I know I'm coming on quite late again. (Evil Grey's fans stole the common room TV again.) Anyway, I LOVED the episode. This is one of those very, very rare episodes where it really does feel like everyone got decent screentime -- and not just decent screentime, but decent
good screentime. Every character got to show at least a little bit of personality, which was nice. That to me stood out as a true mark of strong writing on Hoyt's part (and, presumably, on the part of whoever the story editors, et al were).
But my absolute favorite part was when Doc Robbins starts processing and there's a blues harp in the background! Harps (harmonicas) are so underappreciated, as is the blues, at least by the general public (many musicians, on the other hand, tend to credit blues powerhouses like Willie Dixon of Chess with having one of the biggest influences on all popular music of the last half-century). And I definitely hadn't listened to as much Robert Johnson in quite a while, so it was a nice reminder to check him out again. He's an amazing artist with an absolutely fascinating story. I definitely always hear about most shows (i.e. Grey's) sticking with current Indie-ish/pop/rock music, so my respect for CSI just about doubled. I love that they went old school blues. Now once they throw in some Little Walter and Motown on the show, I can die happy
Oh, and to anyone who really liked the music in this episode, check out Chess Records and Alan Lomax. They were both responsible for a lot of the best old school blues.
My one complaint -- the way Kayla's last, seemingly worst insult to the other girl (I think Rhonda?) was that she would always have a fat *ss. Seriously? I can understand the fixation with slimness in our general culture, but I will never understand what the big deal is with small butts. Back home in DC, that kind of comment would be a compliment, not an insult (albeit worded rather differently). Most of my friends adhere strictly to the Sir Mix-a-lot school of thought, but I guess that's neither here nor there, and not terribly important in the overall episode. It did, however, stand out to me as the second instance this season where I didn't like how CSI portrayed the female body image. In 'Leave Out All the Rest,' Riley and Greg made the assumption (
before they found the body) that Justine had fake breasts based entirely on a photo of her, which just didn't seem fair or even realistic. She definitely didn't look unrealistically large in the photograph that they based the entire judgment on.
