Grade 'Uncertainty Rules'

Uh, yes! :lol: Season 6 hasn't been completely terrible, but it's been the hugest disappointment to me in that we used to have a ton of those episodes each season where Lindsay was just her, on her own. But there has literally been one episode in S6 where Lindsay hasn't interacted with Danny in some way: Blacklist. And even in that one she had a conversation about him. :scream: I can't get over it; in this sense (and a few others), this is by far my least favourite season.

I've been watching a few of the S3 episodes lately, and Stella had her own office even way back then. I know there was another table in the office, but it didn't look like a desk; she was always there on her own, unless Flack/Sid/Lindsay/Danny were coming in to visit her. And I have noticed too that she seems to be even more firmly lodged in the role of Mac's second-in-command this season, but she's always had that role. Even in "Raising Shane", Inspector Gerrard mentioned that "[She] and Taylor have a knack for hiring high-tech geeks...", implying that Stella had some sort of say in the hiring process. So I'm not sure if the supervising she's been doing this season means she might be replacing Mac.

She also connected with the vic in "Live and Let Die" (the whole "this is how I first saw her, and I can't forget her" line, along with the way she followed the girl's life throughout the episode); the little girl in "Boo", and the wife in "Rush to Judgment". How well those scenes were acted might be incredibly subjective -- her handling of the girl in Admissions is one of my favourites :lol:: awkward yet very sympathetic -- but they've been gradually increasing the degree of investment she has in the cases she connects with over the seasons. And if they've been doing it like that on purpose, to make a point about Lindsay's character, then I think James would've been a great cap on that, to show how far she's come. Assuming it has been on purpose, of course.

Throwing Lindsay's past into this episode very likely would've killed it, because a huge part of its success hinged on it being a fun one. But I still think they missed a huge opportunity.

 

awww that's not fair!!!:guffaw::guffaw:

i agree though, i think both their shy awkwardness was the point, it would've been silly if mac had gone 'hey kid, i feel ya!' and that was that. instant connections don't always happen and i think mac tapping into his geeky shy side to try to get through to the kid worked quite well.

 

I beg to differ! :guffaw:

I have some mixed feelings about this episode, though I can not quite put the finger on what puts me off. It was not bad. But it was not brilliant either.

A bit too graphic, the murder scene way too gory. (Oh, and Danny repeating at least 3 times for those really slow who did not get it the first time - "and the spatter goes on the ba-athro-o-om door." ) The case itself - just a collection of random scenes, nothing really unites them, there is absolutely no logic - they could be collected in any order and it would've changed nothing. Yes, I know, the crime itself was random, but I think the writers overdid it a bit - James' friends supposedly planned his birthday celebration (that's what his girlfriend told), but it came out like chaotic wandering. :shifty:

The guy playing James was just great - totally believable in all his scenes. :thumbsup: He really looked drugged and hallucinating, slurred speech was a nice touch. If he's not an actor, I hope he gets noticed and gets something else to try.

Flack's interrogation was great. - All his facial expressions. :thumbsup::drool: He was ready to believe that things just got out of control, but then he was so disgusted with James. They both were perfect there. :thumbsup:

LSD is a rather strange choice of drug for the story - I heard it's not much on the street nowadays - there is a lot of other stuff, easier to get, less expensive to make and just as "tripping". And what's that with Mac determining what drug James's on by symptoms? :wtf: Wau! What a guess! Why didn't they just take a blood sample? :lol:

The scene at the assisted living facility was hilarious. :lol::lol: What a feisty old lady! :thumbsup: I was laughing so hard, I nearly fell out of the chair.

Why did the drug dealer had a huge hematoma not only on his cheek next to the place where the bullet grazed, but also above the brow and on the fronthead? - He never fought with anybody - all the guys were too wasted to resist. Did they decide just a wound from a small caliber gun was not enough? :shifty:

Mac playing a babysitter for a grown-up guy all day long.....:wtf: :scream: Everybody else is working, trying to solve the crime, and he is taking time off walking his charge on the streets from morning till night? And even worse - he's not interacting with his team (he only called Don once to give him a bit about a bull ride), and he's not interested what's going on, what's the progress. And the team also doesn't even mention him.... "Nice".

I absolutely don't agree that Mac was connecting with James. I did not see any connection whatsoever there. A lot of pretense, a bit of lecturing, but no connection. :scream:
Mac with a small kid in an earlier season ("Necrophilia Americana"?) was cute, Mac with Reed was touching, Mac here trying to relate to the physics student was just phony. :shifty:

Mac lecturing on physics trivia...- "that phrase comes to mind often in my field" e-eek.... Platitude about the world - double eek. :wtf: Say "chee-eee-ez". Mac presenting himself as an arms expert or a racing fan was good, he was believable. Mac becoming all of a sudden a physics enthusiast - is not. Even coming from Gary it still sounded very false. :shifty:

In the shooting scene Mac shot the black guy before he fired, and he did not give a warning, neither did he identify himself. Strictly speaking, he should have been investigated and found to be at fault.

And then - where did this phrase come from - "James, don't do this! Don't do this, son!....You don't want to do this, trust me, son."? :wtf: Eh? :wtf: What. The. F$@&? :wtf: I nearly barfed. :scream: Am I the only one who was shuddering at this "son"? Is Horatio-sness contagious? :lol: God, please, no! That's bad enough on Miami, it's just sick on NY, coming from Mac. Whose "brilliant" idea was that?

Oh, and a tiny-teeny glitch from the shooting scene - James switched the street side a couple of times during the scene. :lol:

So, not bad, but babysitter Mac with his "relating" and "son" pretty much killed it for me. :devil:

 

it was good.
Stella rocked, Hawkes hair looks wicked. the storyline was great

cant wait until next week ep. Pot of Gold on St paddy's day

 

I gave an A+ for this episode.

Foremost, I loved the storyline. Somehow, I thought It was great! Even though the girls' and the boys were not connected but the timing were beyond belief, like what Mac said, "world's colliding".

Some of the parts were scary. And I agree, this episode turns the show into a horror story but I find it really intriguing! Particularly, where the police officer's faces were distorted and looked like a zombie.

However, I wonder where's Lindsay... I didn't see her in this episode.

Gary's (Mac Taylor) character, always take my breath away! :lol: How he approach the suspect, James Roberts (Joe Reegan) in a different way, taking it slow... knowing that he just suffered a trauma. Giving him encouragement as well as moral supports. And telling him that things are unpredictable 'cause we never know what would happen the next second.

 

First "A" episode of the year, in my book. Great storyline...enough quirks (bingo, dwarf, bull riding...etc.) to make it interesting. WHY did the girls drug the boys...to get their $$? Mac was a bit over the top (as usual) but bearable. At least screen time was somewhat balanced.

I agree, the actor playing James was very good. It took me a few minutes to recognize the security officer from Star Trek: Enterprise as the bad guy. He was pretty over the top, but fun in a very weird way.

Great episode!

Tobin

 

oops my mistake Pot of gold is next week not st paddy's day.

loved this ep

 

It's been a very frustrating and generally unsatisfying season for NY this year. It's getting harder to bother to say anything about it, even in a devoted community such as this. Sorry, Hill, but this is not the golden year some of us had been looking forward to. If the producers etc are happy with how the show and the season are going, the past few even, then I guess we're on increasingly divergent paths, and I'm not likely, as a viewer, to find what I hope for in the show. Whaddaya do.

That said.

This ep. Was actually one of the better ones this season. We're only two thirds of the way thru it. Hadda happen some time...

There were a few miscellaneous oddities. Excessive Chelsea University. LSD as the drug of choice and it's swift ID, tho part of me suspects the writers were also just looking for a way to be able to use the word "psychotropic". Seems to be flava of the month. Vaguely wondering if bingo halls pay out winnings to the tune of $25000 in cash, or else why did the girls drug the guys anyways. Or did they find a bank with unheard of customer service open at that hour of night or just a moneymart. Mebbe I missed something there. A cabbie letting less than sober guys drive his cab for ...$100? Sheldon keenly if somewhat randomly looking up at something (cos he was directed to in order to be able to float the line) and Messer asking "what's up?" (And also somehow foregoing adding "doc" to the end of the inquiry). Later on in the ep I wanted to ask Danny the same thing, with regards to his hair. What, was he wanting to feel taller? Suddenly insecure or competitve with Hawkes...? .

- I thought the set dressing, trippy fx (pardon me, psychotropic) (sudden random insertion of "Curvature of Lettuce" here) and make-up was good in this ep, and handled the gore convincingly and well.
- I actually didn't mind Hawke's hair :lol: but I think that's cos I was hoping it might get more than a one ep showcase, just so we could get a good look .
- I thought the actor playing James was solid. Very good. And that musta been one of the most interesting and fun guest starring roles someone could hope to win in a series.
- Adam's brief appearance simply made me want to see more of him. Mind you, I always feel that way. Same with Sid.
- Good eye Stella with the whole door/blood thing, and yes, she does seem to written more in a supervisory role again. It's like every six episodes that gets re-established. But it's still nice to see.

There were more than a few mallet moments. And that's what I gotta put to a larger overall vision of the show, and not the writers alone. It's getting very frustrating that the producers et al. really don't seem to think much of the audience they're hoping to attract or maintain. Give people a wee bit of credit to catch on, especially when the actors can convey a great deal without their dialogue essentially being used to narrate it all. Case in point in this episode was Mac and James. I hope Stella fares better in her ep with the girl that's coming up.

The very first scene between Mac and Sarah, I think, where the fact James is a science buff came up, from the acting alone I thought it was apparent that Mac felt some kinship or recognition of some part of himself in the younger James. That's great. A nice, subtle moment where we get to read the scene and fill it in. Allows for subtext even. And then the mallets came down. It was apparently necessary to include the dialogue "...I can relate," and it didn't get a whole lot better. Cheers for the effort to show a different side of Mac that didn't overshadow the case. Just. Give us some credit next time. I was literally out of the room long before James ever took off :lol:. I think I was getting a refill. That or I was brushing my aching teeth. And worse. While he often frustrates me, I like Mac. :vulcan: Sheesh. I think Gary did what he could. I think it could have been a helluvalot worse. I hope he gets better writing in the remaining episodes this season.

For all the supposed focus and attention that was gonna happen with the characters this season, it's like the writers couldn't decide what to do with them or where to take them, like they didn't want to do anything definitive. I wasn't looking for arcs or big moments, just taking what NY used to do very well, moments of character interaction and brief window insights, and allowing a bit more time for it. We've had a lot of Trying Very Hard, with what often seem half arsed results. For all the half asses, mebbe we can compile a whole baker's dozen or so by the time the season's over... So far, for material, Flack wins. </meh disappointment>

As for Flack. In a way I get why people read him as being angrier or harder than he was before Angell's death, where his sarcasm wasn't quite so caustic. More taut, I might say. He was pissed during his part of the interrogation. And yet while I read that too in the context of the episode and where it sits in the series with his character yada, I also tend to see nuggets that the actors really dig into, material that lets them invest more intensity and emotion than "...suspect was a white male between 25 and 35 / ...we're awaiting results from CODIS / blah blah I'm purveying the pertinent points for picking apart puzzles. And so when those wee scenes arise, it's like they're really played hard, or at least, those versions seem to be the ones picked for the final cut. What was also both nice and a good follow up, if equally mallet heavy in it's set up by the previous scene to contrast, was Flack later finding out James was accurate in his story ("...he was right??"), about clowns and seahorses etc., and he wasn't the one who killed his friends. It would also be nice for Flack not to be perpetually be used to set up the ever brilliant CSIs.

I liked the pacing of the progression. By the halfway point it was established that James was innocent, and the rest of the ep was filling in the rest of his evening out. In some ways the ep was reminiscent of a Vegas one. That's a good thing, btw.

The follow up of James and Mac in interrogation, that opened up with the trippy fly, was verging on quirky. Off kilter enough to keep me from finding it entirely predictable. Ditto James bolting in the street due the bull poster, or whatever that was. Now, quantum physics is not where I earn my dollar, but the inclusion of all that with a philosophical twist really felt like the show was trying very hard. Sometimes ya just don't want it quite so apparent that it's trying so hard. As in "...you can't believe that God plays dice with the universe" (Mac); later on, "The timing on the sequence of events is unbelievable" (Stella) yada etc. It certainly was not the greatest use of Mac in an episode, but it was a different side to him brought out, if awkward in writing and realization both, and the attempt was appreciated. Further, I won't begrudge an ep like this a) cos however much I get frustrated, I still like Mac, b) Stella will have an ep with some personal link to a girl, I think, c) Flack will have an ep where he tries to help a little boy. (And gad help me, I'm so glad the writers went with Gary over AB for having a character feel some personal resonance).

The show's conclusion, while still mallet heavy, reigned itself in, and didn't make more of the so-called Connection than should have been.

Things that perhaps endeared the ep to me more than the overall quality might suggest was warranted:
- Bingo, from left field. Was not surprised but nor did I see it coming. Well done.
- "I beg to differ." Possibly the best part of the hour.
- midget wrestling. Beg pardon. Wrestling with little people.
- which gave us "...what are you talking about..."/"...what're you talking about??"
- the early going with clowns. Vindication. Doesn't everyone know by now that clowns are evil?? Nor could I help but flash to "can't sleep clowns will eat me can't sleep clowns will eat me..." Well. In my defense. It'd been a helluva week before I got to see it.

Speaking of. Messer and Flack. I like both of them. Well. Messer frustrates me as much as or more than Mac does. But I still like. My point. Iz. I'm not one to fawn and flutter every time Danny and Flack have a scene together, nor is a scene between them simply fabulous by default (go on, "...beg to differ," I know it's comin' ). ...However. The scene here with the wrestler was among the best and funniest I recall involving Danny and Flack in quite some time. A very pleasant surprise, and injected some humor in a very dark and gory set of circumstances. The whole episode, really, generally managed to balance both sides of that coin very well, with all the things in the list above helping to keep the show from reveling too deeply in uber seriocity and moodiness, in a way that Sanguine, among others, flirted with a bit.

As for the real Paul Bunyon, Rufus. Just a smidgen over the top :lol:, but a believable purely violent malevolent scumbag. As for his accent. Well. He had just been shot in the face... beyond that, I got nuthin :lol:. I did find it odd that he was gonna go after James. With a body guard/second who's anything but anonymous and unnoticeable, closer to Paul Bunyon in stature than Rufus himself. To do what, eliminate James, a witness, one who was anything but sober and had just spent the entire evening Not Remembering, kill him in public, in the middle of the street filled with more witnesses, so Rufus wouldn't be linked to the other four homicides, even though they'd tracked him down, oh, ...cos he was linked to the other four homicides...?? Silly me, in another quantum random curvature of lettuce that makes perfect sense. I dunno how Rufus found Mac and James. ...Perchance he spotted Mac chasing James down a busy Manhattan street while dodging one of their endlessly purchased flying coffees. Which would explain the ongoing walking around and buying coffees, if nothing else. .

The slo mo shootout was only unpredicatble insofar as I couldn't believe the show went ahead with it, both the shoot out, as a scenario, and the sloooo mooOOooOoo :lol: as a style. And while I didn't think James was gonna shoot Rufus, the portrayal was such that I at least believed that James thought he was going to.

The ep had some good, darkly funny moments, some extremely violent circumstances, Stella stepping forward in the investigation and Mac playing more of a side role, until the shootout of course. Up till then, it was almost as if Mac and Stella had swapped coffees earlier in the day and wound up taking a page out of the other's more typical memo book. I think Gary did well with what he had, and was probably happy to change it up. I think Joe Reegan was very good. I enjoyed the fact the case was compiled one piece at a time, which I suppose might make those who brought in the unified field theory happy for that as well. I will remember this episode for the bingo hall above all else, I'm sure.

Anyway.

Call it better than their usual. Not stellar. But a step up. C+ to a B-.

Wow this is long. I give up on editing. Mebbe it makes sense. Mebbe it depends on your lettuce. It's been an interesting week.

PS. As for Lindsay, and the suggestion it shoulda been her having some rapport with James. I gotta say. That did not even occur to me. Of course, I don't tend to think about Lindsay unless unpleasantly confronted by her onscreen in my living room. In short. While there is a commonality in surviving a slaughter, there were enough differences it wasn't a natural link I made. Further, I don't think Lindsay does "rapport" well, and it's usually about her and not about the person that's triggered it. I'm glad I didn't hafta sit thru something like that. While Mac was awkward, the situation wasn't somehow linked into his back-story, and made about him, while using James as a tool to serve up the opportunity. And the ep was better to keep it on that level. Doubtful it woulda worked the same way had Lindsay been given that "rapport" instead. As it was, I'm glad I didn't hafta witness her bolting from the crime scene.

:lol:

 

Oh, I don't disagree with that. It's just with the way people keep asking about seeing Lindsay on the spoiler blogs, it doesn't seem like the smartest decision they've ever made -- and it's a decision which has really soured the entire season for me. I don't think it's at all similar to previous seasons. Even in S5 there were ten episodes that Lindsay didn't even see Danny, and before this, S5 was the most DL-heavy season. It's really...well, toxic, imo.

As was the one in "Stealing Home" -- it didn't stop Lindsay from getting invested in the case; both times.

Lindsay gave her the bear, she didn't take it, so Lindsay left it at her bedside table. Then she said, "we're trying to find out who hurt your family". The little girl (Rose?) said "Monster".

That's when Danny asked, "You saw a monster?" (that was his only line in that scene) Then Rose pointed at the drawing she left on the bed, which Lindsay picked up, then showed to Danny.

That's the scene as I recall it. It definitely seemed to me that Lindsay was the one who took the lead there, and in a way she didn't really have to (it could be argued that they needed what the girl told them, so she had to be there -- but she didn't have to get the girl anything, let alone spend money to do it. That made it feel like she was making an effort to reach out).

They both asked the questions in that second scene (I thought Lindsay looked guilty as she was asking hers, because she deliberately didn't meet the woman's eyes). I didn't see a stone face, I saw concern in the interview and awkwardness at the end...see, really subjective :lol: The only fact there is that she certainly didn't have to bring her flowers, and after the case had ended, no less. If she didn't care, she wouldn't bother.

Oh, that's definitely debatable There've been several episodes where another team member is injured/in-trouble/etc, that I've noticed she's either the first or the only one who happens to ask the obvious "are they alright" question...and while it might be an obvious question, it implies she's concerned, or she wouldn't bother.

There were all sorts of little gestures I saw from her that didn't make her seem flat or uncaring at all -- she put her hand on the girl's when she was telling her that "this happens to more people than you think", and when the girl was starting to claim that she felt really stupid for letting it happen, Lindsay was so quick to jump in with the "no, you can't blame yourself" (she actually cut the girl off when she did it). To me she seemed awkward at the beginning, because the girl singled her out to talk to and Lindsay seemed to feel she wasn't going to be the best confidante...as it went on, though, it became more about the girl. And then there was her disgust when she uncovered what the pedophiles were doing.

No, the James scenes were fairly serious...but this might be another reason I thought the episode would've been better handled as two separate cases that met up into one. Because between the rest of the craziness they were coming across, for me it was impossible to feel the full effect of James's trauma -- even in his scenes with Mac, it was just a more subtle undertone to the episode. And I don't know, maybe that was the point.

Yeah, I think we might have to I mean, it's not exactly like they've been keeping her in the background this season during the episodes she's in ... and if I thought how much a character does in the episodes they show up in meant anything, then the last thing I'd be thinking is that tptb don't believe she can handle it. For me it's very annoying because if it wasn't for the gratuitous DL moment(s) shoved into her every episode, I think I'd actually be fairly happy with S6 on the Lindsay-front.

They've been giving her moments and all, but with the exception of a very few (mostly with Mac and Stella), they don't seem to have been putting any character into those moments except for the ones that involve Danny...which leaves many of them fun, but kind of bland. [Actually, bringing up Sid in "Flag on the Play" -- while I loved seeing Sid get an episode to himself, they've been doing a very similar thing there, putting zero Sid-character into that storyline, and therefore showing no reason why it was unique to him.] And to me, a lot of those scenes would change very, very little if Lindsay shared them with someone other than Danny; because it usually just seems to be him in those scenes with her to remind the audience that they're together. I can't see why the world would end if we weren't reminded that Lindsay's married to him in just one of her episodes.

 

elwood, i totally agree about the mallet moments - they do seem to have quite a lot of them, but it's not exclusive to csi ny or even csi generally. it is really annoying tho - i think maybe producers/writers generally assume audiences are pretty thick. maybe they have to?

 

Elwood, lisa, what do you mean by mallet moments? Sorry my vocabulary isn't that wide. I Google'd it and I got hammer.

 

Yeah, I noticed Stella's office too. She has her own but her office now looks bigger than in season 3. I still hope the team is intact for as long as they can.

 

Hiya Geeno

:lol: sorry, sorry, ...mostly that's just me using my own personal, made-up tags for things.

What I mean by mallet moments is a) when things that would seem to be obvious get excessive and repetitive reinforcement thru dialogue or depiction, often to the point of redundancy, or b) there is an incredible lack of subtlety in getting a point across.

In other words, I feel, as a viewer, that I get beaten over the head because the writers and producers don't give me the credit of being able to understand what they wish to convey. It's like when someone slows their speech down and talks louder in-order-to-make-sure-you-are-CATCHING-ON. :lol:

In this particular episode, I felt that the writers were rather heavy handed in letting us know that Mac felt he understood James, and used his dialogue to narrate the interaction. For example, when Mac was talking with Sarah, I felt it was evident thru good acting by Gary and Sarah Habel that Mac related to James' temperment and personality, and yet the writers had him say "I can relate," which essentially had him narrating the moment, only the merest half step from "I am relating." This, and a general lack of subtlety continued through-out the episode, and rather belabored the point. Of course, NY has never really specialized in subtlety, especially in recent years :lol:.

I think viewers are capable of grasping far more than writers and producers may think, that viewers like to be challenged, and that the lowest common denominator for understanding a show, even if one is only a casual viewer of it, could be of a far higher standard.

That's a generic complaint I have about both CSI:NY and of course teevee in general.

It irks me :lol:.

So. Mallets. Or Hammers. That would work equally well. An overly heavy hand in conveying information or excessive pounding of things that are discernable or already blatantly obvious. I suppose I just like the word "mallets" better. More fun somehow. I'm also picturing rubber ones, useful for repeated strikes w/o causing as much mess or permanent damage...

Apologies for my habit of using my own personal short-hand to the point of incoherent posting.

 

Thanks Elwood! Now I understand.