'CSI': Drugs are bad, mmmkay
It's been a wild week for CSI -- well, okay, for Gary Dourdan. Or could this be the conspiracy's insidious plot? Based on this episode, how'd they slip drugs into all of our drinks?
The opening actually made me think this week's episode was written by the Two and a Half Men gang. (Nope, still next week.) At the police station, a woman dressed in tinfoil tries to explain how aliens from the 11th dimension are coming that very night. Darn that John Bigboote! Inside, Doc Robbins and Dave are autopsying... a doe. As in deer. Wearing a tutu and killed with a crossbow bolt. Brass and Nick are interviewing the suspect, who too easily escapes. After a chase during which the Deer Hunter knocks aside several cops and tinfoil-girl Evelyn, he's pepper sprayed and tased.
Immediately after which he bursts into flames. Oops.
After the credits, the team tries to recreate Deer Hunter's spontaneous human combustion. Warrick found moonshine in the man's truck, but even poured on a ballistics dummy and pepper sprayed, the taser doesn't ignite it. Where next to turn? Evelyn! Maybe something on her tinfoil was flammable. But oops again, she was hit by a truck and is dead. And is gushing green blood. So much for living long and prospering.
Nearby, the investigators find a corpse wearing three pairs of sunglasses also bleeding green. Is it Nada? Nope, Grissom explains the sunglasses just helped him sleep during the day. Greg scopes out a Vulcan-bloodied pipe and deduces it's the murder weapon.
After a moderately cute discussion about Spock, Hodges and Wendy discover both vics' blood had high levels of sulfur, which can make blood appear green. Meanwhile, we learn the cop who pepper-sprayed Deer Hunter used non-regulation spray. Sure enough, it sets Jello Boy aflame while the Mythbusters watch in the background. Whuh? Am I high too? And hey, that sulfur spike in the blood was caused by beyond-overdose levels of thiocyte, a migraine medication. Can Gary score me some?
The pipe, by the way, had green blood from both the dead homeless man and an unknown donor. Thanks to a fingerprint, said donor is identified as David Bohr, ex-military. Brass finds Bohr, who seems to be in pain and is bleeding green. When a red-shirt uncovers a window in the background, green blood explodes from Bohr's orifices. We have another corpse!
Bohr, see, had a brain tumor causing massive headaches, and had worked in pest control at a hospital where he got thiocyte, which he also sold to the homeless, turning their blood green.
But that's not all! Cath and Warrick show up to investigate a couple in their 60s who died seemingly in their sleep. Plus, their yard's got dead squirrels and a weird ultrasonic pest repellant device from "Atomic Dave's." Oh, and the hot sculptor next door is acting -- forgive me -- squirrelly. Let's break down the B-plot: Sculptor used cyanide to kill the ground squirrels driven into her yard by the device created by "Atomic" David Bohr, the tumor guy. One of the squirrels escaped under the neighbors' house and chewed a wire, starting a spark that ignited a layer of carpet under the top layer, creating fumes but no fire. The fumes killed the couple.
Oh, and the sculptor was sad because her fiancee had just died. Yep, the Deer Hunter. In the end, Grissom gives us a lesson in string theory (basically, everything is connected) and I make a note to track down thiocyte.
Another really good episode, so I have high hopes the season will keep rolling out the quality murders. That said, next week was written by the Two and a Half Men writers, so keep those migraine meds on hand.
And the "ground squirrel" that ate through the electrical wiring sure looked like a gray (tree) squirrel to me. Maybe it is just rasier to train a gray squirrel than a "ground" squirrel. Found this discussion while looking up thiocyte, which I still can't find, listed as a legitimate drug, even in the Physician's Drug Reference
Thiocyte - can't find any such drug. Where did they come up with that???? Looked like tree squirrels to me too.
I doubt the writers of this episode would put the true name of a migraine drug on the show, considering how many pathetic morons there are who would snort their own fingernail clippings if they thought they could get high off of it. I'm sure there's a real-world equivalent out there that they used as reference, but since I don't suffer from migraines (thank the goddess), I wouldn't know what it might be.
Patricia, I sure would love to know who could train any kind of squirrel. They would definitely have to have more patience than I have, lol. But I think you were right about the difference in squirrels, which makes me wonder what kind actually do destroy lawns in Las Vegas. Maybe they're really supposed to be prairie dogs, who knows?
I enjoyed the lab techs' discussion about green blood and Star Trek, which I'm sure was a major influence on this particular episode. I had read somewhere many years ago about how certain chemicals cause the blood to turn a swampy greenish-black color, but I didn't know about the sulfer component.
I looked it up after they mentioned the cat's name, and while people can spell the name of their pets however they damn well please, the actual name of the philosopher/scientist was named Schroedinger. He put forth the notion that unless one can see every result of a given cir***stance, any or all of them might be reality (that's a very 101 definition of what is a ridiculously complex idea, so sorry for those who know more about it than I do). There are various sites on the internet that cover his suppositions, so I won't clutter up the blog with it. I'm not sure if he worked with string theory or not, but I did enjoy how the writers included that in the show. Quantum physics and mechanics is a fascinating field, even if nearly all of it is theoretical at this point.
Even if their presence in the lab was a mite mysterious and non sequitur-ish, I did enjoy seeing Adam and Jamie from Mythbusters. I'm sure that the writers of the three CSIs get a lot of ideas from watching their show.
All in all, not a bad episode. As for Gary Dourdan, how prescient was it that the show's PTBs fired him for an "undisclosed personal difficulty" and then he gets arrested for drug possession? Too bad, really, because of the guys on the show, I've always liked him. George Eads irks me sometimes for no particular reason, and the lab rats are just...odd. Ah, well, at least he's not on Lost...the smoke monster would've had him for a late afternoon snack.
DD, I spent a lot of time cracking on Gary Dourdan, but he really is one of my favorites on the show. I mostly skipped the lab rats' banter this week because it felt forced. I thought it detracted from what was an awesomely bizarre storyline.
I do get migraines -- albeit not too often -- and during the times when a fistful of Excedrin doesn't help, I wish for something like this ep's miracle drug.
I really liked last night's episode. I liked how it was all connected and Jamie & Adam from mythbusters made an appearance. I loved grissom's line: "Hodges, please stop stalking me."
Can't wait until next week.
I liked that they included all of the lab rats in the ep. I like what they add to the eps.
I haven't watched CSI for a few seasons (bad me), but I keep up with the big storylines through my mother, who loves to yak about it. I had to sit down to watch this one, though. Geeks talking about the science behind Spock's blood, string theory, Mythbusters cameo, AND the crazy interwovenness of everything in the episode? Yeah, I had to. This ep was bizarrely awesome.
Dark Disciple: The famous physicist's name was indeed spelled Schrödinger. The ö is very often dumbed down to 'oe' in English, because heaven forbid we actually learn how to pronounce international characters instead of substituting them.
Chi, actually I was born in Germany, so I do know how his name is supposed to spelled. However, I guess I "dumbed down" the spelling because I was too lazy to shift my keyboard so that I could utilize the umlaut. Also, the proper pronunciation just doesn't come through when written, hence the "dumbed down" spelling that is commonly seen in places like this. Hell, if my last name were still spelled the way it was when my ancestors got off the boat, as opposed to the Ellis Island/"dumbed down" version it is now, nobody would be able to pronounce it. :)
I founf a drug on wikipedia called Thiocyanate. It sells legit as it says it has a high amount of sulphur in it.
Imitrex (sumatriptan) is thought to produce the "green blood" effect at higher than recommended dosages. There is no commercially manufactured drug generically known as thiocyte.