Well, I guess
somebody has to post
something for the non-spoiler folk, so I’m volunteering myself with my take on “Toe Tags.”
I have to say, I really liked it. I don't expect
CSI to be a roller-coaster of excitement each week; I like getting slower cases sometimes, especially when they make some much-needed room to show our intrepid forensics investigators as real people. And we got lots of that this time... Catherine's grieving for Sam and Brass's sympathy... Warrick's phone call to his wife and Greg's outing himself as an Eagle Boy Scout... Nick and Sofia's disgust over the stupidity of their case and Nick's empathy for the wife... Sara's first impression of Grissom and Grissom's alarmed face as she came at him with the chainsaw. I don't want the "people" stuff to overpower the "forensics investigators" stuff, but I don't want the latter to crowd out the former either. So I liked the fact that the cases allowed both me and the characters to breathe.
I think the format of the episode helped with that. If it'd been only one or two slow cases, the episode might have felt like it was plodding along. But because there were four, each case was simple and straightforward and yet there was no wasted time. In addition, we got to see the CSIs methodically do their job even as they revealed parts of themselves as people.
Kind of like how we saw the dead people be... well, dead, yet they got to reveal part of themselves as well. I liked the "dead man speaking" technique; too often on this show it's easy to ignore the victim in favor of the investigation and the suspects & witnesses, so I liked that the thoughts and feelings of the victims were brought to us front and center this time.
That made the framing with Gil and the students work for me - at the beginning of the episode we viewed the bodies as the students did: bad-smelling puzzles on a stretcher... but at the end, we viewed them as Gil did: people who can no longer speak for themselves and need a medium, someone to champion their cause and seek justice and closure for them. I really liked what that said about Gil, and that it was shown to us through the technique of the episode rather than stated outright.
In addition, I liked how this episode established Gil as a teacher... doing a seminar for the students, a mention of his teaching past in San Fransisco, giving guidance to less experienced CSIs when they needed his advice (Warrick & Nick), gently making suggestions when required (no way Catherine would have ordinarily missed putting those fingerprints together; she's dealing with a lot right now).
Is this maybe setting something up for the future - a direction for Gil to go in when he finally leaves the lab (and William Petersen finally leaves the show)? That's spec, not spoilers - I decided immediately after the first episode that I was going spoiler-free again. Not because of GSR, but because I don’t want to know the cases if they’re going to continue to be this good. That’s right –
Adzix,
Ziggy,
theatresporter,
Gillian, my other spoiler-free friends… you are not alone. *hugs them in solidarity*
One last thing: I thought Doc's comment about whether or not Catherine would be found in Grissom's tub was very revealing metatext. Now you know I love the GSR - but they
are supervisor and subordinate. So do I think that Grissom and Sara are doing something wrong? Yeah, I do - from a work perspective. From a personal perspective, I think they're doing something right.
And I like that moral conflict. Keeping them apart - aside from being personally unsatisfying and ruining a six-year-old storyline - would have been a dramatically barren choice. There's a lot more story potential to keeping them together like this, with the pin on that sup/sub grenade ready to be pulled at any moment....
So I was heartened by Ecklie's comment last episode (& the subsequent nervous looks), and by Doc's comment to Catherine that suggested
of course she'd never be in Grissom's bathtub, 'cause she/he wouldn't go there. That suggests to me that TPTB are very much aware of the sup/sub factor, and don't plan to ignore it. And I hope very, very much that they don't. The sup/sub factor has GOT to be dealt with. There should be negative fallout from their decision, and they should have to deal with those consequences; that's real life.
And that doesn't bother me; I look forward to seeing that storyline pan out, actually. This is a workplace drama, after all, and how far employers and employees are willing to let their work lives dictate the parameters of their personal lives, especially in a dimension as fundamentally necessary to the human spirit as romance... well, to me that's something that all people have to deal with sooner or later, and something that's fascinating to observe. So I don't mind seeing it as a storyline here.
All in all... I thought that despite being slow-moving and simply plotted, it was a very meaty, moving, provocative episode.
Postscript: I have to say it… ordinarily, I just don’t really think of Greg/ES as being particularly hot… but in this episode? Rockin’ that stormtrooper helmet? Hauling himself up over the mountain in that T-shirt, muscles bulging in those forearms with that toothy grin on his face? Hel-
looooo, Greggo! Come to Mama, baby!
I'm sorry. I'm a bad GSR fan. I am. It's just, I've been playing nonstop Sims lately, and my flourishing cities (Corriville and Corrivania) require my full attention at all times. (Zig)
That’s okay – I’ve been spending my time in Smallville. I can't help it. God help me, I’m Lexified. I believe that Michael Rosenbaum has developed his own strain of WPHS, naughty boy….
