, and to me, it doesn't ring true. The possession of a vagina does not correlate to instant empathy.
Violence against women is disgusting in any circumstance and regardless of frequency or duration, but I don't see how Stella can claim tangential sorority in this case. Frankie hit her once before she popped a cap in his ass; Mr. Lifter subjected his wife to years of chronic physical and emotional abuse. Those are incidents of vastly different magnitudes, and I'm not sure if Stella can understand such a situation. Not when she ended the abuse so emphatically and finally when it started. She may want to, but desire and ability are two different animals.
The maze case was fantastic, and for all my howling about Mac's hypocrisy, I couldn't really fault him here. No, he shouldn't have been processing the scene of Reed's beating, but I think he handled himself admirably throughout, and his distinctly Mackian concern for Reed endeared him to me for at least a week. It was paternal but guarded, and I don't think Mac is sure just how far he is allowed to go with Reed. Even after Reed hugged him at the funeral, it took Mac several seconds to respond in kind, and he was ginger, as though touching such a tangible reminder of Claire was painful.
I would like to interrupt this bit of analysis to implore the CSI:NY writers not to resurrect Claire Conrad Taylor from the dead during sweeps or mid-S4. It would be incredibly cheap and slimy, and don't think I didn't see the trapdoor for it that you so cack-handedly inserted into the episode. Mac has enough angst to fill a garbage barge as it is, and The Wife Who Faked Her Death Because She Was Unhappy in Her Marriage or Working Undercover For the CIA screams turgid soap opera cliche. Stop it. At once.
I do like Reed, however. Clearly, his adoptive parents raised him to be an empathetic, gentle young man, and him reaching for stuffy, awkward Mac in the midst of his own hurt was a lovely moment, even if the grumpy part of my brain screamed that once again, it was all about Mac's woe and not the pain of a son who has just learned that there isn't even a grave to visit.
The interrogation scene with Flack and the idiot med student breathed new life into my guttering hope that Flack's Daddy issues will be explored at some point. That "Excuse me?" when Mr. Med got his whine on that "no one would understand what it's like" to be expected to follow in his uber-successful father's footsteps was awfully quick. It might've been because he sniffed a confession, but I sensed that there was also a bit of, "My ass, I don't know what that's like, asshole," in there, too.
On a purely shallow note, was anyone else perving over the perfect shots of Flack's ass as he prowled around the table? Just me?
And no, it did not go unnoticed that without the soggy, useless D/L drama to eat valuable screen time, the show was much stronger, and Danny was, well, Danny. The only pity is that the writers refuse to leave well enough alone, and rather than develop other characters further, they're going to peddle this insipid, steaming romance patty by sending Danny to Montana while the lab is already a man down. Yes, that's certainly plausible given what we know of protocol and Mac's disposition. Jesus Christ. Maybe Anna Belknap will decide she prefers motherhood to acting, and Lindsay will disappear, along with this nauseating storyline.
In regards to the previews for next week, it appears that Frankie Mala's sister is the one that gets her crazy on in the interrogation room. Unless Stella has killed someone else's brother offscreen. Whether Medea Mala, Thrower of Chairs, is the source of the contaminated blood remains to be seen, though that's the sort of painful irony for which the show is known.
