Re: "Dead Doll" Discussion **SPOILERS**
Ah, Dead Doll. Plenty of things that were good, and plenty that weren't so good…
Firstly, the new opening credits look almost the same, but with the addition of the lovely Wallace Langham, and why not? He’s a great regular lab guy. But I did feel that to do justice to his new position they gave him a job to do, which lab guys don’t normally do, and that was process a female suspect… It just seemed odd to me, although he did well at looking pretty freaked out by Natalie.
So obviously, the episode was focused on Sara, with the (unusual) use of old flashbacks. I actually liked them, and to me it did make it feel more as though Sara could potentially be in a life threatening situation. I loved when Sara called Grissom ‘Gilbert’, how great is that! It’s the small details that tend to please me the most, as the larger things and plot lines are often too ridiculous for me to really appreciate them, if you know what I mean.
I could complain about the silly details in this episode probably all night, but I’ll try and keep it brief, because I genuinely thought this episode was OK (not great, awesome etc. but OK nonetheless). Firstly, one of my main complaints from the end of last season was that Natalie just wasn’t a convincing enough serial killer for my liking. And once again, I just don’t buy it. Fair enough, I wondered how she got Sara into the car in the first place, and they answered it simply and convincingly. But after that I just don’t really see how Sara didn’t overpower her, or at least successfully crash the car. Where were they? It looked like there were lights and therefore potential witnesses?
After this, and pretty obviously, why hadn’t they looked into the crashed red car before? It was obvious to find it and find how it got into the desert, because for however good they think Natalie is, she isn’t a complete genius able to magically get a car into the desert on her own. My only other Natalie issue, and I may be missing something, but at the end of last season Grissom spoke to her and she was fairly coherent (well, much more so than now) so why has she suddenly had a complete breakdown? Or is it just convenient for the plot?
OK, so flash flood etc, Sara gets out of the car. It’s all good. I can understand her wanting to get to higher ground, and she seems fairly coherent herself at this point. She understands when it gets to daylight the need to cover her head, for example, and she leaves a trail, so why has she failed to follow the basic rules for surviving in a desert? Because, like it or not there was adequate coverage for her to shelter near to the car and it would have made so much more sense (although, granted it would have been a dull episode).
So, not sheltering did give her the opportunity to sport some rather inventive headgear. Fabulous stuff! And I did wonder why she was carrying that stupid mirror with her the whole time, but in fact she was making a good choice. So I guess, she made a survival decision, and chose walking. The problem is, once you choose you have to keep going, and I like how that was portrayed and I think Jorja Fox did a sterling job!
Others who did great jobs were Nick (although I admit I’m slightly biased towards the beautiful Texan man), he just does emotion extremely well, it was believable and a little bit heartbreaking. And Brass, playing a hard ass with the car lot guy, it was a short but great scene, he does a great tough cop impression…
Both Grissom and Nick were great when finding the car and the vest, and at that point I really felt for Grissom and that he might be feeling some pain at the loss of his loved one. Unfortunately, other than that I was less than convinced by his emotional performance.
I was assured that I would need Kleenex for this one, and I really didn’t. I got close at the end, but that mood was ruined for me because I was busy trying to figure out what emotion Grissom was portraying. He almost looked to be in physical pain, and then almost smiling, perhaps grimacing, but none of it quite seemed right…And then the episode ended, and now we must hope for some sort of follow up next week, because there was more that could be said I think.
Good points: Nick finding Sara, rather than the expected cliché of Grissom being the saviour. Jorja’s performance.
Bad points: It was the story of Sara, which whilst good, wasn’t exactly a CSI episode and didn’t seem to utilise any usual CSI features to solve the case… They basically used normal detective work, and walking round a desert hoping to bump into her. Luckily they did.
OK, that was longer than I meant to write...
