Re: Goodbye doesn't mean forever
My apologies for the later than late post on "Simple Man" scenes. Mouse, keyboard and video graphics card exhibiting a level of IT demonic possession, which would make Linda Blair so proud. I think I have most of it exorcised but this may be wishful thinking on my part.
Ok. As mentioned much earlier, "SM" was the first Miami episode for me. Plus I discovered it during summer re-runs because I didn't even know that there was a CSI spinoff set in Miami. Sad but true. So the only background information I had at the time of viewing this episode was that Horatio had a younger brother, Raymond, a cop, who was killed in the line of duty.
Up to the point of that first intro scene where Yelina walks off the elevator and into Miami Canon verse, Horatio had been ultra cool, calm, controlled and a total kick ass (as our Ducky would put it) with a deserved rating of 10 licks on the Lollipop Scale of Asskickingness.
Then we get that absolute stunner of a scene switch and a pivotal Canon verse point when he looks up from his conversation with Timmy and looks like he's been hit for a thunderous six (sweet Sachin style off a blistering Warne delivery). It’s almost cartoonish how H gets all pop-eyed. This astonishingly swift transition from Terminator to Charlie Brown is startling in its rapidity and total effect it has on Horatio.
From the ensuing dialogue coupled with the body language, it is self-evident, even to the dim-witted that there is deep-seated richly textured history with these two. It is also self-evident that of the two, Yelina is more direct and accepting of this past history and their current state of "truce" than Horatio.
This character dichotomy is intriguing in that Horatio, the tough cop turned even tougher CSI can't quite look Yelina in the eye but takes intense covert glances at her when she isn't looking. It also tickled me pink that his attempt at an excuse for missing dinner at her house was couched in his over-attention to his fingernails; it’s exactly the sort of thing one does when fibbing or when placed in an uncertain and vulnerable position.
The last scene of this episode is yet another defining moment in the Miami Canon verse. There is another surprise from Horatio. This time, he’s actually the one that takes the more direct albeit tentative steps in admitting that he wants something more….
H: I’ve been thinking about Raymond
Y: I think about him everyday. <pause>. I don’t want to go there. Too complicated.
H: What if I were to say you wouldn’t have to go there alone...
Y: Do you understand what you’re saying?
H: I do.
As soon as the dialogue sunk in, the "ain’t that a kick in the head" realization that she was his brother's widow and that he still harbored deep-seated unresolved feelings for her weighed in mightily. This revealation then placed their story in this episode into intriguing perspective by setting the stage for their storyarc and establishing the background of their relationship.
This relationship is straight up Coke unlike the current state of dilute day-old Pepsi-ness they have introduced in Season 4.
So. Not. Even. Close.
